The EU is responsible for “the mess” in Ukraine, Geert Wilders, Holland’s Party for Freedom leader, told RT. Wilders wonders why the bloc has got involved in a country where half the population is against joining Europe.
Wilders, who was speaking exclusively on RT’s SophieCo, believes the EU should have kept out of the conflict and only made things worse by giving the country hopes of a pre-accession treaty to the union, when the people of Ukraine were not in unison about joining the organization.
“It was a very delicate balance in Ukraine with 50 percent looking eastwards, towards Russia, and 50 percent of the population looking westwards, towards the European Union. So I think it was very irresponsible what the EU did; they should have kept out of it,” Wilders said.
The leader of the right-wing Party for Freedom criticized politicians from Europe, the US and from his home country for appearing in Kiev and giving the impression that Ukraine had the complete support of the West while completely ignoring the fact that Ukraine remains a very complex situation.
“I believe Europe was more thinking about itself and expanding it and its territory than really thinking about the whole of Ukraine, let alone the stability in that region.”
Wilders admits he understands the gripes of those living in the east of the country, who were unhappy when the coup-appointed government took power in Kiev. “The best thing to do is to de-escalate by taking the Russian minority in eastern Ukraine seriously; give them rights and make them really feel as important as the other half of Ukraine,” the 50 year-old Eurosceptic continued.
The Dutch politician says Russia is also partly to blame and that retaining the territorial integrity of Ukraine is of the utmost importance.
“I’m not only blaming the EU, I’m blaming both Russia and the EU. But I have to be honest, the European Union made a terrible move in the beginning of November last year, and they at least partially started a lot of the troubles, and that analysis is shared by more parties in the EU for sure,” said the leader of the Party for Freedom.
The US and the EU recently introduced more economic sanctions against Russia as they believe the country is having a destabilizing effect on Ukraine. However, Wilders says this will help neither the Russians nor the EU and cannot have a “positive effect.”
Wilders has achieved success in his native Netherlands on a ticket of euro skepticism and is adamant that his country should leave the EU. “We can deal better economically when we are in charge of our country, again, when it comes to national sovereignty – so, yes, we would like to leave the EU and be stronger as a national country,” the Dutchman said.
Wilders cites the example of Switzerland, as a model that his country could follow, with the Alpine nation being one of the richest on the continent, despite never having joined the EU.
“We lost our identity; we lost our national sovereignty to the EU, an institution that really a lot of people in the West don’t like so much anymore. I have nothing against Europe, but I have a lot against the EU as an organization,” Wilders concluded.
At least 31 anti-government activists have died in a fire at Odessa’s Trade Unions House. Some burned to death, while others suffocated or jumped out of windows, the Ukrainian Interior Ministry reported. The building was set ablaze by pro-Kiev radicals.
Some 40 people were also injured in the fire, the official statement said.
A total of 37 people have died in Odessa violence on Friday and almost 200 others have sustained injuries, including 22 police officers, Interior Ministry reported. Twenty-five people remain in critical condition, according to Odessa City Council.
Police detained over 130 people following Friday’s bloody clashes and opened up 10 criminal investigations with charges including premeditated murder and violence against law enforcement officers.
According to the ministry, the Friday standoff on Odessa included “anti-Maidan” activists on one side and “football fans” from Odessa and Kharkov, as well as “euro-Maidan” activists, on the other. A criminal case on the charges of mass unrest has been opened.
The Trade Unions House was set on fire by pro-Kiev radicals after they surrounded and destroyed the tent camp of anti-government activists that stood in front of the building on Odessa’s Kulikovo Field Square. It was torched in a storming attempt after some of the anti-Maidan activists rallying in the square barricaded themselves inside the building.
The majority of the victims were found on the floors of the Trade Unions House having apparently burned to death or suffocated from smoke. Others jumped out of the building’s windows, according to police.
Earlier reports of the clashes in Odessa said that both sides used Molotov cocktails and, allegedly, gunfire. Part of the pro-Maidan activists reportedly bore insignia of the radical Right Sector group.
A live video stream from inside the building showed disturbing scenes of supposedly dead bodies lying around the rooms with thick smoke in the air and blood stains on the floor.
Most of the bodies filmed had St. George ribbons attached to their clothes, distinguishing the victims as pro-Russian or anti-Kiev activists.
The person filming said he counted up to 25 dead bodies on the upper floors alone.
As the house was engulfed in flames, photos posted on Twitter showed people hanging out of windows and sitting on windowsills of several floors, possibly preparing to jump. Reports claimed that those who jumped and survived were surrounded and beaten by football ultras and the Right Sector.
The riot police lines standing beside the building were apparently doing nothing to prevent the violence, the photos showed. Police officers reportedly said they could not do anything because they were “unarmed.”
Activists trapped on the roof of the besieged Trade Unions House building have been rescued and taken to a police station, the self-proclaimed head of the Republic of Odessa told Rossiya 24.
One of the activist trapped there told RT by phone earlier that up 50 people were there with him, including women.
As people were dying in the burning building, some of the pro-Kiev activists jeered on Twitter that “Colorado beetles are being roasted up in Odessa,” using a derogatory term for pro-Russian activists wearing St. George’s ribbons. Few media outlets followed the developing situation, with thousands of people taking to live streams to see the events unfolding.
