Russia – Page 5 – praag.org

Nuclear trainees head for China

Fifty South African trainees are heading for China for a a 4-month nuclear power plant operations training.

Department of Energy spokesperson Johannes Mokobane told Fin 24 the first group comprises employees from the SA energy industry including the Nuclear Energy Corporation of South Africa (Necsa), Eskom nuclear energy supplier Koeberg, Eskom and the Department of Trade and Industry (dti).

“The programme represents the first phase of an extensive programme which hopes to draw students from South Africa’s tertiary institutions in the near future.

“In the next phase we plan to send 250 participants to China to be trained at various levels,” he said.

The training will take place at the Shanghai Jiao Tong and Tsinghua Universities following a skills development co-operation agreement signed in support of SA’s nuclear new build programme between Necsa and Chinese State Nuclear Power Technology Company.

According to the Department of Energy the training will be in the form of lectures as well as tours to some of China’s nuclear facilities.

Trainees will receive lectures in a variety of topics including nuclear safety regulatory system, nuclear island system equipment, codes and safety oversight, steam power conversion system, material science, conventional island system equipment, thermodynamics and basis of reactor thermal hydraulics, radiation protection, instrumentation and control theories, water chemistry, operation theories, and nuclear safety culture.

In September 2014 Energy Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson reportedly signed a deal for SA to get up to eight nuclear reactors from Russia.

The power cooperation deal with Russia, through the state nuclear firm Rosatom, would pave the way for the building of nuclear power plants providing up to 9.6GW (8 NPP units) of nuclear power based on Russian technology by 2030.

Reuters reported at the time that China Guangdong Nuclear Power Holding was also among the companies showing interest in securing the nuclear deal.

Mokobane declined to comment when asked whether the training agreement is an indication that China will have a role in supplying SA with nuclear power.

South Africa has already signed agreements on nuclear issues with Russia, China, South Korea and France. Agreements with the United States, Canada and Japan were also under consideration.

Russia bans Hollywood propaganda film

Russia on Wednesday cancelled the release of a Hollywood thriller set in the Stalin era on grounds it distorts history and would be shown as the country celebrates the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazi Germany in WWII.

The film, “Child 44”, starring Tom Hardy, Vincent Cassel and Gary Oldman, tells the story of a serial killer who targets children in the Stalin era. It is based on a fantasy novel by British writer Tom Rob Smith and was due to premiere in Russia on Thursday.

Russia’s culture ministry said the film’s distributors in Russia, Central Partnership, had agreed to withdraw a request for a distribution licence after ministry officials viewed the film.

“Films such as ‘Child 44’ should not go out in our country on mass release, earning money from our cinema audiences, not in the year of the 70th anniversary of victory, not ever,” Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky wrote on the ministry’s website.

The move to effectively ban a major mainstream Hollywood film just a day before it was due to premiere was unprecedented.

In recent years, Russia has cracked down harshly on negative depictions of the Soviet Union during the Stalin era, while criticism of those who fought in World War II is frowned upon.

The culture ministry accused the film of “distortion of historical facts and the idiosyncratic treatment of events before, during and after” World War II.

Source: AFP

Hope on the horizon and it comes from Greece

Washington in its arrogance, seeing itself as “indispensable,” poses a continuing threat to the lives of hundreds of millions of people. The extraordinary number of dead that Washington has murdered in the 21st century–”The American Century”–is dismissed as “collateral damage” in the “war on terror.”

The war on terror is a hoax. It is a creation of the evil neoconservatives who intend Washington’s world hegemony and Israel’s hegemony from the Nile to the Euphrates. The rest of mankind has realized that Washington’s drive for world hegemony means the entire human race will be dismissed as “collateral damage” as Washington establishes itself as the “exceptional, indispensable country,” the country whose will is above the rule of law and whose morality is non-existent.

The stark reality is that America, which wore the White Hat during the Cold War, now wears the Black Hat, and Russia and China have traded the Black Hat for the White Hat. The hope for mankind no longer resides in the West, which has entered a militarized gestapo existence conducting war against its own citizens and the world at large.

Aggression is the hallmark of 21st century Washington and its captive European vassal states. There has not been a 21st century year without slaughter of innocents by “Western civilization.”

