Libya, Syria And Now Ukraine - Color Revolution By Force

[seemslikeadream]

US Military Dusts Off Decades-Old 'Readiness' Plans for Russia

As American officials fire of diplomatic salvos at Russia in response to that nation’s purported actual artillery salvos into Ukraine, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said recently that among other actions, the U.S. military is dusting off decades-old plans, just in case.

“We’re looking inside our own readiness models to look at things that we haven’t had to look at for 20 years, frankly, about basing and lines of communication and sea lanes,” Gen. Martin Dempsey, America’s top military officer, said at the Aspen Security Forum Thursday evening. “What the military does when faced with these crises is – our job is preparedness, deterrence and readiness.”

In addition to its own plans, Dempsey said the U.S. military is having “conversations with our NATO allies about increasing their capability and readiness” and that there’s a “very active” ongoing process and debate about how best to provide support to Ukraine.

“I wouldn't misinterpret my presence here today sitting with you… We’re not sitting still,” Dempsey said.

Dempsey said Russia’s actions in Ukraine signaled a significant “change in the relationship of the U.S. and Russia,” but said America’s first instinctual response to Russian aggression should be to look at NATO and the role it played against the Soviets a half century ago.

“That’s why NATO was created… to increase stability, offset Soviet aggression at the time, but maintain a stable Europe. And we’ve been successful at that for 60 years,” Dempsey said. “So the first step here is to have that conversation in the halls of NATO while recognizing the change and taking stock in ourselves – in our capabilities, in our readiness, in our deterrent capabilities.”

Dempsey’s comments came just hours after U.S. officials accused Russia of firing artillery rounds into eastern Ukraine from Russian territory, a move a Pentagon official called a “clear escalation” of the conflict and Russia’s alleged hand in it.

Beyond Russia’s intentions in Ukraine, Dempsey said he also feared that Russian President Vladimir Putin could be in danger of “light[ing] a fire that he loses control of” by stoking a potentially “quite dangerous” strain of nationalism in Europe.

Last week a Malaysian Airlines plane crashed in eastern Ukraine, killing nearly 300 travelers. Shortly after, the Ukrainian government produced a bevy of evidence suggesting pro-Russian rebels had downed the plane with a sophisticated surface-to-air missile that Ukraine claims was provided by Russia. Russian President Vladimir Putin in turn blamed the Ukrainian government and the west for escalating the conflict and pledged that Russia would do “everything it its power” to facilitate an investigation into the Malaysia Airlines tragedy.

Prior to the plane crash, the Ukrainian government and American officials accused Moscow of secretly sending commandos into eastern Ukraine to foment instability. For instance, one of the rebel’s military leaders, Ukraine says, is actually a former Russian intelligence agent from Moscow.

“They are soldiers of fortune, Rambo types who have fought in Russian wars,” former White House counter-terrorism advisor and current ABC News consultant Richard Clarke said last week. “They are people in close contact with the Russian security services, people who have apartments and homes in Moscow, and people who are probably being paid by Russian security services to be the military heart and core of the rebels… These are the dogs of war.”

Putin has denied Russian military troops are active in Ukraine, but said back in March that Russia reserves the right to use military force to protect Russians there.

[American Dream]

The Kremlin Builds an Unholy Alliance With America’s Christian Right

Since the re-election of Pres. Vladimir Putin of Russia in 2012, the Kremlin has clamped down on independent media, established a draconian ban on “gay propaganda” and invaded the Ukrainian Republic of Crimea.

This new Russian government is aggressive, autocratic and moving further to the political right, argues Anton Shekhovtsov, a London-based expert on the Ukrainian and Russian far right—who originally hails from the Crimean city of Sevastopol.

The Kremlin is also reaching out to American conservative evangelicals as a means to find potential allies sympathetic to Russia’s rightward shift. In the following op-ed, Shekhovtsov explains why that’s dangerous.




https://medium.com/war-is-boring/the-kr ... e35250066b

[Morty]

This is the best pre-MH17 analysis of the situation I've ever come across:

Putin, Ukraine, and the Future of Europe
July 14, 2014
(Written for teleSUR English, which will launch on July 24)

As the military crisis in the Ukraine has intensified with the fall of key rebel cities, like Slavyansk and Kramatagorsk, and as new decisive conflicts for the capitols of Donetsk and Lugansk regions are about to take place, in the West some are beginning to ask why Putin has not more directly intervened on behalf of the rebels in the eastern breakaway regions. After initially having mustered Russian forces on the eastern border of Ukraine late last winter, why has Putin pulled back and ordered them to ‘stand down’?

When the Ukraine crisis entered a new stage last February 2014, the question of the day five months ago was ‘would Putin and Russia’ directly intervene militarily’? Today the key question has become ‘why hasn’t Putin intervened’ and ‘why does it appear increasingly that he will not’?

Over the past decade, the USA built up its support among proto-fascist elements on the ground in the Ukraine, funding these forces to the tune of a US admitted $5 billion. It then elbowed aside EU negotiators and intervened directly last February, when it appeared the European Union was about to strike an economic deal that was not politically aggressive enough in the USA view.

The USA has clearly wanted political regime change all along, not just a favorable economic deal with Ukraine. The so-called ‘Orange Revolution’ initiated a decade ago had succeeded only in part in breaking the Ukraine from the Russian economic and political orbit. The Ukrainian crisis of 2013 offered a new opportunity to complete the unfinished political task of the Orange Revolution. But the Europeans, mired in their own economic problems, were not interested in taking the lead.

In her publicly much quoted statement. ‘fuck the EU’, made last February on the eve of the coup by the USA’s leading diplomat on the ground at the time, Virginia Nuland, the USA clearly assumed direct control of the Ukrainian intervention from the Europeans. The European Union, together with the European-led IMF, would henceforth be left to negotiate the economic bailout with the Ukraine. But the USA would now drive the political policy.