However, just as the first official death toll emerged, some Western media and leaders rushed to seemingly downplay the role of pro-Kiev activists in the incident and to blame their rivals instead.
“More than 40 people were killed in Odessa on Friday, most caught in a building set on fire after pro-Russian activists and supporters of Ukrainian unity fought running battles across the southern port city,” Reuters wrote.
“Horrible with at least 38 dead in Odessa. Seems to have started with pro-Russian attempt to get control of buildings. Violence must stop!” Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt wrote on Twitter. Earlier, Bildt blamed “pro-Russian thugs” for the street violence in Odessa.
The Anglo-Saxon Empire is based on a century of propaganda. It managed to convince us that the United States is “the land of the free” and that it engaged in wars to defend its ideals. But the current crisis over Ukraine has changed the rules of the game. Now Washington and its allies are not the only speakers. Their lies are openly challenged by the government and media of another major state, Russia. In the era of satellites and the Internet, Anglo-Saxon propaganda no longer works.
Rulers have always tried to convince their subjects of the correctness of their actions, because crowds never follow men they know to be bad. The twentieth century has seen new ways of spreading ideas unburdened by the truth. Westerners trace modern propaganda to Nazi minister Joseph Goebbels. It is a way to forget that the art of distorting the perception of things was previously developed by Anglo-Saxons.
In 1916, the United Kingdom created Wellington House in London, followed by Crewe House. Simultaneously, the United States created the Committee on Public Information (CPI). Considering the First World War was between masses and no longer between armies, these organizations tried to intoxicate their own people as well as those of their allies and those of their enemies with propaganda.
Modern propaganda started with the publication in London of the Bryce Report on German war crimes, which was translated into thirty languages. According to this document, the German army had raped thousands of women in Belgium. The British Army was thus fighting against barbarism. At the end of the First World War it was discovered that the entire report was a hoax, made up of false testimony with the help of journalists.
For his part, in the United States, George Creel invented a myth that World War II was a crusade by democracies for peace to protect the rights of humanity.
Historians have shown that World War I was responding to causes as deep and as profound, the most important being the competition between major powers to expand their colonial empires.
The British and U.S. bureaus were secret organizations working on behalf of their states. Unlike Leninist propaganda, which aspired to “reveal the truth” to the ignorant masses, the Anglo-Saxons sought to deceive in order to manipulate them. To this end, Anglo-Saxon state agencies had to hide and usurp false identities.
After the demise of the Soviet Union, the United States neglected propaganda and favoured public relations. It was no longer a matter of lying, but of holding journalists’ hands that they may see only what they are shown. During the Kosovo war, NATO appealed to Alastair Campbell, an adviser to the British Prime Minister to tell the press an uplifting dayly story. While journalists reproduced this story, the Alliance could bomb “in peace.” The story telling was less designed to lie than to distract.
However, story telling is back with a vengeance with the September 11 attacks : it consisted of focussing public attention on the attacks on New York and Washington so that people would not perceive the military coup organized that day : the transfer of the executive powers of President Bush to a secret military unit and the house arrest of all parliamentarians. This intoxication was especially the work of Benjamin Rhodes, now an adviser to Barack Obama.
In subsequent years, the White House installed a system of propaganda with key allies (the UK, Canada , Australia and of course Israel). Every day these four governments received instructions or pre-written speeches from the Office of global media to justify the war in Iraq or vilify Iran. [1]
For the rapid spread of its lies since 1989, Washington relied on CNN. Over time, the United States created a cartel of satellite information (Al- Arabiya , Al- Jazeera , BBC , CNN, France 24 , Sky) channels. In 2011, during the bombing of Tripoli , NATO surprisingly convinced Libyans that they had lost the war and that it was useless to continue resisting. But in 2012, NATO failed to replicate this model and to convince the Syrians that their government would inevitably fall. This tactic failed because the Syrians were aware of the operation carried out by international television in Libya and were able to prepare [2]. And this failure marked the end of the hegemony of the “information”cartel.
The current crisis between Washington and Moscow about Ukraine has forced the Obama administration to review its system. Indeed, Washington is now no longer the sole speaker, it must contradict the Russian government and media accessible anywhere in the world via satellite and Internet. Secretary of State John Kerry appointed a new deputy for propaganda, in the person of the former editor of Time Magazine, Richard Stengel [3]. Stengel wrote Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, a total fabrication of the the life of the black “freedom fighter”. Before taking the oath on April 15, he was already occupying his office and, on March 5, sent a “fact sheet” to major Atlanticist media on “10 counter-truths” that Putin would have pronounced on the Ukraine [4]. He reoffended on April 13 with a second sheet with “10 other counter-truths ” [5].