In this interview with Eric King– http://kingworldnews.com/dr-paul-craig-roberts-4-12-15/ –I speak of the hope that comes from revulsion at the looting of southern Europe by fellow EU members and the American hedge funds. If southern Europeans can find the intelligence to comprehend that the New York and German financial interests have decided to destroy the prospects of southern Europeans for the sake of the profits of American and northern European financial interests, European peoples, brainwashed into the grand glorious prospects of being an EU member, might realize the treachery to which they were subjected and leave the exploitative system known as the European Union, a system designed to destroy the sovereignty of European nations.

Powerful Russia stands there as an alternative. As does China. If the Greek government has the sense to default to those who are determined to exploit and to destroy Greece, Italy and Spain will follow. Russia and China are waiting with open arms, and unlike the Western governments, Russia and China are not bankrupt.

Without southern Europe NATO is a non-entity. The Brzezinski and neocon doctrines of Washington controlling Eurasia come to naught. Without NATO Washington’s pretense of speaking for “the world community,” that is, for the white people, rings hollow.

We have to pray for life. Unless Washington can be isolated life on earth has dim prospects.

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts’ latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

Gunter Grass warned of ‘sleepwalking’ into world war in final interview

Germany’s Nobel-winning author Gunter Grass, translated into Afrikaans by PRAAG, said he feared humanity was “sleepwalking” into a world war, in the last interview he gave before his death on Monday.

“We have on the one side Ukraine, whose situation is not improving; in Israel and Palestine things are getting worse; the disaster the Americans left in Iraq, the atrocities of Islamic state and the problem of Syria,” he told the Spanish newspaper El Pais in the interview published Tuesday.

“There is war everywhere; we run the risk of committing the same mistakes as before; so without realising it we can get into a world war as if we were sleepwalking,” he added.

Spain’s top-selling newspaper said the interview, carried out at the author’s home in Luebeck in northern Germany on March 21, was his last before his death aged 87.

Grass, who achieved worldwide fame with his debut and best-known novel “The Tin Drum” in 1959 opposed the installation of nuclear missiles on German soil.

In his lengthy interview with El Pais, he also expressed concern over climate change and overpopulation.

“As the years went by I realised that we have the possibility to autodestruct, something that did not exist before: it was said that Nature caused famine, droughts, the responsibility lay elsewhere,” he said.

“For the first time we are responsible, we have the possibility and the capacity to auto-destroy ourselves and we don’t do anything to eliminate this danger.

“All of this together makes me realise that things are finite, that we don’t have an indefinite amount of time.

“If we take into account the existence of our planet, we have to recognise that we are guests that spend a short and very determined period in this world and all we leave behind is nuclear waste,” he added.

– ‘Need to understand Russia’ –

His Danzig Trilogy is set in the ethnically-mixed region of his childhood. Danzig was handed to Poland after the war, when its ethnic German population fled or were expelled.

Grass, who was wounded and taken prisoner by the Allies during World War II, said his strong work ethic stemmed from several near-death experiences he had as a youth.

“During the space of three or four weeks, during the war, I had five or six possibilities to die like many others of my age. I am still conscious of that,” he told El Pais.

“The fact that I work as much as possible serves to prove to myself that I have survived, that I exist, that I am still living, that I am alive.”

Grass also discussed the rise of tensions between the West and Russia, saying Russia’s long history of occupations needed to be taken into account.

“There are Russian traumas, since Napoleon, since World War II, with 27 million dead when the Germans arrived… and now the fear of being surrounded by the enemy has returned to it,” he said.

“We need to understand it and that is what we have to do, understand Russia,” he added.

Source: AFP

Putin lifts ban on S-300 missile system supplies to Iran

Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to lift the ban on supplies of S-300 air defense missile systems to Iran.

“The decree cancels the ban from transit through Russia (including by air), transportation outside the territory of Russia to the Islamic Republic of Iran and also handover to the Islamic Republic of Iran outside the territory of Russia with the use of ships and aircraft flying the Russian state flag of the air defense missile systems S-300,” the Kremlin’s press-service has said.

The decree is effective immediately.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is expected to make a statement on the decision to lift the ban soon.

It introduces amendments to the presidential decree of September 22, 2010 on measures for implementing the UN Security Council’s Resolution 1929 of June 9 2010. The sub-item concerning S-300 has been removed from it.

