Thierry Meyssan, Voltairenet - Washington, which failed in 2011 to bomb Libya and Syria simultaneously, is now engaged in a new demonstration of its strength: organizing regime change in three states at the same time, in different regions of the world: Syria (CentCom), Ukraine (EuCom) and Venezuela (SouthCom).
To do this, President Obama has mobilized almost the entire National Security Council team.
First, Advisor Susan Rice and Ambassador to the UN, Samantha Power. These two women are champions of "democratic" talk. They have for many years specialized in advocating interference in the internal affairs of other countries under the pretext of preventing genocide. But behind this generous rhetoric, they couldn’t care less about non-US lives as shown by Ms. Power during the chemical weapons crisis in the Damascus suburb of Ghouta. The ambassador, who was aware of the innocence of the Syrian authorities, had gone to Europe with her husband to attend a film festival dedicated to Charlie Chaplin, while her government denounced a crime against humanity, the responsibility for which was placed upon President al Assad.
Then, the three regional co-ordinators: Philip Gordon ( Middle East and North Africa ), Karen Donfried (Europe and Eurasia ) and Ricardo Zuñiga ( Latin America). • Phil Gordon organized the sabotage of the Geneva 2 Peace Conference as long as the Palestinian issue is not settled to the U.S. liking. During the second session of the conference, while John Kerry spoke of peace, Gordon met with the heads of Jordanian, Qatari , Saudi and Turkish intelligence services in Washington to prepare for yet another attack. The plotters have gathered an army of 13,000 men, of whom only 1,000 were given brief military training, to drive tanks and take Damascus. The problem is that the column may be destroyed by the Syrian Army before arriving in the capital. But they fail to agree on how to defend it without distributing anti-aircraft weapons that could later be used against Israel.
Karen Donfried is the former national intelligence officer for Europe. She has long led the German Marshall Fund in Berlin. Today, she manipulates the European Union to hide Washington interventionism in Ukraine. Despite the leak of a phone conversation involving Ambassador Victoria Nuland, she succeeded in convincing Europeans that the opposition in Kiev wanted to join them and was fighting for democracy. Nonetheless, more than half of the Maidan rioters are members of the Nazi party and brandish portraits of collaborator Stepan Bandera.
Finally, Ricardo Zuñiga is the grandson of the namesake President of the National Party of Honduras who organized the coups of 1963 and 1972 in favor of General López Arellano. He directed the CIA station in Havana where he recruited and financed agents to form opposition to Fidel Castro. He mobilized the extreme Trotskyist Venezuelan left to overthrow President Nicolás Maduro, accused of being a Stalinist.
The whole process is hyped under the leadership of one Dan Rhodes. This propaganda specialist has already written the official version of September 11, 2001, drafting the report of the Presidential Commission of Inquiry...
In all three cases, the U.S. narrative is based on the same principles: accuse governments of killing their own citizens, qualify opponents as ’democratic’; impose sanctions against the "murderers" and ultimately operate coups.
Each time, the movement begins with a demonstration during which peaceful opponents are killed, and where both sides accuse each other of violence. In fact U.S. or NATO special forces placed on rooftops shoot at both the crowd and the police. This was the case in Daraa (Syria) in 2011, Kiev (Ukraine) and Caracas (Venezuela) this week....
Qualifying opponents as democratic activists is a simple game of rhetoric. In Syria, they are Takfirists supported by the worst dictatorship in the world, Saudi Arabia. In Ukraine, a few sincere pro-Europeans surrounded by many Nazis. In Venezuela, young Trotskyists from good families surrounded by goon squads...
Support for opponents rests with the National Endowment for Democracy. This agency of the U.S. government falsely presents itself as an NGO funded by Congress. But it was created by President Ronald Reagan, in association with Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. It is headed by the neoconservative Carl Gershman and the daughter of General Alexander Haig (former Supreme Commander of NATO, then Secretary of State ), Barbara Haig. This is the NED (actually the State Department), which employs the "opposition" senator John McCain...
Washington is thus attempting to show the world it is still the master. To be more sure of itself, it launched the Ukrainian and Venezuelan operations during the Olympic Games in Sochi. It was certain that Russia would not move for fear of having its party upset by Islamist attacks. But Sochi ended this weekend. Now it’s Moscow’s turn to play.
DS Wright, Firedog Lake - While the US media gets lost in disaster porn the reality of what is going in the Ukraine is being ignored, a divided country is having trouble standing...
The question remains what are the Russians going to do now that forces backed by the United States and European Union have overthrown the government they were backing?
“We do not understand what is going on there. There is a real threat to our interests and to the lives of our citizens,” Russian media quoted Dmitry Medvedev as saying. “There are big doubts about the legitimacy of a whole series of organs of power that are now functioning there.”
It seems rather unlikely that Russia is going to accept a pro-US/EU government lying down, let alone one that came to power violently. Russia sees Ukraine as part of its sphere of influence and while US officials ask Russia not to send in troops echoes of the Republic of Georgia conflict ring out where the US offered strong condemnations for a Russian invasion but no actual military response. What will the US actually do if Russia invades Ukraine?
What is not being widely reported in Western media is that a large portion of the Ukrainian population see themselves as aligned with Russia – speak Russian, have relatives in Russia, and have no love for the US or EU. East Ukraine is majority Russia speaking and is the base of Yanukovych’s support, it’s unlikely that the people there are particularly happy to see the man they voted for get ousted.
