I resent lions that gorge cute giraffe babies. It is beastly and nasty when tofu is so delicious. How can a heardless human kill animals to feed lions. Will there be more revelations about zoos killing animals just to feed other animals? That would be a scandal! I am so enraged now, I'll stop reading such news and get me some bacon.

The German skiers in Sochi received brand new skis but still needed to grind them. A day before the races started the grinding machine they had brought with them broke down. Without appropriate grinding chances for any success in the competitions were low.

The Austrian and the Swiss team were asked for help but declined. The Russians, without a fuzz, showed Olympic spirit and helped. They offered their grinding machine. During one night over 40 pairs of skis were prepared for the German team.

Some of the German skiers, as well as some of their Russian competitors, are in serious competitive range of medals. The Russian, due to their graciousness, may have given away some Bronze, Silver or even Gold medal.

They, unlike the Russia bashing "western" media, showed real Olympic spirit. May the best win.

original report (in German)

The flap about the "Fuck the EU" uttering of the U.S. assistant secretary of state Nuland is somewhat disguising the real issue.

The unencrypted cell phone call between Nuland and the U.S. ambassador in Kiev (transcript) was likely recorded by the Ukraine's security services. While the State department tried (as usual these days) to blame the Russians, the tweet of a Russian official that pointed to the call recording came a full day after someone else had tweeted the link to it. The Russian official was thereby not the original source.

The caught call reveals several issues:

1. The U.S. is undeniably trying to overthrow the democratically elected government and the elected president of Ukraine and wants to put one of its opposition puppets into the top job. Nuland herself claims (vid at 7:26) that the U.S. has since the 1990s "invested" over $5 billion for such "democratization" of Ukraine. It is likely that the U.S., as the Ukraine government claims, is paying many of the protesters in Kiev.

2. Some countries in the EU (Germany, Poland and the Baltic countries) also want to overthrow the Ukrainian government but they (especially Merkel) want another puppet, price boxer Klitschko, to become the top dog. But as the rest of the EU is not willing to pay up for buying the Ukraine government for the meager plundering of the already very poor country those EU countries that want a coup have little they can offer and no real way of threatening sanctions or other illegal means.

The "fuck the EU" remark is only about the difference in style. The U.S. wants fast sanction against the legal government and the people of Ukraine and to install its own puppet while the EU wants a different puppet and a less noisy kind of coup.

The dragging behind the scenes is also disguising another important issue. The protest in the Ukraine are led by extreme right wing movements which will not shy away from brutalities or even civil war:

[T]he physical organization of these protests, the building of barricades around squares, much of the camp construction and policing, and the pitched and sometimes deadly battles with police are almost entirely the work of the extreme right. In some of Ukraine’s smaller cities, the local protests and seizures of government buildings appear to have been entirely the work of Pravy Sektor.
…
Here in Kiev, some members of the ragtag army of pipe-wielding, helmeted marshals and guards say they are supporters of the more mainstream right-wing Ukrainian-nationalist Svoboda (Freedom) party, which won about 10 per cent of the vote in 2012 parliamentary elections and whose leader, Oleh Tyahnybok, has a history of using anti-Semitic insults.

But the people in the largest and most aggressive group, who generally refuse to speak to journalists, are members of Pravy Sektor, an umbrella group of fascist, nationalist, football-hooligan and right-wing extremist gangs – some with neo-Nazi histories – which is generally considered to the right of Svoboda and which tends to be very secretive. It has not, to this point, been a political party.

The U.S. as well as the EU seem to believe that they can keep these forces under control (do they pay them?). But just like the Jihadists in Syria are hardly controllable the fascist in Ukraine will certainly play their own game as soon as the U.S. EU pressure against the legal government gives them a chance to go for it. They even openly threaten to ignite a civil war.

By pushing for the resignation of the elected president of Ukraine the U.S. and the EU are clearly risking, for their own selfish reasons, to throw Ukraine into an internal conflict they would be unable to control.

The media uproar about the "fuck the EU" part is just hiding those lunatic aspects of these plans.

Even after the Sochi games have begun the New York Times and continue their ridiculous anti-Russian campaign reaching as a last straws to this or that official uttering while conveniently leaving out those quotes that give real meaning of what was said and which condemn the NYT for exactly what it does.

Headlining The Darkness Behind Sochi’s Sparkle the front page piece looks for lost doorknobs and missing pillows, how terribly inconvenient and impossible to happen in the "west", and talks about "Russia’s oppressive antigay law and its suffocating restrictions on freedom of speech". This even after the opening show in Sochi included the Russian band t.A.T.u, famous for their lesbian kisses (vid), and lots of music by Tchaikovsky, the great gay composer.