The implementation of the Russian-Iranian contract of 2007 for supplying the S-300 systems was suspended following the introduction of sanctions against Iran in September 2010. Tehran later protested that decision in court.

Shortly after Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu visited Iran last January the US Department of State said that supplies of Russian air defense systems to Iran would be unacceptable. In the meantime, Iran has repeatedly voiced the hope Russia would eventually agree to provide the launchers.

The head of the Rostech corporation, Sergey Chemezov, in February said that Russia had offered Tehran to buy the upgraded system Antey-2500 instead of S-300 and that Iran was still considering that option and remained undecided. The US Department of State said it had no objections to Russia’s alternative proposal to Iran.

S-300 systems (NATO reporting name SA-10 Grumble) are designed to defend major facilities from air attacks. They are considered to be some of the world’s most capable anti-aircraft missile systems.

Meanwhile the Pentagon slammed the Russian move to sell missiles to Iran.

Source: Itar-TASS

Will Kiev take down statue of Soviet general?

Rumors are swirling the man who liberated Kiev from the Germans may not be allowed to rest there any longer

There have been rumors in the Russian press about Ukraine’s alleged plans to dismantle the monument to Vatutin in central Kyiv, a stone’s throw from parliament.

According to the reports, Ukrainian authorities intend to cremate Vatutin’s remains, buried under the monument, unless his relatives collect them.

Kyiv, however, firmly denies the claims.

A Just Russia, a Russian political party seen as loyal to the Kremlin, ratcheted up tensions this week by stating that Vatutin’s daughter had requested that her father’s body be repatriated to Russia after authorities in Kyiv personally informed her of their plans.

Party leader Sergei Andrei Mironov was quick to throw his weight behind the reburial initiative.

“Our duty is to shield the grave and the monument from the danger they face today,” in the April 8 press release. “Reburying the general and transferring the monument to his homeland would be a correct and timely act.”

With relations between Russia and Ukraine at their lowest since the demise of the Soviet regime, Vatutin has become a polarizing figure.

The Russian general commanded Red Army operations in Ukraine during World War II.

Despite liberating Kyiv from Nazi German forces, he was attacked by the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a partisan unit that fought both Nazi troops and the Red Army, and died of his wounds in April 1944.

The UPA was organized by supporters of controversial Ukrainian nationalist leader Stepan Bandera, branded a neo-Nazi by Russian state media.

Since Ukraine’s pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted following mass protests in Kyiv, Russia has repeatedly accused the new Western-leaning government in Kyiv of being followers of Bandera, or “Banderovtsy.”

A Just Russia is no exception.

“General Vatutin died after being attacked by nationalists, Banderovtsy from the so-called Ukrainian Insurgent Army,” Mironov wrote in the press release. “Today, their heirs and successors are in power in Ukraine. And they don’t hide their hatred for heroes of the Great Patriotic War such as Nikolai Vatutin.”

Vatutin’s daughter, too, has only harsh words for the Ukrainian leadership.

Yelena Vatunina, who lives in Prague, confirms writing to Russian President Vladimir Putin last month to petition for her father’s reburial in Moscow.

She has yet to receive an answer.

“My father’s grave is located where they stirred all this trouble, near the Verkhovna Rada,” she told RFE/RL. “And who are they? They are all Banderovtsy. My father also died because of Banderovtsy.”

But she says her request was inspired solely by her distaste for Ukraine’s new government and denies being contacted by Ukrainian authorities about plans to dismantle the memorial.

“We don’t know anything yet,” she says.

Vatunina is also unlikely to back proposals to transfer the entire monument, which she describes as an architectural “monster,” to Russia.

Meanwhile, Ukraine insists the monument will remain in place, together with Vatutin’s ashes.

Lawmaker Oleksandr Brygynets, the former head of the Kyiv City Council’s commission on culture, admits that feelings are mixed in Ukraine about Vatutin’s legacy.

But he says the general’s final resting place should still be in Ukraine, not Russia.

“I’m not in favor of people who symbolize Soviet rule being actively represented in the streets of Kyiv,” he says. “On the other hand, I strongly believe we need to preserve monuments to people who are part of Kyiv’s history, and Vatutin is unquestionably one of them.

Source: Radio Free Europe

French intel chief questions NATO claims

France’s intelligence chief has questioned NATO’s claims of Russia preparing to attack Ukraine as their agents failed to spot any activities signaling this – either before or after the crisis began.