What strikes one in reading this prose is its ineptitude. It aims to validate the official history of a revolution in Kiev and discredit the Russian discourse on the Nazi presence in the new government. However, we know today that in fact this “revolution” was indeed a coup staged by NATO and implemented by Poland and Israel by mixing recipes for “color revolutions” and the “Arab spring”. [6] Journalists who received these files and relayed them are fully aware of the recordings of telephone conversations between the Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland and Minister for Estonian Foreign Affairs, Urmas Paets, on how Washington would change the regime at the expense of the European Union, and on the true identities of the Maidan snipers. In addition, they learned later revelations of the Polish weekly Nie about the training two months before the events of the Nazi rioters at the Academy of Polish police. As to denying the presence of Nazis in the new Ukrainian government, this amounts to a claim that the night is luminous. It is not necessary to go to Kiev but just to read the writings of the current ministers or listen to their remarks to see this is the case. [7]
Ultimately, if these arguments help give the illusion of a consensus in the large Atlanticist media, they have no chance of convincing curious citizens. Instead, it is so easy with the Internet to discover the deception that this type of manipulation cannot but further undermine Washington’s credibility.
The unanimity of the Atlanticist media on September 11 helped convince international public opinion, but the work done by many journalists and citizens, of which I was the precursor, showed the physical impossibility of the official version. Thirteen years later, hundreds of millions of people have become aware of these lies. This process will only grow with the new propaganda devices manipulated by the US. In short, all those who relay the arguments of the White House , including the governments and media of NATO, destroy their own credibility.
Barack Obama and Benjamin Rhodes , John Kerry and Richard Stengel act only in the short term. Their propaganda convinces the masses for only a few weeks and then helps create revulsion when the people understand they are being manipulated. Unwittingly, they undermine the credibility of the state institutions of NATO who consciously relay them. They forget that the propaganda of the twentieth century could only succeed because the world was divided into blocks that did not communicate with one another, and this monolithic principle is incompatible with the new means of communication.
The crisis in Ukraine is not over, but it has already profoundly changed the world : by publicly contradicting the President of the United States, Vladimir Putin has taken a step that henceforth prevents the success of U.S. propaganda.
French intellectual, specializing in international relations in Arabic, Spanish and Russian. His last two books published in English : 9/11 the Big Lie and Pentagate.
Translation – Roger Lagassé – Source – Al-Watan (Syria)
The Jewish mayor of Kharkov was shot in the back raising fears that prominent public figures were being targeted for assassination.
While America and the European Union impose new sanctions on Russia, violence and turmoil continues unabated in eastern Ukraine.
The attempted murder of Gennady Kernes, the mayor of the country’s second-largest city has caused fear that the US invasion would plunge the country into more bloodshed. Last night Kernes was “fighting for his life”, said his spokesman, after emergency surgery.
Kernes, who has convictions for theft and fraud, was allegedly linked in the past to organised crime. He is also one of the most prominent Jews in the country; there has been rise in anti-semitism recently, but the mayor’s colleagues say he had not received any threats on religious grounds.
Kernes, a colourful character who regularly posted photographs of himself on social media was gunned down while he was out cycling, jogging, or swimming according to differing accounts of what took place. Valeriy Boyko, the director of Surgery institute in Kiev, where he was being treated, said the mayor “had suffered a very serious wound with a number of organs damaged”.
The 64-year-old billionaire businessman banned protests in Kharkov under an emergency order which had been put in place to “avoid the spread of infectious diseases”.
Officials said Kernes had made a public statement that he was being subjected to “political persecution”, adding that Arsen Avakov, Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, was linked to threats against Kernes and the attack on him.
The two men have clashed in the past with Avakov accusing Kernes, to whom he lost the mayoral race in 2010, of organising gangs of thugs.
Ukraine is currently being looted by billionaires, but pickings might be slim.
Gunmen took over the police headquarters and municipal offices at Kosryantynivka on Monday, a city half way between Slovyansk and Donetsk, replacing the Ukrainian flag with those of the Peoples Republic of Donetsk and Russia.
Juliana Anatoliyevna, 40, standing outside the municipal building, wanted to stress: “We had been waiting for this to happen. We saw other places becoming free and we were kept waiting. We have had 22 years of Ukraine and all that has given us is misery, industries shutting down and unemployment. All we want now is a referendum, as soon as possible.”
Amid escalating tensions in Ukraine, the local population remains unclear who the army is ‘defending’.
A taxi driver confronted a military checkpoint in Ukraine’s eastern town of Slavyansk, asking the Interior Troops stationed there: “Who are you guarding against here?”
In response he received a confused answer from one of the soldiers: “We’ve been doing that since December, nobody really knows against whom.”
The taxi driver stood up to Ukrainian soldiers that had been demanding to see his identification, claiming that they are there “to prevent transportation of forbidden items to or out of Slavyansk,” as part of the “anti-terrorist operation.”
Ukrainian authorities have been pushing ahead with ‘anti-terrorist’ ops in the east of the country, which has been opposing the coup-appointed government in Kiev.
Just last week five anti-government protesters reportedly were killed and one injured in Slavyansk after Kiev authorities sent tanks and armored vehicles against the local population.
On Saturday, leaked satellite images revealed that Ukrainian tanks and armored vehicles have been stationed en masse around Slavyansk. A Russian defense source said that artillery and rocket systems have also been deployed to the area.
RIA Novosti published the satellite images showing the buildup of troops. The photos were dated April 24-25. The images appear to show part of military hardware used for the current Ukrainian troops’ objective of “isolating” Slavyansk.