So what happens next? The old two countries under one state model seems unworkable given recent events. If there is a breakup with Western Ukraine joining the European Union and Eastern Ukraine joining Russia can it happen without full scale military combat?
The story is far from over, the overthrow of the Yanukovych government was just the beginning.
Vinyardsaker - The EU:
The EU is in a deep, systemic, economic, social and political crisis and it is absolutely desperate for new opportunities to rescue itself from its slow-motion collapse. For the EU, the Ukraine is first and foremost a market to sells is goods and services. The Ukraine is also a way to make the EU look bigger, more powerful, more relevant. Some believe that the Ukraine can also provide cheap labor for the EU, but I don't believe that this is a major consideration for the following reasons: the EU already has way too many immigrants, and the there has already been a steady stream of Ukrainians (and Balts) leaving their country for a better life in the West. Thus, what the EU really wants is a way to benefit from the Ukraine but without suffering too many negative consequences from any agreement. Hence the 1500 pages of the proposed agreement with the EU.
The USA:
The goals of the USA in the Ukraine are completely different from the goals of the EU, hence the very real tensions between their diplomats so well expressed by the "fuck the EU!" of Madam Nuland. Furthermore, and unlike the bankrupt EU, the US has spent over [5 billion] dollars to achieve its goals in the Ukraine. But so what are these goals really?
This is were it gets really interesting.
First, we have to go back to the crucial statement made by Hillary Clinton in early December of 2012:
“There is a move to re-Sovietize the region,” .... It’s not going to be called that. It’s going to be called a customs union, it will be called Eurasian Union and all of that,” ...But let's make no mistake about it. We know what the goal is and we are trying to figure out effective ways to slow down or prevent it.”
Now, it is absolutely irrelevant to argue about whether Hillary was right or wrong in her interpretation of what the Eurasian Union is supposed to become, what matters is that she, and her political masters, believe, and they really believe is that Putin wants to re-create the Soviet Union. No matter how stupid this notion is, we have to always keep in mind that this is what the likes of Hillary sincerely believe.
Next, we need to recall another crucial statement, made this time by Zbigniew Brzezinski who wrote: "Without Ukraine Russia ceases to be empire, while with Ukraine - bought off first and subdued afterwards, it automatically turns into empire."
According to him, the new world order under the hegemony of the United States is created against Russia and on the fragments of Russia. Ukraine is the Western outpost to prevent the recreation of the Soviet Union.
Again, it does not matter at all whether evil Zbig is right or wrong. What matters is that Zbig and Hillary jointly provide us with the key to the current US policy in the Ukraine: to prevent Russia from becoming a superpower. For them, and unlike the Europeans, its not about "getting the Ukraine", its about "not letting the Russians get the Ukraine". And this is absolutely crucial: from the US point of view, chaos, mayhem and even a full-scale civil war in the Ukraine is much, much, preferable to any, and I mean any, form of economic or political union between Russia and the Ukraine...
Russia:
Here we have to completely switch our point of view and realize the following, no matter how counter-intuitive this might seem to be, regardless of the extreme closeness between Russian and Ukrainian languages and cultures, regardless of a long common history, regardless of the fact that both Russians and Ukrainians jointly defeated Nazi Germany, regardless of the fact that the Ukraine is a big neighbor of Russia and regardless of the fact that the two countries have close economic ties, Russia does not need the Ukraine. Hillary and Zbig are simply plain wrong. Furthermore, Russia has absolutely no intention of re-creating the Soviet Union or, even less so, becoming an Empire. This is all absolute nonsense, stupid propaganda to feed to the western masses, Cold War cliches which are absolutely inapplicable to the current realities. Furthermore, Russia is already a superpower, quite capable of challenging the EU and the USA together (as the example of the war in Syria has so dramatically illustrated). In fact, Russia has had its most spectacular growth precisely at a time when the Ukraine was occupied by Poland (14th-17th century):
Paul Craig Roberts, Global Research On the 100th Anniversary of World War 1, the Western powers are again sleepwalking into destructive conflict. Hegemonic ambition has Washington interfering in the internal affairs of Ukraine, but developments seem to be moving beyond Washington’s control.
Regime change in Ukraine for a mere $5 billion dollars would be a bargain compared to the massive sums squandered in Iraq ($3,000 billion), Afghanistan ($3,000 billion), Somalia, and Libya, or the money Washington is wasting murdering people with drones in Pakistan and Yemen, or the money Washington has spent supporting al Qaeda in Syria, or the massive sums Washington has wasted surrounding Iran with 40 military bases and several fleets in the Persian Gulf in an effort to terrorize Iran into submission.
So far, in Washington’s attempt at regime change in Ukraine large numbers of Americans are not being killed and maimed. Only Ukrainians are dying, all the better for Washington as the deaths are blamed on the Ukrainian government that the US has targeted for overthrow.
The problem with Washington’s plot to overthrow the elected government of Ukraine and install its minions is twofold: The chosen US puppets have lost control of the protests to armed radical elements with historical links to nazism, and Russia regards an EU/NATO takeover of Ukraine as a strategic threat to Russian independence.
Washington overlooked that the financially viable part of today’s Ukraine consists of historical Russian provinces in the east and south that the Soviet leadership merged into Ukraine in order to dilute the fascist elements in western Ukraine that fought for Adolf Hitler against the Soviet Union. It is these ultra-nationalist elements with nazi roots, not Washington’s chosen puppets, who are now in charge of the armed rebellion in Western Ukraine.