Excellent point somebody, that’s what makes his ‘man of the people’ hyper-PR tour since his ‘election’ so blatantly disingenuous. He’s basically the Barack Obama of Catholicism.

Posted by: L Bean | Mar 29 2014 16:47 utc | 4

Forget the Pope, forget the Vatican’s people.
Everybody knows the Catholic Church’s side. Now, in the past and in the future.
Vatican alway$ defend the $tronger $ide, not the people side, nor the democracy side.

Posted by: Scan | Mar 29 2014 16:58 utc | 6

#7;Zionism is Israeli nationalism.I have no problem with it if it stayed in Israel.But to supersede American interests for Israel’s is the height of perfidy,and with their agents everywhere influencing our policies in all ways,means they the tail are wagging our dog.
How about the dual citizens judicial decision, which made Iran liable for an (alleged)Hamas bomb which killed a dual citizen in Israel, here in America.Fortunately,another dual citizen judge(phew) said they can’t take Persian museum property as compensation.Sheesh,the absurdity of it all.

Posted by: dahoit | Mar 29 2014 17:55 utc | 8

Tymoshenko plan to be president, 99,99998% will vote for her and west will say there was no fraud.

Posted by: Anonynmous | Mar 29 2014 18:32 utc | 10

The support for Ukr. in the form of IMF / EU bail-outs and lending and its attendant austerity program are designed to pay back creditors, see Greece for ex. No mystery.
The no. 1. creditor is of course Russia (but there are others.. Germany…) That is why US congress only awarded ‘one billion’ – a tiny pittance, loan or what not never mind…
Michael Hudson outlines, not that I agree with all he says), via naked capitalism:
http://tinyurl.com/luhertz
Yats (1) announced there would be subsidies for the 30% bottom in economic terms families for gas prices. One ex:
http://tinyurl.com/nrzc3jm
What exactly that will amount to on the ground is anybody’s guess.
All going to be so tough for Ukranians that a second ‘revolution’, even more violent, is not to be excluded.
Putin has announced that Crimea pensions will not be raised to Russian levels immediately (Russian salaries / pensions / etc. are much higher than in Ukr.) but only gradually, and he quoted some vague %.
The W Ukr. neighbors, who will see their pensions cut perhaps by half (news, 2) or a bit less or? .. a huge blow and will provoke anger and possibly pro-Russian sentiment.
The pensions (as in Greece) are vitally important, because they provide a minimal safety net for the younger generation, notably for those who have parents or grand-parents who own their own homes.
1. The presidential race will oppose ppl all trawling pretty much for the same votes. The Lady of the Braids, the King Of Chocolate… Yats is not a candidate, he will be PM in any case.
2. http://rt.com/news/ukraine-austerity-pensions-halved-174/

Posted by: Noirette | Mar 29 2014 18:47 utc | 12

@JSorrentine: Moving from the ‘Turkish False Flag’ post – Can you lay out the idea that Snowden is a limited hang out operation more in-depth, if you care to?
Is it that he is directly under US government employ – in other words, that this is a clandestine operation conceived of and executed at the highest levels of the US government – or is this some sort of elite infighting in the way that Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers seemed to be? Or is this a ploy by an organization such as the CIA of whom the victims are not only the public, but also the elite itself? Or something else entirely?
The story is obviously not ‘magic lone whistleblower here to save America from itself’, but I personally think the idea that it is an operation of the US government to be equally far fetched. I realize that is not what you are suggesting, so I’m asking – what are you suggesting when you say “the Edward Snowden psyop” – who is behind it, for what purpose, and what have been its successes and failures so far?

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 29 2014 19:16 utc | 14

Posted by: Noirette | Mar 29, 2014 2:47:52 PM | 11
Thanks for the interesting links.
The no. 1. creditor is of course Russia (but there are others.. Germany…) That is why US congress only awarded ‘one billion’ – a tiny pittance, loan or what not never mind…
I don’t think Russia is that much exposed, they insured their last batch of bonds with the clause to be paid back immediately should Ukraine’s debt be over 60 percent of GDP which without Crimea they will get close. But of course the bailout will be used to pay Russian gas bills.
US Templeton has a lot of the bonds and Austrian banks are heavily involved I don’t think Germany that much.
Everybody expects the IMF to bail them out. Should Ukraine split it would be a perfect default.