The West and the United States provoked the Ukrainian crisis, former President of the Czech Republic Vaclav Klaus said in an interview to Czech television (CT24).
“I think that not Russia is to blame for the outbreak in Kiev on the Maidan (Independence Square). Western Europe and the United States aggravated the situation,” he said.
“I had told them from the very beginning not to exert pressure on Ukraine, as it will only destroy and disintegrate it. Unfortunately, that is exactly what has happened,” Klaus said.
At present, in his view, the country is undergoing a difficult satge, and it is hard to “clearly say whether it wants to rely on the West or on Russia.” However, Ukraine should independently decide its own future.
“Let them determine their future for themselves – without any interference from outside,” the former Czech president said.
Very soon, the IMF will cease to be the world’s only organization capable of rendering international financial assistance. The BRICS countries are setting up alternative institutions, including a currency reserve pool and a development bank.
The BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) have made significant progress in setting up structures that would serve as an alternative to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, which are dominated by the U.S. and the EU. A currency reserve pool, as a replacement for the IMF, and a BRICS development bank, as a replacement for the World Bank, will begin operating as soon as in 2015, Russian Ambassador at Large Vadim Lukov has said.
Brazil has already drafted a charter for the BRICS Development Bank, while Russia is drawing up intergovernmental agreements on setting the bank up, he added.
In addition, the BRICS countries have already agreed on the amount of authorized capital for the new institutions: $100 billion each. “Talks are under way on the distribution of the initial capital of $50 billion between the partners and on the location for the headquarters of the bank. Each of the BRICS countries has expressed a considerable interest in having the headquarters on its territory,” Lukov said.
It is expected that contributions to the currency reserve pool will be as follows: China, $41 billion; Brazil, India, and Russia, $18 billion each; and South Africa, $5 billion. The amount of the contributions reflects the size of the countries’ economies.
The discovery of large hydrocarbon deposits in the Arctic has sparked international competition over resources in frozen waters. Regional powers are quickly filing claims for the sea shelf, with Russia preparing to bring in the biggest bid to the UN.
Ahead of Moscow preparing to file a 1.2 million square kilometer Arctic waters bid to the UN later this year, President Vladimir Putin commissioned Russian ministries to get ready to take the new territories in the Sea of Okhotsk under full control and protection.
The Russian president ordered maintenance of border patrols of the extended sea shelf be in place by July 1, 2014.
Russia’s Defense Ministry has been instructed to ensure maritime authorities extend the Russian shelf in the Sea of Okhotsk beyond the generally recognized 200 nautical miles zone by December 1, 2015.
The Foreign Ministry is obliged to bring all the necessary documents, including new maps of the Sea of Okhotsk and scientific data serving as proof of Russia’s bid, to the UN by March 1, 2015.
Experts say the future of the world economy, to some extent, is dependent on the Arctic.
Last year, Russian energy giants, Gazprom and Rosneft, were granted rights to develop large hydrocarbon deposits recently discovered in the Pechora and Kara seas. The find could be a pot of gold for Russia’s gas industry.
The melting Arctic ice cap has made way for shipping routes and the exploration of resources at the bottom of the world’s smallest ocean. The North Pole icecap has decreased by 40 percent since 1979, opening up two shipping routes, the North Sea route and the Northwest Passage, with extremely high economic potential.
Approximately 30 percent of the world’s undiscovered natural gas and 15 percent of its oil lie in the Arctic. But the majority, 84 percent, of the estimated 90 billion barrels of oil and 47.3 trillion cubic meters of gas remain off shore.
According to the UN’s sea convention, any country has sovereign rights to resources within 200 nautical miles of its territorial waterways. There are five countries with territories in the Arctic: Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the US.
As the icecaps are melting, a military race is also building up in the region.
The US Navy recently debuted a revised roadmap focused on expanding America’s muscle in the world’s coldest ocean over the next decade, increasing the number of personnel trained in Arctic operations, advancing technical equipment and surveillance needs.
The ultimate goal appears to be establishing international order under US leadership.
Earlier this year, NATO countries participated in a Norwegian-led Cold Response exercise in the Arctic, rehearsing high intensity operations with 16,000 troops deployed in extreme conditions. Non-NATO participants, Sweden and Switzerland, also took part.
“The United States is anxious to militarize the Arctic Ocean. It has to do it via its relations with Canada and it is also seeking to do it via NATO, through the participation of Norway and Denmark in NATO. And now it is calling upon Sweden and Finland to essentially join NATO with a view to establishing a NATO agenda in the Arctic,” Michel Chossudovsky, from the Centre for Research on Globalization in Montreal, revealed.
Meanwhile, Canada has been staging its own independent drills with hundreds of soldiers participating in cold-weather winter warfare exercises.
Not to be left out, last year Russia announced the resumption of a constant armed presence in the Arctic, which was abandoned by the military after the fall of the USSR.
Back in 2012, Russia’s former envoy to NATO and current Vice Prime Minister, Dmitry Rogozin, said that by the middle of the 21st century the fight for resources between various states will become “uncivilized.”
In about 40 years, Russia may lose its sovereignty if it fails to clearly set out its national interests in the Arctic, Rogozin said.
