US 'Spring Storm', Ukraine Weapons Depot Explosion, Russia Snap Military Exercises Crimea: Connection?

Joe Quinn
Sott.net
Sat, 25 Mar 2017 18:02 UTC

Has anyone noticed how the mainstream media tends to dispense 'news' stories to the public as if they were isolated incidents unconnected to anything else? Silly question, I know. After all, you're probably reading SOTT.net for that very reason (among others). There were a few significant events over the past week concerning Crimea and the ongoing geopolitical 'war' between the USA and Russia that fit this pattern of media obtuseness to a 'tee', with no context or dot connecting whatsoever, despite the fact that the connections were just screaming to be made.

First, the American landing ship, the USS Carter Hall, with marines on board, crossed the Bosporus Strait and arrived in the Black Sea last Friday for "joint drills with the Romanian Navy." As can be seen from video released of the exercises, these were on a large scale and involved other landing craft like hovercraft, not to mention air support from military jets.

The exercises lasted for 3 days from March 18th to 21st and took place near the Romanian port of Constanta, the ostensible reason for them being to participate in bilateral training exercise Spring Storm 17 with Romania. Of course, the USA has no intention or reason to invade Romania, and does not believe that they would ever have to do so in the face of, for example, a fabled Russian invasion of the country.

The true reason for such exercises is instead a simulated US/NATO invasion of Crimea that lies just a few hundred kilometers to the East. While the mainstream media would have us believe that the intention of such a move would be to 'take back' Crimea for Ukraine, the US' interest in Crimea has nothing to do with justice or international law but rather with denying Russia its Black Sea fleet port in Sevastopol and therefore Russian naval access to the Mediterranean. This was the primary reason for the US-backed coup in Ukraine in 2013, and the reason that Russia's immediate response to the coup was to reincorporate Crimea into Russia.

So it was no surprise that Russia's response to 'Spring Storm' was to launch 'snap' and 'unprecedented' drills on March 20th in Crimea, a clear acknowledgement of the real message conveyed by the US exercise.

"A large scale airborne military drill kicked off at Crimea's Opuk Training Ground on Tuesday, with more than 2,500 soldiers of the Russian Airborne Forces and 600 pieces of equipment participating in the exercise. Some 350 paratroopers from the Novorossiysk air assault division landed on the Crimean coast as part of the Airborne Force's large-scale drills on the peninsula's Opuk Training Ground on Tuesday. The paratroopers as well as nine BMD-2KU airborne infantry fighting vehicles parachuted from nine Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft".

"For the first time in the Russian army's history the Airborne Forces' three large units were simultaneously alerted as part of the drills and partly redeployed to Crimea with weapons and equipment," said Serdyukov, who was in charge of the manoeuvres.

With typical hypocrisy, NATO (aka the USA) expressed their dismay at the Russian exercises, with NATO official spokesperson Oana Lungescu telling the Kommersant newspaper that "any Russian military exercises in occupied Crimea are illegal under international law as they do not have the consent of the Ukrainian government", which is to say, do not have the consent of the USA.

The Ukrainian junta in Kiev was, of course, equally indignant: "We are keeping an eye on these exercises and the relevant departments authorized to carry out this kind of activity. We are doing this because the exercises are taking place on territory temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation and a large number of personnel of the Airborne Troops of the Russian Armed Forces are involved in it," Vladislav Seleznyov, an officer at the public relations directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff, told theKrym.Realii website. He added that Ukraine was ready to retaliate in the event of any aggression anywhere on the Russian-Ukrainian border.

This last remark is interesting in light of what happened just one day after the Russian exercises in Crimea ended.

The explosion occurred at a base in Balakliya, near Kharkiv, about 100km (60 miles) from both the Russian border and the ongoing fighting between East Ukrainian separatists and soldiers of the Kiev junta. The depot stockpiled weapons including rockets and missiles that were being used against the citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics. It is possible, therefore, that this was a case of sabotage by soldiers of these republics, and while that would represent a brilliant military (you could even say humanitarian) move on their part, it also reveals the complete ineptitude of the Ukrainian military command and government as it exists under the pusillanimous Kiev junta, installed and controlled by Washington.

Alternatively, given the increasingly decrepit state of Ukrainian society, where millions of people are in dire financial straits as a result of the staggering levels of political corruption and the feckless 'anti-terror operation' in East Ukraine, it's plausible that some disgruntled members within the Ukrainian military decided to make their feelings known in explosive fashion. Whatever the case, the Ukrainian government has, as expected, blamed Russia for the incident, hysterically hypothesizing that a drone was used to drop a bomb of some description on the depot.