Posted by: somebody | Mar 29 2014 19:33 utc | 16

@Noirette – I have already seen (and perhaps I saw it here and apologies if so) that the Russian Duma just allocated some 36 Billion Rubles to pensioners in Crimea. Obviously this includes Tartar, Ukrainian, Russian, and whatever kind of citizen there is there. People in the rest of the Ukraine, especially in the east, will be watching this with great envy as their standards of living crash.
To retain even a modicum of legitimacy, the government in Kiev has to answer this important question: why should the Ukrainian people suffer brutal austerity in the hopes of becoming part of the EU (no guarantees) while their neighbors are becoming a part of the Eurasian Union with all of the benefits (massive resources, links to the economic dynamo of Asia) that that entails?
Obviously they will attempt to answer it with this synthesis of historical victimhood (based on the model of what developed into the ‘Holocaust industry’ in the west) and virulent nationalism (like the one that caused the actual holocaust). The “politics of history” are a key part of the Svoboda Party Platform (see section VI, ‘Historical Justice’) and the distortions that come from politicizing the past will be used as much as possible to justify suffering austerity even though an incorporation into the Eurasian Union offers all sorts of economic advantages. By incorporating Svoboda extremists into the government – and, we must assume, into the oligarchy – the new government is providing the ideological underpinnings for accepting this huge sacrifice.
The choice for the Ukrainians couldn’t be more clear. Ukraine can be either the industrial heart of Eurasia or it can be a bankrupt backwater of Western Europe. And though I have no doubt that the Poles and the Balts look giddily at their chance to move up the economic food chain be incorporating Ukraine into the EU, it is an open question wether the Ukrainians will accept this, or will have a truly popular rebellion that finally eliminates what remains of the oligarchy.
The important lesson to me seems to be this: the Ukrainian people are best by a class of oligarchs which are draining their chances for any kind of future. For 20 years, there has been a seesaw battle between two shades of oligarchs who have stopped at nothing to secure their positions – now including to join with fascists and come to power via a violent coup. The result of this cycle of infighting and national robbery has been a stagnant, stolen Ukrainian future. While the countries all around them improved their living standards (it should be noted, though, that those former Soviet states that joined the EU did no better than those that did not) Ukraine with its remarkably parasitic oligarchs have been the one real exception to that fact.
What the Ukraine needs is to get out from under their oligarchs. In some ways, the elimination of Yanukovich is a step in the right direction – it showed those forces friendly to the Ukraine (Russia mostly, but also China and the rest of the BRICS) that it could not hope to rely on these unpopular forces for their influence in the Ukraine. They must now turn to the people of Ukraine if they want to have influence there.
Being that Post-Maidan only the Tymoschenko clique remains (and they are in a precarious position to say the least) the situation is cleared up a bit. All that stands between the Ukrainian people and their destiny is a ragged clique of oligarchs, and their claque – a small, regional political party, and a rabid street gang who is as much a liability to the new government as it is an asset. And these groups are as divided as is possible and have no real base accross the country. Unless they manage to hoodwink the people of Ukraine into hating their neighbors, their rule by austerity, baseball bats and visits in the night will not last long.
Once these truly undemocratic forces (not “democratic” in the Omidyar, Soros definition) are swept away Ukraine can finally do what all the other former Soviet countries have already done – emerge from the destitution of the 1990s.

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 29 2014 20:10 utc | 18

@Demian
I am also skeptical of those who believe that we are witnessing a President who, just somehow, has ended up with a bunch of employees who don’t listen to him. And I couldn’t be more in agreement that the US sees any independent nation as a threat – in the same way the pathologically paranoid can’t be expected to see anything other than “everyone is out to get me”. But I also said, long ago, that if Obama didn’t attack Syria – even if out of simple fear over the response – I would give him credit for that, and if only as a personal matter – I do want to give him that credit.
It is possible that the stand down over Syria was simply a result of the clear ‘nyet’ heard in Moscow and that all sectors of the US government were scared shitless and in total agreement that the attack should be called off. But it is also possible to argue that Obama stood down the war hawks who likely would have gone ahead and bombed Syria despite the Russian ships standing in their way (and if perhaps you don’t reject that argument out of hand) then what accounts for those policy differences?
Is it possible that Obama – being such a weak leader in so many ways – has accepted these dangerous neocons into his administration as part of some effort at political “bipartisanship” and now has to sit up top of them and clean up their messes caused by their global shenanigans – or is this to give too much credit to a weak leader who is nothing more than a political snake oil salesman?
I do get some sense that even Presidents are victims of operations meant to manipulate them into action – the Ghouta “gas attack” being on of the most obvious I’ve ever seen.

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 29 2014 20:34 utc | 20

@Demian
“Why on earth do you think Snowden was not a lone whistleblower?”
I think there had to be other forces at work – be it some other help on the inside or something. I think of similar leaks – like the Pentagon Papers – that occurred with the help of Senate staff by someone who ended up being deeply involved within the Robert Kennedy campaign.
I don’t particularly buy the propaganda put out by sources close to the US intelligence community that he was working for Russia or China (or even Germany, I have heard) but I do think he accomplished far, far too much in a space that was far too secure to think he is just another Chelsea Manning who just gained access to some (rather easily accessible, it seems) documents, and then handed them over to a third party.
But what evidence do I have – well, none. It’s just an opinion (as much one can hold an “opinion” on a matter of fact).

