Globalization, the Ukraine Coup, the Vilification of Russia and the Endless Printing of Money

In this 69-second video clip, Paul Craig Roberts explains globalization. It is a means to maximize profits of a few global corporations by impoverishing First-World labour, while turning agriculture in Third-World countries into monocultures for export. Thus globalization destroys the self-sufficiency of peoples of both the less developed and the the developed economies.

US/Nato's multiple criminal wars of aggression serve one purpose, to subjugate independent nation states, otherwise known as "rogue regimes,"  to global governance through the UN/EU/WTO/NATO, etc., etc. Ukraine, a constitutional democracy with a huge agricultural resource base and substantial mineral and energy resources was ripe for exploitation by international capital.

In the hands of the Nato/US State Department/Chatham House puppet, Arse Yatsenyuk, the formerly independent Ukraine is now under full globalist control. Ukraine thus provides a base for action against the still independent former Soviet states of Belarus and Russia. Hence the ongoing vilification of Russia, aimed at creating public support for such aggression, including the instigation of internal dissent, sabotage and terrorism, the application of economic sanctions and blockades, and if necessary direct military intervention.

The endless printing of money by Western central banks is designed to conceal the impoverishment of the workforce of First-world countries by reducing the purchasing power of wages while avoiding large nominal wage cuts. A consequence of such action is a rise in asset prices.

Increases in prices of stocks, commodities and real estate largely reflect monetary inflation, not increases in real value, which means that owners of capital are protected from losses resulting from currency debasement, while the workforce is robbed by stealth, the rate at which  inflation diminishes real wages being concealed by phoney consumer price indices that exclude assets, such as real estate, and energy and energy-related goods and services: Canada's "core Consumer Price Index," for example, excludes among other things fruits and vegetables, gasoline, fuel oil, natural gas, intercity transportation.

Related: 

Globalization: The New American World Order: How It Works 
Globalization: Giving the Super-Rich More Clout 
Globalization: Corporate media control of public opinion — creating a false narrative
Globalization: In Ukraine: Nazis Good, Democracy Bad 
Globalization: Russia is dominated by global banks too
Vilification of Russia: Kiev Sniper Shootings: Lies v. Truth
Vilification of Russia: NATO Commander Paints Dark Picture of “An Imminent Russian Threat”
Vilification of Russia: German Media Lies in Ukraine Crisis
Vilification of Russia: Russia Summons German Ambassador After Schaeuble's Hitler-Putin Analogy
Vilification of Russia: Vladimir Putin and the West: To Dance or Not to Dance
Vilification of Russia: By the time you read this Russia will have invaded Ukraine
Military Pressure on Russia: Russia  Questions NATO's "Unreasonable" E. European Escalation
Financial Sanctions on Russia: JPMorgan Unhalts Russian Money Transfer
Economic Sanctions on Russia: America's European puppets dream of doing without Russian gas
Economic Sanctions on Russia: US Threatens Russia Over Petrodollar-Busting Deal
Sabotage in Russia: FSB detains 25 Ukrainians suspected of 'masterminding attacks' in Russia

Crimea and Punishment

The United States of Assimilation spent $five billion on subversion in Ukraine culminating in the violent Nazi-backed overthrow of the legitimate democratic government. The coup resulted in the installation of the Nato/Chatham House/US State Department-funded puppet, Arse Yatsenyuk, thereby extending the South European border of the globalist empire a thousand kilometers Eastward.

The Imperial authorities were naturally outraged when those devious Russians engineered a democratic counter-coup restoring Crimea — accounting for approximately five percent of the territory and population of Ukraine — to constitutional rule as a member of the Russian Federation. This gross affront to the United States of Arrogance necessitates the exemplary punishment and humiliation of Russia.

The problem for the United States of Aggression is to find effective means whereby punishment can be applied. Diplomatic action at the UN has yielded negligible results, with Russia vetoing a motion of condemnation by the UN Security Council and China abstaining, while almost half the members of the General Assembly, including no-friend-of-Nazis Israel, failed to support a non-binding, i.e., meaningless, vote of censure.

