Who would have thunk it?

 

US-NATO recruits Al-Quaeda killers to come to Ukraine

 

Tariq al-Jasim in the middle as seen in a video he released on February 26.

South Front

Al-Qaeda-Linked Syrian Drug Dealer Al-Jasim To Funnel Militants From Syria To Ukraine

Syrian pro-opposition activists have revealed disturbing facts about a Ukraine-based Syrian businessman who vowed to fight Russian forces currently conducting a special military operation in the country.

The businessman, Tariq al-Jasim, appeared in a video announcing the formation of an armed group to fight Russian forces on February 26.

According to a reputable Syrian pro-opposition Telegram news channel, al-Jasim's older brother, Sa’ad, is a security commander in al-Qaeda-affiliated Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) that controls the northwestern Syrian region of Greater Idlib.

Not only that, al-Jasim, who has been reportedly living in Odessa city for more than year now, is also the cousin of HTS Emir Mohamad al-Abd. Emir is an Arabic term usually used by radicals to describe senior leaders.

The Telegram channel, known as Muzamjer al-Thawra al-Suriyah, also revealed that the so-called businessman is in fact a drug dealer who used to work as a trafficker in Russia.

According to the Abkhazian Network News Agency, al-Jasim is currently preparing to funnel militants from Syria to Ukraine, where they will be thrown against Russian forces. Al-Jasim is working on this with the Turkish-backed Syrian National Army (SNA). Around 200 militants from the Sultan Morad Division and the al-Shamiya Front have already signed up. They are reportedly amassing now in the Turkish-occupied northern Syrian area of Afrin.

The Russian military kicked off a large-scale special operation to “demilitarize” and “denazify” Ukraine on February 24 following Kiev failure to implement the 2014 Minsk agreement.

Kiev is apparently planning to use al-Jasim to funnel Syrian militants from SNA factions and even HTS to Ukraine. This can’t happen without help from Turkey who controls and commands these militants. Russia, who maintains a large force in Syria, will not likely tolerate this.

German Green history Part 2: Foreign Ministers join war machine

 

 By Eugene Woloszyn

 

1999: 37 day, one sided bombing campaign by NATO against Serbia to force surrender. Western media and politicians made Serbia the main culprit. Behind the scenes Germany played a big role in the break up of Yugoslavia and in expanding German domination of Central Europe. German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, a long time Green Party leader, age 50 at the time. 

Joschka Fischer had been a left activist since 1967 (age 19) opposing the Viet Nam War and conservative German governments. He joined the Green Party and rose to win a seat in Parliament in 1983-85 and 1991-94.  Fischer gained a reputation for bold speeches & charisma.  The Social Democratic Party (SPD) was weak in the polls in the 1990s and the Greens acquired greater support nationally.  

In Sept, 1998 German national elections, SPD received 41% of the vote and Greens got 7%. In 1990s opinion polls, Fischer was surprisingly the most popular politician in Germany. SPD and Greens form a coalition and Fischer obtained the Foreign Minister post.  He was Foreign Minister for the second longest period since WWII.  Fischer facilitated NATO bombing & German troops sent to Yugoslavia and later Afghanistan, after 9-11-01.

The causes of NATO bombing of Yugoslavia are complicated and the story can be found in the two books listed below. There was considerable opposition to Fischer’s pro-war position.  At a May 1999 Green Party Convention debating the NATO bombing,  Fischer was hit by a bag of red paint and was injured.  

Fischer was investigated by a Parliamentary Committee for 10 hours on TV in 2005. His policies starting in 2001 led to more than 300,000 Ukrainians visiting Germany on tourist visas with weak and false documentation. There was great upheavals in Ukraine in 2003-5 with a very contested election, Supreme Court ordering a re-vote, and continuing controversy. As described by Wikipedia, “Some commentators have suggested that the increase in Ukrainians visiting Germany may have promoted a more positive view of Western Europe, assisting the Orange Revolution”, hostile to Russia. Seventeen years later, Ukraine again figures in great world tensions and the excuse for greater war budgets advocated by the military industrial complex.

Soon after the 10 hour TV interrogation of Fischer, he resigned from politics and joined Madeleine Albright, Stonebridge Consulting Group in Washington DC. Albright was Obama’s Secretary of State during the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia and was extremely militaristic. Fischer was a member of the US based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR).  He was also a founder of the German Council on Foreign Relations. Decades of work in the Green Party, ending up as a hack for the ruling class.     

Resources: Fool’s Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO & Western Delusions by Diana Johnstone, 2002 and To Kill a Nation: Attack on Yugoslavia by Michael Parenti, 2002

Latest interview

 

Bruce Gagnon explains how the Rand Corporation (Pentagon Papers) outlined very clearly that the end, the goal of US foreign policy, is to overextend and destabilize Russia resulting in regime change and then the rape and pillaging of Russia's vast natural resources.

The way out....

 

 

This war must be immediately terminated before it expands and sucks in the European NATO States and the United States. 

Towards that end President Biden must publicly announce that NATO expansion is over for good and that Ukraine, Georgia and Moldova will not be joining NATO as member States. President Biden must also call for an international peace conference for the conclusion of a treaty that will establish the permanent neutrality of Ukraine which will be guaranteed by the United Nations Security Council under Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter. 

Then negotiations can take place between the United States and Russia over the de-nuclearization of Europe including the removal of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons from NATO States that are there in violation of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and a restoration of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty that was so foolishly and recklessly terminated by the Trump administration. 

Then a new round of the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty Negotiations should be conducted in order to substantially lessen the tensions on land, sea and air between Russia and the U.S./NATO States including over the emplacement of alleged U.S. ABM sites in Europe [currently in Romania and Poland] that threaten Russia.