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 29 2014 20:46 utc | 22

@20 I agree completely. Though it is unwise to think that the US government didn’t also attempt to do exactly as you describe: “change Occupy strategy …[by] form[ing] their own protest groups and ally– or compete– with Occupy”.
The FBI did this in the 1970s by infiltrating – and even creating chapters of – opposition organizations. I think we have to assume they are doing similar things now.

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 29 2014 20:57 utc | 24

@rackstraw (22) Just to be clear, I posted #2, but did not post #3 that contained the article you referenced.
I think there is a danger in the United States using the events in Venezuela to convince regional oil importers to accept US exports instead of Venezuelan ones – especially as an attempt to crack the CELAC/ALBA groupings. This seems to be the same game plan the US has in regards to Europe and Russia.
The US will use its newfound status as an oil producer to engage (read, infiltrate) countries that will hitherto been reliant on its so-called enemies. Especially weak, poor, countries such as those in the Caribbean and Central America. Venezuela has one advantage – its goodwill and willingness to do deals and even make barter contracts. The US will demand cold hard cash and lots of it, and will make the price “worth it” by threatening these small nations should they “break sanctions”. If the mafia could patent such things, the US government might be paying them royalties at this point…
US attempts to secure hegemony are going into overdrive. That much is clear.

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 29 2014 21:08 utc | 26

A close look at who abstained at the UN vote about the Crimea referendum is quite interesting
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-QzneYOOBTn4/UzWOoAuR9gI/AAAAAAAACc0/pufU0igQ1yY/s1600/Result+of+Crimea+vote+at+UNGA.jpg

Posted by: Mina | Mar 29 2014 21:11 utc | 28

@13
Unfortunately – and obviously – I don’t think we’ll ever really know a la 9/11 – who was exactly behind Snowden, how exactly the/he pulled it off, etc. – but also like 9/11 I think that it is incumbent upon people to realize that his story and the people surrounding him – GG and others – stink like shit so engaging in supposition is all that’s left after one concludes that without a doubt what the official/MSM line is bullshit.
I think that one of the great successes of the Snowden narrative – as with any false narrative – is that it allows TPTB the ability to completely control the parameters of the debate and people like Scott Creighton and others have been on this slant from nearly the very beginning. I read somewhere that Snowden’s epic saga was very similar to Obama’s health care reform: first it seems that the people finally have a person who gives a shit about them – i.e., Obama – and who is willing to help them with this massive problem – i.e., they’re hooked. Then the narrative continues on and on with periodic reinforcements from the “savior” figure that something positive will be manifest when in the end the result is nearly 180 degrees from what any sane peon would want as the result is a total and complete sop to TPTB. In both cases, Obama and Snowden have themselves personally and repeatedly demarcated debate parameters beyond which it was totally unacceptable to go: Obama – single payer, Snowden – the need for “responsible” journos to be middlemen in leaking. Both statements are complete tells as to where their loyalties lie, imo.
Jon Rappaport from the beginning was the first that I know of who was pushing the theory that Snowden was still working for the CIA and this was inside baseball to knee cap the NSA as it was looking to become too powerful for the CIA to handle. There are a lot of points that have merit w/ this theory especially as it examines how suspiciously meteoric boy wonder’s rise career was among other things.
However, taken it all together, I think that the difficulty with trying to unwrap these psyops is that intel agencies have gotten very good at creating actors and situations which they can almost allow to run themselves as they have gamed any number of outcomes each with their own benefits as they have abandoned attempting to go for total “successes/coups” as there’s would be too much planning and too much can go wrong. Better to create naive actors that you’ve fed a load of horseshit to for years and let them do their “things” with only minimal guidance/nudging along the way. Someone here after the Pussy Riot affair stated that – make no mistake – the PR psyop was a cleverly intelligence-designed propaganda weapon aimed at directly at Putin. Most of the girls were a bunch of fucking nimrods making extra cash for getting to do stupid shit. All anyone had to do was tell them to pull this stunt or that stunt and then they basically could be counted upon to do their work without any knowledge of their larger context. In addition, the time frame for these psyops are longer than what would normally be expected. Pussy Riot is still getting whipped and doing stupid shit and they’re not done yet and how many years has it been? Over the last 6 months we’ve seen Snowden’s responsible journos align themselves with a billionaire who funds fascist putsches, what will the next 6 bring? Again, I’ve conjectured this before but if Snowden went missing in Russia – i.e. the cleaning up of loose ends by West? – you can be sure the “progressive” blogosphere would be leading the nuke Russia cheerleading. There are other possibilities obviously but I don’t think this is done yet by a long shot. I’m sure Putin thinks correctly that once CIA always CIA vis a vis Snowden.
The fact that the affair Snowden happened not too long after all of that and he ended up in Russia – again, why would the US not allow him to leave Russia and come to the Western hemisphere? Either he’s really a FSB and they were just covering their asses or they wanted him to stay but to leave him with NSA secrets/knowledge in Russia is a bit hard to swallow – makes me believe that he was led to go there and there may have been another act in the Snowden psyop that got foiled possibly by Putin. Instead of trying to grab him in the airport or making any direct move Putin just makes him sit there and it seemed like he chose correctly as no one knew what to do.
Anyways, I gotta run and could say more but at the end of the day I think that in the face of obvious officially touted horseshit stories like 9/11 and Snowden it’s requisite that people should scream bullshit especially if the story aligns with their own hopes/beliefs and even if they don’t know all of the details. If there’s enough there that seems funny – and in the Snowden case I truly believe there is – then examinations of that “funniness” should take precedence over whether the outcomes/results of the narrative are good or bad as TPTB have directly told us that they are busy crafting their next narrative while we are left contemplating/discussing their last “reality” narrative. The only way to break the cycle is reflexively call bullshit all the time until we are given concrete proof. Americans especially should be so reflexive as it is our war criminal leaders that have been directly responsible for the murder/maiming/displacement of millions of innocents for decades.