The third Ukraine-centered event that occurred this past week was the murder, in broad daylight in Kiev, of former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov on March 23rd. Voronenkov was a Russian politician and member of the Russian State Duma from 2011-2016. After stepping down as a member of the parliament in 2016, Voronenkov left Russia and settled in Ukraine. From the available information, Voronenkov appears to have been a disreputable character. While still a Russian MP, he had voted for the repatriation of Crimea to Russia and voiced his support for the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk.

In 2016 when he lost his bid for reelection to the State Duma, he was accused of being involved in an illegal property seizure (worth 127 million rubles) in Moscow. As Russian investigators were preparing a corruption case against him and waiting for his parliamentary immunity to run out in December 2016, Voronenkov fled to Ukraine, received Ukrainian citizenship and immediately became a vocal critic of all things Russian. Last month he compared Russia under Vladimir Putin to Nazi Germany (how original!), condemned the repatriation of Crimea to Russia and denounced the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Now there's a man with principles!

At the time of his death, Voronenkov had been due to testify against former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Voronenkov's assassin (who was killed by a bodyguard) carried a Ukrainian passport and had been sought by the police on fraud and money laundering charges according to the General Prosecutor of Ukraine. He was also an active member of the National Guard of Ukraine. Given the internecine nature of post-coup Ukrainian politics and the massive business and political corruption that defines it, it is highly likely that, as concluded by the Kiev police, the murder was a contract killing over a business dispute.

But just as they blamed the Balakliya explosion on Russia, Kiev immediately blamed Voronenkov's assassination on Russia, concocting an elaborate tale alleging that his assassin was actually a Russian spy whose mission was to infiltrate the National Guard and who was trained in a special Russian school for saboteurs created by the Stalin-era NKVD (disbanded in 1946). Heck, Russia even encouraged him to get involved in a financial scandal in Ukraine as a 'cover', no doubt! It's as if they're trying to sound ridiculous. Then again, people who live within their own reality bubble tend to sound like raving lunatics a lot.

So there you have it, nothing to see here according to the Western media that serves as little more than a mouthpiece for Western imperialism in its primary goal of making sure that Russia is demonized at every turn and the world public kept ignorant of the truth Behind the Headlines.

Joe Quinn

Joe Quinn is the co-author of 9/11: The Ultimate Truth (with Laura Knight-Jadczyk, 2006) and Manufactured Terror: The Boston Marathon Bombings, Sandy Hook, Aurora Shooting and Other False Flag Terror Attacks (with Niall Bradley, 2014), and the host of Sott.net's The Sott Report Videos and co-host of the 'Behind the Headlines' radio show on the Sott Radio Network.

An established web-based essayist and print author, Quinn has been writing incisive editorials for Sott.net for over 10 years. His articles have appeared on many alternative news sites and he has been interviewed on several internet radio shows and has also appeared on IranianPress TV. His articles can also be found on his personal blog JoeQuinn.net.

(sott.net)

