3882-ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? | View Thread

The tawdry Michael Flynn soap opera boils down to the CIA hemorrhaging leaks to the company town newspaper, leading to the desired endgame: a resounding victory for hardcore neocon/neoliberalcon US Deep State factions in one particular battle. But the war is not over; in fact it's just beginning.

Even before Flynn's fall, Russian analysts had been avidly discussing whether President Trump is the new Viktor Yanukovych — who failed to stop a color revolution at his doorstep. The Made in USA color revolution by the axis of Deep State neocons, Democratic neoliberalcons and corporate media will be pursued, relentlessly, 24/7. But more than Yanukovych, Trump might actually be remixing Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping: "crossing the river while feeling the stones". Rather, crossing the swamp while feeling the crocs.

Flynn out may be interpreted as a Trump tactical retreat. After all Flynn may be back — in the shade, much as Roger Stone. If current deputy national security advisor K T McFarland gets the top job - which is what powerful Trump backers are aiming at - the shadowplay Kissinger balance of power, in its 21st century remix, is even strengthened; after all McFarland is a Kissinger asset.

This call won't self-destruct in five seconds

Flynn worked with Special Forces; was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); handled highly classified top secret information 24/7. He obviously knew all his conversations on an open, unsecure line were monitored. So he had to have morphed into a compound incarnation of the Three Stooges had he positioned himself to be blackmailed by Moscow.

What Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak certainly discussed was cooperation in the fight against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, and what Moscow might expect in return: the lifting of sanctions. US corporate media didn't even flinch when US intel admitted they have a transcript of the multiple phone calls between Flynn and Kislyak. So why not release them? Imagine the inter-galactic scandal if these calls were about Russian intel monitoring the US ambassador in Moscow.

No one paid attention to the two key passages conveniently buried in the middle of this US corporate media story. 1) "The intelligence official said there had been no finding inside the government that Flynn did anything illegal." 2) "...the situation became unsustainable - not because of any issue of being compromised by Russia - but because he [Flynn] has lied to the president and the vice president."

Recap: nothing illegal; and Flynn not compromised by Russia. The "crime" - according to Deep State factions: talking to a Russian diplomat.

Vice-President Mike Pence is a key piece in the puzzle; after all his major role is as insider guarantor - at the heart of the Trump administration — of neocon Deep State interests. The CIA did leak. The CIA most certainly has been spying on all Trump operatives. Flynn though fell on his own sword. Classic hubris; his fatal mistake was to strategize by himself - even before he became national security advisor. "Mad Dog" Mattis, T. Rex Tillerson - both, by the way, very close to Kissinger — and most of all Pence did not like it one bit once they were informed.

A "man of very limited abilities"

Flynn was already compromised by his embarrassingly misinformed book co-written with neocon Michael Ledeen, as well as his juvenile Iranophobia. At the same time, Flynn was the point man to what would have been a real game-changer; to place the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff under White House control.

A highly informed US source I previously called "X", who detailed to Sputnik how the Trump presidency will play out, is adamant "this decision makes Trump look independent. It is all going according to script."

"X" stresses how "the NSA can penetrate any telephone system in the world that is not secure. Flynn was a man of very limited abilities who talked too much. You never hear from the real powers in intelligence nor do you know their names. You can see that in Flynn's approach to Iran. He was disrupting a peace deal in the Middle East relating to Russia, Iran and Turkey in Syria. So he had to go."

"X" adds, "the Russians are not stupid to talk among themselves on unsecured lines, they assumed that Flynn controlled his own lines. Flynn was removed not because of his Russian calls but for other reasons, some of which have to do with Iran and the Middle East. He was a loose cannon even from the intelligence perspective. This is a case of misdirection away from the true cause."

In direct opposition to "X", an analytical strand now rules there's blood on the tracks; the hyenas are circling; a vulnerable Trump has lost his mojo; and he also lost his foreign policy. Not yet.

In the Grand Chessboard, what Flynn's fall spells out is just a pawn out of the game because the King would not protect him. We will only know for sure "draining the swamp" - the foreign policy section - is doomed if neocons and neoliberalcons continue to run riot; if neoliberalcons are not fully exposed in their complicity in the rise of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh; and if the much vaunted possibility of a détente with Russia flounders for good.

Ukraine on Fire, a new documentary about the Ukraine crisis, might change how people in the West perceive the conflict, but it's unlikely to get much distribution since it contests the prevailing narrative, writes James DiEugenio.

It is not very often that a documentary film can set a new paradigm about a recent event, let alone, one that is still in progress. But the new film Ukraine on Fire has the potential to do so - assuming that many people get to see it.

Usually, documentaries — even good ones — repackage familiar information in a different aesthetic form. If that form is skillfully done, then the information can move us in a different way than just reading about it.

A good example of this would be Peter Davis's powerful documentary about U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Hearts and Minds. By 1974, most Americans understood just how bad the Vietnam War was, but through the combination of sounds and images, which could only have been done through film, that documentary created a sensation, which removed the last obstacles to America leaving Indochina.

Ukraine on Fire has the same potential and could make a contribution that even goes beyond what the Davis film did because there was very little new information in Hearts and Minds. Especially for American and Western European audiences, Ukraine on Firecould be revelatory in that it offers a historical explanation for the deep divisions within Ukraine and presents information about the current crisis that challenges the mainstream media's paradigm, which blames the conflict almost exclusively on Russia.

Key people in the film's production are director Igor Lopatonok, editor Alex Chavez, and writer Vanessa Dean, whose screenplay contains a large amount of historical as well as current material exploring how Ukraine became such a cauldron of violence and hate. Oliver Stone served as executive producer and conducted some high-profile interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin and ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

The film begins with gripping images of the violence that ripped through the capital city of Kiev during both the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 removal of Yanukovich. It then travels back in time to provide a perspective that has been missing from mainstream versions of these events and even in many alternative media renditions.

A Longtime Pawn

Historically, Ukraine has been treated as a pawn since the late Seventeenth Century. In 1918, Ukraine was made a German protectorate by the Treaty of Brest Litovsk. Ukraine was also a part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 signed between Germany and Russia, but violated by Adolf Hitler when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941.

The reaction of many in Ukraine to Hitler's aggression was not the same as it was in the rest of the Soviet Union. Some Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis. The most significant Ukrainian nationalist group, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), had been established in 1929. Many of its members cooperated with the Nazis, some even enlisted in the Waffen SS and Ukrainian nationalists participated in the massacre of more than 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar ravine in Kiev in September 1941. According to scholar Pers Anders Rudling, the number of Ukrainian nationalists involved in the slaughter outnumbered the Germans by a factor of 4 to 1.

But it wasn't just the Jews that the Ukrainian nationalists slaughtered. They also participated in massacres of Poles in the western Ukrainian region of Galicia from March 1943 until the end of 1944. Again, the main perpetrators were not Germans, but Ukrainians.

According to author Ryazard Szawlowksi, the Ukrainian nationalists first lulled the Poles into thinking they were their friends, then turned on them with a barbarity and ferocity that not even the Nazis could match, torturing their victims with saws and axes. The documentary places the number of dead at 36,750, but Szawlowski estimates it may be two or three times higher.