On the economic front, Europe has declined to punish itself by damaging commercial relations with its largest energy supplier and third largest single-country trade partner, while America's sanctions on Bank Rossiya have prompted Russia to launch an international payments system in competition with Visa and MasterCard. Well done the United States of Annoyance.

In response to a further insult from the American financial octopus, Russia has undertaken to create its own international financial transaction mechanism that will bypass the Western-controlled Bank of International Settlements. In the long-run this may prove to be another own goal for the United States of Asseveration.

Perhaps the United States of Avengement will also seek to punish the "gas station masquerading as a country" as Russia has been described by the prominent American psychopath Senator Bomb-Bomb-Bomb-Iran McCain, by barring purchases of Russian-built motors that power the Atlas rocket, America's chief means of access to space.

Meantime, Russia is to be vilified by resort to the abusive language of the Cold War, being described as the dictatorship of Putin the Terrible, notwithstanding that Russia has been a constitutional republic with an elected parliament, senate and presidency for more than 20 years.

Russia is also to be condemned for moving troops on its own territory as it prepares to protect, if need be, ethnic Russians in Ukraine subject to martial law enforced by foreign mercenaries. Thus, a Ukraine foreign ministry spokesperson complained:

We have information that the Russian Federation is carrying out unfathomable maneuvers on the borders with Ukraine. Such action can not fail to cause concern especially since we today do not have a clear explanation from the Russian Federation about the aims of these movements.

Yeah, well, while explanations are being demanded one thing Lavrov might demand of Kerry during their next face to face meeting is YTF have you just sent war planes, at least one aerial tanker and additional servicemen to to the Baltic region and Poland? Not that the United States of Assertion is accustomed to explaining its actions on the demands of a mere regional power.

The fact is,  Russia is not morally fit to undertake the "responsibility-to-protect" its fellow nationals, whereas the United States of Annihilation is free bomb any country "back to the Stone Age," as in Iraq and Libya, in the name of protecting those who might otherwise be "killed by their own government."

Ukraine Nazi/Nato Ukraine Coup: April 1, 2014

Zero Hedge: Nigel Farage: Europe Has "Blood On Its Hands" Over Ukraine

The Diplomat: Why Did BRICS Back Russia on Crimea?

VOR: Ukraine's Nazi-backed government to employs Blackwater affiliate to suppress the population?

Shanghai Daily: It’s NATO, not Russia, that poses threat to peace and security

RT: Ron Paul says US aid for Ukraine is intended to bailout banks

Global Research: Ukraine: Western Gangsterism and Propaganda

Global Research: Media Bias: Parroting a “New Cold War” which Threatens America

Global Research: Lynch Law: The Root of US Imperialism

Global Research: The United Nations and the Issue of Ukraine’s Sovereignty: The General Assembly vs. the UN Security Council

Global Research: The Crimean Crisis and US Hypocrisy. “War of Words” to Justify Outright Aggression

Global Research: NATO Steps Up Military Pressure on Russia

Global Research: America, NATO and the Sino-Russian Backlash

European Genocide: Explained by a Diagram

How mass immigration and multi-culturalism is in the process of exterminating the British people. The process explained in one simple diagram:

Read more: Teachers 'assaulted and marginalised in Islamising plot’

Image source: FSD

The image is not entirely accurate. In fact, the white British population is not constant but in rapid decline. London, for example, fifty years ago had a population of around eight million British people. Today London has the same population, most of them not of British descent, which means not only that the immigrant community is growing relative to the indigenous population but that the British people in London are headed for extinction. The same is true in most great British cities. Britons are now a minority in Leicester, Luton and Slough and English children are not even the largest minority in elementary schools in Birmingham, England's second city.

It should also be noted that mass immigration to Britain is not confined to Muslims but includes people from the entire world including large numbers from Eastern Europe, such as this happy Rumanian family leading the good life at public expense.

