Russian President Vladimir Putin (C) shakes hands with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko (R) during a meeting on February 11, 2015 in Minsk. (AFP Photo / Andrey Stasevich)
By Paul Craig Roberts
Judging by the report on RT, I conclude that the Ukraine peace deal worked out in Minsk by Putin, Merkel, Hollande, and Poroshenko has little chance of success.
As Washington is not a partner to the Minsk peace deal, how can there be peace when Washington has made policy decisions to escalate the conflict and to use the conflict as a proxy war between the US and Russia?
The Minsk agreement makes no reference to the announcement by Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of US Army Europe, that Washington is sending a battalion of US troops to Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces how to fight against Russian and rebel forces. The training is scheduled to begin in March, about two weeks from now. Gen. Hodges says that it is very important to recognize that the Donetsk and Luhansk forces “are not separatists, these are proxies for President Putin.”
How is there a peace deal when Washington has plans underway to send arms and training to the US puppet government in Kiev?
Looking at the deal itself, it is set up to fail. The only parties to the deal who had to sign it are the leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk break-away republics. The other signers to the Minsk deal are an OSCE representative which is the European group that is supposed to monitor the withdrawal of heavy weapons by both sides, a former Ukrainian president Viktor Kuchma, and the Russian ambassador in Kiev. Neither the German chancellor nor the French, Ukrainian, and Russian presidents who brokered the deal had to sign it.
The terms of the agreement depend on actions of the Ukrainian parliament and prime minister, neither of which are under Poroshenko’s control, and Poroshenko himself is a figurehead under Washington’s control. Moreover, the Ukrainian military does not control the Nazi militias. As Washington and the right-wing elements in Ukraine want conflict with Russia, peace cannot be forthcoming.
The agreement is nothing but a list of expectations that have no chance of occurring.
An Iraqi family tasting what former US President Bush called “Operation Iraqi Freedom”.
By Chris Hedges
We fire missiles from the sky that incinerate families huddled in their houses. They incinerate a pilot cowering in a cage. We torture hostages in our black sites and choke them to death by stuffing rags down their throats. They torture hostages in squalid hovels and behead them. We organize Shiite death squads to kill Sunnis. They organize Sunni death squads to kill Shiites. We produce high-budget films such as “American Sniper” to glorify our war crimes. They produce inspirational videos to glorify their twisted version of jihad.
The barbarism we condemn is the barbarism we commit. The line that separates us from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is technological, not moral. We are those we fight.
“From violence, only violence is born,” Primo Levi wrote, “following a pendular action that, as time goes by, rather than dying down, becomes more frenzied.”
The burning of the pilot, Jordanian Lt. Muath Al-Kaseasbeh, by ISIS militants after his F-16 crashed near Raqqa, Syria, was as gruesome as anything devised for the Roman amphitheater. And it was meant to be. Death is the primary spectacle of war. If ISIS had fighter jets, missiles, drones and heavy artillery to bomb American cities there would be no need to light a captured pilot on fire; ISIS would be able to burn human beings, as we do, from several thousand feet up. But since ISIS is limited in its capacity for war it must broadcast to the world a miniature version of what we do to people in the Middle East. The ISIS process is cruder. The result is the same.
Exposing the truth about our corrupt world and what humanity has become.
This is a short documentary film, questioning our freedom, the education system, corporations, money, the American capitalist system, the US government, world collapse, the environment, climate change, genetically modified food, and our treatment of animals.
President Poroshenko’s PR advisers are helping him turn speeches into a kind of performance art. Sadly for the Ukrainian leader, they are more Laurel and Hardy than Laurence Olivier.
On Saturday, Poroshenko was again engaged in physical theatre, this time in Munich. Holding up Russian passports, he alleged that they belonged to Russian soldiers who had been found on Ukrainian soil. Citing “mountains of (Russian) lies and propaganda,” the Ukrainian President stood on a German stage and, well, lied.
Russian soldiers cannot use their passports while on active service – they must hand them in. Everybody who has ever lived in Russia knows this. Indeed, even contract soldiers are forced to hand in theirs while on army business and, like the troops, they get a replacement military ID. This is why Sochi’s bars are crawling with off-duty Russian military – they can’t go abroad without their travel documents.
However, many Russian civilians who are army reservists (much like the US National Guard) would have both passports and military ID’s. Theoretically, Russian reservists – who are not employed by the Kremlin – could act as volunteers in Ukraine…in much the same way that mercenaries from as far-flung areas such as Spain, Poland, Croatia and Canada have been documented as serving in the Ukrainian civil war.
Crystal Clear that Russian Army is in Ukraine, Says PM Yatsenyuk
It is “crystal clear” that Russia has boots on the ground in Ukraine, the Ukrainian Prime Minister has said. Speaking at a news conference with US Secretary of State John Kerry, Arseniy Yatsenyuk said he had strong evidence that President Putin had ordered Russian troops to invade Crimea and the east of Ukraine. He said they were not fighting rebels or guerillas, they were fighting the regular Russian army.