“It’s crucially important for us to set goals for our national interests in this region. If we don’t do that, we will lose the battle for resources which means we’ll also lose in a big battle for the right to have sovereignty and independence,” Rogozin stated at a Marine Board meeting in Moscow.
American senator, Republican John McCain, who is currently on a visit to Estonia, has urged to “provide weapons to Ukraine” speaking at a live show of one of the local TV channels.
“We should provide weapons to Ukraine so that it could defend itself,” the 77-year-old senator from Arizona said.
John McCain, the ex-presidential candidate from the Republicans on 2008 elections, believes that Russia threatens its neighbor. “Russia is provoking the West by staging actions in Ukraine’s East. Maybe, it wants to increase its influence on the South as well,” the senator suggested.
An advisor to Secretary of State John Kerry said Monday that the United States may decide to send arms to eastern Ukraine as tensions continue to worsen there between pro-Russian protesters and supporters of the country’s interim government.
Reuters reported on Monday that US State Department Counselor Thomas Shannon — a senior diplomat and member of Sec. Kerry’s inner circle — said the possibility of providing arms to Ukrainian forces is indeed currently on the table.
Oleksandr Turchynov, the acting president of Ukraine, has since asked for the UN to conduct a joint “anti-terrorist operation” in that region as activity intensifies.
Seven weeks after the right-wing coup in Ukraine, evidence is mounting that the Western-backed opposition at the time was responsible for the lethal shootings in Independence Square on February 20. This was suggested by a report on the German public television programme “Monitor” last Thursday evening, and which is available online in German.
“According to research it appears unlikely that the shots on demonstrators came exclusively from the side of the old regime,” stated a press release made available prior to the program. In its report, “Monitor” raised the question, “Did radical oppositionists end up shooting in order to produce chaos and place the blame on Yanukovitch?” The presented videos, interviews and sound recordings suggest precisely this!
“Monitor” presented an extract of radio traffic from alleged sharp-shooters of the Yanukovitch regime, who were positioned on various rooftops in the centre of Kiev on February 20. The discussion was picked up by a Ukrainian radio amateur. One of the snipers can be heard asking his colleagues, “Hey guys, they are over there, on the right of the hotel Ukrayina. Who is shooting? Our people don’t shoot at unarmed civilians.” Then he calls, “Guys, there is a sniper who is aiming at me. Who is he aiming at from the corner? Look out.” A short time later someone else says, “Someone shot him. But not us. Are there more snipers over there? And who are they?”
On other videos, activists who marched along Institutska Street on February 20, can be seen being shot not only from the front, that is, from the direction of government buildings, but also from behind. Nikola, an eyewitness who is visible on several videos, confirmed, “Yes, on the 20th [February] we were shot from behind, from the Hotel Ukrayina, from the eighth or ninth floor. People were standing up there and shooting at us and we were also shot from the other direction.”
Responding to the question as to who had shot them from the Hotel Ukrayina, he answered, “I don’t know. They were soldiers, certainly professionals.”
On the day of the shootings, the Hotel Ukrayina was firmly under the control of the opposition and was heavily guarded. Numerous witnesses, journalists and oppositionists confirmed this to “Monitor”. On the morning of February 20, the opposition even introduced entry controls. Only those with a room key or identification were allowed into the hotel. The “Monitor” reporters come to the conclusion, “Therefore it would have been very difficult for a sniper to sneak in.”
In addition, the reporters reviewed pictures from Russian television, which allegedly show armed oppositionists firing at demonstrators. “Precisely who is shooting at whom is not possible to confirm,” However, it was determined that “the recording was definitely made in the Hotel Ukrayina.” It was also confirmed that “not only oppositionists, but also the government militias were shot at. And perhaps this was also by the same people.”
A doctor, who treated victims on both sides, confirmed this in an interview. “The injured who we treated had the same type of bullet wounds. I’m speaking about the type of bullets we took out of the bodies in operations. They were identical. I can’t say any more”, he stated.
The explosive report concurs with the intercepted telephone call between Estonian foreign minister Urmas Paet and the foreign policy head of the EU, Catherine Ashton, at the beginning of March. Paet also based himself on information from doctors and stated that “the same snipers shot people on both sides.” He warned that “the conclusion that not Yanukovitch, but members of the new coalition were behind the shootings is increasingly reinforced.”
Since then, the transitional government in Kiev and its Western allies have desperately sought to cover up the true course of events. Only last week, Ukrainian general state prosecutor Oleg Machnizki of the fascist Svoboda, arrested 12 members of the now dissolved special Berkut unit and presented them as the main suspects in the shootings.
“Monitor” cites a high-ranking member of the investigative committee, who calls the version of events from the state prosecutor into doubt. “My investigation results do not agree with those presented by the state prosecutor at the press conference,” said the investigator, who wished to remain anonymous, in an interview.
A lawyer for the victims suggested that the entire investigation was a deliberate ploy by the transitional government to bury their own crimes. “None of us are getting any information on the investigation”, he complained. “And if you ask me, there is one simple reason for this: it is not being investigated properly. As a lawyer of the victims I am saying to you that the state prosecutor is not investigating properly. They are covering for their own people. They are as partisan as before.”