Liberal anti-racists for the genocide of the European peoples find this kind of posting deeply unpleasant, which it must be for them, since it clearly identifies them in motivation with the mass murdering Nazis of the Hitler era. European liberals differ from the Nazis, it seems, only in hating themselves rather than competing groups — a very strange and deadly dangerous perversion of the human soul. Today, the stamping out of self-hating liberalism should be the first goal of every valid European political movement.

Related:

CanSpeccy: Universal Genocide and the New World Order

Canspeccy: In Praise of Diversity

Ukraine Update March 28–31, 2014

Robert Parry: Ukraine’s Inconvenient Neo-Nazis

Fred Reed: Crimea — Pickle Boy Steps Up

...I have a strategy. If we want to do those Russian rascals in, bring’em lower than dirt, we ought to arrange to have the American public elect their government. You know, on some kind of contract. Then they’d be ruled, like us, by a nursery full of pansies, milquetoasts, ethno-picks, growly feather-weights, diesel dykes, and sorry rich kids who never got into a school-yard fight. Russia would never recover.

We won’t either.

Scott McConnell: Russia's incursion into Ukraine is a response to misguided Western expansionism

Zero Hedge: German Executives Denounce EU/US Leaders Over Russia Confrontation

Global Research: Lavrov: Russia has info about Ukraine’s Right Sector involved in Kiev sniper shooting

Does Russian have proof that Nazi/Nato supplied the snipers that killed both police and demonstrators during the Maidan riots? Never mind, the Empire will lie its way through any such small difficulty. After all, "We are an Empire now and we create our own reality." Which is to say we control the media and we lie, lie and lie again until the people have got the lie firmly in their distracted minds.

But then Lavrov said this:

"People who live in Crimea and who chose Russian citizenship are not related to geopolitics. They want to live in a country which meets their cultural and language request, their so-called 'gene pool'," Lavrov noted.

A rather odd but fascinating statement. Lavrov is intimating that people have the right to be concerned about their own posterity. That nationalism isn't some twisted and immoral sentiment but a totally rational impulse to maximize inclusive fitness that is rooted in our biology shaped by billions of years of evolution.

True that's just one more thing for the "anti-racist" genocidal liberal imperialists intent on destroying the European peoples to rant against, I suppose. Yet it's an idea people do understand in their bones. It may not need to be repeated too often before the idea become ineradicably fixed in the public mind. Then there could be Hell to pay by those who've been selling the lies about the wonders of diversity and the multi-culti world empire.

Global Research: Steve Harper Spewing Russophobic Lies in Europe

Harper believes if you're a puppet, you should be a good puppet, which means when the Empire you serve is creating its own reality, you roll up your sleeves and, like an Alberta farm boy who still has mud on his boots, spread the manure with manly vigor.

Lavrov: If West accepts coup-appointed Kiev govt, it must accept a Russian Crimea

...We are convinced that it would be impossible to work out solutions to all of Ukraine’s problems without a unanimous agreement on the introduction of the federal form of government in Ukraine. Each region needs to have the opportunity to elect directly its local authorities, the executive branch and the governors, and to have all the rights and needs of its citizens satisfied across all spheres, including economy, finances, culture, language, social activities or the right for friendly relations and travel to neighboring states, be it Poland, Lithuania or Russia.

Oh the Heck with local autonomy. Ukraine's a plutocracy now, with billionaires Tymoshenko and Poroshenko contesting the Presidency. And as US Secretary of State John Kerry say, "You don't just in the 21st Century, act in 19th Century fashion and run society in the interests of the public." Jeeze, the Russian view of the World is so outmoded.

RT: Ukraine's Greek Economic Future

NBC Tour of Russia–Ukraine Border: Finds No Evidence of Russian Troop Concentration

Asked about this apparent refutation of alarmist US claims about a threatening Russian military build-up, John Kerry, US Secretary of State said: "You don't just in the 21st Century behave in 19th Century fashion and base diplomacy on real facts. So I'm warning that Commie dictator Putin if he doesn't de-escalate soon we'll just have to impose much harsher sanctions on Russia."