Bradford Houppe, Vice-President of the Ethical Affairs Committee at Shell, apologises. Mr. Houppe is perhaps better known as one of the key activists of The Yes Men.
Nigeria: Oil Pollution in the Niger Delta
Nigeria is one of the countries with the largest reserves of crude oil worldwide. About 80 percent of the country’s income comes from the export of oil and natural gas. In Port Harcourt, flares burn day and night. There are more than 120 gas flares in the Niger Delta. Here, natural gas that bubbles up during oil extraction is burned. It’s a cheap way of getting rid of an undesired byproduct. Elsewhere, flaring has long been banned, because it releases greenhouse gases and carcinogenic heavy metals.
The longer and bigger the war in Ukraine becomes, the more lucrative it becomes for US politicians and big business, says Alexandr Khrolenko, a columnist for the RIA Novosti information agency.
The pro-independence militia in the Donbas are in the process of liberating new territories. The encirclement of a large group of Ukrainian forces numbering in the thousands is taking place around the city of Debaltseve; a narrow gap in the front there is soon set to be eliminated. And nevertheless the war will continue, and for a long time, because even in the limited Donbas format, it will result in profits for American corporations.
Over the course of two weeks, according to data released by the hacker organization ‘CyberBerkut,’ the Ukrainian armed forces suffered over 1,000 fatalities and more than 100 of their tanks were destroyed, with dozens of soldiers and officers surrendering to the militia. These days, the US needs Ukrainian casualties.
Kiev is being forced into a war. On January 24, US Vice President Joe Biden discussed the situation in Donbas with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. The pair condemned the violence and expressed their conviction that “the costs for Russia will continue to rise” for its alleged aggressive actions against Ukraine.
The possible [new] victims and the idea of Ukraine being responsible for the conflict are not even being considered; Poroshenko was given a carte blanche and an indulgence. Shortly thereafter, the Verkhovna Rada officially declared that Russia is an aggressor nation, as if this was another step toward the direction of a peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Ukraine and the European Union serve as subordinate instruments of US foreign policy. The Europeans are being pushed headfirst toward war. On January 28 in Washington, US Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland urged NATO to deploy command posts and to create rapid-reaction forces to its eastern members. “We must install command and control centers in all six frontline states as soon as possible,” Nuland noted. She explained that “NATO is a defensive alliance,” and that “our goal is deterrence of aggression,” but “if that fails we have to be ready.” In other words, she’s asking NATO to be ready to stage preemptive attacks. Europeans are being convinced of the need for war with Russia, setting them up for the next advance on Moscow and beyond.
[…]
We have seen how large scale military defeats have forced Ukraine to the peace talks table [in Minsk], following which Kiev saves up its strength, and once again throws its troops into the Donbas region. This can continue on for a long time.
However, the lack of fighting spirit and the degradation of the Ukrainian economy will sooner or later have the potential to turn thousands of Ukrainian radicals, now with combat experience, toward a new Maidan. At that point, Poroshenko can be saved only by the direct (military) intervention of the European Union and the United States. In the heart of Europe, on the borderline separating two worlds, each of them nuclear-armed, the flames of war continue to grow.
The historic leader of the Cuban Revolution Fidel Castro sent a message to the Federation of University Students on the occasion of an event commemorating the 70th anniversary of his admission to the University of Havana.
Since the times of ancient Greece, during almost 3,000 years, the Greeks, without going very far, were brilliant in almost all activities: physics, mathematics, philosophy, architecture, art, science, politics, astronomy and other branches of human knowledge. Greece, however, was a land in which slaves did the most difficult work in fields and cities, while the oligarchy devoted itself to writing and philosophizing. The first utopia was written precisely for them.
Observe carefully the realities of this well-known, globalized and very poorly shared planet Earth, on which we know every vital resource is distributed in accordance with historical factors: some with much less than they need, others with so much they don’t know what to do with it. Now amidst great threats and dangers of war, chaos reigns in the distribution of financial resources and social production. The world’s population has grown, between 1800 and 2015, from one to seven billion inhabitants. Can this population increment be accommodated, in this way, over the next 100 years, and food, health, water and housing needs met, regardless of whatever scientific advances are made?
[…]
Many friends of Cuba know of the Cuban people’s exemplary conduct, and I will explain to them, in a few words, my essential position.
I do not trust the policy of the United States, nor have I exchanged one word with them, though this does not in any way signify a rejection of a peaceful solution to conflicts or threats of war. Defending peace is the duty of all. Any negotiated, peaceful solution to the problems between the United States and peoples, or any people of Latin America, which does not imply force or the use of force, must be addressed in accordance with international principles and norms.
We will always defend cooperation and friendship with all of the world’s peoples, and with those of our political adversaries. This is what we are demanding for all.