The dichotomy between the USA and the EU that erupted into full view with the February 2014 coup in Kiev, when the USA took charge ‘on the ground’ is still evident today: Since the May 2014 Ukrainian parliamentary elections the USA has continued to push for harsher economic sanctions against Russia while directing the new Ukrainian Poroshenko government to undertake more aggressive military action in the eastern regions of the Ukraine. In recent months, moreover, it has become further clear that USA military, CIA , and no doubt USA special forces advisors have been calling the shots on the ground militarily for the Poroshenko government. USA advisors have been flowing steadily into the Ukraine since last May. And shifts concerning Ukrainian military tactics and strategy against the eastern regions in recent months have almost always coincided with high ranking US politicians and USA-NATO military personnel visits to the Ukraine.

In contrast, the EU governments have been trying to keep the economic sanctions against Russia limited to select individuals instead of entire economic sectors in Russia, as the USA has proposed, while calling for a ceasefire and immediate negotiations between the parties.

Given the aggressive USA political policy toward the Ukraine today, the question is: ‘ Why has Putin not responded more aggressively to the threat of the now potential severing of the Ukraine from Russian economic and political interests’? Why has Russia not militarily intervened to date and appears, with every passing week, even less likely to do so?

The possible answers to Russia’s cautious, measured response to USA aggressive political and military policies in the Ukraine are several:

First, what’s at play here is not just a fight for the eastern regions of the Ukraine. It’s not even a fight for the Ukraine per se. It is a broader geopolitical strategic struggle now emerging across the Eurasian continent as new global realignments begin to unfold.

The Ukrainian crisis has various levels of meaning. But at the geopolitical level it’s about whether Europe will continue to develop even deeper economic and political ties with Russia than it has to date; or whether the USA will take more aggressive steps to slow, reverse, and potentially sever, that growing Europe-Russia economic relationship.

This writer rejects the view that the USA intervention in the Ukraine is the outcome of a rogue foreign policy adventure that caught the Obama administration and its security apparatuses by surprise. When viewed more globally and strategically, what appears as a USA political mis-adventure in the Ukraine, set in motion and led by a Neocon dominated US State Department since last winter, is really a planned intervention and response by USA interests.

Those interests viewed the emergence of a general crisis in the Ukraine in 2013 as an opportunity to further secure USA global economic hegemony by preventing what it perceives has been a dangerous drift by Europe toward more economic integration with a resurgent Russia.

Europe’s growing dependence on Russian gas and energy is well known. Europe has grown in the last decade to depend on at least a third of its gas from Russia. And Eastern Europe EU economies are nearly totally dependent on Russian gas. But that energy dependency only the visible ‘tip of the economic iceberg’ of a growing mutual economic dependency between Russia and Europe.

German, Italian, and French export and import trade with Russia in various categories has grown significantly in the last decade, including production and exports of military equipment. France’s development and export of two helicopter carriers to Russia is but one case in point. The USA’s recent $9 billion financial penalty levied on France largest bank, BNP, could be viewed, at least in part, as a USA response and threat to France’s delivering the carriers to Russia despite USA insistence to the contrary. USA proposals to provide Europe with liquefied natural gas is another indicator of its attempt to wean Europe off of its growing Russian resource and capital flows dependence. The USA’s current proposals for a ‘Trans-Atlantic Free Trade’ agreement between it and Europe is no doubt another indication of a renewed USA ‘turn’ toward Europe. With a combined economy roughly the size of the USA’s, Europe is too big and too important an economic prize to allow Russia to obtain too large a foothold. And the economic penetration of Russia has already gone too far, in the view of USA interests.

The USA’s direct intervention in the Ukraine—elbowing aside the Europeans last February 2014 to bring about the Ukrainian coup d’etat—should be viewed therefore in this context of the USA political response to potential long term strategic shifts in Europe. What better way to bring Europe fully ‘back into the USA economic fold’ than by precipitating a political crisis in the Ukraine that provokes Russia into a premature, direct military conflict with the west?

But should Russia intervene military in the Ukraine in response to USA provocations, that intervention would provide an opportunity for the USA to push Europe in general, and Germany in particular, to retreat from the Europe-Russia economic relationships that have developed over the past decade.

Putin no doubt knows this and has been seeking a way around a direct fight on the ground with the USA and its NATO arm in the eastern Ukraine. Putin and Russia are thus ‘between a rock and a hard place’, as the saying goes. Intervene militarily in the Ukraine, and Russia gives impetus to the USA strategic objective of slowing and possibly even severing Europe in the long run from Russia economically. On the other hand, by not intervening militarily Putin strengthens the hand of certain EU interests to continue to resist USA demands for broad sanctions against Russia and to continue to insist on a negotiated settlement in the Ukraine.

To recognize the larger geopolitical reasons for the USA’s direct political intervention in the Ukraine—and for Russia’s reluctance to respond with its own military intervention in the Ukraine—is not to deny other possible reasons for Russia’s hesitancy to intervene militarily despite the grave threat to its interests posed by the USA-engineered coup of last February.

A possible second reason why Putin appears reluctant to engage militarily directly in the eastern regions is that he recognizes the Russian military is still no match in a direct conflict with USA-NATO forces on the ground. Russia’s military modernization is not yet completed. It is therefore premature for a decisive conflict on the ground there. Having re-integrated the Crimea earlier, before the USA was able to handpick the Poroshenko government and reconstitute the Ukrainian military, Putin knows a similar development in the eastern regions is highly unlikely to prove as successful as the Crimea.

Thirdly, there’s the factor of Russia’s own economic oligarchs. They have little interest in a military conflict in the eastern Ukraine, and a good deal of interest in continuing their wealth economic & investment partnerships with western European bankers and industrial capitalists. Many also have large financial positions in the Russian giant company, Gazprom, which is owed $4.4 billion by the Ukrainian government in back gas payments. The only way Gazprom and the oligarchs will be paid is with the agreement of the IMF to ensure the IMF’s $18 billion current bail out of the Ukraine will in part include payments to Gazprom. Russia and Gazprom would like to conclude that payment deal first. However, Poroshenko and the USA keep the bait dangling, refusing to agree to final terms while military actions are underway. Sensitive negotiations continue to this day between the parties with regard to how much the Ukraine and IMF will pay Gazprom for past gas deliveries. Poroshenko and USA advisors will no doubt refuse to agree until they have militarily pacified the eastern Ukraine.