OUN members participated in these slaughters for the purpose of ethnic cleansing, wanting Ukraine to be preserved for what OUN regarded as native Ukrainians. They also expected Ukraine to be independent by the end of the war, free from both German and Russian domination. The two main leaders in OUN who participated in the Nazi collaboration were Stepan Bandera and Mykola Lebed. Bandera was a virulent anti-Semite, and Lebed was rabidly against the Poles, participating in their slaughter.

After the war, both Bandera and Lebed were protected by American intelligence, which spared them from the Nuremburg tribunals. The immediate antecedent of the CIA, Central Intelligence Group, wanted to use both men for information gathering and operations against the Soviet Union. England's MI6 used Bandera even more than the CIA did, but the KGB eventually hunted down Bandera and assassinated him in Munich in 1959. Lebed was brought to America and addressed anti-communist Ukrainian organizations in the U.S. and Canada. The CIA protected him from immigration authorities who might otherwise have deported him as a war criminal.

The history of the Cold War was never too far in the background of Ukrainian politics, including within the diaspora that fled to the West after the Red Army defeated the Nazis and many of their Ukrainian collaborators emigrated to the United States and Canada. In the West, they formed a fierce anti-communist lobby that gained greater influence after Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980.

Important History

This history is an important part of Dean's prologue to the main body of Ukraine on Fire and is essential for anyone trying to understand what has happened there since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. For instance, the U.S.-backed candidate for president of Ukraine in 2004 — Viktor Yushchenko — decreed both Bandera and Lebed to be Ukrainian national heroes.

Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and Nazi collaborator

Bandera, in particular, has become an icon for post-World War II Ukrainian nationalists. One of his followers was Dmytro Dontsov, who called for the birth of a "new man" who would mercilessly destroy Ukraine's ethnic enemies.

Bandera's movement was also kept alive by Yaroslav Stetsko, Bandera's premier in exile. Stetsko fully endorsed Bandera's anti-Semitism and also the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Stetsko, too, was used by the CIA during the Cold War and was honored by Yushchenko, who placed a plaque in his honor at the home where he died in Munich in 1986. Stetsko's wife, Slava, returned to Ukraine in 1991 and ran for parliament in 2002 on the slate of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party.

Stetsko's book, entitled Two Revolutions, has become the ideological cornerstone for the modern Ukrainian political party Svoboda, founded by Oleh Tyahnybok, who is pictured in the film calling Jews "kikes" in public, which is one reason the Simon Wiesenthal Center has ranked him as one of the most dangerous anti-Semites in the world.

Another follower of Bandera is Dymytro Yarosh, who reputedly leads the paramilitary arm of an even more powerful political organization in Ukraine called Right Sektor. Yarosh once said he controls a paramilitary force of about 7,000 men who were reportedly used in both the overthrow of Yanukovych in Kiev in February 2014 and the suppression of the rebellion in Odessa a few months later, which are both fully depicted in the film.

This historical prelude and its merging with the current civil war is eye-opening background that has been largely hidden by the mainstream Western media, which has downplayed or ignored the troubling links between these racist Ukrainian nationalists and the U.S.-backed political forces that vied for power after Ukraine became independent in 1991.

The Rise of a Violent Right

That same year, Tyahnybok formed Svoboda. Three years later, Yarosh founded Trident, an offshoot of Svoboda that eventually evolved into Right Sektor. In other words, the followers of Bandera and Lebed began organizing themselves immediately after the Soviet collapse.

In this time period, Ukraine had two Russian-oriented leaders who were elected in 1991 and 1994, Leonid Kravchuk, and Leonid Kuchma. But the hasty transition to a "free-market" economy didn't go well for most Ukrainians or Russians as well-connected oligarchs seized much of the wealth and came to dominate the political process through massive corruption and purchase of news media outlets. However, for average citizens, living standards went down drastically, opening the door for the far-right parties and for foreign meddling.

In 2004, Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base was strongest among ethnic Russians in the east and south, won the presidential election by three percentage points over the U.S.-favored Viktor Yushchenko, whose base was mostly in the country's west where the Ukrainian nationalists are strongest.

Immediately, Yushchenko's backers claimed fraud citing exit polls that had been organized by a group of eight Western nations and four non-governmental organizations or NGOs, including the Renaissance Foundation founded by billionaire financial speculator George Soros. Dick Morris, former President Bill Clinton's political adviser, clandestinely met with Yushchenko's team and advised them that the exit polls would not just help in accusations of fraud, but would bring protesters out into the streets. (Cambridge Review of InternationalAffairs, Vol. 19, Number 1, p. 26)

Freedom House, another prominent NGO that receives substantial financing from the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), provided training to young activists who then rallied protesters in what became known as the Orange Revolution, one of the so-called "color revolutions" that the West's mainstream media fell in love with. It forced an election rerun that Yushchenko won.

But Yushchenko's presidency failed to do much to improve the lot of the Ukrainian people and he grew increasingly unpopular. In 2010, Yushchenko failed to make it out of the first round of balloting and his rival Yanukovych was elected president in balloting that outside observers judged free and fair.

Big-Power Games

If this all had occurred due to indigenous factors within Ukraine, it could have been glossed over as a young nation going through some painful growing pains. But as the film points out, this was not the case. Ukraine continued to be a pawn in big-power games with many Western officials hoping to draw the country away from Russian influence and into the orbit of NATO and the European Union.

In one of the interviews in Ukraine on Fire, journalist and author Robert Parry explains how the National Endowment for Democracy and many subsidized political NGOs emerged in the 1980s to replace or supplement what the CIA had traditionally done in terms of influencing the direction of targeted countries.

During the investigations of the Church Committee in the 1970s, the CIA's "political action" apparatus for removing foreign leaders was exposed. So, to disguise these efforts, CIA Director William Casey, Reagan's White House and allies in Congress created the NED to finance an array of political and media NGOs.

As Parry noted in the documentary, many traditional NGOs do valuable work in helping impoverished and developing countries, but this activist/propaganda breed of NGOs promoted U.S. geopolitical objectives abroad - and NED funded scores of such projectsinside Ukraine in the run-up to the 2014 crisis.

Ukraine on Fire goes into high gear when it chronicles the events that occurred in 2014, resulting in the violent overthrow of President Yanukovych and sparking the civil war that still rages. In the 2010 election, when Yushchenko couldn't even tally in the double-digits, Yanukovych faced off against and defeated Yulia Tymoshenko, a wealthy oligarch who had served as Yushchenko's prime minister.

After his election, Yanukovych repealed Bandera's title as a national hero. However, because of festering economic problems, the new president began to search for an economic partner who could provide a large loan. He first negotiated with the European Union, but these negotiations bogged down due to the usual draconian demands made by the International Monetary Fund.

So, in November 2013, Yanukovych began to negotiate with Russian President Putin who offered more generous terms. But Yanukovych's decision to delay the association agreement with the E.U. provoked street protests in Kiev especially from the people of western Ukraine.