Posted by: JSorrentine | Mar 29 2014 21:30 utc | 30

@Mina:
Haha, Israel was absent! Fine ally, they. I wonder if some neocons have blown some fuses over that.
All BRICS countries (other than Russia) abstained. And such recipients of US military largesse as Afghanistan, Iraq, and Egypt also abstained. Serbia is so crushed that it was absent instead of voting no with its ally Russia.
Well, that table gives a good idea of what USG officials mean when they continue using the term “the free world”.

Posted by: Demian | Mar 29 2014 21:33 utc | 32

This is actually pretty funny. From all appearances the clowns from Svoboda and Right Sector couldn’t be serving Russia’s interests better if they were on the payroll. Who’s the biggest beneficiary of the IMF bailout? Russia, at least immediately:
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2014/03/michael-hudson-real-logic-18-billion-ukraine-rescue-package.html
Funny – if you’re not Ukrainian at least.

Posted by: TOwen | Mar 29 2014 21:43 utc | 34

@Petri (34)
I’m laughing my ass off over here. You haven’t met a real conspiracy theorist until you’ve asked a US official to explain something. Then it’s all the most outlandish shit you’ve ever heard: “Assad supports al Qaeda!” and “Putin funds Svoboda!”
My god.
But I think it all comes down to the old adage: “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive”.
The US is so deep in it now – working at so many cross purposes and with so many bad actors on all sides – that really now they’re willing to believe everyone else is up to the same thing.

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 29 2014 21:56 utc | 36

Da Russophile has a nice pic that says it all about old/new Ukraine

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 29 2014 22:02 utc | 38

@30
South Africa abstained, understandable, our government is split between traditional European alliances and the rising Chinese tide in Africa. Most Southerm African countries abstained it appears.
Zimbabwe however voted “No” … but i wouldn’t class them as resistance. Mugabe would be the first to order live ammunition against any region threatening secession.
Infographic of the free world indeed @31.

Posted by: david | Mar 29 2014 22:14 utc | 40

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 29, 2014 5:56:51 PM | 35
Surprise, surprise (as Gomer used to say). I’m sorry it’s such a disappointment for you that Putin and Obama are talking and making up. No nuclear war. Awe shucks! Can we get a refund? Maybe next time. Yeah, right. I’ll have a post up about this in the next couple of days. There were such high hopes for a showdown at the Okay Corral. Instead, yet another dud. Where’s the nuclear war we were promised? I feel cheated. You charlatan bastards. You come up empty (wheel?) again?
Putin thanks you for your service. He and his friends are that much wealthier now. At this rate, they’ll be trillionaires in no time. And you? Just some two-bit hack carrying their water on the internet as they lounge in their expanding lap of luxury. Meet the New Leftists…same as the Old Rightists.

Posted by: Cold N. Holefield | Mar 29 2014 22:21 utc | 42

Posted by: james | Mar 29, 2014 6:11:59 PM | 38
German politicians are asking for consequences. There are some German NATO soldiers protecting Turkey on the Syrian border who potentially would get involved in reaction to Turkish false flags.

Posted by: somebody | Mar 29 2014 22:24 utc | 44

Posted by: remembererringgiap | Mar 29, 2014 6:23:54 PM | 42
Including Hitler who did work for German intelligence at one stage and that is more than 50 years back.