Make no mistake about it: The Origins of both the First World War and the Second World War hover like twin Swords of Damocles over the heads of all humanity!

Professor Francis A. Boyle 

Law Building

Champaign, Illinois

Who funded the RAND Corp study on regime change in Russia?

 

 

 

The infamous RAND Corporation has created a study calling for the break-up of Russia. The plan is now being implemented by the US-UK-NATO. See the study here.

The pie chart above (click on it for a better view) details where RAND gets its funding. Should be no surprise to see that the vast majority of the money comes from the Department of Defense, US Army, Air Force, Homeland Security and other government agencies.

It is my opinion, based on these and other obvious facts, that the current international effort to militarily encircle Russia and take them down - is being envisioned and organized by the US war machine.

In addition is the unrelenting corporate media brainwashing of the American and European people to support this regime change effort now underway. 

Since 2007 Russia has been pleading with US-UK-NATO to agree to a negotiated security program for all of Europe that would end NATO expansion and would return to serious negotiations to ban weapons in space, cyber war, and return to nuclear weapons reduction talks. The US has refused all of these offers for stability.

 

Moscow understands what the western corporate-run governments intend - regime change and the breaking up of Russia into smaller nations that would then give resource extraction companies access to the vast resources along the Arctic Sea zone.

The US use of Ukraine as a tool to destabilize Russia is spelled out in the Rand study where they say:

Providing lethal aid to Ukraine would exploit Russia’s greatest point of external vulnerability....Undermining Russia’s image abroad would focus on diminishing Russian standing and influence, thus undercutting regime claims of restoring Russia to its former glory. Further sanctions, the removal of Russia from non-UN international forums, and boycotting such events as the World Cup could be implemented by Western states and would damage Russian prestige.

NATO endless war council

 

So the evidence is abundant if one is serious about cutting through the media demonization and the western military encirclement of Russia. But the willingness to seek the truth and to stand against the wave of American 'exceptionalist' propaganda is more than most are prepared to face.

Sadly far to many in the US (even in the progressive movement) know little to nothing about the full story.  And even more sadly, many don't appear to be that interested in finding the truth. 

Let's hope that changes before it is too late.

Bruce

Sunday song

 

Aaron Mate discusses Ukraine-Russia

 

 

The media description of the Russian attack on Ukraine has almost universally whitewashed the role played by the US and its NATO allies, including supporting a coup overthrowing the democratically elected president in 2014, refusing to support the Minsk Accords or refusing to engage in negotiations in the months leading up to the Russian invasion.

Read Aaron’'s work at The Grayzone here: http://mate.substack.com http://thegrayzone.com 

Follow Aaron on Twitter: https://twitter.com/AaronJMate 

Where were the cries & howls in 2014 as Nazis massacred poeple in Odessa?

 

 

I went to Odessa, Ukraine in 2016 for the May 2 memorial service organized by the Council of Mothers. 

I was with Regis Tremblay and Phil Wilayto from the US.  

When we returned we each did our best to get the peace movement to pay attention to what happened in Odessa. Largely to no avail.

The Nazis in Ukraine have flourished since then and today are inside some big cities of Ukraine holding their fellow citizens hostage as the Russian military closes in on them. 

Ever since the US orchestrated coup d'etat in 2014 I've almost daily studied and worked hard to bring these stories to the peace movement. Sadly few have been interested.

Since then I've traveled to Russia three times including a Global Network study tour in 2019 that visited Moscow, Crimea and St Petersburg. In 2019 I also went to the Donbass region of Ukraine and toured the embattled cities of Lugansk and Donetsk.

It is clear to me that the US-UK-NATO have constructed this entire episode in order to justify NATO expansion and military war games up to the Russian border. The real goal is regime change in Moscow.

How is Russia to respond - particularly considering that they lost 27 million people during the WW II Nazi invasion?

The latest news appears to be that Biden is sending $350 million in military hardware to Ukraine. Germany will delivery 1,000 anti-tank guided weapons and 500 anti-aircraft Stinger system. 

The US-UK-NATO got just what they planned for in Ukraine.

Bruce 

French film reviews the Ukraine Nazi's

 

Documentary Project "Ukraine: The masks of the revolution" broadcast on the French TV channel Canal +. 

Ukrainian Embassy in Paris asked for this documentary to be taken off air. What were the Ukrainian authorities so afraid of? Maybe the truth? 

Until now Europe does not know all of what actually happened and continues to happen in Kiev and across the country as a whole. 

This documentary film directed by Paul Moreira, tells the story of the tragic events that took place in Odessa: the fire in the House of Trade Unions and the burning of at least 48 people (according to official figures) and 300 (unofficial sources). 

Moreira said that his aim was to show the world the bloody history of Ukraine and Odessa in particular: "In the heart of Europe, people are burned alive and everyone is silent about that."

Link to Feb 22 anti-war webinar that drew 900

 

 

This is the video from the February 22 webinar organized by UNAC. 

According to the Zoom statistics, we had a total of 1,320 people register and a total of 906 unique viewers.  The vast majority were from the US but there were also 55 from Canada and some from 16 other countries.

The speakers included:

• Leela Anand – ANSWER coalition
• Ajamu Baraka – Black Alliance for Peace
• Medea Benjamin – CodePink
• Sara Flounders – International Action Center
• Margaret Flowers – Popular Resistance
• Bruce Gagnon – Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
• Margaret Kimberley – Black Agenda Report
• Jeff Mackler – United National Antiwar Coalition
• Nancy Price - Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (US)
• Susan Schnall – Veterans For Peace
• David Swanson – World Beyond War
• Joe Lombardo will chair. Ajamu Baraka will give an opening statement

Important to understand the history & context

 

If you are truly interested in understanding the Ukraine-Russia story then I highly suggest this doc film by Oliver Stone ..... 