NATO is creating a naval battle group outside Russian borders, a Russian military source told Interfax news agency.
On April, 3, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov accused NATO of violating the Montreux Convention, which regulates the number ships that can enter the Black Sea, saying that “US warships have extended their deployment beyond the set terms a couple of times lately.”
According to the treaty, warships from non-Black Sea states can only stay in the basin for up to 21 days consecutively. USS Taylor spent 11 more than that in the region in February and March.
Russia’s Foreign Ministry expressed “bemusement” over the move.
“Turkey [which administers the treaty] did not inform us about the overstay. We have expressed our concern to the Turkish and US side in a verbal note,” said a statement on the ministry website.
A Russian fighter jet made multiple, close-range passes near an American warship in the Black Sea for more than 90 minutes Saturday.
Officials said the Russian Fencer made 12 passes, and flew within 1,000 yards of the USS Donald Cook, a Navy destroyer, at about 500 feet above sea level.
The U.S. warship, equipped with the powerful Aegis missile defense system and carrying helicopters, issued several radio queries using international emergency circuits. A Russian Navy ship, a frigate, has been shadowing the U.S. warship, remaining within visual distance.
U.S. military officials have said the deployment is part of an effort to “reassure” allies and partners in the region. A second U.S. Navy warship – a frigate from the Navy’s Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean Sea – is also heading to the Black Sea.
It appears however that no official communication or protests by the U.S. to the Russians about incident have been made. It is also not clear how an American military build-up in the region could be reassuring, as it increases the likelyhood of conflict.
Paul Craig Roberts recently wrote that democracy and freedom require an independent and aggressive media, an independent and aggressive judiciary, and an independent and aggressive Congress. He said the US had none of the above.
The US media consistently lies for the government. Reuters continues to report, falsely, that Russia invaded and annexed Crimea. The Washington Post ran an obviously false story planted on the paper by the Obama regime that the massive protests in former Russian territories of Ukraine are “rent-a-mobs” instigated by the Russian government.
The CIA director has been sent to Kiev to launch a military suppression of the Russian separatists in the eastern and southern portions of Ukraine.
Washington’s plan to grab Ukraine overlooked that the Russian and Russian-speaking parts of Ukraine were not likely to go along with their insertion into the EU and NATO while submitting to the persecution of Russian speaking peoples, Roberts said.
Self-determination will not be recognized by the UN as the UN is essentially a Washington-financed organization, and will follow Washington’s orders. Roberts warned that money is more important to European politicians than humanity’s survival, and Washington pays them well.
The Malaysian Defence Ministry plans to announce soon a tender for delivery of multipurpose fighters, Russia will participate in it with upgraded fighter Su-30MKM, Nikolay Dimidyuk, the director for special commissions of company Rosoboronexport, the only Russian state-run mediator for export and import of the whole scope of military and dual-purpose end products, technologies and services, said in an exclusive interview with ITAR-TASS.
“The Malaysian Defence Ministry plans to announce a tender for delivery of 1-2 squadrons of multipurpose fighters. We will participate in it with upgraded fighter Su-30MKM,” Dimidyuk said, noting that a final form of the fighter plane would be made after an official request was received and technical tender requirements were surveyed.
“We believe that we will have high chances in this tender taking into account successful operation of fighters Su-30MKM and fighters MIG-29N delivered under the 2003 contract. A well-known Malaysian aerobatic team Smokey Bandits that is a landmark of the country’s Air Force steers MIG-29N,” the source said.
A resident of Donetsk has posted a photo of soldiers on a social networking service site. The soldiers, outside a local military enlistment office, were armed with sub-machineguns and light-weight machineguns and spoke English. They wore the uniform that was obviously not Ukrainian.
The coordinator of the Self-Defence of Donbass united organization of the activists of Donetsk told reporters earlier that a plane with 200 foreign mercenaries had landed at Donetsk airport. According to him, the legionnaires speak neither Russian, nor Ukrainian.
Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on April 7th that Kiev is amassing Interior Ministry troops and Ukraine’s National Guards, as well as fighters of the ‘Right Sector’ illegal armed group, in the southeast of Ukraine, including in Donetsk. The Russian Foreign Ministry points out that it is especially concerned over the fact that taking part in the forthcoming operation are some 150 US experts from the Greystone private military organization, dressed in the uniform of the Sokol (Falcon) police task force.
The White House has refuted the report, insisting in its Tuesday’s statement with reference to a Greystone official that US mercenaries are not involved in suppressing unrest in the south-east of Ukraine, Interfax reports.
The Foreign Ministers of Russia, Ukraine, the US and the EU are due to meet for talks on Ukraine next week, according to the press service of the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Catherine Ashton.
Peace initiatives do in no way prevent the US from beefing up its military presence off Ukraine’s coast. Another US naval ship, USS Donald Cook, has entered the Black Sea, according to Rossiya-24 TV channel.
According to The Daily Telegraph British newspaper, the objective of the ship, armed with an air defence system and Tomahawk cruise missiles is to show support for Kiev. Another US naval ship has been in the area since March this year.
Russia is not conducting any unusual or unplanned military activities on its territory in the area of the Ukrainian border, the Russian Foreign Ministry said.