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 3/26/2017 7:07:21 PM
	US 'Spring Storm', Ukraine Weapons Depot Explosion, Russia Snap Military Exercises Crimea: Connection? Joe Quinn Sott.net Sat, 25 Mar 2017 18:02 UTC © AP Photo/ Efrem Lukatsky Weapons depot explosion in Kharkiv. Has anyone noticed how the mainstream media tends to dispense 'news' stories to the public as if they were isolated incidents unconnected to anything else? Silly question, I know. After all, you're probably reading SOTT.net for that very reason (among others). There were a few significant events over the past week concerning Crimea and the ongoing geopolitical 'war' between the USA and Russia that fit this pattern of media obtuseness to a 'tee', with no context or dot connecting whatsoever, despite the fact that the connections were just screaming to be made. First, the American landing ship, the USS Carter Hall, with marines on board, crossed the Bosporus Strait and arrived in the Black Sea last Friday for "joint drills with the Romanian Navy." As can be seen from video released of the exercises, these were on a large scale and involved other landing craft like hovercraft, not to mention air support from military jets. The exercises lasted for 3 days from March 18th to 21st and took place near the Romanian port of Constanta, the ostensible reason for them being to participate in bilateral training exercise Spring Storm 17 with Romania. Of course, the USA has no intention or reason to invade Romania, and does not believe that they would ever have to do so in the face of, for example, a fabled Russian invasion of the country. The true reason for such exercises is instead a simulated US/NATO invasion of Crimea that lies just a few hundred kilometers to the East. While the mainstream media would have us believe that the intention of such a move would be to 'take back' Crimea for Ukraine, the US' interest in Crimea has nothing to do with justice or international law but rather with denying Russia its Black Sea fleet port in Sevastopol and therefore Russian naval access to the Mediterranean. This was the primary reason for the US-backed coup in Ukraine in 2013, and the reason that Russia's immediate response to the coup was to reincorporate Crimea into Russia. So it was no surprise that Russia's response to 'Spring Storm' was to launch 'snap' and 'unprecedented' drills on March 20th in Crimea, a clear acknowledgement of the real message conveyed by the US exercise. "A large scale airborne military drill kicked off at Crimea's Opuk Training Ground on Tuesday, with more than 2,500 soldiers of the Russian Airborne Forces and 600 pieces of equipment participating in the exercise. Some 350 paratroopers from the Novorossiysk air assault division landed on the Crimean coast as part of the Airborne Force's large-scale drills on the peninsula's Opuk Training Ground on Tuesday. The paratroopers as well as nine BMD-2KU airborne infantry fighting vehicles parachuted from nine Ilyushin Il-76 aircraft". "For the first time in the Russian army's history the Airborne Forces' three large units were simultaneously alerted as part of the drills and partly redeployed to Crimea with weapons and equipment," said Serdyukov, who was in charge of the manoeuvres. With typical hypocrisy, NATO (aka the USA) expressed their dismay at the Russian exercises, with NATO official spokesperson Oana Lungescu telling the Kommersant newspaper that "any Russian military exercises in occupied Crimea are illegal under international law as they do not have the consent of the Ukrainian government", which is to say, do not have the consent of the USA. The Ukrainian junta in Kiev was, of course, equally indignant: "We are keeping an eye on these exercises and the relevant departments authorized to carry out this kind of activity. We are doing this because the exercises are taking place on territory temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation and a large number of personnel of the Airborne Troops of the Russian Armed Forces are involved in it," Vladislav Seleznyov, an officer at the public relations directorate of the Ukrainian General Staff, told theKrym.Realii website. He added that Ukraine was ready to retaliate in the event of any aggression anywhere on the Russian-Ukrainian border. This last remark is interesting in light of what happened just one day after the Russian exercises in Crimea ended. The explosion occurred at a base in Balakliya, near Kharkiv, about 100km (60 miles) from both the Russian border and the ongoing fighting between East Ukrainian separatists and soldiers of the Kiev junta. The depot stockpiled weapons including rockets and missiles that were being used against the citizens of the Donetsk and Lugansk people's republics. It is possible, therefore, that this was a case of sabotage by soldiers of these republics, and while that would represent a brilliant military (you could even say humanitarian) move on their part, it also reveals the complete ineptitude of the Ukrainian military command and government as it exists under the pusillanimous Kiev junta, installed and controlled by Washington. Alternatively, given the increasingly decrepit state of Ukrainian society, where millions of people are in dire financial straits as a result of the staggering levels of political corruption and the feckless 'anti-terror operation' in East Ukraine, it's plausible that some disgruntled members within the Ukrainian military decided to make their feelings known in explosive fashion. Whatever the case, the Ukrainian government has, as expected, blamed Russia for the incident, hysterically hypothesizing that a drone was used to drop a bomb of some description on the depot. The third Ukraine-centered event that occurred this past week was the murder, in broad daylight in Kiev, of former Russian lawmaker Denis Voronenkov on March 23rd. Voronenkov was a Russian politician and member of the Russian State Duma from 2011-2016. After stepping down as a member of the parliament in 