Pilger on western hypocrisy

Sounds like British and American voices

 

 

Listen closely to the voices in this short video.

Are they British and American?

If so, are they well-paid (I heard $1,000 a day) mercenaries or are they active duty soldiers inside Ukraine?

Coming days should reveal just how many of these people were brought into Ukraine by the US-UK-NATO to support the Nazi-led Ukraine army. 

Pepe Escobar adds: '" 'Remnants' now include mostly surviving Azov batallion Nazis, mercenaries trained by the usual Blackwater/Academi suspects, and a bunch of Salafi-jihadis."

One more reason....

 

Clearly the US-NATO has been using Ukraine as a staging ground for endless aggression aimed at Russia - appears Russian bear's patience ran out.

Link to web site on US bio-labs around the globe here

 

Report: Aims of Russian Demilitarization and Denazification of Ukraine

Just one example of thousands of homes in the Donbass shelled by the Nazi-led Ukrainian army trained, armed and directed by the US-NATO war machine

 
 

The aim of Russian "special military operation" is to destroy Ukrainian war machine (demilitarization) that has killed 14000 civilians in Donbass, to enforce denazification of the Ukrainian society and to stage trial vs those who issued criminal orders for launching genocide in Donbass. The reference was to Article 51 of the UN Charter. It is self-defense versus multiple outside threats.

By now all Ukrainian AAD and military airfields have been destroyed.  Airstrips of two airports that accepted NATO military cargos send to kill more civilians have been destroyed too. War depots and warehouses have been blown up by hi-tech, high-precision strike weapons.

Moscow asked Ukrainian AF to lay down arms and to go home. Ukrainian border guards have not returned fire and surrendered.

Some key military command HQ have been destroyed as well.

Russia does not use arms against civilians and civilian infrastructure.

All urgent  info is at English websites of RT.com, TASS, Sputniknews.com.

Unfortunately, the US and NATO leaders call Zelensky to resist. So, once again they are acting like accomplices of a criminal gang - they created, nourished and canalized.

It is in vain. No chances.

[See Vladimir Putin's latest speech to the Russian people here]
 
Kind regards,

Vladimir Kozin
Corresponding Member,Russian Academy of Military Sciences
Corresponding Member, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences,
Winner of Colonel-General Varfolomei Korobushin Reward (Russian Strategic Missiles Forces) and Russian Academy of Natural Sciences Reward
Leading Expert, Center for Military-Political Studies, Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO)
Ph.D, Senior Researcher (Academic Rank)

Gagnon on the Russia-Ukraine situation

 

Bruce Gagnon talks with Regis Tremblay about a revitalized Peace Movement in the US and abroad condemning US provocations of Russia. 

We discuss many aspects of the current situation in Ukraine and the Donbass. The geopolitical ramifications of a Russia and China union. 

What does the future hold?

Americans don't want war

 

The Dems seem to want more than the Repubs - no surprise there

NATO lies, lies, lies.....

 

Uproar by the West about Russia 'violating' international agreements dominates the headlines, but Moscow has its own axe to grind, as it claims it was given a promise that NATO would not move an inch further eastward – and this promise was broken.

 

 

See National Security Archives

Declassified documents show security assurances against NATO expansion to Soviet leaders from Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner 

Latest from Jeju Island

 

A military road is currently under construction in Gangjeong village, Jeju Island, South Korea.

 

This is the 500 year old fishing and farming village that is being torn apart as the US forced the construction of a naval base to port warships moving to the Asia-Pacific as part of Washington's 'pivot' to encircle China and Russia. 

Don't forget that Korea borders both Russia and China.

Photos: Moon-Hee, Um

German Greens take a dive

 

German Green Party Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock in action

 By Eugene Woloszyn

German Green Party Foreign Ministers promoted military action in Yugoslavia in 1999 are are doing so again today. How did this betrayal of Green Party founding principals and values come about?  How are Greens manipulated to convince the German public to support war and increased military budgets?

Annalena Baerbock is 41 years old. In fall 2021 elections, she received 15% of national vote for Chancellor and the Greens got 118 seats in Parliament. The Greens entered a coalition government of three parties and she was appointed Foreign Minister on 12-8-21.  

As a child, she joined her parents at numerous antiwar & anti-nuclear weapon demonstrations.  At age 16, she was an exchange student at Lake Highland prep school in Orlando, Florida.  She graduated from college while working as an intern and staff for Green Party elected officials.  She had been a member of parliament for eight years. Her husband is a political consultant & public relations manager.   

Baerbock urges a 'Post Pacifist' and stronger German Foreign Policy, especially against Russia & China.  She calls for a European Army under the supervision of the European Parliament.  Such an army would be two-steps away from the will of the German People. She supports NATO’s expansion eastward and continued close cooperation with the US. Following the vehement position of both Trump and Biden, she supports the [cancellation] of the completed Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany.  (Fossil fuel prices in Germany have increased 73% in the last year & Germany plans to eliminate all nuclear power plants.)

 

The US is constantly badgering NATO members to increase military spending to reach war budgets of 2% of each nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).  US officials want more German war expenditures for US weaponry, rather than the previous German Chancellor Merkel’s preference for soldier wages and benefits.  Merkel resisted these aggressive US policies, but Baerbock supports the U.S. position.  Is this in the interests of the German people, which historically have been ravished by the deranged plans of their leaders and generals? And is it in the interest of the Green Party of Germany and other global Green Parties, shackled by an image of war mongering by the highest Green official in the world?