Another possible interpretation of Putin’s reluctance to intervene militarily is that the reluctance reflects a strategy of allowing violence by the Ukrainian military and government to intensify in the east, and thereby deepen further popular internal disgust with, and opposition to, the Ukrainian government there. There is also the possibility the military action now underway by the Poroshenko government will overextend itself and produce a popular backlash within the Ukraine itself.

Continued atrocities by the Ukrainian military against its own Russian-speaking citizens in the east would also build more support with the Russian populace in favor of intervention, which is now still split at best on the topic of military intervention in the Ukraine. Putin may thus be awaiting events to further develop within the Ukraine and for public opinion—in both the Ukraine and Russia—to shift more in favor of direct military intervention.

Of the various reasons behind Putin’s apparent reluctance to intervene in the east Ukraine, the most compelling is the longer run geopolitical strategic contest over the future of Europe itself: will it be pulled back from growing relations with Russia? Or will Europe in general, and Germany & France in particular, continue to maintain, and even grow, economic relations with Russia? Russian military intervention at this point would clearly prevent the latter, and set in motion a reversal of Europe-Russia economic relations.

The conflict in the Ukraine is therefore about the future direction of Europe itself. Will Europe become even more economically dependent upon the USA, more integrated with the USA economically, and politically and diplomatically even more an appendage of the USA? Or will Europe embark on a more independent global economic course—with not only Russia but China as well?
Were there no USA-provoked Ukrainian coup and crisis, a more independent European economic policy would prove more likely, perhaps even inevitable. But with the fact of the Ukraine crisis and the aggressive USA-led military action by the USA-friendly Poroshenko government, the future economic direction of Europe may thus depend on whether or not Putin and Russia intervene military in the eastern Ukraine in response to the on-going USA provocation.

But don’t bet on it. Our guess is Putin is not just a ‘master tactician’ but is no less focused on the broader geopolitical implications of a Russian military intervention. He will more likely continue providing all the support he can to the rebels in Donetsk and Lughansk—short of direct military response.”

Jack Rasmus is the author of ‘Epic Recession: Prelude to Global Depression’ (2010) and ‘Obama’s Economy: Recovery for the Few’(2012), by Pluto Press, London, UK, and the forthcoming ‘Transitions to Global Depression’(2015). He hosts the Alternative Visions radio show on the Progressive Radio Network, and serves as the ‘Shadow’ Federal Reserve Chair, in the Green Shadow Cabinet. His website is http://www.kyklosproductions.com. He blogs at jackrasmus.com, and tweets at @drjackrasmus

[seemslikeadream]

U.S. releases images it says show Russia has fired artillery over border into Ukraine

By Karen DeYoung July 27 at 11:12 AM
The Obama administration on Sunday released overhead surveillance images it said were evidence that Russia has fired artillery rounds from its side of the border against Ukrainian military units.

The grainy photographs, taken between Wednesday and Saturday, are labeled as indicating fire from multiple rocket launchers inside Russia and targets they have struck inside Ukraine.

As the ground war between Russia-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine and government troops has escalated this past week, charges and countercharges between Russia and the West have reached fever pitch.

A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, charged Sunday that the United States is getting most of its intelligence data on the Russian military from social media and suggested it turn to more “trustworthy” information, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported.

Konashenkov denied recent U.S. statements that Russia, after first decreasing the number of troops it has deployed along the Ukrainian border, has now increased them to at least 15,000. Regular international inspections under the international Open Skies Treaty, he said, “have not registered any violations or undeclared military activity on the part of Russia in the areas adjacent to the Ukrainian border.”

Under the treaty, member governments regularly conduct overflights, after providing advance notice, of neighboring countries. Although such flights were common in the early days of the Ukrainian conflict, it is unclear whether any have been conducted recently. The U.S. photographs, disseminated by the State Department as “evidence of Russia firing into Ukraine,” were declassified by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and presumably taken by U.S. surveillance assets flying overhead.

[seemslikeadream]

Ukraine mounts onslaught to secure Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 crash site


DONETSK, Ukraine - Ukrainian armed forces mounted a major onslaught against pro-Russian separatist fighters Sunday in an attempt to gain control over the area where Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was downed earlier this month.


Play VIDEO
Ukraine's foreign minister calls for "bilateral cease-fire"
Just as the onslaught was launched, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin, appearing on CBS' "Face the Nation," said his government is eager for a bilateral cease-fire.

"We are for (a) peaceful settlement," Klimkin said. "But we can't negotiate directly with terrorists who shot down the plane, who have been killing people, taking hostages...The main leaders of the terrorists are Russian citizens with different connections with Russian special services."

Reports of the intensifying unrest prompted a postponement of a trip to the site by a team of Dutch and Australian police officers who had planned to started searching for evidence and the remaining bodies.

In the Netherlands, Prime Minister Mark Rutte said his government has rejected the idea of deploying armed troops to secure the crash site because there is no way they could achieve "military superiority" in a region where heavily armed pro-Russian rebels are battling Ukrainian government forces.

"The option we looked at was a military option in which you could secure the area so you can work in a stable environment," Rutte said. But "that the option would be such a provocation to the separatists that it could destabilize the situation."


Play VIDEO
U.S. officials: Russia has fired into Ukraine
The U.S. State Department released satellite images that it says back up its claims that rockets have been fired from Russia into eastern Ukraine and heavy artillery for separatists has also crossed the border.

A four-page document released by the State Department seems to show blast marks from where rockets were launched and craters where they landed. Officials said the images, sourced from the U.S. Director of National Intelligence, show heavy weapons fired between July 21 and July 26 - after the July 17 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

Ukraine's National Security Council said Sunday that government troops have encircled Horlivka, a key rebel stronghold, and that there had been fighting in other cities in the east. Horlivka lies around 20 miles north of the main rebel-held city of Donetsk.