It calls as witness the president of the International Olympic Committee, Thomas Bach, misrepresenting him as if he somehow did what the Times is doing:

At the opening ceremony, during which he sat next to Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin, Bach gave a strong speech to kick off the Olympics. He made points that sounded like sharp digs at Putin and the law he signed that banned the distribution of so-called gay propaganda to children in Russia.

In the most refreshing speech by an I.O.C. president in decades, Bach did not kowtow to the host country. He said the Olympics should set an example for “human diversity and great unity.”

“To the athletes, you have come here with your Olympic dream,” he said. “You are welcome, no matter where you come from or your background. Yes, it’s possible even as competitors to live together and to live in harmony with tolerance and without any form of discrimination for whatever reason.”

He did not have to come out and say it, but many people who heard him knew exactly what he meant.

Bach said what is said at any Olympic Games. Leave out the politics. Be peaceful and tolerant. But the author obviously completely missed what Bach was really saying. The very next sentence in Bach's short speech, not quoted by the New York Times, was this:

“Have the courage to address your disagreements in a peaceful, direct political dialogue and not on the backs of these athletes,” he said.

But that is of course not what the Times wants to do. It wants to mix the issues, sports and politics, and demean the apolitical games only to insert its political pet peeve.

A few links with regard to the Sochi Olympics and the ridiculous U.S. propaganda campaign to denigrate Russia and the games there:

• Shredding Sochi… in a Good Way

Western journalists have been in the business of dismissing Russian achievements and magnifying Russian failures ever since Putin drove them into a collective derangement syndrome – he even haunts their dreams, as recently revealed by the Guardian’s Shaun Walker – so the preemptive besmirching of the Sochi Olympics can’t have surprised anyone.

What is startling, though, is the unusually low competence of the effort, even by the standards of these people that are sarcastically referred to as ”democratic journalists” in Russia. (read on)

• 8 Viral Sochi Olympics Photos That Are Total Lies
• Welcome to Sochi: Holiday resort, Olympic host – and gay capital of Russia
• Sochi organizer says 65 leaders coming to Olympics, a record for Winter Games

Good luck to all the athletes and good luck to Russia.

Yesterday some insurgent groups in Syria claimed that the Aleppo prison was stormed after a suicide attack and that hundreds of prisoners were freed. The claim was widely reported in "western" media:

BEIRUT (AP) — A suicide bomber blew himself up at the gates of a Syrian prison Thursday and rebels stormed in behind him, freeing hundreds of inmates as part of an offensive aimed at capturing key government symbols around the northern city of Aleppo, activists said.

Today the insurgent propaganda office claims that the government has recaptured the prison.

Syrian troops retook Friday most of Aleppo's prison, lost to rebels a day earlier, in fighting that has killed at least 46 people over two days, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.

But the fate of hundreds of prisoners reportedly freed after Islamist and jihadist fighters overran the facility was unclear, with suggestions that they may not have been able to flee amid the fighting.

But the facts beg to differ. The vehicle based bomb and the British suicide bomber driving it never came to the prison gate but were defeated before reaching it. The prison's perimeter was not breached and no prisoners were able to escape in the first place. Jabhad al-Nusra and Ahrar al-Sham, which cooperated in the attack, lost dozens of fighters when the Syrian air force hit the areas around the prison.

This case is just another reminder that neither the insurgency propaganda organizations, nor its multipliers in the "western" media can be trusted with regard to their information on Syria.

Ukraine. Memorandum on Security Assurances

Budapest, 5 December 1994

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland,

Welcoming the accession of Ukraine to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons as a non-nuclear-weapon State,

Taking into account the commitment of Ukraine to eliminate all nuclear weapons from its territory within a specified period of time,

Noting the changes in the world-wide security situation, including the end of the Cold War, which have brought about conditions for deep reductions in nuclear forces.

Confirm the following:

The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine, in accordance with the principles of the CSCE Final Act, to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine.
[…]

—

So here is the U.S. showing its legal commitment to respect the independence and sovereignty of Ukraine  by moving its puppets across the chess board:

In a conversation leaked online and posted to YouTube on Feb. 6, voices closely resembling those of U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland discuss loosely the roles of Ukrainian opposition leaders and the United Nations, and frustration over inaction and indecision by the European Union in solving Ukraine’s political crisis.
…
The voice allegedly of Nuland adds that Klitschko should not be given a role in government.