As Ukraine on Fire points out, other unusual occurrences also occurred, including the emergence of three new TV channels - Spilno TV, Espreso TV, and Hromadske TV - going on the air between Nov. 21 and 24, with partial funding from the U.S. Embassy and George Soros.

Pro-E.U. protests in the Maidan square in central Kiev also grew more violent as ultra-nationalist street fighters from Lviv and other western areas began to pour in and engage in provocations, many of which were sponsored by Yarosh's Right Sektor. The attacks escalated from torch marches similar to Nazi days to hurling Molotov cocktails at police to driving large tractors into police lines - all visually depicted in the film. As Yanukovich tells Stone, when this escalation happened, it made it impossible for him to negotiate with the Maidan crowd.

One of the film's most interesting interviews is with Vitaliy Zakharchenko, who was Minister of the Interior at the time responsible for law enforcement and the conduct of the police. He traces the escalation of the attacks from Nov. 24 to 30, culminating with a clash between police and protesters over the transport of a giant Christmas tree into the Maidan. Zakharchenko said he now believes this confrontation was secretly approved by Serhiy Lyovochkin, a close friend of U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, as a pretext to escalate the violence.

At this point, the film addresses the direct involvement of U.S. politicians and diplomats. Throughout the crisis, American politicians visited Maidan, as both Republicans and Democrats, such as Senators John McCain, R-Arizona, and Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut. stirred up the crowds. Yanukovych also said he was in phone contact with Vice President Joe Biden, who he claims was misleading him about how to handle the crisis.

The film points out that the real center of American influence in the Kiev demonstrations was with Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland. As Parry points out, although Nuland was serving under President Obama, her allegiances were really with the neoconservative movement, most associated with the Republican Party.

Her husband is Robert Kagan, who worked as a State Department propagandist on the Central American wars in the 1980s and was the co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the 1990s, the group that organized political and media pressure for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Kagan also was McCain's foreign policy adviser in the 2008 presidential election (although he threw his support behind Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race).

Adept Manipulators

As Parry explained, the neoconservatives have become quite adept at disguising their true aims and have powerful allies in the mainstream press. This combination has allowed them to push the foreign policy debate to such extremes that, when anyone objects, they can be branded a Putin or Yanukovych "apologist."

Thus, Pyatt's frequent meetings with the demonstrators in the embassy and Nuland's handing out cookies to protesters in the Maidan were not criticized as American interference in a sovereign state, but were praised as "promoting democracy" abroad. However, as the Maidan crisis escalated, Ukrainian ultra-nationalists moved to the front, intensifying their attacks on police. Many of these extremists were disciples of Bandera and Lebed. By February 2014, they were armed with shotguns and rapid-fire handguns.

On Feb. 20, 2014, a mysterious sniper, apparently firing from a building controlled by the Right Sektor, shot both police and protesters, touching off a day of violence that left about 14 police and some 70 protesters dead.

With Kiev slipping out of control, Yanukovich was forced to negotiate with representatives from France, Poland and Germany. On Feb. 21, he agreed to schedule early elections and to accept reduced powers. At the urging of Vice President Biden, Yanukovych also pulled back the police.

But the agreement - though guaranteed by the European nations - was quickly negated by renewed attacks from the Right Sektor and its street fighters who seized government buildings. Russian intelligence services got word that an assassination plot was in the works against Yanukovych, who fled for his life.

On Feb. 24, Yanukovych asked permission to enter Russia for his safety and the Ukrainian parliament (or Rada), effectively under the control of the armed extremists, voted to remove Yanukovych from office in an unconstitutional manner because the courts were not involved and the vote to impeach him did not reach the mandatory threshold. Despite these irregularities, the U.S. and its European allies quickly recognized the new government as "legitimate."

Calling a Coup a Coup

But the ouster of Yanukovych had all the earmarks of a coup. An intercepted phone call, apparently in early February, between Nuland and Pyatt revealed that they were directly involved in displacing Yanukovych and choosing his successor. The pair reviewed the field of candidates with Nuland favoring Arseniy Yatsenyuk, declaring "Yats is the guy" and discussing with Pyatt how to "glue this thing." Pyatt wondered about how to "midwife this thing." They sounded like Gilded Age millionaires in New York deciding who should become the next U.S. president. On Feb. 27, Yatsenyuk became Prime Minister of Ukraine.

Not everyone in Ukraine agreed with the new regime, however. Crimea, which had voted heavily for Yanukovych, decided to hold a referendum on whether to split from Ukraine and become a part of Russia. The results of the referendum were overwhelming. Some 96 percent of Crimeans voted to unite with Russia. Russian troops - previously stationed in Crimea under the Sevastopol naval base agreement - provided security against Right Sektor and other Ukrainian forces moving against the Crimean secession, but there was no evidence of Russian troops intimidating voters or controlling the elections. The Russian government then accepted the reunification with Crimea, which had historically been part of Russia dating back hundreds of years.

Two eastern provinces, Donetsk and Lugansk, also wanted to split off from Ukraine and also conducted a referendum in support of that move. But Putin would not agree to the request from the two provinces, which instead declared their own independence, a move that the new government in Kiev denounced as illegal. The Kiev regime also deemed the insurgents "terrorists" and launched an "anti-terrorism operation" to crush the resistance. Ultra-nationalist and even neo-Nazi militias, such as the Azov Battalion, took the lead in the bloody fighting.

Anti-coup demonstrations also broke out in the city of Odessa to the south. Ukrainian nationalist leader Andrei Parubiy went to Odessa, and two days later, on May 2, 2014, his street fighters attacked the demonstrators, driving them into the Trade Union building, which was then set on fire. Forty-two people were killed, some of whom jumped to their deaths.

'Other Side of the Story'

If the film just got across this "other side of the story," it would provide a valuable contribution since most of this information has been ignored or distorted by the West's mainstream media, which simply blames the Ukraine crisis on Vladimir Putin. But in addition to the fine work by scenarist Vanessa Dean, the direction by Igor Lopatonok and the editing by Alexis Chavez are extraordinarily skillful and supple.

The 15-minute prologue, where the information about the Nazi collaboration by Bandera and Lebed is introduced, is an exceptional piece of filmmaking. It moves at a quick pace, utilizing rapid cutting and also split screens to depict photographs and statistics simultaneously. Lopatonok also uses interactive graphics throughout to transmit information in a visual and demonstrative manner.

Stone's interviews with Putin and Yanukovych are also quite newsworthy, presenting a side of these demonized foreign leaders that has been absent in the propagandistic Western media.

Though about two hours long, the picture has a headlong tempo to it. If anything, it needed to slow down at points since such a large amount of information is being communicated. On the other hand, it's a pleasure to watch a documentary that is so intelligently written, and yet so remarkably well made.

When the film ends, the enduring message is similar to those posed by the American interventions in Vietnam and Iraq. How could the State Department know so little about what it was about to unleash, given Ukraine's deep historical divisions and the risk of an escalating conflict with nuclear-armed Russia?

In Vietnam, Americans knew little about the country's decades-long struggle of the peasantry to be free from French and Japanese colonialism. Somehow, America was going to win their hearts and minds and create a Western-style "democracy" when many Vietnamese simply saw the extension of foreign imperialism.