In 2020-21, Baerbock participated in the DAVOS-based World Economic Forum’s “Young Global Leaders program”.  The World Economic Forum was founded and is led by Klaus Schwab, whose two books about 'The Great Reset' following Covid have shocked many with their manipulative, dystopian scenarios.  This leadership program has groomed other world leaders such as young female prime ministers of New Zealand and Finland. Another leadership program graduate was banker Emmanuel Macron, with no political background, who came out of the blue with influential media support, and became President of France.

The US has 34,500 Soldiers and nuclear weapons in Germany.  Germany also “hosts” US Africa Command, major military hospitals and training facilities that enable other U.S. military activities worldwide. 

The first NATO commander said the alliance purpose was to “Keep the Russians out, the US in, & the Germans down”.  77 years after the end of WWII, why have the German people allowed their nation to be so manipulated by the US?  

Is it in the interest of the American people to be constantly frightened by a US military industrial complex, which foments world tensions as rationale for constantly increasing war budgets? 

Who really occupies Ukraine?

 

Is Russia really “invading” Ukraine? 

Or is it finally reacting to an ongoing occupation or capture of Ukraine - a nation on its own borders after 8 years of patience?

The long suffering voices

 

As the Russian president announced Moscow’s recognition of the Donbass republics, Lugansk and Donetsk residents let their emotions flow. We hear from people on the streets about what they expect to happen next.

Now the real test is what will the US puppet regime in Kiev do next? Will it continue shelling the Donbass region (which would draw a firm Russian military response) or will they withdraw their forces?

What will happen with the several thousand head-chopping Jihadists (from Afghanistan, Syria and assorted failed states) and other mercenaries who have been brought to the line of contact by the US? 

Joined Friends of Crimea

 

 

Very happy to have joined Friends of Crimea.

They invited us to make short videos saying what we thought of our trips to Crimea and why we joined the club.

Thanks to friend Regis Tremblay for doing the organizing to make this happen .

Can't wait to visit Crimea again.

Bruce

Yes, it is true.

 

 

I wrote to Vladimir Kozin today to ask if a certain theory I've pieced together was on the right path.

He had sent an email around sharing the joy of Russians that their government had at long last recognized the two Donbass Republics - Lugansk and Donesk - as independent states.

    Great news Vladimir - congratulations

    I read today that Zelensky actually wanted this so that Ukraine would not have to implement Minsk agreements - plus all those votes in the Donbass would now be gone next presidential election time.

    Could this be true?

    Bruce

 

Vladimir responded:

Yes, it is true.

Kind regards,
Dr. Vladimir Kozin
 
Member, Russian Academy of Military Sciences
Member, Russian Academy of Natural Sciences,
Vice President, Russian National Institute for Global Security Research
Winner of Colonel-General Varfolomei Korobushin Reward (Russian Strategic Missiles Forces) and Russian Academy of Natural Sciences Reward
Leading Expert, Center for Military-Political Studies, Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO)
Ph.D, Senior Researcher (Academic Rank)

 

What Next?

So my theory is that all sides wanted out of this mess without losing face. The US wanted out of it - the Biden neo-cons (amateurs that they are) stumbled into a hornets nest but were able to use it to help distract the public from our collapsing economy at least until their next visit to the grocery check-out counter.

After Russia declared it will send a peace-keeping force to the Donbass all the EU, UK and US corporate agents had to scream and holler. More sanctions will be placed on Russia. But can Europe really afford to completely divorce themselves from doing business with Russia? 

France is in a tight spot because Macron is running for reelection but most of the country hates him. He needs a diplomatic win, plus Paris does understand that Russia, China, Iran and others are leading the new push to multi-polarism. France doesn't want to be left behind as the train leaves the station. But Macron has to play along for a while with the denouncing of Russia for recognizing the independence of the Donbass. What will Macron do now next to make himself 'indispensable'?

The US understands that it is fading but needs a big enemy due to the fact that it has an economy addicted to war. Thus, not being able to take down Russia as Washington hoped, they need another diversion (all addicts are like this) so China is now being aimed at through the Pentagon's gun-sights. 

(We've just learned that a 'missile defense' radar, set to be deployed in Hawaii, is now instead going into Guam. Even closer to China. Pentagon would call it a 'strategic shift'. Activists in Guam are already building resistance.)

 
Germany wants Nordstream 2 and needs a way out of this controversy since the Green Party partners in the new government have been fighting to kill the natural gas pipeline from Russia. For the time being Germany is saying that 'certification' of the pipeline will be put on hold - but I don't think it is dead yet. The German business community will likely be putting big pressure on the government to keep it alive. The Green Party takes orders from Washington which hates Nordstream 2 so they will keep trying to put a stake through the heart of the pipeline. Very sad how the Greens have sold out. Without the pipeline how will Germans heat their homes?

 

President Zelensky wanted an out too. He knows his army would be slaughtered if it attacked the Donbass in an all-out assault. Ukraine was never going to honor their signing of the Minks Agreements that called for a federated state where the Russian-ethnic citizens in the Donbass would be allowed to speak their own language and elect their own local leaders. The Nazis are adamantly opposed to the Minks Agreements.

So Zelensky really wants to cut Donbass loose - won't have to worry about those damn Minsk Agreements (that Kiev had agreed to honor but never did) and those couple million voters in the Donbass during the next election. Plus now that they temporarily moved the capital to Lvov (the Nazi stronghold in western Ukraine) they can seriously think about dumping the other parts of Ukraine that are Russian-ethnic and just create a 'pure Nazi state' near the Poland border. 

