Abby Martin gives a heartfelt tribute to investigative journalist and former LAPD detective, Michael C. Ruppert, highlighting his career from exposing CIA drug trafficking to his groundbreaking research on ‘Peak Energy’ and remember his sincere devotion to truth and justice.
See also: 9/11 Truther Mike Ruppert Kills Himself
By Mike Whitney
Washington does not want a peaceful solution. Washington wants a confrontation. Washington wants to draw Moscow into a long-term conflict in Ukraine that will recreate Afghanistan in the 1990s. That’s the goal, to lure Putin into a military quagmire that will discredit him in the eyes of the world, isolate Russia from its allies, put strains on new alliances, undermine the Russian economy, pit Russian troops against US-backed armed mercenaries and Special Ops, destroy Russian relations with business partners in the EU, and create a justification for NATO intervention followed by the deployment of nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory. That’s the gameplan. Why doesn’t Putin see that?
Putin has agreed to a meeting this week with foreign Ministers from The United States, the European Union, and Ukraine. This is another mistake. Originally, Putin refused to acknowledge the coup-government as legitimate. Now he’s changed his mind. Now he’s agreed to meet with their representatives. This is a victory for Washington and a defeat for Russia. The Obama team will see this as a sign of weakness, which it is.
According to Al Jazeera: “The meeting will involve US Secretary of State John Kerry, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Andriy Deshchytsia, the EU said on Tuesday. A spokesman for Ashton said the talks were aimed at “de-escalating” the crisis in Ukraine.”
The meeting has nothing to do with “de-escalating” the crisis.” It’s a public relations stunt. These talks have all the credibility of the Israel-Palestine peace talks, which is to say, none at all.
There’s no sense talking to people who don’t want peace. It just makes them look like they are being sincere, when they’re not. Obama and Co. don’t want peace. They want regime change. They want to weaken and dismember Russia. They want to reduce Moscow’s influence over energy-dependent states in Europe by disrupting the flow of gas through Ukraine. And they want to create a justification for carrying out their imperial agenda, which means they need to make Putin look like a dangerous aggressor. The coup government’s crackdown on ethnic Russians in Donetsk and Kharkiv could lead to a Russian intervention which would provide the justification that Washington is looking for. However painful it is for Putin to watch Russian speaking Ukrainians get beaten and perhaps killed by Nazi thugs and foreign mercenaries dressed up as Ukrainian Security Forces, he should avoid sending in the troops. It’s a trap.
Read full article at CounterPunch
In my opinion, Washington does not want the Ukraine matters settled in a diplomatic and reasonable way. It might be the case that Russia’s best move is immediately to occupy the Russian territories of Ukraine and re-absorb the territories into Russia from whence they came. This should be done before the US and its NATO puppets are prepared for war. It is more difficult for Washington to start a war when the objects of the war have already been lost. Russia will be demonized with endless propaganda from Washington whether or not Russia re-absorbs its traditional territories. If Russia allows these territories to be suppressed by Washington, the prestige and authority of the Russian government will collapse. Perhaps that is what Washington is counting on.
If Putin’s government stands aside while Russian Ukraine is suppressed, Putin’s prestige will plummet, and Washington will finish off the Russian government by putting into action its many hundreds of Washington-financed NGOs that the Russian government has so foolishly tolerated. Russia is riven with Washington’s Fifth columns.
Source: PaulCraigRoberts.org
The conspiracy theorist Mike Ruppert shot and killed himself Sunday night after recording his Lifeboat Hour radio show.
His death was announced Monday night in a Facebook post by the blogger and author Carolyn Baker, who assured her followers that Ruppert’s death was “not a ‘fake’ suicide.”
“It was very well planned by Mike, who gave us few clues but elaborate instructions for how to proceed without him,” said Baker, who was a guest on the final program and will host Ruppert’s upcoming radio show in memoriam.
The 63-year-old Ruppert had previously worked as a Los Angeles police officer, and he gained notoriety in 1995 for an encounter with then-CIA Director John Deutch during a town hall meeting.
Ruppert, a former narcotics officer, told Deutch he’d seen evidence of CIA complicity in drug dealing.
He published and edited the website From the Wilderness, where he claimed the CIA and U.S. government were involved in the September 11, 2001, terrorist plots.
Ruppert also covered civil liberty issues, government corruption, economics, and international politics on the site, which he discontinued in 2006.
He published the 2004 book “Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil,” which speculated that then-Vice President Dick Cheney had conspired with other government officials and Wall Street financiers in the 9/11 attacks.
Ruppert also appeared in several documentary films, including “The 911 Report You Never Saw” and “Peak Oil,” and was the subject of another, “Collapse.”
His critics say Ruppert used dubious or partial sources to back his claims.
“Conspiracy theories may seem more nuisance than problem,” wrote columnist David Corn about Ruppert’s work in 2002. “But they do compete with reality for attention. There is plenty to be outraged over without becoming obsessed with X Files-like nonsense.”
Watch this recent interview with Ruppert posted online by TheLipTV:
Collapse mastermind Michael Ruppert joins Media Mayhem to continue his conversation about the dirty secrets of the US government. This time he pulls out the big guns when discussing 9/11, the Bush administration, and why Dick Cheney was such an important (and nefarious) figure. He also gives his thoughts on President Obama, and the overwhelming force that keeps the machine of US government ticking in the direction of criminality.
Source: The Raw Story
In this episode of the Keiser Report, Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert discuss how ignorance could, indeed, be bliss for all of us if the ignorant would just STFU. From geopolitics to cryptocurrencies, those who know least are the most likely to seek the use of force. In the second half, Max interviews crypto whale, Karl Gray, about the future of crypto and his plans to crowdfund the $300 million Statue of Responsibility, a companion to the Statue of Liberty to be built off the West coast of America.