The armed forces "have increased assaults on territory held by pro-Russian mercenaries, destroyed checkpoints and positions and moved very close to Horlivka," the council said in a statement.

A representative of the separatist military command in Donetsk confirmed that there had been fighting in Horlivka, but said that rebel fighters were holding their positions.


25 PHOTOS
The battle for eastern Ukraine
Elsewhere, Russian state news agency RIA Novosti reported Sunday that a column of Ukrainian armored personnel carriers, trucks and tanks had entered the town of Shakhtarsk, 10 miles west of the site of the Boeing 777 crash.

Shakhtarsk is a strategic town in the area. By controlling the town, the Ukrainian army would cut off vital rebel supply lines.

Local media reported fighting also taking place in the towns of Snizhne and Torez, the two nearest mid-sized towns to the crash site.

The government accused rebel forces of firing rockets Sunday on residential apartment blocks in Horlivka in what they said was an attempt to discredit the army and whip up anti-government sentiment. The separatist self-declared "Donetsk People's Republic" has accused the army of being responsible for that and other rocket attacks in nearby cities.

The Donetsk regional government - which is loyal to Kiev and based elsewhere since rebels took over the area - said Sunday in a statement that at least 13 people, including two children aged 1 and 5, were killed in fighting in Horlivka. It said another five people were killed as a result of clashes in a suburb north of Donetsk.

New York-based Human Rights Watch last week condemned what it said was the Ukrainian government forces' practice of using unguided rockets in populated urban areas. It said that use of the rockets was a violation of international humanitarian law that "may amount to war crimes."

Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 was shot down with a surface-to-air missile over a part of eastern Ukraine controlled by pro-Russian separatists on July 17, killing all 298 people on board. U.S. and Ukrainian officials say it was shot down by a missile from rebel territory, most likely by mistake.


Play VIDEO
Malaysia Airlines black box data reveal "massive explosive decompression"
Unreleased data from a black box retrieved from the wreckage of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 inUkraine show findings consistent with the plane's fuselage being hit multiple times by shrapnel from a missile explosion.

"It did what it was designed to do, bring down airplanes," a European air safety official told CBS News.

The official described the finding as "massive explosive decompression."

If the full teams of aviation crash experts and security personnel ever do arrive at the crash site in Grabovo, it will be a relief to the handful who are already there.

The dedicated but small group of Dutch, Australian and Malaysian investigators has been on the crash site for the past few days and has learned that there's a lot more work to be done to find hard evidence of the cause of the crash.

They are also still making more grisly discoveries.


36 PHOTOS
Malaysia Airlines flight shot down in eastern Ukraine
"Personal belongings, passports, ID cards, credit cards, things like that," Michael Borkiurkiw of the OSCE said, "and the Dutch have just documented some very small human remains over there in that field as well."

Around a hundred passengers are still unaccounted for.

Ten days after the disaster, a full-fledged investigation still has not begun at the crash site, with some bodies still unrecovered and the site forensically compromised. Concerns about the integrity of the site were raised further when a couple that had flown from their home in Perth, Australia, visited the site Saturday outside the village of Hrabove and even sat on part of the plane's wreckage.

It remained unclear when the forensic experts from the Netherlands and Australia would be able to begin their work at the site.

Alexander Hug, the deputy head of a monitoring team from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, said it was too dangerous for the unarmed officers to travel there from their current location in Donetsk.

"We reassess the situation continuously and we will start to redeploy tomorrow morning back to the site if the situation changes," Hug said.

Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott had said earlier Sunday that unarmed Australian police would be part of the Dutch-led police force to secure the area and help recover victims' remains.

Abbott said that by using unarmed police, Ukraine's parliament won't need to ratify the deployment as it would if the security force were to be armed.


Play VIDEO
Dutch mourn arrival of more Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 victims' bodies
Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said in a statement that his country would send dozens of police and that his country had received assurances from pro-Russia separatists that they would provide protection for investigators.

Flights from Ukraine to the Netherlands have taken 227 coffins containing victims of the plane disaster. Officials say the exact number of people held in the coffins still needs to be determined by forensic experts in the Netherlands.

The Malaysia Airlines disaster prompted some expectations in the West that Russia would scale back its involvement in the uprising in Ukraine's east, but the opposite seems to be the case.

In addition to producing evidence that rockets have been fired into Ukraine from Russia, the U.S. has said it has seen powerful rocket systems moving closer to the border.

[seemslikeadream]

U.S.: Satellite Images Show Russian Rockets Hitting Ukraine
by SCOTT NEUMAN
July 27, 201412:58 PM ET

Image released by the U.S. State Department showing what it says is evidence of Russia firing artillery into eastern Ukraine.

U.S. State Department
Update at 4:05 p.m. ET.

The U.S. State Department has released satellite images it says back up the assertion by Washington and Kiev that Russian forces are firing artillery into eastern Ukraine in support of separatists.

In a four-page document titled Evidence of Russian Shelling into Ukraine, released Sunday, blast marks from rocket launches in Russia and craters in Ukraine can be seen, the State Department says.

The document also shows "self-propelled artillery only found in Russian military units, on the Russian side of the border, oriented in the direction of a Ukrainian military unit within Ukraine."

It also states that: "Russia-backed separatists have used heavy artillery, provided by Russia, in attacks on Ukrainian forces from inside Ukraine."

The images are attributed to the U.S. Director of National Intelligence and were taken between July 21 and July 26, officials say — days after the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

According to The Associated Press, they "claim to show multiple rocket launchers fired at Ukrainian forces from within Ukraine and from Russian soil. One image shows dozens of craters around a Ukrainian military unit and rockets that can travel more than 7 miles."

The release of the satellite images comes after the U.S. said last week that it had obtained "new evidence" that Russian forces were firing artillery across the border, a charge that Kiev has made repeatedly and loudly in recent days.

It also comes as Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry reportedly agreed in a telephone conversation Sunday on the importance of a cease-fire in eastern Ukraine, according to Reuters.

In a Russian Foreign Ministry statement carried by the news agency, Moscow describes the crisis in Ukraine as an "internal conflict."