Fredrik Hagberg's speech to the Ukrainian Revolution
Choose freedom and national independence not US/Nato's New World Order

Seems pointless lecturing Ukrainians on nationalism. Ukraine is not a nation state, it is a mini empire encompassing former Russian provinces and imperial possessions including areas dominated by Poles, Hungarians, Romanians, Bulgarians plus an admixture of sundry others including Germans, Tartars and the ubiquitous Greeks and Jews.

If the Ukrainians really want a nation state, they'll have to slough off their border regions, which could be done painlessly by way of a referendum conducted on a county by county basis, which would offer inhabitants of contiguous areas adjoining a neighboring state the option of union with that neighboring state.

But nation states are not what the New World Order is about. The New World Order is about destroying the nation state. So Ukraine as presently constituted as a collection antagonistic nationalities is an ideal laboratory for the imposition of the US-inspired religion of political and environmental correctness. And since the folks in Ukraine fell for a fake revolution bought and paid for by John, You-don't-just-in-the-21st-Century Kerry's State Department, they'd better just get used to it.

Yang Hengjun: Crimea: Ideals and Reality, Glory and Dreams

Lavrov: We were promised that NATO would not bring its military infrastructure closer to our borders – and we were cheated

NeoCon Think Tanker: Watch Out, Putin's Gonna Take Finland

Patrick Buchanan: Behind the Russian Rage: The Geography and History Lessons That Obama Skipped

Pepe Escobar: Asia will not 'isolate' Russia

Tony Cartalucci. R2P: The Tables Turn on the West in Crimea

Jim Dean: Right Sector’s Muzychko gets three bullets with dinner

Robert Parry: American psychopaths lying their way to war

Paul R. Pillar: Forgetting the Lessons of Deterrence

Zero Hedge: Russia's Military Begins Nuclear War Drill

Paul Craig Roberts: Canadian PM Stephen Harper is a lying puppet of the warmongering United States of Aggression

The American puppet, Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper, openly lied on Canadian TV that Russian President Putin had invaded Crimea, threatened Ukraine, and was restarting the Cold War. The host of the TV program sat and nodded his head in agreement with these bald-faced lies.

The script that Washington handed to its Canadian puppet has been handed to all of Washington’s puppets, and everywhere in the West the message is the same. “Putin invaded and annexed Crimea, Putin is determined to rebuild the Soviet Empire, Putin must be stopped.”

I hear from many Canadians who are outraged that their elected government represents Washington and not Canadians.

The good news is that the jerk Harper will almost certainly be gone in the 2015 election. The bad news is that the jerk Harper thinks that if his American NeoCon masters are able to kick-start a world war, it will keep him in power despite his meager current popularity.

RT: Eastern Ukraine rises against Kiev LIVE UPDATES

BBC: Ukraine crisis: Russia vows no invasion
In an interview with state TV channel Rossiya 1 on Saturday, Mr Lavrov said: "We have absolutely no intention of - or interest in - crossing Ukraine's borders."

He added that Russia was ready to protect "the rights of Russians and Russian-speaking people in Ukraine, using all available political, diplomatic and legal means".

Zero Hedge: West Desperate To Break Russia-China Axis, But "Money Talks" Straight To Putin

Zero Hedge: Putin Calls Obama To "Draw Attention To Ukraine Extremists", Obama Replies With Request For Putin To Pull Out

Mish: Ukraine "On Verge of Financial Bankruptcy" Reaches $27 Billion "Kamikaze" Deal With IMF

CounterPunch: Time to Disband NATO

Global Post: Sanctions. How Russia could strangle the US space program

RT: Are US claims a of Russian military build-up on Ukraine border due to bad intelligence, stupidity, lies?

It's not just the Russians wondering where the Western media get their Ukraine info.
The impunity that Western governments and their media mouthpieces have so long enjoyed while telling grotesque and even implausible lies may be coming to an end, in which case, even if there were conclusive evidence of Russian preparation for war, few in the West will believe it.