Posted by: somebody | Mar 29 2014 22:26 utc | 46

Regarding Snowden, there are two reasons why I find his actions suspicious in the sense that he is some sort of freedom-fighter. The first is that there is no history for it. Quite the opposite, he appears to be a good little cog in the wheel. His entire career has been spent in intelligence. This appears to be his latest assignment.
The other reason, and here I may be trapped by historical precedent, is that this is all too reminiscent of the CIA’s false defector program of the late fifties. There were eight or nine defectors in a short period at the end of the fifties, military people, Rand employees, etc., who all defected to the Soviet Union. One was Lee Harvey Oswald. Oswald was supposed to have been part of the Atsugi U-2 program (I say supposed to because there are indications that the CIA had two Oswalds, one who spoke Russian and the other who worked at Atsugi).
At the end of his administration Eisenhower was trying to hold peace talks in Paris with the USSR in the hopes of ending the Cold War. He ordered that there be no U-2 overflights of the USSR leading up to the talks. Then Francis Gary Powers was shot down. So, the CIA disregarded Eisenhower’s orders, and losing the U-2 killed the peace talks. The tell was that before Powers flew the CIA took out its top secret surveillance camera and replaced it with a less technically-advanced unit. The CIA were willing to sacrifice a U-2 to continue the Cold War, but there wasn’t any point in giving the Russians their best camera.
Oswald was later blamed in some neocon circles as having given the Soviets secrets that enabled them to shoot down Powers, but, of course, he was never prosecuted upon his return to the US.
In that context I look at Snowden and wonder what he has accomplished. Most people who have done anti-fascist research know that the US, post-WWII, has conducted massive and continuing domestic spying on dissidents. In the mid-nineties it was clear that Echelon was going to eventually open up all electronic communications to government spying. The only question was how big a hard drive would the NSA need and how well could they sort out all their information.
In fact, widespread public knowledge, while it brings down Obama’s poll numbers, does nothing to remedy the situation. Even Feinstein’s latest yowl offers no real legislative remedy to the status quo.
So to what end is Snowden? For a time his revelations seemed timed to embarrass Obama, so it’s not unrealistic to think that at some level he is being used to hurt Obama’s (and Democrats’) numbers. At one point it looked as if publicity gains were accruing to Merkel. I really can’t discern who the author of Snowden is.
By the way, while I am not sure of Obama’s relationship with the permanent government of the US, I’m not sure if it’s relevant other than as another performer on the stage. A drum majorette leads the parade through town but she doesn’t draw up the parade route.

Posted by: Bob In Portland | Mar 29 2014 22:41 utc | 48

@cold handjob/41 keep quacking, you idiot. A guy from a country seething with corrupt billionaires are really going to start inventing shit about Putin being “a Trillionaire”? You might want to watch out with that kind of propaganda, it might just come back to bite you neoliberal hags in your ass…

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 29 2014 22:53 utc | 50

@Talbot:
Yes, that was an odd story. I wanted to put the gist of it into the Wikipedia article about the coup, but couldn’t because I couldn’t find a second “reliable source” that made the same claims.
In fact, I haven’t seen any other article which gives a chronology of how the coup occurred.

Posted by: Demian | Mar 29 2014 23:08 utc | 52

I think a lot of people are picking on Snowden because he hasn’t brought down the house of cards. TPTB just absorb every punch and nothing changes. Each new revelation quickly becomes a yawn. I don’t know what you do about that.

Posted by: dh | Mar 29 2014 23:37 utc | 54

Re Svoboda’s Party Platform (see comment 17), I thought this part worth chewing over, a fascist/nationalist’s wet dream:

9. Restore the nuclear status of Ukraine due to violations of the Budapest Memorandum by Russia (one of the guarantors of security of Ukraine): conflicts around Tuzla island and the Kerch Strait, direct threats, brutal political and economic pressure, regular attempts of officials to question the territorial integrity of Ukraine. Restore tactical missile and nuclear arsenal state. Appeal to the U. S. and the UK to promote and support the nuclear program in Ukraine.

That last quote is really funny… the way the final sequence in Dr. Strangelove is a howler!

Posted by: Jeff Kaye | Mar 30 2014 0:02 utc | 56

54
silly, very silly
turnign in this instance is a mathematical equation & the truth is neither so simple nor so oblique

Posted by: remembererringgiap | Mar 30 2014 0:31 utc | 58

Book suggestion for people interested in the cold war history of Guatemala – a country where the United States sponsored one of its first cold war coups, supporting a tiny, economic elite against its poor and indigenous population, in a country where serfdom survived into the 1960s.
The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War by Greg Grandin