The President of Cuba has taken pertinent steps in accordance with his prerogatives and faculties conceded by the National Assembly and the Communist Party of Cuba.
The grave dangers which today threaten humanity must yield to norms which are compatible with human dignity. No country can be denied such a right.
In this spirit I have struggled, and will continue to struggle, to my last breath.
“American Sniper” lionizes the most despicable aspects of U.S. society—the gun culture, the blind adoration of the military, the belief that we have an innate right as a “Christian” nation to exterminate the “lesser breeds” of the earth, a grotesque hypermasculinity that banishes compassion and pity, a denial of inconvenient facts and historical truth, and a belittling of critical thinking and artistic expression. Many Americans, especially white Americans trapped in a stagnant economy and a dysfunctional political system, yearn for the supposed moral renewal and rigid, militarized control the movie venerates. These passions, if realized, will extinguish what is left of our now-anemic open society.
The movie opens with a father and his young son hunting a deer. The boy shoots the animal, drops his rifle and runs to see his kill.
“Get back here,” his father yells. “You don’t ever leave your rifle in the dirt.”
“Yes, sir,” the boy answers.
“That was a helluva shot, son,” the father says. “You got a gift. You gonna make a fine hunter some day.”
The camera cuts to a church interior where a congregation of white Christians—blacks appear in this film as often as in a Woody Allen movie—are listening to a sermon about God’s plan for American Christians. The film’s title character, based on Chris Kyle, who would become the most lethal sniper in U.S. military history, will, it appears from the sermon, be called upon by God to use his “gift” to kill evildoers. The scene shifts to the Kyle family dining room table as the father intones in a Texas twang: “There are three types of people in this world: sheep, wolves and sheepdogs. Some people prefer to believe evil doesn’t exist in the world. And if it ever darkened their doorstep they wouldn’t know how to protect themselves. Those are the sheep. And then you got predators.”
The camera cuts to a schoolyard bully beating a smaller boy.
“They use violence to prey on people,” the father goes on. “They’re the wolves. Then there are those blessed with the gift of aggression and an overpowering need to protect the flock. They are a rare breed who live to confront the wolf. They are the sheepdog. We’re not raising any sheep in this family.”
The father lashes his belt against the dining room table.
“I will whup your ass if you turn into a wolf,” he says to his two sons. “We protect our own. If someone tries to fight you, tries to bully your little brother, you have my permission to finish it.”
There is no shortage of simpletons whose minds are warped by this belief system. We elected one of them, George W. Bush, as president. They populate the armed forces and the Christian right. They watch Fox News and believe it. They have little understanding or curiosity about the world outside their insular communities. They are proud of their ignorance and anti-intellectualism. They prefer drinking beer and watching football to reading a book. And when they get into power—they already control the Congress, the corporate world, most of the media and the war machine—their binary vision of good and evil and their myopic self-adulation cause severe trouble for their country. “American Sniper,” like the big-budget feature films pumped out in Germany during the Nazi era to exalt deformed values of militarism, racial self-glorification and state violence, is a piece of propaganda, a tawdry commercial for the crimes of empire. That it made a record-breaking $105.3 million over the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday long weekend is a symptom of the United States’ dark malaise.
“The movie never asks the seminal question as to why the people of Iraq are fighting back against us in the very first place,” said Mikey Weinstein, whom I reached by phone in New Mexico. Weinstein, who worked in the Reagan White House and is a former Air Force officer, is the head of the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which challenges the growing Christian fundamentalism within the U.S. military. “It made me physically ill with its twisted, totally one-sided distortions of wartime combat ethics and justice woven into the fabric of Chris Kyle’s personal and primal justification mantra of ‘God-Country-Family.’ It is nothing less than an odious homage, indeed a literal horrific hagiography to wholesale slaughter.”
Weinstein noted that the embrace of extreme right-wing Christian chauvinism, or Dominionism, which calls for the creation of a theocratic “Christian” America, is especially acute among elite units such as the SEALs and the Army Special Forces.
Say hello to Jaanika Merilo, Ukraine’s new Advisor on foreign investments, improvement of business climate, coordination of international programs and more.
The new minister for economy, Mr. Abromavičius, knows that the country is in fact bankrupt. “To expect that we are going to produce real as opposed to declarative incentive programs is unrealistic,” he declared. In other words, the new Ukrainian budget is nothing but a piece of paper. But without this piece of paper there will be no new money from the European Bank and the IMF.
The first steps he has taken so far are controversial.
On January 5, the new minister for economy appointed former Estonian Jaanika Merilo—a young dark-haired beauty—as his advisor on foreign investments, improvement of business climate in Ukraine, coordination of international programs and so on. Directly after her appointment, the young lady put online not her resume or a program for Ukrainian financial stabilization but a series of candid shots that display her long legs, plump lips and prominent cleavage.
Against the Grain 