See also: The Less Americans Know about Ukraine’s Location, the More They Want U.S. to Intervene
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, while making a point about Western media coverage of Ukraine, performs the romantic WWII ballad ‘Katyusha’ on SophieCo. Watch the full interview below:
The Ukrainian crisis may have seen a flickering light at the end of the tunnel, as politicians from the great powers collided over the former Soviet state are now bringing up the idea of having four-sided talks between the US, EU, Russia and Ukraine itself. But with the east of the Ukraine boiling with new wave of protests, and Kiev’s government being fed with unreasonable promises from Washington — what will tomorrow hold for the Ukrainians themselves? Are talks a real possibility? Will there be any use of them? To find this out, Sophie talks to Ray McGovern, retired CIA analyst turned whistleblower.
By the way, Sophie is also the granddaughter of former Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze.
US warship USS Donald-Cook sails through the Bosphorus in Istanbul, Turkey, on April 10, 2014, en route to the Black Sea (AFP Photo / Bulent Kilic)
By Renee Parsons
In February, 1990, US Secretary of State James Baker (1989-1992), representing President George HW Bush, traveled to Moscow to meet with Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev regarding the possible reunification of Germany and the removal of 300,000 Soviet troops. There is little serious dispute that as the Berlin Wall teetered, Baker promised Gorbachev “there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east.” Gorbachev is reported to have taken the US at its word and responded “any extension of the zone of NATO is unacceptable.” “I agree,” replied Baker.”
Unfortunately, Gorbachev never got it in writing and most historians, at the time, agreed that NATO expansion was “ill conceived, ill-timed, and above all ill-suited to the realities of the post-Cold War world.”
President Bush’s National Security Advisor Brent Scowcroft and Bill Clinton’s Defense Secretary were also in agreement. But by 1994, that verbal contract had not deterred the concerted efforts of a handful of State Department policy professionals to subdue the overwhelming bureaucratic opposition according to James Goldgeier in his classic “Not Whether but When: The US Decision to Enlarge NATO.” By 1997, the Gorbachev-Baker-Bush agreement was a forgotten policy trinket as Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic were accepted into NATO. In 2004, former Soviet satellite countries Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were admitted and in 2009, Croatia and Albania joined NATO.
Currently, the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Kazakhstan, Armenia, and Azerbaijan are pending membership and all five former Soviet republics in Central Asia (Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan) provide NATO with logistical support for the US war in Afghanistan.
Full article at CounterPunch
Related: NATO’s ‘Fogh of War’
NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen (Reuters)
By Finian Cunningham
It’s been a busy week for NATO chief Anders Fogh Rasmussen. The week began with him telling lies, spewing propaganda, seeking to please Washington, trying to incite war in Europe with Russia, and ended with a warning to Russia to back down from military aggression.
Such is the busy life of a puppet on a string, bouncing in step with the tune called by his master. From here on, Rasmussen should be re-branded as the “Fogh of War.”
Rasmussen, who was previously the prime minister of Denmark before taking up his mouthpiece job at NATO in 2009, went on to spew lies about Russian aggression in Ukraine and he called, ominously, for “a readiness action plan.”
“The current crisis [in Ukraine] poses a serious challenge to our common security,” he claimed this week.
“But,” he assured, “North America and Europe stand together in facing up to it. And we stand united in our firm response. In recent weeks, we have seen the United States’ clear commitment to Europe’s security… We must review the readiness of all our forces,” said Rasmussen, sounding like a cross between a tin-pot general and an arms salesman working for Washington.
We can be sure that Rasmussen’s masters in Washington really loved that bit of melodrama about America and Europe standing together and the US commitment to Europe’s security.
For this is exactly what the Danish non-entity politician is doing. He is giving a European accent to Washington’s strategic agenda of sowing conflict between Europe and Russia, even if that means inciting a nuclear war.
Full article at Press TV
President Vladimir Putin says it was “strange” to learn of the US reaction on a Russian letter to the leaders of EU’s top gas-consuming nations, as it was in no way designed for Washington’s eyes.
He added that he wrote his letter because “Russia can’t carry the Ukrainian burden alone,” urging the European leaders to hold a joint meeting as soon as possible “to find ways to help and support the Ukrainian economy.”
“Handing out cakes at the Maidan isn’t enough to prevent the Ukrainian economy from plunging into complete chaos,” he said.
Full story at RT News
Related: EU taking Putin’s letter on gas transit ‘seriously’ – Merkel
The confrontation over Ukraine has been unfolding not only on the ground, but in the media as well. And what appears to be an exaggeration of basic facts has led to some dubious reporting.
Moscow’s concerned about the possible use of mercenaries by Kiev to quell anti-government unrest in eastern Ukraine. According to reports, around 150 private-American military contractors have been brought in from a private firm called Greystone.
Full article at RT News
According to reports from Donetsk, another group of US mercenaries has landed at the local airport, mercenaries that the ‘Maidan’-approved government in Kiev is going to use for a mop-up operation in the region.
Deputy Chief of People’s Self-Defence of Donbass, Sergei Tsyplakov, claims that 100 “soldiers of fortune” have arrived this time. Judging by US and UK press reports, the overall strength of the ground force that the Kiev-based government is going to send to the South-East of Ukraine makes up 1,800.
The US private military companies Blackwater and Greystone are the ones that are mentioned increasingly often. Blackwater is actually non-existent. It has changed its name several times and is now called Academi. It’s a biggest private army of the world. Blackwater is one of its subdivisions. 90 percent of orders of both companies come from the US Department of State, the Pentagon and even the White House. They can collect from 5,000 to 10,000 “soldiers of fortune” under their standards.
Source: The Voice of Russia
Against the Grain 