In Iraq, President George W. Bush and his coterie of neocons were going to oust Saddam Hussein and create a Western-style democracy in the Middle East, except that Bush didn't know the difference between Sunni and Shiite Moslems and how Iraq was likely to split over sectarian rivalries and screw up his expectations.

Similarly, the message of Ukraine on Fire is that short-sighted, ambitious and ideological officials - unchecked by their superiors - created something even worse than what existed. While high-level corruption persists today in Ukraine and may be even worse than before, the conditions of average Ukrainians have deteriorated.

And, the Ukraine conflict has reignited the Cold War by moving Western geopolitical forces onto Russia's most sensitive frontier, which, as scholar Joshua Shifrinson has noted, violates a pledge made by Secretary of State James Baker in February 1990 as the Soviet Union peacefully accepted the collapse of its military influence in East Germany and eastern Europe. (Los Angeles Times, 5/30/ 2016)

Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 2/17/2017 11:18:15 PM
	Pepe Escobar: Flynn Resignation - The Swamp Strikes Back Pepe Escobar Sputnik Wed, 15 Feb 2017 17:33 UTC © AP Photo/ Drew Angerer / GETTY IMAGES NORTH AMERICA The tawdry Michael Flynn soap opera boils down to the CIA hemorrhaging leaks to the company town newspaper, leading to the desired endgame: a resounding victory for hardcore neocon/neoliberalcon US Deep State factions in one particular battle. But the war is not over; in fact it's just beginning. Even before Flynn's fall, Russian analysts had been avidly discussing whether President Trump is the new Viktor Yanukovych — who failed to stop a color revolution at his doorstep. The Made in USA color revolution by the axis of Deep State neocons, Democratic neoliberalcons and corporate media will be pursued, relentlessly, 24/7. But more than Yanukovych, Trump might actually be remixing Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping: "crossing the river while feeling the stones". Rather, crossing the swamp while feeling the crocs. Flynn out may be interpreted as a Trump tactical retreat. After all Flynn may be back — in the shade, much as Roger Stone. If current deputy national security advisor K T McFarland gets the top job - which is what powerful Trump backers are aiming at - the shadowplay Kissinger balance of power, in its 21st century remix, is even strengthened; after all McFarland is a Kissinger asset. This call won't self-destruct in five seconds Flynn worked with Special Forces; was head of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA); handled highly classified top secret information 24/7. He obviously knew all his conversations on an open, unsecure line were monitored. So he had to have morphed into a compound incarnation of the Three Stooges had he positioned himself to be blackmailed by Moscow. What Flynn and Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak certainly discussed was cooperation in the fight against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh, and what Moscow might expect in return: the lifting of sanctions. US corporate media didn't even flinch when US intel admitted they have a transcript of the multiple phone calls between Flynn and Kislyak. So why not release them? Imagine the inter-galactic scandal if these calls were about Russian intel monitoring the US ambassador in Moscow. No one paid attention to the two key passages conveniently buried in the middle of this US corporate media story. 1) "The intelligence official said there had been no finding inside the government that Flynn did anything illegal." 2) "...the situation became unsustainable - not because of any issue of being compromised by Russia - but because he [Flynn] has lied to the president and the vice president." Recap: nothing illegal; and Flynn not compromised by Russia. The "crime" - according to Deep State factions: talking to a Russian diplomat. Vice-President Mike Pence is a key piece in the puzzle; after all his major role is as insider guarantor - at the heart of the Trump administration — of neocon Deep State interests. The CIA did leak. The CIA most certainly has been spying on all Trump operatives. Flynn though fell on his own sword. Classic hubris; his fatal mistake was to strategize by himself - even before he became national security advisor. "Mad Dog" Mattis, T. Rex Tillerson - both, by the way, very close to Kissinger — and most of all Pence did not like it one bit once they were informed. A "man of very limited abilities" Flynn was already compromised by his embarrassingly misinformed book co-written with neocon Michael Ledeen, as well as his juvenile Iranophobia. At the same time, Flynn was the point man to what would have been a real game-changer; to place the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff under White House control. A highly informed US source I previously called "X", who detailed to Sputnik how the Trump presidency will play out, is adamant "this decision makes Trump look independent. It is all going according to script." "X" stresses how "the NSA can penetrate any telephone system in the world that is not secure. Flynn was a man of very limited abilities who talked too much. You never hear from the real powers in intelligence nor do you know their names. You can see that in Flynn's approach to Iran. He was disrupting a peace deal in the Middle East relating to Russia, Iran and Turkey in Syria. So he had to go." "X" adds, "the Russians are not stupid to talk among themselves on unsecured lines, they assumed that Flynn controlled his own lines. Flynn was removed not because of his Russian calls but for other reasons, some of which have to do with Iran and the Middle East. He was a loose cannon even from the intelligence perspective. This is a case of misdirection away from the true cause." In direct opposition to "X", an analytical strand now rules there's blood on the tracks; the hyenas are circling; a vulnerable Trump has lost his mojo; and he also lost his foreign policy. Not yet. In the Grand Chessboard, what Flynn's fall spells out is just a pawn out of the game because the King would not protect him. We will only know for sure "draining the swamp" - the foreign policy section - is doomed if neocons and neoliberalcons continue to run riot; if neoliberalcons are not fully exposed in their complicity in the rise of ISIS/ISIL/Daesh; and if the much vaunted possibility of a détente with Russia flounders for good. What's certain is that the fratricide war between the Trump administration and the most powerful Deep State factions will be beyond vicious. Team Trump only stands a chance if they are able to weaponize allies from within the Deep State. As it stands, concerning the Kissinger grand design of trying to break the Eurasian "threat" to the unipolar moment, Iran is momentarily relieved; Russia harbors no illusions; and China knows for sure that the China-Russia strategic partnership will become even stronger. Advantage swamp. (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? 2/17/2017 11:33:30 PM
	Record number of Palestinian homes destroyed by Israel in 2016 – rights group Published time: 17 Feb, 2017 09:30 © Reuters In 2016, Israeli authorities had sped up demolishing homes of Palestinians in the occupied territories, rights group B’Tselem reported. The number was the highest in 12 years, during which the group kept systematic statistics of the demolitions. B’Tselem says the demolitions campaign intensified in August 2015 and unofficially halted later in the year, only to be resumed in 2016. Last year Israel demolished 274 homes in the West Bank (excluding East Jerusalem), thereby rendering homeless 1,134 individuals, including 591 minors. Read more ‘Record demolition & displacement’: Israel razes dozens Palestinian homes in West Bank In East Jerusalem, Israeli authorities demolished 73 Palestinian homes in 2016, while 15 others were demolished by their owners on orders from the municipality. Violation of the orders would have carried hefty fines and would not likely prevent the demolitions or being charged the cost of carrying them out. Together those actions rendered 295 people homeless, including 160 minors, B’Tselem said. The authorities also demolished 48 non-residential buildings. “Despite the differences between Area C and East Jerusalem in terms of which authorities operate in each area and the laws applied by Israel, the policy Israel pursues in the two areas is similar, and designed to minimize the number of Palestinians in as much land as possible,” the group said. “Authorities cynically cite illegal construction as a pretext for the demolitions, while at the same time authorities are the ones