A readout of the conversation issued by the State Department says Kerry "urged Foreign Minister Lavrov to stop the flow of heavy weapons and rocket and artillery fire from Russia into Ukraine, and to begin to contribute to deescalating the conflict."

The secretary of state "did not accept Foreign Minister Lavrov's denial that heavy weapons from Russia were contributing to the conflict," it said.

[conniption]

U.S. releases images it says show Russia has fired artillery over border into Ukraine

By Karen DeYoung July 27 at 11:12 AM
The Obama administration on Sunday released overhead surveillance images it said were evidence that Russia has fired artillery rounds from its side of the border against Ukrainian military units.

The grainy photographs, taken between Wednesday and Saturday, are labeled as indicating fire from multiple rocket launchers inside Russia and targets they have struck inside Ukraine.

As the ground war between Russia-backed separatist forces in eastern Ukraine and government troops has escalated this past week, charges and countercharges between Russia and the West have reached fever pitch.

A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman, Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov, charged Sunday that the United States is getting most of its intelligence data on the Russian military from social media and suggested it turn to more “trustworthy” information, the ITAR-TASS news agency reported.

Konashenkov denied recent U.S. statements that Russia, after first decreasing the number of troops it has deployed along the Ukrainian border, has now increased them to at least 15,000. Regular international inspections under the international Open Skies Treaty, he said, “have not registered any violations or undeclared military activity on the part of Russia in the areas adjacent to the Ukrainian border.”

Under the treaty, member governments regularly conduct overflights, after providing advance notice, of neighboring countries. Although such flights were common in the early days of the Ukrainian conflict, it is unclear whether any have been conducted recently. The U.S. photographs, disseminated by the State Department as “evidence of Russia firing into Ukraine,” were declassified by the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence and presumably taken by U.S. surveillance assets flying overhead.

~

RT

US allegations of Russia firing at Ukraine are ‘baseless’ – Russian MP

Published time: July 28, 2014
Edited time: July 28, 2014

Satellite images released by the US allegedly “proving” that Russia fired rockets at Ukrainian troops across the border cannot be considered evidence, according to a Russian MP.

The imagery was released via email, along with a four-page document titled 'Evidence of Russian Shelling into Ukraine.' Four satellite images were included, all dating between July 21 and July 25/26.

They were all posted on Twitter by the US ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, on Sunday.

The US “lies about obvious things,” said Franz Klintsevich, deputy chairman of the State Duma Defense Committee, as quoted by RIA Novosti.

He stated that the satellite images are not enough to point fingers at Russia and accuse it of shelling Ukraine. In order to confirm such claims, the data must be backed by other sources as well.

“The American dialogue today is simply unsubstantiated,” Klintsevich said, adding that he is not aware of Russia firing from its own territory into Ukraine.

While speaking about Ukrainian artillery frequently hitting Russian territory since the beginning of summer, Klintsevich said that several of his colleagues support the idea of precision strikes against those artillery machines used to target Russia.

On Friday, Ukraine’s army fired at least 45 mortar shells at targets located inside the Rostov Region, Russia’s border officials said. The barrage destroyed houses and forced an evacuation of civilians.

Russia’s Ministry of Defense said on Sunday that inspectors who came to check the state of Russian troops along the Ukrainian borders found no violations.

“No instances of violations by Russia along the Ukrainian border had been registered by the inspectors,” the ministry stated.

This came in response to the US alleging that 15,000 Russian troops had amassed in the area.

Russia has repeatedly denied allegations that it is taking part in the Ukrainian conflict, and the Russian Foreign Ministry called Washington's charges "unsubstantiated innuendos."
'US allegations are ludicrous and unprofessional'

Military expert Igor Korotchenko challenged the so-called evidence released by Pyatt and questioned its authenticity.

“Publishing charges on the US ambassador to Ukraine’s Twitter and using them as a basis to argue that Russia is firing at Ukrainian territory is ludicrous and unprofessional,” Korotchenko told RT.

“In serious cases like that, I would recommend for the US to look into briefings, such as the recent briefing by Russia’s Defense Ministry. In it, everything was clear: satellite images were presented, they were decoded, and the pictures were as detailed as possible; everyone could make out the details,” he said.

“In addition to satellite imagery data, the satellite control and electronic intelligence were attached. There were also maps, plans, and diagrams included. On the US ambassador’s Twitter you cannot make anything out, even with a magnifying glass.”

“This is not serious at all, it is low-skilled work,” he added. “What was published by the US ambassador is part of an information campaign to force European countries to agree on anti-Russian sanctions.”

Observers on the border have not registered any discrepancies, Korotchenko said.

“During the last several weeks the combat area has been regularly monitored. At the time, a foreign military radar group, including individuals from the US, were working in Russia and nothing was found.”

Meanwhile, columnist and head of the Institute for Political Economy, Paul Craig Roberts, told RT that he also doubts the credibility of the photographs released by the State Department.

“I can state with complete confidence that information this important would not be released in this way,” Roberts said. “If this was released by the State Department, which I doubt, it is so unprofessional; it would mean that the State Department is trying to spread propaganda about Russia on social media. Now the way this type of information would be released would be at a press conference with a high level of government officials addressing the bureau chiefs of the major news organizations.”

He said that experts would explain the meaning of the photographs and their validity.

“The US government has been desperate to produce information to back up its claims. It would not release information in this way,” he stated, adding that anyone can spread information on social media.

Another military expert, Viktor Litovkin, said the US allegations are an attempt to distract the public from the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17, which crashed in Ukraine on July 17.

“This is an information campaign to distract the people’s attention from the tragedy of the Boeing 777, since more and more evidence is coming to light that Ukraine is responsible for the plane crash.”

[conniption]

Consortium News

Blaming Russia as ‘Flat Fact’

July 27, 2014

Exclusive: The American rush to judgment blaming ethnic Russian rebels and Russian President Putin for the crash of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 continues unabated despite other possible explanations, writes Robert Parry.