After decades of bloodshed and political terror, many lament the rise of the left in Latin America. Since the triumph of Castro, politicians and historians have accused the left there of rejecting democracy, embracing communist totalitarianism, and prompting both revolutionary violence and a right-wing backlash. Through unprecedented archival research and gripping personal testimonies, Greg Grandin powerfully challenges these views in this classic work. In doing so, he uncovers the hidden history of the Latin American Cold War: of hidebound reactionaries holding on to their power and privilege; of Mayan Marxists blending indigenous notions of justice with universal ideas of equality; and of a United States supporting new styles of state terror throughout the region.
With Guatemala as his case study, Grandin argues that the Latin American Cold War was a struggle not between political liberalism and Soviet communism but two visions of democracy—one vibrant and egalitarian, the other tepid and unequal—and that the conflict’s main effect was to eliminate homegrown notions of social democracy. Updated with a new preface by the author and an interview with Naomi Klein, The Last Colonial Massacre is history of the highest order—a work that will dramatically recast our understanding of Latin American politics and the role of the United States in the Cold War and beyond.
“This work admirably explains the process in which hopes of democracy were brutally repressed in Guatemala and its people experienced a civil war lasting for half a century.”—International History Review
“A richly detailed, humane, and passionately subversive portrait of inspiring reformers tragically redefined by the Cold War as enemies of the state.”—Journal of American History

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 30 2014 0:40 utc | 60

@19 Guest 77 I may be a tad naive here, but I think the Syrian stand down had a lot to do with the US publics bombardment of their “sElected reprehensibles” with messages of “don’t you fucking dare – we’re sick of war” I read of some congressional offices saying calls/faxes & emails were running at 1000 – 1 against any R2P involvement.
@56 The Boston Bombing is as hinkey as it gets & so was the Florida shooting.

Posted by: DonNeedNoSUserName | Mar 30 2014 0:52 utc | 62

@61 Agreed. I do not want to try and to discount the role the American public played in preventing the war. There were certainly many factors at work – the publics response, as well as the UK parliaments “no” all played a huge part.

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 30 2014 1:15 utc | 64

@Mina 27:
I always like to look at the head count.

Posted by: john francis lee | Mar 30 2014 1:47 utc | 66

Kommesrant (via google translate) is reporting that Klitschko will run for Mayor of Kiev.
Also, the illegal coup government will rush to write a new constitution in the three weeks before the upcoming May 25th presidential elections – because democracy, of course.
This is really a revolting display. Fascism and oligarchy at its worst. A rush by an unelected coup government – installed by a violent mob, no less – to rewrite the country’s constitution in a three week period before they face the the verdict of the people? That shows some real fucking confidence that they’re popular, doesn’t it…
That the west wants to call this a democracy in any way shape or form is absolutely criminal.

Posted by: guest77 | Mar 30 2014 1:54 utc | 68

#60
So the 2 years build up to Operation Groza, “Thunderstorm,” to sovietise all Europe never happened? and Adolf wanted to conquer the world and/or just kill Slav Untermensch!!
We are years into the God given internet. R-giap, please let go of the holocaust narrative. It is a false religion whose concepts are strict obsessions unique to the Goy-hating hunchbacks who think they descend from the Christ killers—thus that their blood is divinely cursed. What must an unmentionable, fearful absurdity do to a human being’s mind? – A good JewBoy never rats on the tribe. He takes his medicine; he goes to Hell. It is not his fault! It is God’s!!
Everybody welcomed the Germans because they drove out the criminally insane Talmudists.
[Extracts from McLellan Letter 20Feb1998]”…the NKVD slaughtered their prisoners en masse. Coming on the heels of the mass deportations and growing Soviet terror, these executions fuelled the West Ukrainians’ abhorrence of the Soviets. When the Germans arrived in Lvov on 29 June, the city stank, and the prisons were surrounded by terrified relatives. Unimaginable atrocities had occurred inside. The prisons looked like abattoirs. It had taken the NKVD a week to complete their gruesome task before they fled. About 5,000 people were killed. The arrests and killings had taken place under the leadership of Jewish functionaries and with the participation of the Jewish inhabitants. That was why the citizens so hated the Jewish population. In Pleskau [Pskov] the population is in general convinced that it is mostly the Jews who should be held responsible for the atrocities that are committed everywhere.”
The organisers of the recent coup had to guard against this history, and did so with the standard ultra-nationalist, “fascist,” neo-Nazi, dispensable false flag to which the West declares no objection unless, of course, the patsies become an embarrassment, which at present they have.