Itar-Tass: Austrian Foreign Minister against Ukraine’s admittance to NATO

Bloomberg: Crimea Resolution Backed by U.S. Barely Gets UN Majority
The motion was supported by 100 out of 193 states, including three piddling US protectorates, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, and American Samoa plus all those states that act as more or less involuntary hosts to 971 US overseas military bases (although among the latter there was one exception, Israel, which failed to support the motion).

YNet: Israel Rootin' for Putin

CanSpeccy: Stephen Harper in Europe to Relaunch the Cold War

CSM: Russia accuses West of 'shameless blackmail' in UN vote on Ukraine

WRH: Obama: Russia must pull back troops from Ukraine border

Nigel Farage: The EU's Stupid Imperialist Policy on Ukraine

CanSpeccy: Ukraine Update March 27, 2014

Stephen Harper in Europe to Relaunch the Cold War

Traveling in the wake of Barak Obama's $10-million-dollar unapplauded Brussels speech calling on Europeans to punish Russia by imposing sanctions that would punish themselves, Canada's Steven Harper urged a Munich business audience to make Russia’s natural-gas exports a target for anti-Russian sanctions.

Harper's hope is that Europe will substitute Canadian liquified natural gas for Russian gas. But liquified gas will never compete on price with gas piped overland from well to consumer, and Europeans are not much into punishing themselves, so forget Canadian natural gas sales in Europe.

Then there's Canada tar sands oil, but since Harper's government has been too incompetent to allow the construction of a single new pipeline necessary to move tar sands oil to the West coast, the East coast, or South to the USA, the scope for exports to Europe is minimal. Instead, much tar sands oil is shipped expensively and dangerously by rail and sold in a restricted US market at well below the world price.

Then Harper sought to justify his new cold war rhetoric by expressing his concern for the Russian people. Yeah right, punish Russia to help the people. Especially, Harper's concern, he said, is for the younger people, who "want the same standards of governance and information flow that the rest of us have."

Quite how boycotting Russian oil and gas will improve life for Russia's young people Harper didn't say, probably because, as perhaps the World's most autistic national leader, he hasn't a clue. Still he's probably following the line of US UN envoy Samantha Power who seems to think that young people in Russia would like to see more of Pussy Riot copulating in church.

But the logic behind Harper's campaign to help Russia's young people, is that by screwing Russia hard enough, young people will join the Western-funded revolutionaries that are to topple Putin's regime to be replaced by a replica of Ukraine's Arse Yatsenyuk regime, which fronts for the IMF and global capital.

Whether Harper's intervention against the government of Russia will improve the lives of young Russians is much to be doubted. But for a prime minister headed for defeat at the 2015 election, Harper's likely more interested in impressing those who could provide him with a comfy after-office income stream from multiple corporate directorships — unless that is, he's planning to follow the example of his ex-chief of staff, Nigel Wright, and devote his retirement from public life to helping out at a soup kitchen.

Ukraine Update March 27, 2014

What Putin Thinks

This is what Putin thinks: The Americans promised Gorbachev that they would not take NATO into Eastern Europe, but the Americans did. The Americans withdrew from the ABM Treaty, which prohibited escalating the arms race with anti-ballistic missile systems. The Americans arranged with Poland to deploy anti-ballistic missile bases on Poland’s border with Russia. The Americans tell us the fantastic lie that the purpose of American missile bases in Poland is to protect Europe from non-existent Iranian ICBMs. The Americans change their war doctrine to elevate nuclear weapons from a retaliatory deterrent to a pre-emptive first strike force. The Americans pretend that this change in war doctrine is directed at terrorists, but we know it is directed at Russia. The Americans have financed “color revolutions” in Georgia and Ukraine and hope to do so in the Russian Federation itself. The Americans support the terrorists in Chechnya. The Americans trained and equipped the Georgian military and gave it the green light to attack our peacekeepers in South Ossetia. The Americans have financed the overthrow of the elected government in Ukraine and blame me for the anxiety this caused among Crimeans who on their own volition fled Ukraine and returned to Russia from whence they came. Even Gorbachev said that Khrushchev should never have put Crimea into Ukraine. Solzhenitsyn said that Lenin should not have put Russian provinces into eastern and southern Ukraine. Now I have these Russian provinces agitating to return to Russia, and the Americans are blaming me for the consequences of their own reckless and irresponsible actions.