A statement by the chief of France’s military intelligence, General Christophe Gomart, was published on the National Assembly’s website.

“NATO announced that the Russians were about to invade Ukraine. But, according to French intelligence, there is nothing to corroborate this hypothesis – we determined that the Russians were deploying neither command posts nor logistical facilities, including field hospitals, needed for a military incursion,” General Gomart told a parliamentary hearing.

NATO’s top brass has been incanting mantras about a “Russian invasion” ever since the crisis in Ukraine began a year ago. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, as well as his predecessor Anders Fogh Rasmussen, have lashed at Russia on numerous occasions, claiming that the Russian military is present on the ground in Ukraine, but failing to provide evidence supporting these claims.

“Our conclusion eventually proved correct because even if some Russian soldiers had indeed been seen on the Ukrainian side of the border, it was just a ploy, meant to bring pressure to bear on President Poroshenko, rather than an attempt to invade Ukraine,” General Gomart said.

The French intelligence chief’s remarks came in the context of France’s role in NATO. Gomart noted that at the moment the alliance is dominated by US intelligence, while France’s intelligence is taken not taken into consideration so much.

“France will not be fooled. France has its own sources of information and we are aware what the explanation for the crisis in Ukraine is,” Philippe Migault, expert on Ukraine from the University of International and Strategic Relations, said.

Meanwhile an American RC-135U reconnaissance aircraft was buzzed by a Russian Sukhoi Su-27 fighter jet over the Baltic Sea near Russia’s Kaliningrad Region, according to the Pentagon.

Major-General Igor Konashenkov, spokesman for the Russian Defense Ministry, said that the interception was launched after “Russian air defense radars spotted an unidentified air target over the Baltic Sea making steady progress toward the national border.” The aircraft had its transponder turned off, Konashenkov said.

The head of Russia’s Upper House Committee for Foreign Relations, Konstantin Kosachev, called on to NATO to stop their “hysterics” over flights by the Russian Air Force, “presenting them as aggression and demonizing Russia.”

“In connection with the incident over the Baltic one should keep in mind that Russia is a Baltic country, whereas the US is not,” Kosachev said.

Frants Klintsevich, of the United Russia party, said the report showed US intelligence has been working to fulfill a political order.

Meanwhile, on Friday five Northern European states, non-NATO Finland and Sweden included, signed a declaration on the expansion of military cooperation to counter “Russian aggression against Ukraine.”

Since Finland and Sweden intend to interact with NATO on a matching contribution basis, which might indicate a desire to join the alliance, Moscow will view this declaration as an act of aggression, Norwegian defense analyst Janne Haaland Matlary warned.

“Finland and Sweden have also decided to keep their exercises to NATO standards, which implies a step on the way toward NATO. Today, there are no political grounds for them to join NATO, public opinion is not frightened enough, and referendums will be required. But what is happening now still looks like a preparation for membership,” Matlary told Aftenposten newspaper on Friday.

US, UK and NATO up the infowar

Documents posted on the web reveal a high-level anti-Russian propaganda war being waged in south and eastern Ukraine by the US, the UK and NATO on behalf of the Kiev Government, using non-governmental organisations (NGOs) as agents.

According to the Drakula blog, the West is raising its game in its campaign against Russian President Vladimir Putin. While it is — on the one hand — pumping up the military volume by moving NATO and US hardware nearer to the Ukraine and Russian borders, it is also playing a hybrid war by pumping funds into an anti-Russian propaganda war.

NATO documents show that a “co-ordination meeting on StratCom training for Ukraine” was held in Riga, Latvia on February 19, 2015 as part of its “on-going capacity building programme”.

StratCom stands for Strategic Communication, which means dealing with the “inability of Ukrainian media to provide sufficient reach for the south/east of the country; vast reach of media originating from Russia; lack of strong Public Broadcaster; lack of success stories; [and] lack of trust of the population of the south/eastern regions in the central government”.

The NATO document reveals the Kiev Government has a “weak Public Affairs capacity” and sets out proposals to counter Russian influence and tackling what it describes as a lack of cross-government work and co-ordination as well as a lack of understanding of the importance of “national narrative”.