“The US and Ukraine have no reasons for concerns. Russia has said many times that it is not conducting any unusual or unplanned activities significant in terms of military issues on its territory in the area of the Ukrainian border,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a commentary posted on its website.
“The daily activities by the Russian troops on its national territory do not threaten the security of the US and other OSCE countries. The attempts to accuse Russia of beefing up its armed forces are groundless,” the ministry said.
Washington employs thousands private military contractors (PMCs). They’re mercenaries. They’re hired guns.
Peter Dale Scott once said they’re “authorized to commit violence in the the name of their employers.” They’re “predatory bandits.”
They operate extrajudicially. They’re unrestricted by US, international, or local governments’ laws. They’re free from civil or criminal accountability.
Under Article 47 of the 1977 Protocol I to the Geneva Conventions:
“A mercenary is any person who:
(a) is specially recruited locally or abroad in order to fight in an armed conflict;
(b) does, in fact, take a direct part in the hostilities:
(c) is motivated to take part in the hostilities essentially by the desire for private gain and, in fact, is promised, by or on behalf of a Party to the conflict, material compensation substantially in excess of that promised or paid to combatants of similar ranks and functions in the armed forces of the Party;
(d) is neither a national of a Party to the conflict nor a resident of territory controlled by a Party to the conflict;
(e) is not a member of the armed forces of a Party to the conflict; and
(f) has not been sent by a State which is not a Party to the conflict on official duty as a member of its armed forces.”
Washington substitutes them for Pentagon forces however. At multiples more in cost. Using them gives US authorities cover for whatever crimes they commit. Doing so avoids accountability.
They’re an integral part of America’s imperial agenda. Apparently they’re operating in Ukraine. Perhaps hundreds will increase to thousands.
Maybe in other Ukrainian cities. Maybe covertly in Crimea. If not now, maybe later. Expect East/West tensions to escalate. Expect the risk for open conflict to increase.
Russia is a Christian country, Putin repeated recently.
This speech recalls last December’s address where the former KGB chief spoke of Russia as standing against a decadent West:
“Many Euro-Atlantic countries have moved away from their roots, including Christian values. Policies are being pursued that place on the same level a multi-child family and a same-sex partnership, a faith in God and a belief in Satan. This is the path to degradation.”
Heard any Western leader, say, Barack Obama, talk like that lately?
Indicting the “Bolsheviks” who gave away Crimea to Ukraine, Putin declared, “May God judge them.”
What is going on here?
With Marxism-Leninism a dead faith, Putin is saying the new ideological struggle is between a debauched West led by the United States and a traditionalist world Russia would be proud to lead.
In the new war of beliefs, Putin is saying, it is Russia that is on God’s side. The West is Gomorrah.
Vladimir Putin knows exactly what he is doing, and his new claim has a venerable lineage. The ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers who exposed Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy, was, at the time of his death in 1964, writing a book on “The Third Rome.”
The first Rome was the Holy City and seat of Christianity that fell to Odoacer and his barbarians in 476 A.D. The second Rome was Constantinople, Byzantium, (today’s Istanbul), which fell to the Turks in 1453. The successor city to Byzantium, the Third Rome, the last Rome to the old believers, was — Moscow.
Putin is entering a claim that Moscow is the Godly City of today and command post of the counter-reformation against the new paganism.
Putin is plugging into some of the modern world’s most powerful currents.
Not only in his defiance of what much of the world sees as America’s arrogant drive for global hegemony. Not only in his tribal defense of lost Russians left behind when the USSR disintegrated.
He is also tapping into the worldwide revulsion of and resistance to the sewage of a hedonistic secular and social revolution coming out of the West.
In the culture war for the future of mankind, Putin is planting Russia’s flag firmly on the side of traditional Christianity. His recent speeches carry echoes of John Paul II whose Evangelium Vitae in 1995 excoriated the West for its embrace of a “culture of death.”
What did Pope John Paul mean by moral crimes?
The West’s capitulation to a sexual revolution of easy divorce, rampant promiscuity, pornography, homosexuality, feminism, abortion, same-sex marriage, euthanasia, assisted suicide — the displacement of Christian values by Hollywood values.
Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum writes that she was stunned when in Tbilisi to hear a Georgian lawyer declare of the former pro-Western regime of Mikhail Saakashvili, “They were LGBT.”
“It was an eye-opening moment,” wrote Applebaum. Fear and loathing of the same-sex-marriage pandemic has gone global. In Paris, a million-man Moral Majority marched in angry protest.
Author Martha Gessen, who has written a book on Putin, says of his last two years, “Russia is remaking itself as the leader of the anti-Western world.”
But the war to be waged with the West is not with rockets. It is a cultural, social, moral war where Russia’s role, in Putin’s words, is to “prevent movement backward and downward, into chaotic darkness and a return to a primitive state.”
Would that be the “chaotic darkness” and “primitive state” of mankind, before the Light came into the world?
This writer was startled to read in the Jan-Feb. newsletter from the social conservative World Council of Families in Rockford, Ill., that, of the “ten best trends” in the world in 2013, number one was “Russia Emerges as Pro-Family Leader.”
