At least 50 people were killed in co-ordinated multiple bomb attacks in in Baghdad’s Sadr City (Photo: Reuters)
As recently as the 1970s, Baghdad was lauded as a model city in the Arab world. But now, after decades of seemingly endless conflict, it is the world’s worst city.
That is, at least, according to the latest survey by the Mercer consulting group, which when assessing quality of life across 239 cities, measuring factors including political stability, crime and pollution, placed Baghdad last.
The Iraqi capital was lumped with Bangui in the conflict-hit Central African Republic and the Haitian capital Port-au-Prince, the latest confirmation of the 1,250-year-old city’s fall from grace as a global intellectual, economic and political centre.
Residents of Baghdad contend with near-daily attacks, a lack of electricity and clean water, poor sewerage and drainage systems, rampant corruption, regular gridlock, high unemployment and a myriad other problems.
Abby Martin reports on the growing number of murders of environmental activist worldwide by corporate and government entities, citing the 908 deaths reported in countries from Brazil to the Philippines.
An anti-government protester waves a flag in front of the seized office of the SBU state security service in Luhansk, eastern Ukraine April 14, 2014. (Reuters / Shamil Zhumatov)
I’m confused. A few weeks ago we were told in the West that people occupying government buildings in Ukraine was a very good thing. These people, we were told by our political leaders and elite media commentators, were ‘pro-democracy protestors’.
The US government warned the Ukrainian authorities against using force against these ‘pro-democracy protestors’ even if, according to the pictures we saw, some of them were neo-Nazis who were throwing Molotov cocktails and other things at the police and smashing up statues and setting fire to buildings.
Now, just a few weeks later, we’re told that people occupying government buildings in Ukraine are not ‘pro-democracy protestors’ but ‘terrorists’ or ‘militants’.
Why was the occupation of government buildings in Ukraine a very good thing in January, but it is a very bad thing in April? Why was the use of force by the authorities against protestors completely unacceptable in January, but acceptable now? I repeat: I’m confused. Can anyone help me?
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.
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.
Paul Craig Roberts: Washington Drives the World to War
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.
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.
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.
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.
Against the Grain 