Further documents reveal a project run by the UK Foreign Office, the Department for International Development and the Ministry of Defence worth $360,500 with the purpose of: “National reconciliation in Ukraine through effective communication for restoring public trust and empowering of the participatory democracy mechanisms using regional media coverage, counteraction to Russian information influence”.

It outlines a pro-Kiev propaganda battle using Ukrainian agencies including the Ukrainian Institute for International Politics (UIIP); the Analytical Center for Geopolitical Studies ‘Borysfen Intel’ (BI); and the Department of the civil-military cooperation, HQ of the armed forces.

The program involves “resuming the communication and community dialog in Eastern and Southern regions of Ukraine using international experience shared by UIIP and BI foreign partners; informational support of national reconciliation ideas through broadcasting and media coverage of Eastern and Southern Ukraine regions by new alternative regional mass-media and Internet resources; and decreasing the Russian information influence in Ukraine, discredit of the Russian political and military leaders.”

The revelations will embarrass the US, NATO and UK who have been at pains to denounce Russia for promoting what they call a ‘hybrid war’ in Ukraine.

Source: Sputniknews

Belgians ignore EU sanctions against Moscow

Belgian companies continue expanding their businesses in Russia despite the sanctions imposed by the West against Moscow over its alleged involvement in the Ukrainian conflict, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich told RIA Novosti in an interview.

“Despite the unfavorable conjuncture, Belgian companies haven’t frozen their projects in Russia, and even continue to develop their businesses,” Lukashevich said.

Both, Russian and Belgian companies express unflagging interest in future cooperation, Lukashevich said.“Even given the counterproductive European Union policy of maintaining sanctions against Russia, the business circles of the two countries continue expressing unflagging mutual interest in increasing bilateral cooperation,” he stated.

The Foreign Ministry’s representative said that some 35 Belgian companies are currently implementing their projects in Russia.

Lukashevich cited an example when in March 2014, Belgian Fluxys and Russia’s Yamaltrade signed a 20-year agreement to organize the transit of up to 8.8 billion tons of Yamal liquefied natural gas per year through the Port of Zeebruge.

Since 2014, the United States, the European Union, and their allies have imposed several rounds of economic sanctions against Moscow, citing the Kremlin’s alleged involvement in Ukraine’s internal affairs. Russia has repeatedly denied the accusations, adding that the sanctions policy is ineffective and counterproductive.

Several European companies that have been successful in the Russian market have also expressed their disappointment with the anti-Russia sanctions, saying that the measures hinder their businesses.

Moscow and Athens forge new alliance

The Greek prime minister’s visit to Moscow aimed at improving relations with Russia angers many in Europe – this is what reports in Greek media, covering the visit, boil down to.

Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is on a two-day visit to Moscow, making headlines in Greek media.”Alexis Tsipras’ upcoming visit to Moscow and meeting with Putin has generated much talk, analysis and warnings,” iefimerida.gr wrote in a piece titled Tsipras-Putin: Smiles in Moscow, Annoyance in Brussels. “Both sides underline that Moscow and Athens will discuss many issues and there is no shortage of speculations on what Tsipras will ask and what Putin will offer.

“The visit could help return Greek produce to the Russian market, according to the media outlet. “Exports are worth 125 million Euros and are of primary importance to the agriculture in northern Greece,” iefimerida.gr said.

EU sanctions and the Russian food ban, investments, privatization, energy cooperation and the Turkish Stream gas pipeline, tourism, the Ukrainian crisis and Greece-Turkey relations are the main topics on the agenda.

“Putin is preparing a ‘gift’ for Tsipras,” newsit.gr said, adding that it is the first visit of a Greek prime minister to Moscow in five years. According to the media outlet, Tsipras’ visit “caused outrage in Brussels” that “thinks the Russian president is trying to undermine the European stance on sanctions against Moscow.”

The visit sent partners and creditors, especially in Berlin, into turmoil. Some “on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean also worry that Greece would throw itself into Russia’s arms to come up with ‘alternative plans’ to solve the Greek problem,” the Crete media outlet pointed out.

“Tsipras and Putin are forging a new alliance,” according to protothema.gr. “All eyes in Europe are on Tsipras and Putin. ‘The spring’ in Greek-Russian relations gets on Europe’s nerves. The visit has created an atmosphere of enthusiasm in Moscow. … It is seen as a breakthrough in the bilateral relations that would revive and strengthen cooperation in a number of areas,” the media outlet said.”