“I don’t think it’s necessary, I don’t think it’s a good idea,” she says.

“Yeah… I guess… in terms of him not going into the government, just let him sort of stay out and do his political homework and stuff,” Pyatt says.
…
Before the call ends, Nuland tells Pyatt she has “one more wrinkle” for him.

Commenting on European pressure put on Yanukovych – or lack thereof – she explains that she has spoken to the United Nations and has gotten an official there who said that Ban Ki-moon, the UN secretary general, agreed to send someone to Ukraine to “help glue this thing and to have the UN glue it.”

She adds: “And you know, fuck the EU.”

“Exactly,” Pyatt replies. “And I think we got to do something to make it stick together, because you can be sure that if it does start to gain altitude the Russians will be working behind the scenes to torpedo it. Let me work on Klitschko, and I think we should get a Western personality to come out here (to Ukraine) and midwife this thing,’’ he adds.

Victoria Nuland is the Assistant Secretary of State for Europe. Brussels will just love that call.

Thanks whomever for putin that call on YouTube.

Eight month after the Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif won the elections peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban, which he had promised, have finally begun:

The two sides gathered at the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa House in Islamabad for a preliminary meeting likely to chart a “roadmap” for future discussions, amid deep scepticism over whether dialogue can yield a lasting peace deal.

Sources said that talks were held in a cordial atmosphere and that negotiations would now be continued on a daily basis.

It is unclear though whether these talks will lead to an end of violent incidents which are attributed to the Taliban. A McClatchy report claims that prime minister Sharif no longer has hope for these talks to succeed and has planned an all out military assault on the Taliban borderlands with Afghanistan. There is reason to doubt that claim as the writer of that report also manipulates some facts:

[T]he Pakistani prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, already has decided to press ahead with a massive military strike at the militants’ headquarters in North Waziristan, a tribal area bordering Afghanistan – and the insurgents know it’s coming.
…
After being sworn in, Sharif insisted that the option of peace talks with the Pakistani Taliban be explored, despite opposition from the country’s powerful military, which had all but routed the militants after five years of fighting involving 150,000 troops.

The TTP used the eight months since to regroup, organize and publicly demonstrate their renewed strength with the two-month wave of terrorist attacks. That response to Sharif’s reconciliatory policy has made him look ill-informed and naive, and much of the public anger generated by the terrorist attacks has targeted him.

Of course the Pakistani military never “all but routed the militants” which is what make peace talks a necessity in the first place.

The writer of that highlighted sentence is also leaving out some important historic events and is thereby coming to a very wrong conclusion.

There were few attacks from the Taliban during the first few months of Nawaz Sharif’s rule and preparations for peace talks went well along. But just a day before those were starting in earnest the Unites States killed the head of the TTP, Hakimullah Mahsud, in a targeted drone strike and thereby sabotaged those earlier peace talks.

It was only after Hakimullah’s assassination that the TTP launched a series of attacks against Pakistani security forces. For McClatchy to leave that out and to blame the attacks on Nawaz Sharif’s willingness for peace talks is a serious manipulation of the facts.

One central demand the TTP has is the end of the U.S. occupation in Afghanistan and the end of Pakistan’s support for it. The United States fears that Nawaz Sharif will agree to that and therefore has an interest to make any peaceful solution in Pakistan impossible.

Sharif’s alleged plan to use a wide ranging military campaign to fight the TTP will end like all such plans have ended since the British colonized India – in disaster. The Taliban will slip away and come back as soon as the attack is running out of steam. The plans for that attack are based on pipe dreams. As McClatchy claims:

[Sharif’s national security adviser] Aziz laid out a new policy under which Pakistan would act to secure the northwest tribal areas by the time the United States withdraws the last of its combat troops from Afghanistan in December. That entails a decisive operation in North Waziristan, with Pakistan seeking the support of the U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force on the Afghan side of the border to cut off TTP escape routes.

How can ISAF forces block the border on the Afghan side when ISAF is withdrawing? It would take several brigades of ground troops to prevent Pakistani Taliban from slipping into Afghanistan. Such troops are no longer available and the planned campaign will therefore end just as pointless as earlier ones. The Taliban will cross the border and come back as soon as military exhausts it’s campaign drive.