By Robert Parry

As nuclear-armed America hurtles into a completely avoidable crash with nuclear-armed Russia over Ukraine, you can now see the dangers of “information warfare” when facts give way to propaganda and the press fails to act as an impartial arbiter.

In this sorry affair, one of the worst offenders of journalistic principles has been the New York Times, generally regarded as America’s premier newspaper. During the Ukraine crisis, the Times has been little more than a propaganda conveyor belt delivering what the U.S. government wants out via shoddy and biased reporting from the likes of Michael R. Gordon and David Herszenhorn.

The Times reached what was arguably a new low on Sunday when it accepted as flat fact the still unproven point of how Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down. The Times dropped all attribution despite what appear to be growing – rather than diminishing – doubts about Official Washington’s narrative that Ukrainian rebels shot down the plane by using a powerful Russian-supplied Buk missile battery.

U.S. and Ukrainian government officials began pushing this narrative immediately after the plane went down on July 17 killing 298 people onboard. But the only evidence has been citations of “social media” and the snippet of an intercepted phone call containing possibly confused comments by Ukrainian rebels after the crash, suggesting that some rebels initially believed they had shot the plane down but later reversed that judgment.

A major problem with this evidence is that it assumes the rebels – or for that matter the Ukrainian armed forces – operate with precise command and control when the reality is that the soldiers on both sides are not very professional and function in even a deeper fog of war than might exist in other circumstances.

Missing Images

But an even bigger core problem for the U.S. narrative is that it is virtually inconceivable that American intelligence did not have satellite and other surveillance on eastern Ukraine at the time of the shoot-down. Yet the U.S. government has been unable (or unwilling) to supply a single piece of imagery showing the Russians supplying a Buk anti-aircraft missile battery to the rebels; the rebels transporting the missiles around eastern Ukraine; the rebels firing the fateful missile that allegedly brought down the Malaysian airliner; or the rebels then returning the missiles to Russia.

To accept Official Washington’s certainty about what it “knows” happened, you would have to believe that American spy satellites – considered the best in the world – could not detect 16-feet-tall missiles during their odyssey around Russia and eastern Ukraine. If that is indeed the case, the U.S. taxpayers should demand their billions upon billions of dollars back.

However, the failure of U.S. intelligence to release its satellite images of Buk missile batteries in eastern Ukraine is the “dog-not-barking” evidence that this crucial evidence to support the U.S. government’s allegations doesn’t exist. Can anyone believe that if U.S. satellite images showed the missiles crossing the border, being deployed by the rebels and then returning to Russia, that those images would not have been immediately declassified and shown to the world? In this case, the absence of evidence is evidence of absence – absence of U.S. evidence.

The U.S. government’s case also must overcome public remarks by senior U.S. military personnel at variance with the Obama administration’s claims of certainty. For instance, the Washington Post’s Craig Whitlock reported last Saturday that Air Force Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, U.S. commander of NATO forces in Europe, said last month that “We have not seen any of the [Russian] air-defense vehicles across the border yet.”

Whitlock also reported that “Rear Adm. John Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, said defense officials could not point to specific evidence that an SA-11 [Buk] surface-to-air missile system had been transported from Russia into eastern Ukraine.”

There’s also the possibility that a Ukrainian government missile – either from its own Buk missile batteries fired from the ground or from a warplane in the sky – brought down the Malaysian plane. I was told by one source who had been briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts that some satellite images suggest that the missile battery was under the control of Ukrainian government troops but that the conclusion was not definitive.

Plus, there were reports from eyewitnesses in the area of the crash that at least one Ukrainian jet fighter closed on the civilian plane shortly before it went down. The Russian government also has cited radar data supposedly showing Ukrainian fighters in the vicinity.

Need for a Real Inquiry

What all this means is that a serious and impartial investigation is needed to determine who was at fault and to apportion accountability. But that inquiry is still underway with no formal conclusions.

So, in terms of journalistic professionalism, a news organization should treat the mystery of who shot down Flight 17 with doubt. Surely, no serious journalist would jump to the conclusion based on the dubious claims made by one side in a dispute while the other side is adamant in its denials, especially with the stakes so high in a tense confrontation between two nuclear powers.

But that is exactly what the Times did in describing new U.S. plans to escalate the confrontation by possibly supplying tactical intelligence to the Ukrainian army so it can more effectively wage war against eastern Ukrainian rebels.

On Sunday, the Times wrote: “At the core of the debate, said several [U.S.] officials — who, like others interviewed, spoke on the condition of anonymity because the policy deliberations are still in progress — is whether the American goal should be simply to shore up a Ukrainian government reeling from the separatist attacks, or to send a stern message to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin by aggressively helping Ukraine target the missiles Russia has provided. Those missiles have taken down at least five aircraft in the past 10 days, including Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.” [Emphasis added.]

The link provided by the Times’ online version of the story connects to an earlier Times’ story that attributed the accusations blaming Russia to U.S. “officials.” But this new story drops that attribution and simply accepts the claims as flat fact.

The danger of American “information warfare” that treats every development in the Ukraine crisis as an opportunity to blame Putin and ratchet up tensions with Russia has been apparent since the beginning of the Ukraine crisis – as has been the clear anti-Russian bias of the Times and virtually every other outlet of the mainstream U.S. news media. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Will Ukraine Be NYT’s Waterloo?”]

Since the start of the crisis last year, U.S. officials and American-funded non-governmental organizations have not only pushed a one-sided story but have been pushing a dangerous agenda, seeking to create a collision between the United States and Russia and, more personally, between President Barack Obama and President Putin.

The vehicle for this head-on collision between Russia and the United States was the internal political disagreement in Ukraine over whether elected President Viktor Yanukovych should have accepted harsh International Monetary Fund austerity demands as the price for associating with the European Union or agree to a more generous offer from Russia.

Angered last September when Putin helped Obama avert a planned U.S. bombing campaign against Syria, American neocons were at the forefront of this strategy. Their principal need was to destroy the Putin-Obama collaboration, which also was instrumental in achieving a breakthrough on the Iran nuclear dispute (while the neocons were hoping that the U.S. military might bomb Iran, too).