that prohibit legal construction by Palestinians.” The rights advocates accuse the Israeli authorities of failing to authorize enough construction permits to meet the demand of the growing Palestinian population, leaving Palestinians with no choice but to build homes illegally. B’Tselem believes it to be part of a policy aimed at making living conditions for Palestinians unbearable and forcing them to leave. “This policy, which all authorities work to uphold, severely and directly violates the most fundamental human rights of tens of thousands of Palestinians, and indirectly those of hundreds of thousands more. At the same time, the policy also offers decisive evidence that Israel has long-term plans to continue controlling the area, while oppressing and dispossessing its residents,” it said. View image on Twitter Follow B'Tselem בצלם بتسيلم ✔@btselem 2016 Record number of #WestBank home demolitions shows Israel’s intentions: control, oppress and dispossesshttp://www.btselem.org/planning_and_building/20170213_2016_demolitions … 8:58 AM - 14 Feb 2017 55 Retweets 26 likes The Israeli authorities deny the accusations. “The Civil Administration conducts enforcement operations against illegal construction in Judea and Samaria in accordance with the political echelon’s instructions,” the coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories unit told Ynet, the online branch of the newspaper Yedioth Ahronot. “In the past year, the Civil Administration approved zoning plans for the villages of Taanakh and Izbeit at-Tabib, and these days it is advancing the zoning plans of the city of Qalqilya, Nabi Ilyas, Hableh and Dahar al-Malakh. In addition, the Civil Administration is looking into and advancing several plans to legalize infrastructure and housing for the Bedouin population in Judea and Samaria, in the Ma’ale Adumim area and the Jordan Valley, as part of which the families will be allotted plots of land including proper housing infrastructures such as water, electricity and sewage, while maintaining the population's lifestyle.” (RT)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 2/17/2017 11:47:33 PM
	Hystericizing Westerners against Muslims: 'Mass sex assaults by refugees' in Frankfurt on New Year's Eve... never happened RT Wed, 15 Feb 2017 11:42 UTC Fake news: An example of the 'reporting' done by media outlets across Europe in the wake of 'mass rapefugee-gate' in Germany on New Year's Eve 2015. Reports of mass sexual assaults on women in Frankfurt on New Year's Eve allegedly committed by dozens of drunken refugees, and which initially appeared in Germany's Bild newspaper, were made up and are "completely baseless," police said. The story about mass sexual assaults by refugees in the Fressgass Street area in downtown Frankfurt was reported by Bild earlier in February. The article has since been taken down. One of the victims, Irina A., 27, told Bild: "They [the migrants] grabbed me under the skirt, between my legs, my breasts, everywhere....More and more of these guys came. Their hands were everywhere," the Express said, quoting the original report. Her words were supported by Jan Mai, a local pub owner, who said that a mob of Arabs was "highly aggressive, there was shouting and hand gestures." "When I came in, the whole place was full with a group of around 50 Arabs. They did not speak German, drank our guests' drinks and danced towards them. The women asked me for help because they were being attacked. The mood changed completely," he told Bild, as cited by the Express. It was claimed the migrants came from a refugee center in Hesse state, where Frankfurt is located, the Local said, citing the original report. Police started an investigation into the alleged incidents and on Tuesday released a report stating that the allegations of mass sexual assaults had been invented. "There were no massive mob-like attacks by masses of refugees in Fressgass [Street]. The allegations were groundless," police said. In the article several people "reported about sexual assaults, bodily injuries, thefts and extremely aggressive behavior of masses of refugees. Media interest in these descriptions was very high. The police were not aware of these circumstances," the statement said. According to police, "interviews with alleged witnesses, guests and employees led to major doubts with the version of events that had been presented. "One of the alleged victims was not even in Frankfurt at the time* the allegations are said to have taken place,"* the report said. The Bild editorial team quickly apologized "for this inaccurate reporting and the accusations against those concerned." "This reporting does not correspond in any way to the journalistic standards of Bild," the newspaper said in a statement. Comment: Actually, it does. Bild, like other Fake News outlets, the British Express included, is one of the key tabloids the 'reality-creators' have routinely used since 9/11 to hystericize the population in western Europe against Muslims. Bild said that the alleged witnesses - the pub owner and his staff - talked of mass sexual assaults to other media outlets. "We apologize for our own work. I'll shortly announce what Bild will do about it," online editor-in-chief Julian Reichelt tweeted. Comment: Too late; mission accomplished. There's no way this genie is going back in the bottle. It appears at this point that a majority in western Europe has been 'bitten' by The Big Lie: for them, Muslims are inherently evil and the phony 'clash of civilizations' is reality. The Bild story appeared to prompt comparisons with the Cologne attacks committed on New Year's Eve in 2015. Back then, groups of North African men sexually assaulted hundreds of women in the city. A German police report from November revealed the latest figures on the crimes committed on New Year's Eve 2015 across Germany: 881 sexual offenses involving over 1,231 women. The victims were almost all young women. Apart from Germany, similar sex attacks allegedly took place on New Year's Eve that year in Sweden, Austria, Finland and Switzerland. Comment: That first round of 'mass rape-fugee' in 2015 was likely also fake news: Fact Check: Daily Express Publishes Fake Cologne Assault Video Cologne sex assaults: Muslim rape myths fit a neo-Nazi agenda The Truth About The New Years Eve Refugee Attacks On Women In Germany Fake photos flood Internet after sexual assaults in Germany Yes, assaults took place... and they've been taking place on an increasing basis in cities across the West for years. These assaults are being carried out NOT primarily by newly-arrived immigrants, but by nationals and longer-term residents of European countries (ie, by people already living in Europe's ghettos before the waves of arrivals after NATO destroyed Libya and Syria) - a fact that has everything to do with the West's internal economic, political and moral collapse, and little to do with 'outsiders coming for our wimmins'. (sott.net)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 2/18/2017 12:05:59 AM
	Ukraine on Fire: The Oliver Stone documentary the US Empire doesn't want you to see James DiEugenio Consortium News Mon, 13 Feb 2017 16:37 UTC Ukraine on Fire, a new documentary about the Ukraine crisis, might change how people in the West perceive the conflict, but it's unlikely to get much distribution since it contests the prevailing narrative, writes James DiEugenio. It is not very often that a documentary film can set a new paradigm about a recent event, let alone, one that is still in progress. But the new film Ukraine on Fire has the potential to do so - assuming that many people get to see it. Usually, documentaries — even good ones — repackage familiar information in a different aesthetic form. If that form is skillfully done, then the information can move us in a different way than just reading about it. A good example of this would be Peter Davis's powerful documentary about U.S. involvement in Vietnam, Hearts and Minds. By 1974, most Americans understood just how bad the Vietnam War was, but through the combination of sounds and images, which could only have been done through film, that documentary created a sensation, which removed the last obstacles to America leaving Indochina. Ukraine on Fire has the same potential and could make a contribution that even goes beyond what the Davis film did because there was very little new information in Hearts and Minds. Especially for American and Western European audiences, Ukraine on Firecould be revelatory in that it offers a historical explanation for the deep divisions within Ukraine and presents information about the current crisis that challenges the mainstream media's paradigm, which blames the conflict almost exclusively on Russia. Key people in the film's