2016, Voronenkov left Russia and settled in Ukraine. From the available information, Voronenkov appears to have been a disreputable character. While still a Russian MP, he had voted for the repatriation of Crimea to Russia and voiced his support for the breakaway Donetsk and Lugansk. In 2016 when he lost his bid for reelection to the State Duma, he was accused of being involved in an illegal property seizure (worth 127 million rubles) in Moscow. As Russian investigators were preparing a corruption case against him and waiting for his parliamentary immunity to run out in December 2016, Voronenkov fled to Ukraine, received Ukrainian citizenship and immediately became a vocal critic of all things Russian. Last month he compared Russia under Vladimir Putin to Nazi Germany (how original!), condemned the repatriation of Crimea to Russia and denounced the breakaway republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Now there's a man with principles! At the time of his death, Voronenkov had been due to testify against former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. Voronenkov's assassin (who was killed by a bodyguard) carried a Ukrainian passport and had been sought by the police on fraud and money laundering charges according to the General Prosecutor of Ukraine. He was also an active member of the National Guard of Ukraine. Given the internecine nature of post-coup Ukrainian politics and the massive business and political corruption that defines it, it is highly likely that, as concluded by the Kiev police, the murder was a contract killing over a business dispute. But just as they blamed the Balakliya explosion on Russia, Kiev immediately blamed Voronenkov's assassination on Russia, concocting an elaborate tale alleging that his assassin was actually a Russian spy whose mission was to infiltrate the National Guard and who was trained in a special Russian school for saboteurs created by the Stalin-era NKVD (disbanded in 1946). Heck, Russia even encouraged him to get involved in a financial scandal in Ukraine as a 'cover', no doubt! It's as if they're trying to sound ridiculous. Then again, people who live within their own reality bubble tend to sound like raving lunatics a lot. So there you have it, nothing to see here according to the Western media that serves as little more than a mouthpiece for Western imperialism in its primary goal of making sure that Russia is demonized at every turn and the world public kept ignorant of the truth Behind the Headlines. Joe Quinn Joe Quinn is the co-author of 9/11: The Ultimate Truth (with Laura Knight-Jadczyk, 2006) and Manufactured Terror: The Boston Marathon Bombings, Sandy Hook, Aurora Shooting and Other False Flag Terror Attacks (with Niall Bradley, 2014), and the host of Sott.net's The Sott Report Videos and co-host of the 'Behind the Headlines' radio show on the Sott Radio Network. An established web-based essayist and print author, Quinn has been writing incisive editorials for Sott.net for over 10 years. His articles have appeared on many alternative news sites and he has been interviewed on several internet radio shows and has also appeared on IranianPress TV. His articles can also be found on his personal blog JoeQuinn.net. (sott.net)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 3/27/2017 12:22:29 AM
	Let there be light: German scientists test 'artificial sun' By FRANK JORDANS, ASSOCIATED PRESS BERLIN — Mar 23, 2017, 1:36 PM ET WATCHOur Journey to Space Scientists in Germany flipped the switch Thursday on what's being described as "the world's largest artificial sun," a device they hope will help shed light on new ways of making climate-friendly fuels. The giant honeycomb-like setup of 149 spotlights — officially known as "Synlight" — in Juelich, about 30 kilometers (19 miles) west of Cologne, uses xenon short-arc lamps normally found in cinemas to simulate natural sunlight that's often in short supply in Germany at this time of year. By focusing the entire array on a single 20-by-20 centimeter (8x8 inch) spot, scientists from the German Aerospace Center, or DLR , will be able to produce the equivalent of 10,000 times the amount of solar radiation that would normally shine on the same surface. Creating such furnace-like conditions — with temperatures of up to 3,000 degrees Celsius (5,432 Fahrenheit) — is key to testing novel ways of making hydrogen, according to Bernhard Hoffschmidt, the director of DLR's Institute for Solar Research. Many consider hydrogen to be the fuel of the future because it produces no carbon emissions when burned, meaning it doesn't add to global warming. But while hydrogen is the most common element in the universe it is rare on Earth. One way to manufacture it is to split water into its two components — the other being oxygen — using electricity in a process called electrolysis. Researchers hope to bypass the electricity stage by tapping into the enormous amount of energy that reaches Earth in the form of light from the sun. Hoffschmidt said the dazzling display is designed to take experiments done in smaller labs to the next level, adding that once researchers have mastered hydrogen-making techniques with Synlight's 350-kilowatt array, the process could be scaled up ten-fold on the way to reaching a level fit for industry. Experts say this could take about a decade, if there is sufficient industry support. The goal is to eventually use actual sunlight rather than the artificial light produced at the Juelich experiment, which cost 3.5 million euros ($3.8 million) to build and requires as much electricity in four hours as a four-person household would use in a year. Hoffschmidt conceded that hydrogen isn't without its problems — for one thing it's incredibly volatile — but by combining it with carbon monoxide produced from renewable sources, scientists would, for example, be able to make eco-friendly kerosene for the aviation industry. ——— Follow Frank Jordans on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/wirereporter (abcNEWS)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 3/27/2017 10:12:20 AM