The visit also sends important political signals: both countries are discontent with the West. In this context Tsipras wants to develop a diverse foreign policy and alliances, while Putin wants to show that he has power and influence to attract the attention of European leaders and countries,” protothema.gr said.

Source: Sputniknews

‘Czech Republic is not an American protectorate’

As readers know, I have emphasized for years that European governments are regarded by Washington as vassals who behave according to Washington’s wishes. It has been 70 years–two or three generations–since former world powers, such as Great Britain and Germany had an independent foreign policy.

In addition to this ignobility, European governments are also vassals to the EU, so on the sovereignty front European countries are twice damned. They simply have no sovereignty.

This is why it is so easy for Washington to spin a web of lies and drive its vassals into a “crisis” with Russia that does not serve the interests of Europeans. Washington’s European puppets don’t count. Only Washington counts.

Next month is Russia’s Victory Day celebration over Nazi Germany. Washington has told its puppets not to attend, and many including German chancellor Merkel have complied with their overlord’s demand. But not the President of the Czech Republic.

When the US ambassador to the Czech Republic, Andrew Schapiro, advised President Milos Zeman to cancel his participation in the Russian celebration, President Zeman threw the Obama fundraiser out of the presidential castle. The Czech people, President Zeman said, were next in line for extermination by the Nazis, and it was the Red Army that saved the Czech people.

Of course Washington and its corrupt court historians are at work revising the history of World War II in order to cleanse the record of Russia’s victory over Germany. Of course, everyone in Europe knows that this is just another Washington attempt to control all explanations regardless of the facts, but vassals are accustomed to vassalage and its humiliations. Proud peoples are not what Europeans any longer are.

Petr Hajek, who served as an advisor to former Czech president Vaclav Klaus, said that the US ambassador thinks he is the governor of a conquered territory issuing orders to the locals and that previous ambassadors from Washington had the same idea:

“President Zeman’s position rejecting the advice of the US ambassador is the only possible adequate response. Our country’s leader has carried himself as the President of the Czech Republic, and not as the head of a protectorate of the United States.”

Russia offers Greece loans, gas discount

Russia may offer Greece a discount on gas deliveries and new loans when Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras visits Moscow this week, the Kommersant business daily reported on Tuesday, citing one source in the Russian government.

A Kremlin spokesman said last week that Russian President Vladimir Putin and Tsipras planned to discuss economic ties and EU sanctions on Moscow when they meet for talks, which Kommersant said would take place on Thursday.

“We are ready to consider the issue of a gas price discount for Greece,” the newspaper said quoting an unnamed Russian government source.

Russia’s state-controlled producer Gazprom declined to comment. The Energy Ministry also declined to comment.

The source said that in exchange for the discount and some unspecified loans, Russia would want access to Greek assets. The source did not name any specific assets.

In recent weeks, the gas price charged by Gazprom has fallen, tracking lower oil prices. Gazprom said it wanted to acquire DEPA in 2013 but dropped its bid after failing to receive enough guarantees over DEPA’s financial position.

Source: Reuters

Czech president closes the door to American ambassador

Local media said on Sunday that Czech leader Milos Zeman had “closed the door” of Prague Castle to U.S. Ambassador Andrew Schapiro after he made controversial comments about the president’s decision to join celebrations to mark the end of World War II in Russia.

EU leaders are boycotting the ceremony next month over Russia’s role in the Ukraine conflict.

However, Zeman had said he would attend the May 9 commemorations being held in the Russian capital, Moscow.

“I can’t imagine the Czech ambassador in Washington would give advice to the American president where to travel,” Zeman told news portal Parlamentni Listy. “I won’t let any ambassador have a say about my foreign travels.”

“Ambassador (Andrew) Schapiro has the door to the castle closed,” he added.

A presidential spokesman said that Schapiro could still attend social events at Prague Castle, the official residence of the Czech president.

Left out in the cold over comments

Schapiro had told Czech television that it would be “awkward” if Zeman attended the ceremony as the only statesmen from an EU country.

Zeman, a former prime minister, has frequently departed from the EU’s stance on the Ukraine crisis and criticized sanctions against Moscow.

Russia’s victory over Nazi Germany is marked each year in major Russian cities.