So, on Sept. 26, 2013, Carl Gershman, a leading neocon and longtime president of the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, took to the op-ed page of the neocon-flagship Washington Post to urge the U.S. government to push European “free trade” agreements on Ukraine and other former Soviet states and thus counter Moscow’s efforts to maintain close relations with those countries.

The ultimate goal, according to Gershman, was isolating and possibly toppling Putin in Russia with Ukraine the key piece on this global chessboard. “Ukraine is the biggest prize,” Gershman wrote. “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

To give the United States more leverage inside Ukraine, Gershman’s NED paid for scores of projects, including training “activists” and supporting “journalists.” Rather than let the Ukrainian political process sort out this disagreement, U.S. officials, such as neocon Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and neocon Sen. John McCain, also intervened to encourage increasingly disruptive demonstrations seeking to overthrow Yanukovych when he opted for the Russian deal over the EU-IMF offer.

Though much of the ensuing violence was instigated by neo-Nazi militias that had moved to the front of the anti-Yanukovych protests, the U.S. government and its complicit news media blamed every act of violence on Yanukovych and the police, including a still mysterious sniper attack that left both protesters and police dead.

On Feb. 21, Yanukovych denied ordering any shootings and tried to stem the violence by signing an agreement brokered by three European nations to reduce his powers and hold early elections so he could be voted out of office. He also complied with a demand from Vice President Joe Biden to pull back Ukrainian police. Then, the trap sprang shut.

Neo-Nazi militias overran government buildings and forced Yanukovych and his officials to flee for their lives. The State Department quickly endorsed the coup regime – hastily formed by the remnants of the parliament – as “legitimate.” Besides passing bills offensive to ethnic Russians in the east, one of the parliament’s top priorities was to enact the IMF austerity plan.

White Hats/Black Hats

Though the major U.S. news media was aware of these facts – and indeed you could sometimes detect the reality by reading between the lines of dispatches from the field – the overriding U.S. narrative was that the coup-makers were the “white hats” and Yanukovych along with Putin were the “black hats.” Across the U.S. media, Putin was mocked for riding on a horse shirtless and other indiscretions. For the U.S. media, it was all lots of fun, as was the idea of reprising the Cold War with Moscow.

When the people of Crimea – many of whom were ethnic Russians – voted overwhelmingly to secede from Ukraine and rejoin Russia, the U.S. media declared the move a Russian “invasion” although the Russian troops were already in Ukraine as part of an agreement with previous Ukrainian governments.

Every development that could be hyped was hyped. There was virtually no nuance in the news reporting, a lack of professionalism led by the New York Times. Yet, the solution to the crisis was always relatively obvious: a federalized system that would allow the ethnic Russians in the east a measure of self-governance and permit Ukraine to have cordial economic relations with both the EU and Russia.

But replacement President Petro Poroshenko – elected when a secession fight was already underway in the east – refused to negotiate with the ethnic Russian rebels who had rejected the ouster of Yanukovych. Sensing enough political support inside the U.S. government, Poroshenko opted for a military solution.

It was in that context of a massive Ukrainian government assault on the east that Russia stepped up its military assistance to the beleaguered rebels, including the apparent provision of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles to fend off Kiev’s air superiority. The rebels did succeed in shooting down some Ukrainian warplanes flying at altitudes far below the 33,000 feet of the Malaysia Airlines plane.

For a plane at that height to be shot down required a more powerful system, like the Buk anti-aircraft batteries or an air-to-air missile fired by a fighter jet. Which brings us to the mystery of what happened on the afternoon of July 17 and why it is so important to let a serious investigation evaluate all the available evidence and not to have a rush to judgment.

But the idea of doing an investigation first and drawing conclusions second is a concept that, apparently, neither the U.S. government nor the New York Times accepts. They would prefer to start with the conclusion and then make a serious investigation irrelevant, one more casualty of information warfare.
_______

Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his new book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com). For a limited time, you also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush Family and its connections to various right-wing operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes America’s Stolen Narrative. For details on this offer, click here.

[stefano]

This is interesting and making a big flap on Bloomberg, which is what they've got on the TVs at work:

An arbitration court in the Netherlands on Monday ruled in favour of shareholders in defunct Russian oil giant Yukos, ordering Moscow to pay roughly $50 billion (29.45 billion pounds) in damages.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague issued rulings in three separate cases which had sought a total of $100 billion from Russia for expropriating Yukos, formerly controlled by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man.

$50bn! Bloody hell. As I understand it Mikhail Khodorkovsky is out, and transferred his shares to the Israeli Leonid Nevzlin, who would in that case be the main beneficiary of the judgement.

[conniption]

ITAR-TASS

Ukrainian army helps installing shale gas production equipment near Slavyansk


The people of Slavyansk, which is located in the heart of the Yzovka shale gas field, staged numerous protest actions in the past against its development


© ITAR-TASS Archive/Mihail Pochuev

DONETSK, July 25. /ITAR-TASS/. Ukrainian troopers help installing shale gas production equipment near the east Ukrainian town of Slavyansk, which they bombed and shelled for the three preceding months, the Novorossiya news agency reports on its website citing local residents.

“Civilians protected by Ukrainian army are getting ready to install drilling rigs. More equipment is being brought in,” they said, adding that the military are encircling the future extraction area.

The people of Slavyansk, which is located in the heart of the Yzovka shale gas field, staged numerous protest actions in the past against its development. They even wanted to call in a referendum on that subject. Environmentalists are particularly concerned with the consequences of hydrofracing, a method used for shale gas extraction, because it implies the use of extremely toxic chemical agents which can poison not only subsoil waters but also the atmosphere. Experts claim that not a single country in the world has invented a method of utilization of harmful toxic agents in the process of development of shale gas deposits.

Countries like the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and France have given up plans to develop shale gas deposits in their territories.

In May 2012, Ukraine’s State Service for Geology and Mineral Resources announced a tender for the right to develop the Yuzovka shale gas deposit that was won by British-Dutch Shell.