production are director Igor Lopatonok, editor Alex Chavez, and writer Vanessa Dean, whose screenplay contains a large amount of historical as well as current material exploring how Ukraine became such a cauldron of violence and hate. Oliver Stone served as executive producer and conducted some high-profile interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin and ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. The film begins with gripping images of the violence that ripped through the capital city of Kiev during both the 2004 Orange Revolution and the 2014 removal of Yanukovich. It then travels back in time to provide a perspective that has been missing from mainstream versions of these events and even in many alternative media renditions. A Longtime Pawn Historically, Ukraine has been treated as a pawn since the late Seventeenth Century. In 1918, Ukraine was made a German protectorate by the Treaty of Brest Litovsk. Ukraine was also a part of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 signed between Germany and Russia, but violated by Adolf Hitler when the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in the summer of 1941. The reaction of many in Ukraine to Hitler's aggression was not the same as it was in the rest of the Soviet Union. Some Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis. The most significant Ukrainian nationalist group, Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), had been established in 1929. Many of its members cooperated with the Nazis, some even enlisted in the Waffen SS and Ukrainian nationalists participated in the massacre of more than 33,000 Jews at Babi Yar ravine in Kiev in September 1941. According to scholar Pers Anders Rudling, the number of Ukrainian nationalists involved in the slaughter outnumbered the Germans by a factor of 4 to 1. But it wasn't just the Jews that the Ukrainian nationalists slaughtered. They also participated in massacres of Poles in the western Ukrainian region of Galicia from March 1943 until the end of 1944. Again, the main perpetrators were not Germans, but Ukrainians. According to author Ryazard Szawlowksi, the Ukrainian nationalists first lulled the Poles into thinking they were their friends, then turned on them with a barbarity and ferocity that not even the Nazis could match, torturing their victims with saws and axes. The documentary places the number of dead at 36,750, but Szawlowski estimates it may be two or three times higher. OUN members participated in these slaughters for the purpose of ethnic cleansing, wanting Ukraine to be preserved for what OUN regarded as native Ukrainians. They also expected Ukraine to be independent by the end of the war, free from both German and Russian domination. The two main leaders in OUN who participated in the Nazi collaboration were Stepan Bandera and Mykola Lebed. Bandera was a virulent anti-Semite, and Lebed was rabidly against the Poles, participating in their slaughter. After the war, both Bandera and Lebed were protected by American intelligence, which spared them from the Nuremburg tribunals. The immediate antecedent of the CIA, Central Intelligence Group, wanted to use both men for information gathering and operations against the Soviet Union. England's MI6 used Bandera even more than the CIA did, but the KGB eventually hunted down Bandera and assassinated him in Munich in 1959. Lebed was brought to America and addressed anti-communist Ukrainian organizations in the U.S. and Canada. The CIA protected him from immigration authorities who might otherwise have deported him as a war criminal. The history of the Cold War was never too far in the background of Ukrainian politics, including within the diaspora that fled to the West after the Red Army defeated the Nazis and many of their Ukrainian collaborators emigrated to the United States and Canada. In the West, they formed a fierce anti-communist lobby that gained greater influence after Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980. Important History This history is an important part of Dean's prologue to the main body of Ukraine on Fire and is essential for anyone trying to understand what has happened there since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. For instance, the U.S.-backed candidate for president of Ukraine in 2004 — Viktor Yushchenko — decreed both Bandera and Lebed to be Ukrainian national heroes. Stepan Bandera, a Ukrainian ultra-nationalist and Nazi collaborator Bandera, in particular, has become an icon for post-World War II Ukrainian nationalists. One of his followers was Dmytro Dontsov, who called for the birth of a "new man" who would mercilessly destroy Ukraine's ethnic enemies. Bandera's movement was also kept alive by Yaroslav Stetsko, Bandera's premier in exile. Stetsko fully endorsed Bandera's anti-Semitism and also the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe. Stetsko, too, was used by the CIA during the Cold War and was honored by Yushchenko, who placed a plaque in his honor at the home where he died in Munich in 1986. Stetsko's wife, Slava, returned to Ukraine in 1991 and ran for parliament in 2002 on the slate of Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party. Stetsko's book, entitled Two Revolutions, has become the ideological cornerstone for the modern Ukrainian political party Svoboda, founded by Oleh Tyahnybok, who is pictured in the film calling Jews "kikes" in public, which is one reason the Simon Wiesenthal Center has ranked him as one of the most dangerous anti-Semites in the world. Another follower of Bandera is Dymytro Yarosh, who reputedly leads the paramilitary arm of an even more powerful political organization in Ukraine called Right Sektor. Yarosh once said he controls a paramilitary force of about 7,000 men who were reportedly used in both the overthrow of Yanukovych in Kiev in February 2014 and the suppression of the rebellion in Odessa a few months later, which are both fully depicted in the film. This historical prelude and its merging with the current civil war is eye-opening background that has been largely hidden by the mainstream Western media, which has downplayed or ignored the troubling links between these racist Ukrainian nationalists and the U.S.-backed political forces that vied for power after Ukraine became independent in 1991. The Rise of a Violent Right That same year, Tyahnybok formed Svoboda. Three years later, Yarosh founded Trident, an offshoot of Svoboda that eventually evolved into Right Sektor. In other words, the followers of Bandera and Lebed began organizing themselves immediately after the Soviet collapse. In this time period, Ukraine had two Russian-oriented leaders who were elected in 1991 and 1994, Leonid Kravchuk, and Leonid Kuchma. But the hasty transition to a "free-market" economy didn't go well for most Ukrainians or Russians as well-connected oligarchs seized much of the wealth and came to dominate the political process through massive corruption and purchase of news media outlets. However, for average citizens, living standards went down drastically, opening the door for the far-right parties and for foreign meddling. In 2004, Viktor Yanukovych, whose political base was strongest among ethnic Russians in the east and south, won the presidential election by three percentage points over the U.S.-favored Viktor Yushchenko, whose base was mostly in the country's west where the Ukrainian nationalists are strongest. Immediately, Yushchenko's backers claimed fraud citing exit polls that had been organized by a group of eight Western nations and four non-governmental organizations or NGOs, including the Renaissance Foundation founded by billionaire financial speculator George Soros. Dick Morris, former President Bill Clinton's political adviser, clandestinely met with Yushchenko's team and advised them that the exit polls would not just help in accusations of fraud, but would bring protesters out into the streets. (Cambridge Review of InternationalAffairs, Vol. 19, Number 1, p. 26) Freedom House, another prominent NGO that receives substantial financing from the U.S.