The US would like that and certainly the weapons industry would rush into that new market. A US-NATO military base would likely be built. This 'pure' Ukraine could then still help to internally destabilize the other parts of Ukraine not currently in the fascist grip by creating a festering sore along Russia's flank. The US loves to do that - just look at Afghanistan, Libya, the former Yugoslavia, Syria and Iraq. All examples of US-NATO efforts to create failed states.

The remaining question? Is this current situation going to drive Washington and Brussels to double-down and push their endless war machine ever closer to Russia's borders? If they do then fighting in  Ukraine could still happen. If the long and simmering war does escalate dramatically the question arises as to how far into Ukraine would Russia go? Moscow's primary goal would be to take out the military capability of Ukraine's Nazi-led army. They are not eager for war.

Putin does not want to have to rebuild that vast Ukrainian territory that has been wrecked by US-NATO. He's long said they need to fix it.

We should know soon, now that Russia has made its move on the chess board.

Russia recognizes the Independence of Donbass Republics

 

By Regis Tremblay (living in Yalta, Crimea, Russian Federation)

President Putin (urged on by the State Duma-parliament) declares the independence of the two Donbass Republics, Donetsk and Lugansk. 

 

There is now a mutual security agreement. Game changer.

 

What will Washington and NATO now do? 

 

 

 

I thought I heard that daddy Biden was tough on drug crimes - wants them in prison. 

 

Bruce

Very interesting .....

 

 

Over the weekend, when the Canadian government made their move to drive the trucker convoy out of Ottawa, folks in nearby North Bay discovered planes with markings from the UN were on the runway. I seriously doubt that UN planes land in North Bay, Canada very often.

 

 

The police in Ottawa generally were dressed like this photo below.

 

But then these strange looking uniformed units showed up to help push the trucker convoy out of Ottawa. Some of the protesters said they heard German being spoken by some of them. Does this mean that the UN is now being used to help particular nations to crack down on non-violent peaceful protests? These brown-shirted shock troops (with no Identification of name or nation) were in the video below that has been 'mysteriously' taken down.

If this is so then we have a big problem.

Please let me know if you have any information about this strange happening.

 

Flashback to 2014 in Ukraine - meet the Nazis

 

RT: The threat of neo-Nazi ideology is causing alarm in Ukraine. The country, home to over 13 ethnicities, is now rocked on a daily basis by shocking videos - uploaded to Youtube by some of those who came to power following the ousting of President Yanukovich. Maria Finoshina reports.

 

Not much has changed in Ukraine since 2014 when this above video was aired. 

After the Obama administration orchestrated coup in Kiev, the Nazis were sent around the country to harass, beat and kill anyone who stood in the way of this takeover of the nation. Especially in Russian-ethnic parts of the country - these Nazis were very active.

A couple years later the US-NATO established a military training base in western Ukraine (where the Nazis predominate). The Nazis were brought in, dressed up in new fancy uniforms that covered their Nazi tattoos, and then sent to eastern Ukraine to attack their fellow Ukrainian citizens whose only crime was they were Russian ethnic and lived near the Russian border.

Just like Jimmy Carter used the Taliban in Afghanistan to destabilize the former Soviet Union, the US today uses bullies like these Nazis to bust knee-caps for the corporate agenda.

Today the US-UK-NATO are arming the hell out of the Ukrainian Army aimed at Russia.

It's interesting that when the US recently moved its Ukrainian embassy out of Kiev, it was set up in Lvov which is the home city of the nationalist Nazi movement in Ukraine.

But who notices any of these details?

Every day I check all kinds of media outlets around the globe - including Russian. Why do I view Russian media? I've learned over many years that if I want to know what is going on in the Ukraine-Russia situation I won't find any non-CIA reporting in the west. Over time I find Russian media to be generally very accurate.

Bruce 

Tell the truth....

 

By Edward Curtin (Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies)

Back in the 1960s, CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to "court the compatible left." He knew that drawing liberals and leftists into the CIA's orbit was the key to efficient propaganda. Right-wing and left-wing collaborators were needed to create a powerful propaganda apparatus that would be capable of hypnotizing audiences into believing the myth of American exceptionalism and its divine right to rule the world. The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites.

Sunday song

 

Kozin: A trusted voice

 

 

I trust Vladimir Kozin. I've known him for many years.

We met in Kiruna, Sweden - in the high north - at a Global Network annual conference some years ago. 

I was impressed with his directness, honesty and humility.

He spoke well at our GN conference in Kiruna. There is a satellite communication/receiving station there that downloads surveillance and reconnaissance data and sells it to the Pentagon. Mostly they are tracking every thing Russia does. (US-NATO regularly make war games in the high north - dragging Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland increasingly into this aggressive military campaign aimed at Moscow.)

 

Downlink station near Kiruna, Sweden that helps Washington spy on Russia.

Then in 2019 the Global Network organized a study tour to Moscow, Crimea, and St. Petersburg in Russia. While in Moscow Vladimir came and spoke to our group of 25 people.

Russians have a long and proud history. They've been invaded many times over the centuries by the Mongols, Sweden (repeatedly), France and Germany. The former Soviet Union lost 27 millions citizens in WW II when Hitler tried unsuccessfully to destroy Russia.

Now the US-UK-NATO want regime change in Moscow. Who are they to think they have the right to dictate to Russia? This blind fucking arrogance is evil and must be resisted in what ever way one can.