In 2013, the Kremlin imposed a ban on homosexual propaganda, a ban on abortion advertising, a ban on abortions after 12 weeks and a ban on sacrilegious insults to religious believers.
“While the other super-powers march to a pagan world-view,” writes WCF’s Allan Carlson, “Russia is defending Judeo-Christian values. During the Soviet era, Western communists flocked to Moscow. This year, World Congress of Families VII will be held in Moscow, Sept. 10-12.”
Will Vladimir Putin give the keynote?
In the new ideological Cold War, whose side is God on now?
Patrick J. Buchanan is the author of “Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?” To find out more about Patrick Buchanan and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.
The area round the first ever McDonalds in Moscow in Pushkinskaya square saw today an extraordinary promo-campaign against “all the unhealthy stuff that came from the West”, Russian media as well as restaurant search engine Tillypad XL report.
Leaders of the movement “All the truth about food” are set to improvise later the symbolic deportation of the giant hamburger, universally seen as the basic junk food token.
“We are going to put forward our own bill that would set limits to the possible number of unhealthy fast food eateries in Russia, citing a high proportion of saturated fats in their menus, which proves harmful for human health,” says Maxim Raksha, the campaign coordinator.
He admits that one of the reasons for the event is the US-imposed sanctions on Russia. ‘I’ve been following the standoff between Russia and the West, and we’ve come to believe now is the right moment to say no to everything harmful that comes from them.”
The beef is “washed” in ammonium hydroxide and used in the filling of the burger. Before this process the food is deemed unfit for human consumption.
According to the chef and hamburger enthusiast, Jamie Oliver, who has undertaken a war against the fast food industry, “Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold in the cheapest way for dogs, and after this process, is being given to human beings.”
Besides the low quality of the meat, the ammonium hydroxide is harmful to health. Oliver famously coined this the “the pink slime process.”
10. He strengthened international friendship and cooperation between patriots who cling to their guns, religion and integrity.
9. The increased international awareness of government spying results from violation of human rights and privacy laws committed by the Obama administration.
8. By constantly insulting our values and stealing our liberties he made us realise how much we care for our faith and tradition. The threats to our lifestyle are forcing us to become more determined and forceful.
7. He helped humanity become aware of devaluation of Nobel Peace Prize.
6. Thanks to the overdose of gay propaganda he established a solid base on which to build gay bashing.
Side effect 1: Gushing over the openly gay couples, yet refusing comments on his own ambiguous past associations he facilitated the spread of rumours about his own sexuality.
Side effect 2: He makes Vladimir Putin look even more macho.
5. His perpetual boasting and phantasms of omnipotence shifted into a very efficient public awareness campaign against malignant narcissism. Obama helped to persuade not only mental health professionals but ordinary citizens that Narcissistic Personality Disorder should not disappear from Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
4. Bowing to foreign leaders, making confusing and exceedingly arrogant statements he managed to convince millions of people around the world that we need to put the genie back into the bottle. Obama caused that entire nations have a more suspicious and hostile attitude to Islam and we will think twice before electing officials who act like servants of a foreign supremacy.
3. He proved that wussy bureaucrats make bad military leaders and are harmful to our security interests. The Commander in Chief should both earn and deserve this honourable title. By neglecting veterans and persecuting soldiers he made us aware how much we respect them and how much we owe them.
2. He excavated dangerous ideologies; reminding us they proved harmful to humanity and made us want to eradicate them. He brought to light the grotesque features of political correctness and we are less likely to fall into the trap of laxity and permissiveness.
1. As a result of his disastrous leadership we came to the realisation that an incompetent and socially irresponsible president should be dismissed like any bad manager. He reminded us that we have the right to demand accountability from our leaders, and an obligation to limit their power if the prime duty to serve and protect turns into a licence to harm.
Side effect 1: Association with Obama brought his European allies record unpopularity and riots.
Side effect 2: We love Donald Trump’s: “You are fired!”
Moscow’s actions in the Crimea are comprehensible, former German chancellor, Helmut Schmidt said, criticizing the Western reaction to the peninsula’s reunification with Russia.
President Vladimir Putin’s approach to the Crimean issue is “completely understandable,” Schmidt wrote in Die Zeit newspaper where he’s employed as an editor.
While the sanctions, which target individual Russian politicians and businessmen, employed by the EU and the US against Russia are “a stupid idea,” he added.
The current restrictive measures are of symbolic nature, but if more serious economic sanctions are introduced “they’ll hit the West as hard as Russia,” Schmidt warned.
He also believes that the refusal of the Western countries to cooperate with Russia in the framework of the G8 is a wrong decision.
“It would’ve been ideal to get together now. It would certainly do a lot more to promotion of peace than the threats of sanctions,” the ex-chancellor explained.
But the G8 itself isn’t that as important as the G20, in which Russia remains a member, he added.
Schmidt executed the duties of chancellor of West Germany in 1974-82, also working as the country’s finance, economy and defense minister.
Source: RT
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The EU is responsible for “the mess” in Ukraine, Geert Wilders, Holland’s Party for Freedom leader, told RT. Wilders wonders why the bloc has got involved in a country where half the population is against joining Europe.