Burisma, Ukraine’s oil and gas production holdings, also has the right to develop the shale gas fields in the Dnieper-Donetsk basin of Eastern Ukraine.

A son of U.S. Vice-President Joe Biden has recently become a member of Burisma’s board of directors.

~

zerohedge

Company In Which Joe Biden's Son Is Director Prepares To Drill Shale Gas In East Ukraine

Submitted by Tyler Durden on 07/25/2014

[American Dream]

Overall, this thread strikes me as extremely bizarre. Isn't the better perspective to solidly reject Russian expansionism, just as we should reject machinations towards global hegemony by the U.S. and its allies in NATO and/or the EU, etc.?

In other words, why support and (uncritically) perpetuate so much unnuanced propaganda coming from forces in favor of Putin and the Russian State? Isn't there a much more thoughtful perspective that should be supported instead?






ON EDIT: Changed "or" to "of"

[seemslikeadream]

just who is eating Victoria Nuland's girl scout cookies?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victoria_Nuland

Nuland is the daughter of Yale bioethics and medicine professor Sherwin B. Nuland, whose original surname was Nudelman. Victoria’s paternal grandfather was Meyer Nudelman from a family of Jewish immigrants who came to New York City from the Russian Empire.[2]

Victoria Nuland graduated from Choate Rosemary Hall in 1979 and has a B.A. from Brown University. Nuland speaks Russian, French, and a little Chinese.[citation needed] Nuland has two children. Nuland’s husband is historian Robert Kagan, Council on Foreign Relations member, and co-founder of the think-tank "Project for the New American Century" (PNAC).

Victoria Nuland will probably enter the history as a person who contributed to start of civil war in Ukraine.

[seemslikeadream]

RI threads

WikiLeaks cables show that it was all about the oil



Khodorkovsky Documentary Nobody in Russia Wants to Screen


Who Poisoned Alexander Litvinenko? Radioactive thallium


human rights lawyer assassinated in Moscow

The verdict that may shake Russia

This is interesting and making a big flap on Bloomberg, which is what they've got on the TVs at work:

An arbitration court in the Netherlands on Monday ruled in favour of shareholders in defunct Russian oil giant Yukos, ordering Moscow to pay roughly $50 billion (29.45 billion pounds) in damages.

The Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague issued rulings in three separate cases which had sought a total of $100 billion from Russia for expropriating Yukos, formerly controlled by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, once Russia's richest man.

$50bn! Bloody hell. As I understand it Mikhail Khodorkovsky is out, and transferred his shares to the Israeli Leonid Nevzlin, who would in that case be the main beneficiary of the judgement.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2006/dec/03/world.russia
But the file that most excited him was the so-called 'Yukos dossier', which allegedly includes damaging material about how the Russian oil company once owned by oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky - recently jailed on fraud and tax-dodging charges - came to be taken over by the state. Three months ago, Russian prosecutors launched an investigation into Yukos bosses, accusing them of asset-stripping, charges they deny and say are politically motivated.
Litvinenko's claims that he had such a document were yesterday corroborated by another former Soviet intelligence officer, Yuri Shvets, during questioning by Scotland Yard and the FBI. It is likely that Litvinenko's ownership of the Yukos file may have come to the attention of Russia's security services shortly before he was poisoned. Weeks before he was contaminated with polonium 210, Litvinenko had travelled to Israel to hand over the dossier to Leonid Nevzlin, a Yukos executive whom Russia has been trying to extradite. Nevzlin is currently in self-imposed exile in Israel, but denies any wrongdoing and has given the dossier to the authorities.

Somethin' ain't right
Gonna get myself, I'm gonna get myself
Gonna get myself connected
I ain't gonna go blind
For the light which is reflected
I see through you, I see through you
I see through you, I see through you
Ya dirty tricks, ya make me sick
I see through you, I see through you
Gonna do it again, gonna do it again
I'm (gonna do it again, gonna do it again)
Gotta do right (gonna do it again)
'Cause somethin' ain't right (gonna do it again)
Gotta do right, come on

If you make sure you're connected,
The writing's on the wall
But if your mind's neglected,
Stumble you might fall
Stumble you might fall
Stumble you might fall

I, ain't gonna go blind
Gonna get myself, I'm gonna get myself
I'm gonna get myself connected
I ain't gonna go blind
For the light that is reflected
Hear me out
Do it again, do it again sponsored links


Do it again, do it again
I wanna do it again, I wanna do it again
I wanna through it again
Ya terrified (I wanna do it again)
Ain't gonna go blind, ain't gonna go blind
(I wanna do it again) here we go

If you make sure you're connected,
The writing's on the wall
But if your mind's neglected,
Stumble you might fall
Stumble you might fall, hear me out
Stumble you might fall

Interstate five stayin' alive
Won't someone try open up your eyes
You must be blind if you can't see
The gapin' hole called reality
Ow, wanna do it again,
I know I'm gonna do it again
I wanna do it again, come on,
I'm gonna do it again
Hear me out, terrified
Somethin' ain't right, here we go

If you make sure you're connected,
The writing's on the wall
But if your mind's neglected,
Stumble you might fall

[American Dream]

I'm still shocked and baffled by this thread. Sure, the U.S. and its allies use neo-Liberal methods and rhetoric to try to sustain hegemony- and surely it is wrong just as more overtly coercive methods of control are. Why though would this ever equate to uncritically latching on to propaganda organs of the Russian State, the Iranian State or whatever? Surely there is a deeper and more thoughtful politics that can be attached to an examination of this currently smoldering Cold War!

[stefano]

Not all of this thread is propaganda AD, and NATO's social/crowdsourcing tactics are pretty interesting reading. Most readers will know what ITAR-TASS is; if you don't think so it might be helpful to point it out, and say what precisely in a story, like about those shale gas fields, seems unlikely to you. There is a thread called 'let's talk intelligently about Ukraine', which is as deep and thoughtful as anything you're going to find on here. It's cool to see you post an opinion and I'd be happy to see more of a conversation on there, even though this isn't a subject on which I have a lot to contribute.