I am so sick of the US wars, regime changes, stupidity, dishonesty and greed. This country is rotten to the core and is collapsing all around us. Mr. Big does not need us any more - we are expendable - superfluous - not needed - only useful as cannon fodder for the wars of the crashing empire.

Bruce

The seldom told story of the promise....

 

Despite their denials, Western leaders did make a promise to the USSR that NATO would not expand to Central and Eastern Europe when Moscow agreed to Germany’s reunification.

Willy Wimmer, a former vice president of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) explains in an interview with RT.

National Zoom call with peace movement leaders

 

How to Respond to War Threats on Russia?

•  Understanding U.S. Objectives

• The Role of NATO, a U.S. Commanded Military Alliance
  

• What we can do about it
  

Zoom call with speakers

TUES. Feb 22 at 8:30 pm ET / 7:30 pm CT / 6:30 pm MT / 5:30 pm PT

Please click here to register for the meeting.

Join us for this important meeting and discussion with leaders from the antiwar movement including (in alphabetical order):

•     Leela Anand – ANSWER coalition
•     Joe Jamison – US Peace Council
•     Ajamu Baraka – Black Alliance for Peace
•     Medea Benjamin – CodePink
•     Sara Flounders – International Action Center
•     Margaret Flowers – Popular Resistance
•     Bruce Gagnon – Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space
•     Margaret Kimberley – Black Agenda Report
•     Jeff Mackler – United National Antiwar Coalition
•     Nancy Price - Women's International League for Peace and Freedom (US)
•     Susan Schnall – Veterans For Peace
•     David Swanson – World Beyond War
•     Joe Lombardo will chair. Ajamu Baraka will give an opening statement

 
Only a few short months after the chaotic US defeat in Afghanistan, the US is pushing a war with Russia, a major nuclear power. US officials insist that the Russians will invade Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly denied this.

In recent days the US and some of their allies have closed their embassies and asked their nationals to leave Ukraine. [The US and allies moved their embassies to Lvov in western Ukraine where Nazis predominate.]

The Ukrainian military has a force of 150,000 troops, that are U.S. trained and armed with modern US weapons, near the Russian border and the independent regions in Donbass. These independent regions have taken a stand in opposition to the right-wing, coup government in Kiev, since 2014. The Ukrainian military has started heavy shelling of the independent areas of Donbass, which have returned the fire.

Every U.S. war in our lifetime has been based on false information, repeated relentlessly by the corporate media. There is deep apprehension that the US and the Ukrainian government are preparing a “false flag” incident that could lead to a major conflict.

The US has tens of thousands of troops in Europe, it is putting troops on high alert and sending more. They are not only arming the Ukrainian military, but they are expanding NATO bases and sending additional arms and missiles to other NATO countries in the region.

It is important that the US antiwar movement come together to oppose these dangerous war moves. Please join us on Tuesday.  

There will be Q & A after 3 minute talks from each speaker

Lunatics running the asylum

 

Here are the ex-CIA lunatics at the Atlantic Council: ‘The United States remains the world’s leading power with global interests, and it cannot afford to choose between Europe and the Indo-Pacific. Instead, Washington and its allies should develop a defense strategy capable of deterring and, if necessary, defeating Russia and China at the same time’.

See a much better article on the whole issue of Russia & China and western plans for war with both those nuclear-armed nations here.

Nazi fever growing in Europe

 

Thousands gathered in Germany to remember the Allied offensive bombing of Dresden, on February 13th, 1945. 

But those solemn memorials of the dead were upstaged by a procession of nearly 1,000 Neo-Nazis – on the out skirts of the city – who marched to the center. They were met by counter protestors. 

Meanwhile, in Bulgaria, the Lukov March carried on in Sofia despite a ban, with local courts permitting the event. The Lukov March, commemorating a fascist leader, Hristo Lukov, who was in power during WWII in Bulgaria. 

RT’s Peter Oliver reports, then Dr. Eike Hamer, publisher of Wirtschaft Aktuell, a business publication in Germany breaks it all down.

Evacuations from Donbass to Russia

 

Because the Ukrainian-Nazi forces (150,000 of them along the line of contact with the Donbass near the Russian border) have resumed major shelling of the Donbass, children and the elderly are being evacuated to Russia.

 

Sputnik

Donbass militia leaders ordered an evacuation of civilians from the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics on Friday, citing the threat of Ukrainian shelling and the danger of a full-scale invasion by Kiev. The escalation comes after months of claims by Western officials and media that it was Russia that was preparing to "invade" Ukraine.

Ukrainian forces have fired 18 120-mm mortar rounds at the village of Zaitsevo, a Donetsk People's Republic-controlled settlement situated on the outskirts of the town of Gorlovka, a DPR representative at the Joint Center on Control and Coordination has told journalists.

The deployment of 120-mm mortar systems in the Donbass conflict zone is prohibited under the Minsk Agreements - the peace deal hammered out in early 2015 aimed at enforcing a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine and ultimately bringing the civil conflict to a close.

The mortar fire comes amid a major escalation of mortar, artillery and small-arms fire along the line of contact between Kiev forces and Donbass militia in the past two days, with both sides reporting dozens of violations of the ceasefire and blaming the other for the violence. 

 

Buses lined up in the eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk for evacuation to Russia

Lugansk People's Republic the Trilateral Contact Group representative Rodion Miroshnik warned Friday that the Ukrainian army's deployment of a large amount of tubed artillery on the line of contact would lead to massive casualties if a major military conflagration was started.