Posted by: Michaël | Mar 30 2014 2:10 utc | 70

23
I’ve always felt that Occupy and TeaParty were both pre-scripted NSA hangout operations. I’m sure the folks who joined the Movement-Already-In-Progress really believed the pitch.
But who came up with that pitch and who directed the abyssmal strategic planning?
How else can you explain the upper-quintile TeaParty with our Last Savings, effetely throwing barbs at an Executive and Congress bought and paid for by Citizens Uniteds??
And how else can you explain the lower-quintile Occupy with none of the Last Savings effetely camping out, as the Wall Street Elites pissed down on their upturned faces?
Both the groups sprang up under scurrilous and spurious psyops circumstances.
Both groups had pre-scripted Mark of the Beast on their frothy fevered pitch.
Both groups marched them up the hill, and then they marched them down again.
Charades!
Had TeaParty pensioners instead occupied Wall Street, with all their purchasing power, holdback sanctions and lasting strength, it would’ve brought Wall Street to its knees.
And Occupy hoi polloi stormed Casa Blanca and Ziomedia circus with their 100,000s all willing to do prison time, well, we wouldn’t be having these NSA conversations today.
It is virtually a statistical impossibility that they ‘randomly’ became what they were.
Instead, all that energy, that life force, like a herd of stampeding buffalo, was led off into side canyons and slaughtered mercilessly by Ziomedia, until they’re just a talking point today, a focus phrase, a puerile skid mark in the US history of the oiligarchs.

Posted by: Chip Nikh | Mar 30 2014 2:35 utc | 72

progressive or regressive? my letter to Raw Story on being blocked from commenting
hello Raw Story
You posted an article on Steven Segal and Russia:
Steven Seagal favors Putin over Obama and says he may emigrate to Russia | The Raw Story
and on your FB page this appears:
The Raw Story
7 hrs ·
We’ll help you pack, hairball!
————-
is this your idea of progressive journalism? to nastily libel a public figure?
‘Raw Story is a progressive news site that focuses on stories often ignored in the mainstream media. While giving coverage to the big stories of the day, we also bring our readers’ attention to policy, politics, legal and human rights stories that get ignored in an infotainment culture driven solely by pageviews.
I posted some comments criticising your view that Segal was wrong to support Putin over Obama as well as the barrage of vitriol your other readers endulged themslves: sample:
aceshigh • an hour ago
What a treasonous, un-American piece of shit.
Get the fuck out of my country, you lowlife right-wing cretin, and take Nugent with you, you douchenozzle.
Yet i was blocked and none of these libelous posters were. : ‘We are unable to post your comment because you have been blocked by Raw Story. Find out more.’
care to explain?
and while at it, why is Raw Story supporting a fascist regime (Svoboda was rebuked in 2012 by EU for its fascism) that took power in Kiev by force?
Kiev snipers hired by Maidan leaders – leaked EU’s Ashton phone tape
Shame on Raw Story…no better than Fox
regards

Posted by: brian | Mar 30 2014 3:15 utc | 74

another *leak* which somehow bolster the pentagon’s charge of the ubiquitous pla hackers ?
*The N.S.A., for example, is tracking more than 20 Chinese hacking groups — more than half of them Chinese Army and Navy units — as they break into the networks of the United States government, companies including Google, and drone and nuclear-weapon part makers, according to a half-dozen current and former American officials.
If anything, they said, the pace has increased since the revelation last year that some of the most aggressive Chinese hacking originated at a People’s Liberation Army facility, Unit 61398, in Shanghai.*
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/23/world/asia/nsa-breached-chinese-servers-seen-as-spy-peril.html?_r=0

Posted by: denk | Mar 30 2014 3:34 utc | 76

69
i don’t even bother to scan such filth

Posted by: remembererringgiap | Mar 30 2014 3:58 utc | 78

#71
Occupy and the Tea Party were clearly Hate establishment containment operations. Occupy was observable as such because they had zero strategy to threaten financial super crime. Smirking Georgie Schwatz/Soros applauded the hippy wankers. The tactic to “occupy Wall Street” is meaningless. And the Tea Party was a routine operation to control both ends of an argument, like left wing and right. Right wing is merely leftist talk for the opposition, the bad guys, like fascist. Both sides take direction from the secret (satanic?) societies. But the worshipful Republican catamites were so subtle this time that simple decent patriots, seeing no cunning, joined up in serious numbers and started winning elections they were not meant to contest.
On reflection, we bloggers can keep scribbling and achieve nothing until the country’s moral elite invades the GOP to reinforce the battling TeaParty conservatives who, I gather, are a real headache for the worshipful globalists. They control all viable parties because nationalists remain aloof from the contest.