From Paul Craig Roberts' article: How much war does Washington want?

Obama says 'bigger nations cannot simply bully smaller ones'. Wait... what?

Nigel Farage: 'Europe has blood on its hands in Ukraine'

Pepe Escobar: Why the EU can't 'isolate' Russia

German Chancellor Angela Merkel could teach US President Barack Obama one or two things about how to establish a dialogue with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

As if Obama would listen. He'd rather boost his constitutional law professor self, and pompously lecture an elite eurocrat audience in the glittering Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, like he did this Wednesday, on how Putin is the greatest threat to the US-administered global order since World War II. Well, it didn't go that well; most eurocrats were busy taking selfies or twittering.

Putin, meanwhile, met with the CEO of German engineering and electrical conglomerate Siemens, Joe Kaeser, at his official residence outside Moscow. Siemens invested more than US$1.1 billion in Russia over the past two years, and that, Kaeser said, is bound to continue. Angela was certainly taking notes.

Obama couldn't behave otherwise. The constitutional law expert knows nothing about Russia, in his (meager) political career never had to understand how Russia works, and may even fear Russia - surrounded as he is by a coterie of spectacularly mediocre aids...

Russia is global not regional power: parliamentarian

Obama compares Russia's "brute force" referendum in Crimea with Iraq War

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it."
Joseph Goebbels

The thing is, when you take the big lie to the next level, you have complete bullshit. Then people think you must be, you know, mental. Which is why, following his preposterous statement in Brussels, during a visit that cost his European hosts $10 million, no one clapped. Hey, at least they didn't laugh out loud.

Russian troop buildup on Ukraine border?

Concerning which, Obama said:

we oppose what appears to be an effort of intimidation.

Naturally.

Ukraine's US-backed, unelected government includes Russophobic neo-Nazi's who control the military and the security services. A prominent candidate for President of Ukraine has expressed the desire to machine-gun or nuke Ukraine's eight million ethnic Russians. The Government in Kyiv has hired foreign mercenaries to impose control over Ukraine's majority Russian-speaking Eastern provinces.

So how's Russia supposed to react?

Russia has adopted America's favorite pretext for aggressive war, the so-called "Responsibility to Protect." But in this case, Putin has a perfectly valid reason to suspect that Ukraine's ethnic Russians may be in need of physical protection. By making clear that Russia will intervene to prevent the oppression of Russians in Eastern Ukraine, the Government of Russia is engaging in a legitimate and responsible exercise in R-2-P. Not that that has prevented O'Bomber from comparing Russia's actions to America's grotesque war crimes in Iraq, Libya and elsewhere.

Der Spiegel: The Crimean Crisis from the Kremlin's Perspective

How Sanctions Against Russia Could Signal the Beginning of ‘World War III’

German chancellor Merkel against imposition of economic sanctions on Russia

This may mark the beginning of the end of US global hegemony. Germany, the powerhouse of the EU economy, which is the largest economy in the world, has massive investments in Russia, by both giant firms such as VW and Siemens, and hundreds of the mittelstand firms that powered Germany's post war economic miracle. The last thing Germany wants is to kill this profitable collaboration between German capital and know-how and Russia's great human and natural resources.

But if Germany and Russia become interdependent, then American interests will have to take second place to joint German–Russian interests, and there's really nothing the US can do about it. With Europe's economic clout and Russia's military clout, the US will be checked if not check-mated.