"There was shelling of a small village called Sanzhary. It is located between Debaltseve and Pervomaisk on the line of contact. 122-mm artillery was used there, that is, tubed artillery," Morshnik said. "On the line of contact, we see a massive amount of cannon artillery in the 122-152 mm calibre, which can strike at distances of between 20-40 km. Let me remind you that there re just 7 km between the line of contact and the center of Donetsk, and 12 km from the positions where these weapons are deployed and the center of Lugansk. That is, if this artillery is used now, it will not be possible to avoid huge bloodshed and a massive number of victims," he added.

Miroshnik warned that the Donbass was being pushed toward renewed fighting, since Kiev has shown its lack of readiness to negotiate with the breakaway republics.

The leaders of Donetsk and Lugansk ordered an evacuation of their civilian population on Friday, citing the danger of an all-out Ukrainian assault.

Speaking to reporters after meeting with his Belarusian counterpart on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin reiterated that Kiev must sit down for talks with the Donbass breakaways, and do so as soon as possible. Putin also stressed that the Minsk Agreements were the only way to restore peace and relieve tension in the region. 

Dancing and free

 

 

I've been watching a ton of these trucker protest videos from Canada.

They are being supported by people all over Canada and the world.

People are touched by their spirit of joy and love, their persistence and dedication, and their sense of humor.

Their government and much of the media continues to demonize them - calling them Nazis and other such names. If Trudeau wants to see real Nazis he should take a look at the Ukrainians that he just gave $500 million to so they could buy more weapons.

Every day more police are coming into the area where the trucks are parked near the capital in Ottawa. The government is threatening to take the trucks away from those who have parked them, the truckers are being told their bank accounts will be frozen, they are told their truck insurance will be cancelled, and they each face $100,000 fines and a year in jail.

But the truckers, their families, and their supporters keep dancing.

The have stood up and fought against the totalitarian 'green pass mandates'. They have earned my deepest respect.

I love working class people - they are real.

Bruce 

PS I've heard several times that little kids who are at this protest are saying this has been the best time in their entire lives. 

 

Ukraine history series: Nazi's in city of Lvov

 

Lvov, Ukraine in 2011 (where the Nazis predominate)

It was a day of remembrance that turned violent. In Western Ukraine, nationalists attacked veterans and their relatives on Victory Day [in WW II against Hitler's Nazi army]. 

People wearing St George ribbons to commemorate World War Two had them ripped off their clothing before riot police fought pitched battles with neo-Nazis. 

RT's Aleksey Yaroshevsky witnessed the events. 

Lvov is the city where Nazis predominate in Ukraine. The US and its NATO allies have moved their embassies to Lvov.

Israel watch: More apartheid on the way

 

 A difficult week - and the following week seems even worse

 

By Adam Keller (Gush Shalom)

Hacking into
Mobile phones
And extracting
Personal information
From them
Started with
The Palestinians
And has reached
Deep into
Israeli society.

Israeli soldiers
Raided Nablus
And extra-judicially executed
Three Palestinians.

The Knesset approved
A law that
Prevents Arab citizens
Of Israel from marrying
Whomever they wish
And living in this country
With their chosen spouse.

Two Palestinian workers
Plunged to their death
From unsafe scaffolding
On a high rise
Being built by
A greedy contractor
On the rubble of a slum
Whose residents were
Forcibly evicted.

And in the same week:
The leadership of
British Jewry,
Which hitherto granted
Unconditional support
To all of Israel's actions,
Informed a former minister
In the Israeli government
That racists of his ilk
Were personae non gratae.

Putin on Ukraine inside NATO

 

Russian President Vladimir Putin to German journalist: Regarding the expansion of NATO. You said a wonderful phrase: "They say that in the coming years Ukraine will not be in NATO." 

What does "say" mean? We have been told for 30 years that there will be no NATO expansion at all, not one inch towards the Russian borders.

Putin sees the Nazi influence in Ukraine and he sees the US-UK-NATO arming and training the Ukrainian military.  

The former Soviet Union lost 27 million people during Hitler's WW II invasion. Russia says we are not going there again.

Get NATO off our back - disband it. It's just another way the international war machine can use to extract precious monies from the host nation.

Bruce

War in Europe and the rise of raw propaganda

 

By John Pilger

Marshall McLuhan’s prophecy that “the successor to politics will be propaganda” has happened.  Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the US and Britain

On matters of war and peace, ministerial deceit is reported as news. Inconvenient facts are censored, demons are nurtured. The model is corporate spin, the currency of the age. In 1964, McLuhan famously declared, “The medium is the message.” The lie is the message now.

But is this new? It is more than a century since Edward Bernays, the father of spin, invented “public relations” as a cover for war propaganda. What is new is the virtual elimination of dissent in the mainstream.

The great editor David Bowman, author of The Captive Press, called this “a defenestration of all who refuse to follow a line and to swallow the unpalatable and are brave”. He was referring to independent journalists and whistle blowers, the honest mavericks to whom media organisations once gave space, often with pride. The space has been abolished.

The war hysteria that has rolled in like a tidal wave in recent weeks and months is the most striking example. Known by its jargon, “shaping the narrative”, much if not most of it is pure propaganda.

The Russians are coming. Russia is worse than bad. Putin is evil, “a Nazi like Hitler”, salivated the Labour MP Chris Bryant. Ukraine is about to be invaded by Russia – tonight, this week, next week. The sources include an ex-CIA propagandist who now speaks for the US State Department and offers no evidence of his claims about Russian actions because “it comes from the US Government”.

 

The no-evidence rule also applies in London. The British Foreign Secretary, Liz Truss, who spent £500,000 of public money flying to Australia in a private plane to warn the Canberra government that both Russia and China were about to pounce,  offered no evidence. Antipodean heads nodded; the “narrative” is unchallenged there. One rare exception, former prime minister Paul Keating, called Truss’s warmongering “demented”.