-government-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED), provided training to young activists who then rallied protesters in what became known as the Orange Revolution, one of the so-called "color revolutions" that the West's mainstream media fell in love with. It forced an election rerun that Yushchenko won. But Yushchenko's presidency failed to do much to improve the lot of the Ukrainian people and he grew increasingly unpopular. In 2010, Yushchenko failed to make it out of the first round of balloting and his rival Yanukovych was elected president in balloting that outside observers judged free and fair. Big-Power Games If this all had occurred due to indigenous factors within Ukraine, it could have been glossed over as a young nation going through some painful growing pains. But as the film points out, this was not the case. Ukraine continued to be a pawn in big-power games with many Western officials hoping to draw the country away from Russian influence and into the orbit of NATO and the European Union. In one of the interviews in Ukraine on Fire, journalist and author Robert Parry explains how the National Endowment for Democracy and many subsidized political NGOs emerged in the 1980s to replace or supplement what the CIA had traditionally done in terms of influencing the direction of targeted countries. During the investigations of the Church Committee in the 1970s, the CIA's "political action" apparatus for removing foreign leaders was exposed. So, to disguise these efforts, CIA Director William Casey, Reagan's White House and allies in Congress created the NED to finance an array of political and media NGOs. As Parry noted in the documentary, many traditional NGOs do valuable work in helping impoverished and developing countries, but this activist/propaganda breed of NGOs promoted U.S. geopolitical objectives abroad - and NED funded scores of such projectsinside Ukraine in the run-up to the 2014 crisis. Ukraine on Fire goes into high gear when it chronicles the events that occurred in 2014, resulting in the violent overthrow of President Yanukovych and sparking the civil war that still rages. In the 2010 election, when Yushchenko couldn't even tally in the double-digits, Yanukovych faced off against and defeated Yulia Tymoshenko, a wealthy oligarch who had served as Yushchenko's prime minister. After his election, Yanukovych repealed Bandera's title as a national hero. However, because of festering economic problems, the new president began to search for an economic partner who could provide a large loan. He first negotiated with the European Union, but these negotiations bogged down due to the usual draconian demands made by the International Monetary Fund. So, in November 2013, Yanukovych began to negotiate with Russian President Putin who offered more generous terms. But Yanukovych's decision to delay the association agreement with the E.U. provoked street protests in Kiev especially from the people of western Ukraine. As Ukraine on Fire points out, other unusual occurrences also occurred, including the emergence of three new TV channels - Spilno TV, Espreso TV, and Hromadske TV - going on the air between Nov. 21 and 24, with partial funding from the U.S. Embassy and George Soros. Pro-E.U. protests in the Maidan square in central Kiev also grew more violent as ultra-nationalist street fighters from Lviv and other western areas began to pour in and engage in provocations, many of which were sponsored by Yarosh's Right Sektor. The attacks escalated from torch marches similar to Nazi days to hurling Molotov cocktails at police to driving large tractors into police lines - all visually depicted in the film. As Yanukovich tells Stone, when this escalation happened, it made it impossible for him to negotiate with the Maidan crowd. One of the film's most interesting interviews is with Vitaliy Zakharchenko, who was Minister of the Interior at the time responsible for law enforcement and the conduct of the police. He traces the escalation of the attacks from Nov. 24 to 30, culminating with a clash between police and protesters over the transport of a giant Christmas tree into the Maidan. Zakharchenko said he now believes this confrontation was secretly approved by Serhiy Lyovochkin, a close friend of U.S. Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt, as a pretext to escalate the violence. At this point, the film addresses the direct involvement of U.S. politicians and diplomats. Throughout the crisis, American politicians visited Maidan, as both Republicans and Democrats, such as Senators John McCain, R-Arizona, and Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut. stirred up the crowds. Yanukovych also said he was in phone contact with Vice President Joe Biden, who he claims was misleading him about how to handle the crisis. The film points out that the real center of American influence in the Kiev demonstrations was with Ambassador Pyatt and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland. As Parry points out, although Nuland was serving under President Obama, her allegiances were really with the neoconservative movement, most associated with the Republican Party. Her husband is Robert Kagan, who worked as a State Department propagandist on the Central American wars in the 1980s and was the co-founder of the Project for the New American Century in the 1990s, the group that organized political and media pressure for the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003. Kagan also was McCain's foreign policy adviser in the 2008 presidential election (although he threw his support behind Hillary Clinton in the 2016 race). Adept Manipulators As Parry explained, the neoconservatives have become quite adept at disguising their true aims and have powerful allies in the mainstream press. This combination has allowed them to push the foreign policy debate to such extremes that, when anyone objects, they can be branded a Putin or Yanukovych "apologist." Thus, Pyatt's frequent meetings with the demonstrators in the embassy and Nuland's handing out cookies to protesters in the Maidan were not criticized as American interference in a sovereign state, but were praised as "promoting democracy" abroad. However, as the Maidan crisis escalated, Ukrainian ultra-nationalists moved to the front, intensifying their attacks on police. Many of these extremists were disciples of Bandera and Lebed. By February 2014, they were armed with shotguns and rapid-fire handguns. On Feb. 20, 2014, a mysterious sniper, apparently firing from a building controlled by the Right Sektor, shot both police and protesters, touching off a day of violence that left about 14 police and some 70 protesters dead. With Kiev slipping out of control, Yanukovich was forced to negotiate with representatives from France, Poland and Germany. On Feb. 21, he agreed to schedule early elections and to accept reduced powers. At the urging of Vice President Biden, Yanukovych also pulled back the police. But the agreement - though guaranteed by the European nations - was quickly negated by renewed attacks from the Right Sektor and its street fighters who seized government buildings. Russian intelligence services got word that an assassination plot was in the works against Yanukovych, who fled for his life. On Feb. 24, Yanukovych asked permission to enter Russia for his safety and the Ukrainian parliament (or Rada), effectively under the control of the armed extremists, voted to remove Yanukovych from office in an unconstitutional manner because the courts were not involved and the vote to impeach him did not reach the mandatory threshold. Despite these irregularities, the U.S. and its European allies quickly recognized the new government as "legitimate." Calling a Coup a Coup But the ouster of Yanukovych had all the earmarks of a coup. An intercepted phone call, apparently in early February, between Nuland and Pyatt revealed that they were directly involved in displacing Yanukovych and choosing his successor. The pair reviewed the field of candidates with Nuland favoring Arseniy Yatsenyuk, declaring "Yats is the guy" and discussing with Pyatt how to "glue this thing." Pyatt wondered about how to "midwife this thing." They sounded like Gilded Age millionaires in New York deciding who should become the next U.S. president. On Feb. 27, Yatsenyuk became Prime Minister of Ukraine. Not everyone in Ukraine agreed with the new regime, however. Crimea, which had voted heavily for Yanukovych, decided to hold a referendum on whether to split from Ukraine and become a part of Russia. The results of the referendum were overwhelming. Some 96 percent of Crimeans voted to unite with Russia. Russian troops - previously stationed in Crimea under the Sevastopol naval base agreement - provided security against Right Sektor and other Ukrainian forces moving against the Crimean secession, but there was no evidence of Russian troops intimidating voters or controlling the elections. The Russian government then accepted the reunification with Crimea, which had historically been part of Russia dating back hundreds of years. Two eastern provinces, Donetsk and Lugansk, also wanted to split off from Ukraine and also conducted a referendum in support of that move. But Putin would not agree to the request from the two provinces, which instead declared their own independence, a move that the new government in Kiev denounced as illegal. The Kiev regime also deemed the insurgents "terrorists" and launched an "anti-terrorism operation" to crush the resistance. Ultra-nationalist and even neo-Nazi militias, such as the Azov Battalion, took the lead in the bloody fighting. Anti-coup demonstrations also broke out in the city of Odessa to the south. Ukrainian nationalist leader Andrei Parubiy went to Odessa, and two days later, on May 2, 2014, his street fighters attacked the demonstrators, driving them into the Trade Union building, which was then set on fire. Forty-two people were killed, some of whom jumped to their deaths. 