Schapiro overlapped with Barack Obama at Harvard Law School and also served on the Harvard Law Review. They remained friends and Schapiro and his wife, Tamar Newberger, were among Obama’s top fundraisers.

The reward for Schapiro, a white-collar defense litigator with absolutely no discernable foreign policy experience, was the posting to Prague.

The ambassador’s 72-room Beaux-Arts residence, built in the late 1920s by a Jewish businessman and once home to the late Shirley Temple Black, ambassador to Czechoslovakia during the 1989 Velvet Revolution, sits on six acres, and comes complete with a uniformed staff.

Obama nominees have a terrible record. The ludicrous ambassador to Norway, George Tsunis, didn’t know that the country, a constitutional monarchy, doesn’t have a president; the ambassador to Argentina, Noah Mamet, a Wall Street Journal op-ed, lamented “seemed not to understand basic facts about Argentina or the serious challenges that would confront our ambassador there,” and had never set foot in that country. And Colleen Bell, former Chicagoan and soap opera producer/writer, Obama’s nominee to take over the embassy in Budapest, could not answer the question, “What are our strategic interests in Hungary?”

Some 15 former presidents of the American Foreign Service Association, a trade union for members of the Foreign Service, wrote to Senate leaders as well as 11 other senators, asking that they reject Tsunis, Bell and Mamet, who, they wrote, have been “subjected to widespread ridicule, not only in the U.S. but also abroad.”

The reason to reject given by the former AFSA presidents is that “[the nominees] appear to have been chosen on the basis of their service in raising money for electoral campaigns.”

Schapiro’s family history worked in his favor too. Schapiro’s mother is said to be a Czech refugee from the Holocaust.

Source: Deutsche Welle/Chicagomag

We are losing the oceans

I am an admirer of Dahr Jamail’s reporting. In this article, Oceans In Crisis, Jamail tells us that we are losing the oceans. He reports on the human destruction of the oceans. It is a real destruction with far-reaching consequences.

That fact is indisputable.

From my perspective the human destruction of the oceans is yet more evidence of the ruinous nature of private capitalism. In capitalism there is no thought for the future of the planet and humanity, only for short-term profits and bonuses. Consequently, social costs are ignored.

Capitalism can work if social or external costs can be included in the costs of production. However, the powerful corporations are able to block a socially functioning capitalism with their political campaign contributions.

Consequently, capitalists themselves make the capitalist system dysfunctional. We may have reached the point where the external costs of production are larger than the value of capitalist output. Economist Herman Daly makes a convincing case that this is the fact.

While the powerful capitalists use the environment for themselves as a cost-free dumping ground, the accumulating costs threaten everyone’s life. It appears that nothing can be done, because the oceans are “common property.” No one owns them, so no one can protect them and their contents.

What we are faced with is the most destructive force in history: the short-sightedness of humans. Humans are willing to destroy the environment that sustains them, the law that sustains them, the truth that sustains them. Indeed, humans will destroy everything that sustains life if they can raise their incomes for another quarter or another year.

I have a friend who regales me with stories that humans are aliens on planet earth, exiled here by an intergalactic government that unwittingly disposed of its criminal wastes on a planet teeming with life. The inhumans, not humans, have been busy at work ever since their arrival exterminating one another, other species, and the life of the planet itself.

In the Western World truth is dying. Corporate and government money has purchased many scientists along with the media and politicians. The independent scientists who remain have great difficulty obtaining funds for their research, but the corporate scientists have unlimited funds with which to lie.

Scientists, like journalists, advance their careers by lying for the Establishment.

Truth-tellers and whistleblowers are defined as “domestic extremists,” “terrorists,” and are on watch lists. Some have been arrested on suspicion that they might commit a crime in the future. Here in the US we have Jeremy Bentham’s policy of arresting “suspects” before they commit a crime on the basis that they might in the future commit a crime.

All the while the US and UK, Australian and Canadian, governments are committing heinous crimes against other countries in the world whose peoples, like those of Iraq, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, Palestine, Somalia, Yemen, Pakistan, Ukraine don’t count. These peoples are disposable, unexceptional, like the Vietnamese, Laotians, Cherokees, Sioux, Apaches . . .

These peoples don’t matter. It is we Americans who matter. We are “exceptional.” We are “indispensable.”