Truss has blithely confused the countries of the Baltic and Black Sea. In Moscow, she told the Russian foreign minister that Britain would never accept Russian sovereignty over Rostov and Voronezh – until it was pointed out to her that these places were not part of Ukraine but in Russia. Read the Russian press about the buffoonery of this pretender to 10 Downing Street and cringe.

This entire farce, recently starring Boris Johnson in Moscow playing a clownish version of his hero, Churchill, might be enjoyed as satire were it not for its wilful abuse of facts and historical understanding and the real danger of war.

Vladimir Putin refers to the “genocide” in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine. Following the coup in Ukraine in 2014 – orchestrated by Barack Obama’s “point person” in Kyiv, Victoria Nuland – the coup regime, infested with neo-Nazis, launched a campaign of terror against Russian-speaking Donbas, which accounts for a third of Ukraine’s population.

Overseen by CIA director John Brennan in Kyiv, "special security units" coordinated savage attacks on the people of Donbas, who opposed the coup. Video and eyewitness reports show bused fascist thugs burning the trade union headquarters in the city of Odessa, killing 41 people trapped inside. The police are standing by. Obama congratulated the “duly elected” coup regime for its “remarkable restraint”.

In the US media the Odessa atrocity was played down as "murky" and a "tragedy" in which "nationalists" (neo-Nazis) attacked "separatists" (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal damned the victims - "Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says".
 

Nazi's throwing Molotov cocktails at the Odessa Trades Union Hall in 2014. Inside hiding from the onslaught were many peaceful local citizens who had been collecting collecting signatures in front of the building requesting a national referendum for a 'federated' Ukraine. No one has ever been charged for these crimes in spite of voluminous video evidence.

Professor Stephen Cohen, acclaimed as America’s leading authority on Russia, wrote, “The pogrom-like burning to death of ethnic Russians and others in Odessa reawakened memories of Nazi extermination squads in Ukraine during world war two. [Today] storm-like assaults on gays, Jews, elderly ethnic Russians, and other ‘impure’ citizens are widespread throughout Kyiv-ruled Ukraine, along with torchlight marches reminiscent of those that eventually inflamed Germany in the late 1920s and 1930s …

“The police and official legal authorities do virtually nothing to prevent these neo-fascist acts or to prosecute them. On the contrary, Kyiv has officially encouraged them by systematically rehabilitating and even memorialising Ukrainian collaborators with Nazi German extermination pogroms, renaming streets in their honour, building monuments to them, rewriting history to glorify them, and more.”

Today, neo-Nazi Ukraine is seldom mentioned. That the British are training the Ukrainian National Guard, which includes neo-Nazis, is not news. (See Matt Kennard’s Declassified report in Consortium 15 February). The return  of violent, endorsed fascism to 21st-century Europe, to quote Harold Pinter, “never happened … even while it was happening”.

On 16 December, the United Nations tabled a resolution that called for “combating glorification of Nazism, neo-Nazism and other practices that contribute to fuelling contemporary forms of racism”. The only nations to vote against it were the United States and Ukraine.

Almost every Russian knows that it was across the plains of Ukraine’s “borderland” that Hitler’s divisions swept from the west in 1941, bolstered by Ukraine’s Nazi cultists and collaborators. The result was more than 20 million Russian dead.  

Setting aside the manoeuvres and cynicism of geopolitics, whomever the players, this historical memory is the driving force behind Russia’s respect-seeking, self-protective security proposals, which were published in Moscow in the week the UN voted 130-2 to outlaw Nazism. They are:

Russian demands for security

- NATO guarantees that it will not deploy missiles in nations bordering Russia. (They are already in place from Slovenia to Romania, with Poland to follow)

- NATO to stop military and naval exercises in nations and seas bordering Russia.

- Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.

- the West and Russia to sign a binding East-West security pact.

- the landmark treaty between the US and Russia covering intermediate-range nuclear weapons to be restored. (The US abandoned it in 2019)

These amount to a comprehensive draft of a peace plan for all of post-war Europe and ought to be welcomed in the West. But who understands their significance in Britain? What they are told is that Putin is a pariah and a threat to Christendom.

Russian-speaking Ukrainians, under economic blockade by Kyiv for seven years, are fighting for their survival. The “massing” army we seldom hear about are the thirteen Ukrainian army brigades laying siege to Donbas: an estimated 150,000 troops. If they attack, the provocation to Russia will almost certainly mean war.

Now empty apartment building inside the city of Donesk in eastern Ukraine after Kiev's Nazi-led army shelled the city

 
In 2015, brokered by the Germans and French, the presidents of Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France met in Minsk and signed an interim peace deal. Ukraine agreed to offer autonomy to Donbas, now the self declared republics of Donetsk and Luhansk.

The Minsk agreement has never been given a chance. In Britain, the line,  amplified by Boris Johnson, is that Ukraine is being “dictated to” by world leaders. For its part, Britain is arming Ukraine and training its army.

Since the first Cold War, NATO has effectively marched right up to Russia’s most sensitive border having demonstrated its bloody aggression in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and broken solemn promises to pull back.  Having dragged European “allies” into American wars that do not concern them, the great unspoken is that NATO itself is the real threat to European security.

In Britain, a state and media xenophobia is triggered at the very mention of “Russia”. Mark the knee-jerk hostility with which the BBC reports Russia. Why? Is it because the restoration of imperial mythology demands, above all, a permanent enemy? Certainly, we deserve better.

www.johnpilger.com