“Hypocritical” is how CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou describes his arrest and imprisonment for exposing the spy agency’s use of torture while those who actually committed the heinous acts go unpunished. In an in-depth interview with RT’s Ben Swann, Kiriakou discussed only his time in prison, but also the controversial “enhanced interrogation” program, claiming that President George W. Bush personally approved the harsh practices.
Related documentary: SILENCED: The War on Whistleblowers
Ukraine in 2013 was on the path of stable economic growth with the potential to rival Germany. Its GDP, profits, wages and social welfare were all rising. One year later the trend is the opposite.
The mechanics of the 2014 coup d´état, the uninvestigated crimes, the lies and censorship, the economic and social consequences are among many topics highlighted by former Prime Minister Nikolai Azarov, who fled for his life after an assassination attempt during the Washington-sponsored coup.
Azarov has noticed that whenever the Ukrainian economy achieves a positive growth rate, some political turbulence disrupts the progress. The best years for the Ukrainian economy were:
2004 – leading to the Orange Revolution;
2007 – leading to the dissolution of parliament;
2013 – leading to Nuland’s $5 billion coup d´état.
The ‘exclusive’ photos of ‘Russian invasion in Ukraine’ in 2014 turned out to be easily found in the Web, with at least one of them dating back to 2008. Now, US senator James Inhofe is furious with the Ukrainian delegation for setting him up with the ‘evidence’.
Questions have been raised about the veracity of reports that claim Russian troops have invaded Ukraine after US Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe confessed that several photos of Russian convoys he obtained from a Ukrainian parliamentary group were taken during the 2008 Georgia conflict, the Washington Free Beacon said.
On Tuesday, the Washington Free Beacon ran a story that unveiled “exclusive” photos of victims of militia bombs and Russian armed vehicles seemingly rolling into Ukraine.
The photos were provided to Inhofe’s office in print by an obscure Ukrainian delegation, led by a Georgetown professor, who said the images were taken at the height of Russia’s alleged military incursion between August 24 and September 5, 2014.
Inhofe’s spokeswoman Donelle Harder was cited as saying they had checked back with their sources – none of them high-level Ukrainian officials – before releasing the photos. She said they had been quite confident about their authenticity since the imagery allegedly matched reports about the Ukraine conflict.
But speaking to The Mirror on Thursday, Sen. Inhofe confessed he was “furious” to learn that at least one of the photos was taken by Associated Press during Russia’s military operation in Georgia back in 2008. Several other images are readily available elsewhere online and can be found using a Google Images search.
Source: Sputnik International
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.
Full article at: PaulCraigRoberts.org
See also: How to Make Sense of Ukraine Peace Talks
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.
Read the full article at: Truthdig
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.
Source: RT Op-Edge.
See also: Kiev Unable to Provide Copies of Alleged Russian Soldiers’ Passports
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 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.
See also: Shell Nigeria oil spill ’60 times bigger than it claimed’
© AFP 2015 / ANATOLII BOIKO
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.
Full article at: Sputnik International
Related: Obama openly admits ‘brokering power transition’ in Ukraine