'Other Side of the Story' If the film just got across this "other side of the story," it would provide a valuable contribution since most of this information has been ignored or distorted by the West's mainstream media, which simply blames the Ukraine crisis on Vladimir Putin. But in addition to the fine work by scenarist Vanessa Dean, the direction by Igor Lopatonok and the editing by Alexis Chavez are extraordinarily skillful and supple. The 15-minute prologue, where the information about the Nazi collaboration by Bandera and Lebed is introduced, is an exceptional piece of filmmaking. It moves at a quick pace, utilizing rapid cutting and also split screens to depict photographs and statistics simultaneously. Lopatonok also uses interactive graphics throughout to transmit information in a visual and demonstrative manner. Stone's interviews with Putin and Yanukovych are also quite newsworthy, presenting a side of these demonized foreign leaders that has been absent in the propagandistic Western media. Though about two hours long, the picture has a headlong tempo to it. If anything, it needed to slow down at points since such a large amount of information is being communicated. On the other hand, it's a pleasure to watch a documentary that is so intelligently written, and yet so remarkably well made. When the film ends, the enduring message is similar to those posed by the American interventions in Vietnam and Iraq. How could the State Department know so little about what it was about to unleash, given Ukraine's deep historical divisions and the risk of an escalating conflict with nuclear-armed Russia? In Vietnam, Americans knew little about the country's decades-long struggle of the peasantry to be free from French and Japanese colonialism. Somehow, America was going to win their hearts and minds and create a Western-style "democracy" when many Vietnamese simply saw the extension of foreign imperialism. In Iraq, President George W. Bush and his coterie of neocons were going to oust Saddam Hussein and create a Western-style democracy in the Middle East, except that Bush didn't know the difference between Sunni and Shiite Moslems and how Iraq was likely to split over sectarian rivalries and screw up his expectations. Similarly, the message of Ukraine on Fire is that short-sighted, ambitious and ideological officials - unchecked by their superiors - created something even worse than what existed. While high-level corruption persists today in Ukraine and may be even worse than before, the conditions of average Ukrainians have deteriorated. And, the Ukraine conflict has reignited the Cold War by moving Western geopolitical forces onto Russia's most sensitive frontier, which, as scholar Joshua Shifrinson has noted, violates a pledge made by Secretary of State James Baker in February 1990 as the Soviet Union peacefully accepted the collapse of its military influence in East Germany and eastern Europe. (Los Angeles Times, 5/30/ 2016) This film also reminds us that what happened in Ukraine was a bipartisan effort. It was begun under George W. Bush and completed under Barack Obama. As Oliver Stone noted in the discussion that followed the film's premiere in Los Angeles, the U.S. painfully needs some new leadership reminiscent of Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, people who understand how America's geopolitical ambitions must be tempered by on-the-ground realities and the broader needs of humanity to be freed from the dangers of all-out war. (RT)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Luis Miguel 1162 61587 Lima	RE: ARE WE NOW IN THE END TIMES? 2/18/2017 10:00:50 AM
	Glenn Beltz Rising seas aren’t the only threat to coastlines By Emma Foehringer Merchant on Feb 16, 2017 Washington’s Grays Harbor County lies just southwest of Olympic National Forest, right up against the Pacific Ocean. It encompasses the Quinault Nation Reservation and several small commercial fishing ports and towns. It’s also sandwiched between two major “erosion zones” where, year after year, the sea washes away swaths of beach. Scientists have warned that sea-level rise will make coastal areas around the world vulnerable to flooding. But the creeping ocean isn’t the only force threatening waterfronts like in Grays Harbor. A study published this week by the United States Geological Survey shows that erosion will make the West Coast — where the effects of sea-level rise have been relatively minimal so far — even more vulnerable as climate change increasingly spurs powerful El Niño storms to batter shores. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association named the most recent 2015–2016 El Niño the strongest in 18 years. Scientists expect these types of El Niño events to become more frequent with the changing climate. Future El Niños may even add to sea-level rise while also increasing erosion from storms, causing portions of sandy beaches and bluffs to crumble into the ocean. Using lasers and GPS equipment stowed in backpacks, riding on jet skis, or attached to sand buggies, researchers can create a 3D surface map of a beach as it changes over the years. In the USGS report, scientists mapped 29 beaches from Washington down through California during the 2015–2016 El Niño and found the erosion of the shoreline was the highest ever recorded: 76 percent more land washed away than would in a normal year. “It’s a little bit of a window into the future,” said Patrick Barnard, the study’s lead author. Similar, albeit less severe, erosion occurred in the second and third strongest El Niños in 1997–1998 and 1982–1983. And as powerful El Niños become more common, erosion could endanger over 25 million people living in vulnerable areas on the West Coast. That’s on top of erosion threats identified in previous studies of beaches in Canada, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii. “Maybe originally it [will be] only one or two homes impacted negatively,” says Peter Ruggiero, coauthor of the USGS study. But after a couple bad winters, he says, coastal communities could face an increasingly “dire situation.” Many are already struggling to halt runaway erosion, like Imperial Beach in California andOceanside in Oregon. With a federal government unlikely to address climate change adaptation, local governments will likely have to take the lead on addressing erosion. But states and cities may struggle to keep low-lying communities safe, Ruggiero says. “Part of the issue is communities have a whole bunch of things they have to worry about on a regular basis,” he points out, and “it’s usually what’s most pressing right now” that gets dealt with first. That is the curse of climate change — its slow-moving effects undermine any sense of urgency until a disaster hits a community smack in the face. That’s what has happened in places like Pacifica, California, where the city declared a state of emergency this January as storm-eroded cliffs threatened to pitch apartment buildings into the sea. Counties like Grays Harbor and Tillamook, both in the Pacific Northwest, are investigating options to armor their coasts against accelerating erosion and rising seas. Communities can build jetties, restore vegetation, and try to pile on sand faster than storms can wash it away. In both places, policymakers have worked with a group of scientists, including Ruggiero, to develop potential solutions and outcomes. What they decide could define the coast’s future. “If there’s no planning involved, it’s dealing with emergency after emergency,” said Ruggiero. “The idea is to at least think through what these alternative futures might look like.” (GRIST)
	"Choose a job you love and you will not have to work a day in your life" (Confucius)
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Record number of Palestinian homes destroyed by Israel in 2016 – rights group

Hystericizing Westerners against Muslims: 'Mass sex assaults by refugees' in Frankfurt on New Year's Eve... never happened

Ukraine on Fire: The Oliver Stone documentary the US Empire doesn't want you to see

Rising seas aren’t the only threat to coastlines

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