	500 Kids Have Gone Missing In DC In 2017 — Sex Trafficking Fears Have Officials Asking FBI For Help MARCH 25, 2017 By Matt Agorist A total of 501 juveniles have been reported missing in D.C. since the beginning of the year. This startling number has forced the hands of several officials who’ve written a letter to call on special help from the Justice Department in investigating the matter. The letter, obtained by the Associated Press, asked FBI Director James Comey and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to “devote the resources necessary to determine whether these developments are an anomaly or whether they are indicative of an underlying trend that must be addressed.” It was signed by Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La) and Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents D.C. in Congress. “Ten children of color went missing in our nation’s capital in a period of two weeks and at first garnered very little media attention. That’s deeply disturbing,” Richmond’s letter said. As the AP reports, the District of Columbia logged 501 cases of missing juveniles, many of them black or Latino, in the first three months of this year, according to the Metropolitan Police Department, the city’s police force. Twenty-two were unsolved as of March 22, police said. The Twitter profile for the DC police department is quite literally riddled with images of missing young Black and Latino girls. In spite of the officials’ concern and the posts on Twitter, police are assuring the public that there is nothing out of the ordinary. View image on Twitter Follow DC Police Department ✔@DCPoliceDept Missing Person: Anjel Burl, 16, last seen 3/22 in 200 block of 43rd Rd., NE. Seen her? Call 202-727-9099. #MissingPerson 10:30 PM - 23 Mar 2017 3,121 Retweets 846 likes “We’ve just been posting them on social media more often,” said Metropolitan Police spokeswoman Rachel Reid. “We can’t focus on the numbers,” said Derrica Wilson, co-founder of the Black and Missing Foundation. “If we have one missing child, that’s too many.” View image on Twitter Follow DC Police Department ✔@DCPoliceDept Missing Person: Winter Griffin, last seen 3/21 in 1400 blk Kearney St, NE. Seen her? Call 202-727-9099. #MissingPerson 10:21 PM - 21 Mar 2017 4,506 Retweets 1,058 likes Police then went on to dispel talk of these girls being kidnapped and sold into slavery by human traffickers. “We have no indication to believe that young girls in the District are being preyed upon by human traffickers in large numbers,” said police commander Chanel Dickerson, leader of the Youth and Family Services division, according to NBC News 4. Notice how Dickerson said “in large numbers” as a qualifier, meaning he didn’t rule out the fact that there are human traffickers in the area preying on young girls. As the Free Thought Project pointed out on several occasions, some of these traffickers have already been caught in D.C. — and some of them have been cops. Linwood Barnhill Jr., a veteran of the D.C. Police Department, was exposed by the Free Thought Project for running a child sex ring out of his house. In 2014, in an early morning search warrant issued for his Southeast D.C. apartment found a 15-year-old girl who had previously been reported missing by her parents. When police rescued the girl she told officers that she had met six other girls inside the Southeast D.C. apartment who told her they were also being prostituted, including with ads posted on backpage.com. Barnhill also took naked photos of the girls, purportedly for use in advertisements for sex. Marijuana, condoms and a large mirror were also seized from the apartment; law enforcement officials say that the seized mirror had the names of other females who were being trafficked written on it. Around that same time, another cop in the area was also exposed and arrested for trafficking teens. Lamin Manneh, 32, of Baltimore, pleaded guilty to traveling across state lines and using a telephone and internet to operate a prostitution business using two teens he prostituted out over 300 times. According to the AP, Wilson also said she is concerned about whether human trafficking is a factor, citing the case of 8-year-old Relisha Rudd, who has been missing since she vanished from a city homeless shelter in 2014. A janitor who worked at the shelter was found dead of apparent suicide during the search for the girl. “They prey on the homeless, they prey on low-income children, they prey on the runaways, they prey online,” Wilson said. “Whether these recent disappearances are an anomaly or signals of underlying trends, it is essential that the Department of Justice and the FBI use all of the tools at their disposal to help local officials investigate these events, and return these children to their parents as soon as possible,” Richmond said. According to the anti-Human Trafficking group, Polaris, located in D.C., the number of trafficked humans in the US is startling. Since 2007, the National Human Trafficking Hotline, operated by Polaris, has received reports of 22,191 sex trafficking cases inside the United States. In 2016, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children estimated that 1 in 6 endangered runaways reported to them were likely sex trafficking victims. The International Labor Organization estimates that there are 4.5 million people trapped in forced sexual exploitation globally. In a 2014 report, the Urban Institute estimated that the underground sex economy ranged from $39.9 million in Denver, Colorado, to $290 million in Atlanta, Georgia. Sadly, the US government appears to spend far more time looking for an illegal plant or for Tom Brady’s jersey, than they do on missing children. Matt Agorist is the co-founder of TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared. (activistpost.com)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
	+1

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