Posted by: Michaël | Mar 30 2014 5:14 utc | 80

28 this is the case in question
And this is a good summary on what was/is at stake for the church in Argenina, and what Bergoglio is accused of.
And this is the story told the other way round: Bergoglio’s list
Basically in Argentina, he was in a position to save people – or not.
This here is a mainstream – FP account of what he did

But it may be the church’s ambiguous stance during Argentina’s last dictatorship, which lasted from 1976 to 1983, that has done the most to damage the institution’s credibility.
Bergoglio, who was also the head of the church’s Argentine Jesuit order, has been harshly criticized for his role during this period, when as estimated 30,000 people were disappeared or killed. In continuing trials, members of the church have even been convicted for human rights crimes.
All this has devastated the church’s credibility, according to José Casanova, a sociologist of religion at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center. The Argentine church “compromised itself by playing a role much more tied to the powers that be,” Casanova said.
Unlike the nuns and priests in El Salvador, Chile, Brazil and the Dominican Republic who spoke out against dictatorship, often becoming victims to it, very few members of Argentina’s church denounced the dictatorship of Gen. Jorge Videla, currently serving multiple life sentences for human rights crimes. This near-absolute silence has been interpreted since as acquiescence, and even complicity.
Perhaps for this reason, Bergoglio’s efforts to present a more charismatic church fell flat.
Estela de Carlotto, the president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, a human rights group formed in 1977 that focuses on identifying grandchildren born to mothers in captivity and appropriated by military families, has accused Bergoglio of being “part of the church that has obscured the country’s history.”

Posted by: somebody | Mar 30 2014 5:38 utc | 82

Posted by: Michaël | Mar 29, 2014 10:10:23 PM | 69
No, they were not welcome. German Nazis killed Russians, Poles, Roma and Sinti, Jews, Communists, Anarchists, Social Democrats who had a spine, priests who had a spine, homosexuals and anybody else who strongly disagreed with them like Jehova’s witnesses in concentration camps. Some people fulfilled several criteria.
The people who welcomed German Nazis in Eastern Europe were fascists interested in ethnic cleansing. And that did not save these fascists from ending up in a concentration camp like Stepan Bandera when he stopped being useful.

Posted by: somebody | Mar 30 2014 5:52 utc | 84

Posted by: Michele | Mar 29, 2014 2:55:04 PM | 12
Autism is a great metaphor.

Posted by: somebody | Mar 30 2014 5:54 utc | 86

@Michelle 84…Huh?

Posted by: Marc | Mar 30 2014 5:57 utc | 88

Posted by: remembererringgiap | Mar 29, 2014 6:45:58 PM | 48
They always cultivate these people. They are used to frighten populations into authoritarian rule.

Posted by: somebody | Mar 30 2014 6:03 utc | 90

how many ways to skin a cat ?
how many ways to fix a non compliant government ?
jihadists, *dissidents*, separatists, r2p n……..*human rights* !!
what a coincidence, another china friendly country gonna bite the dust.
unhrc strikes again….
http://www.countercurrents.org/cc280314.htm

Posted by: denk | Mar 30 2014 6:44 utc | 92

billmon @billmon1 8h
@iwelsh The great thing about Twitter is that it encourages economy of form in ridiculing establishment jackasses like @strobetalbott.
Strobe Talbott @strobetalbott 16h
Those “extremists” in Ukraine Putin denounces? Kremlin funds them to destabilize the country & provide a pretense for Russian “protection.”
billmon
@billmon1
@strobetalbott Suggestion: Fly to Kyiv & tell Right Sector guys (the ones with the clubs & axes) they’re ALL Putin’s stooges. To their faces
billmon @billmon1 12h
@strobetalbott But make sure there’s a video camera present — I want to watch what happens next.

Posted by: brian | Mar 30 2014 7:04 utc | 94

All of this is ancient history. What matters is that Russia has been able to go forward from the Soviet period and modernize whereas the Ukraine is stuck in the past, both in that Ukrainian identity is stuck in what happened during World War II, and in that the Ukraine still has the kind of gangster economy that Russia had in the 1990s. The only thing that can save the Ukraine from the fate of Greece—an IMF-imposed depression—is Russia, but western Ukrainian nationalists would rather go through a brutal austerity regimen than allow Russia to help them fix their economy, because they are hopelessly stuck in the hatreds of the past.

Posted by: Demian | Mar 30 2014 7:37 utc | 96

Interesting blog (in a perfect English, for once), here
http://annaraccoon.com/2014/03/28/the-ukraine-the-pain-and-the-gain/
JLF, Thanks but can you explain me the difference? How does it work?

Posted by: Mina | Mar 30 2014 8:06 utc | 98

Further reflections upon Snowden( with apologies if discussed in previous thread):
Wasn’t there a Stratfor leak which discussed neutralizing Glenn Greenwald? Didn’t this same leak identify
Greenwald’s main weakness as being his ambition?
Is it not also strange that ‘The Guardian’ -bulwark of the establishment and the same paper that does not publish leaks contrary to US/NATO narrative in Turkey or Ukraine-
should take up Snowden’s cause?
I also seem to remember that Snowden initially made comments distancing himself from Assange and company, only to strangely rectify a few days later.
Snowden himself does not appear to see himself as an anti- imperialist and has stated that he not only supports the NSA but in fact is in some way ‘still working for it’.
Nice blog by the way- thanks

Posted by: bassalt@hotmail.com | Mar 30 2014 8:08 utc | 100