Talks between the Taliban and the government are the only way to peace in Pakistan as well as in Afghanistan. One major point in such talks and a condition without which no success is possible is the end of foreign occupation and drone attacks. But as the U.S. wants to stay in Afghanistan it will do its best to sabotage such talks. Both those between the Afghan president Karzai and the Taliban in Afghanistan and those between the Pakistan premier Sharif and the Taliban in Pakistan.

The Jihadists unde the Islamic State of Iraq And Syria are consolidating positions on the Turkish border. The seem to want to get control over all border crossings. One wonders what their plans for Turkey look like.

In the south Jabhat al-Nusra, disguised as U.S. sponsored FSA, is getting more entrenched. This is the result of U.S. arms, ammunition and tactical advice delivered through Jordan.

The Syrian army is making good progress in and around the major cities. Damascus is pretty much cleared. Homs city has only a few pockets of insurgents left and the insurgents in parts of Aleppo city are now mostly encircled.

The norther countrysides are a mixed picture. There is some fighting between the various Jihadist groups but recent attempts to take any new territory held by the Syrian government seems to have failed.

All this seems like a winter lull spend on consolidating ones position while planning for this or that new offensive.

The anti-Yanukovich rhetoric in the German media has somewhat died down for now. Is this the silence before the storm? Or is this a response to the overwhelmingly negative reaction that 90% of the commentators had towards the very obvious pro-coup propaganda? I don't know.

But the soon start of the Sochi Olympics lets me think back to the start of the Beijing Olympics which the United States used to let its proxy force Georgia attack Russian peacekeepers in Georgian areas that strove for independence.

What has the "west" planned for the start of of the Sochi Olympics? Let me know some scenarios.

Can someone reconcile these two parts from a NYT report about Ukraine? First:

On Sunday, tens of thousands of demonstrators gathered in Independence Square here in the capital, … Rather than being placated by any of the concessions, the opposition has grown emboldened by the evidence that Mr. Yanukovych’s position has weakened.

So "tens of thousands" show that the president Yanukovych's position has "weakened". But what then is this further down in the piece?

Though large, the turnout was far lower than at the movement’s peak in early December, when more than 100,000 people gathered on three successive Sundays.

The protests are far smaller now but that is a sign that the president's position has weakened? How does that fit?

The attempts by the U.S. and the EU to now bribe Ukraine with more empty promises will not work.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said Western powers were working on a financial plan for Ukraine whose numbers "won't be small" and won't hinge on Kiev first agreeing upon a long-term International Monetary Fund agreement, whose financial conditions Kiev has had difficulty complying with.

However, she said the money was contingent on the new Ukrainian government pursuing economic and political reforms.

U.S. officials said the goal was to convince Mr. Yanukovych to make a series of political reforms, including appointing a "true" technocratic government that would then start to make the tough economic changes sought by the IMF.

It makes no economic sense for Ukraine, which depends on exports to Russia and on natural gas from Russia, to turn away from Russia and towards a predatory "west". Any IMF program, which would lend money just as Russia is willing to do but with much more destructive conditions, would likely be very harsh for the people. They know this and are not willing to give in.

The U.S. and the EU are inciting the hard-rightwing and fascist "opposition" in Ukraine. The western darling Klitchko has called for the creation of "self-defense groups". One hopes that this call will be ignored like his previous two calls for a general strike which no one followed.

The "west" is pushing a anti-democratic collection of right-wingers as a "democratic opposition" against the dully elected government of Ukraine. How can Kerry claim that these forces who fight the majority elected government are in a "fight for democracy"?

There is a great danger here. The street-muscle of the "opposition" is fascist in its core and a quite violent collection of hooligans and militants:

These groups range from right-wing radicals and soccer hooligans to military veterans and mobs of stick-wielding goons. And to the gall of more-established opposition figures, like the world boxing champion Vitali Klitschko, they have become the revolution’s most commanding presence. Anyone with a stake in resolving Ukraine’s political crisis — including the diplomats watching fretfully from the E.U. and U.S. — will likely have to reckon with the role of these groups. But they are becoming increasingly hard to control.

By hyping the "opposition", which could not win in elections, the "west" is giving succor to the extreme forces. These forces already pledge to incite a civil war.

This is clearly, as we claimed, a repeat of the strategy that was used to throw Syria into ruins. Under the disguise of "peaceful protests" which, like in the Ukraine never were peaceful, radical forces are incited to fight the state and all its structures.

But what is the purpose his obvious attempt to throw Ukraine into a state of unrest and possibly into a civil war? Did not Syria show that such radical forces will in the end hit back at the "west"? What is there to win but trouble?