Swiss Nix Russian Sanctions

See also:

Ukraine Update March 26, 2014
Ukraine Update March 24, 2014
Our Nazi Friends In Ukraine
Ukraine: Motes and Beams
Ukraine Fallout
The Financial Times' Insane Spin on the Crimea Vote for Union with Russia
Message from the Mainstream: Putin Must Be Paranoid, He Thinks Nazi-NATO Threatens Russia
Ukraine Update March 14, 2014
Killers in Kiev: Located in Buildings Controlled By Maidan — Coordinated by US Special Forces?
Ukrainian PM, Arse Yatsenyuk: A Globalist Stooge Funded by Chatham House, NATO, and the US State Department
For Ukraine, What's Wrong With Independence?
Putin’s Lost the Plot, In a World of His Own, Just a Total Loser, LOL
BBC: Neo-Nazis in Kiev
Those Whom the United States Seeks to Destroy, They First Call Hitlerites
Nato Snipers in Kiev and planned false-flag attacks on the Ukrainian military
Ukraine Hypocrisy
Want to Know What Russia Wants in Ukraine? Listen to What Russia Says
Ukraine Update, March 2, 2014
Reaping the Ukrainian Whirlwind: Tyranny in Kiev, Russian Nukes 90 Miles off America's Southern Shore
Ukraine: Just One Step in the Assimilation of Eurasia by the New World Order

Ukraine Update March 26

Russian Sanctions: Russian Government Dumps iPads, Switches To Samsung

If Steve Harper had not been acting like a jerk, they might have turned to Blackberry, which offers better security than either Apple or Samsung.

Russian stock market up 40% since March 14, pre-Crimea referendum low

Obama's Maidan activist friends — traitors, bandits, snakes, and murderers — turn on one another

Russia to create national payment system to rival Visa, Mastercard

American sanctions are Obama's way of making the global banking system a bit more competitive.

Ukraine agrees to 50% gas price hike amid IMF talks

But don't worry folks, your friend John, Dobbin Kerry's has given you enough to cover the increase for over a month. Well it's not a gift, it's a loan. Well, not exactly a loan, more a loan guarantee, so make sure you pay it back.

Barack Obama has called on Russia to de-escalate the crisis in Ukraine or face more sanctions

Like, we started this whole thing by installing a Nazi-backed Russophobic government in Ukraine in place of the legitimate, democratically elected Russia-friendly regime, so now you Hitler Putin person have gotta de-escalate or we'll hit you again. Like, grovel man, grovel.

This is what counts as diplomacy by the expansionist American Empire.

Zero Hedge: What Happens If A US President Stops Speaking, And Nobody Claps

Ukraine wants closer military ties with U.S. and NATO after Crimea annexation

Which is to say the expansionist, Hitlerite US/NATO empire wants to assimilate Ukraine before continuing Eastward. Making way for the New Fascist World Order is what O'Barmy means by de-escalating the crisis: get out of our way.

Siemens 'to invest long-term in Russia'

America's spokesperson provocateurs:


NEO: Beware the Sheep with Fangs

Zero Hedge: Ukraine Only Has Enough Gasoline For A Month

Larissa Smirnova: Six Questions About Russia, Crimea, and Ukraine

Zero Hedge: Dear Ukrainians, Your Gas Bill Goes Up By 50% On May 1, Have A Nice Day

Simon Jenkin: Crimea: all this virile cold war talk won't force Vladimir Putin to slink back

John Mearsheimer: Getting Ukraine Wrong

Slaughter of Ukrainian Ultranationalist Olexander Muzychko Signals Split in Maidan Leadership

Moscow Slams Closure of Russian TV in Ukraine

West, Russia signal line drawn in Ukraine crisis

What, they're just gonna let that Hitler Putin person get away with the annexation of the Sudetenland or whatever the Hell with no more Churchillian rhetoric from Stevie Harper, the Mighty Mouse of the North? Shame.

Right Sector Thug Surplus to Requirement


Itar-Tass: Ukraine to deploy foreign mercenaries to suppress (oppress?) ethnic Russians

Zero Hedghe: "Anarchy" Returns To Ukraine As Ultra-Nationalist Leader Killed By Police

Pepe Escobar: How Crimea plays in Beijing

...the UN Security Council itself is a joke, with US ambassador Samantha "Nothing Compares to You" Power - one of the mothers of R2P ("responsibility to protect") - carping on "Russian aggression", "Russian provocations" and comparing the Crimean referendum to a theft. Oh yes; bombing Iraq, bombing Libya and getting to the brink of bombing Syria were just innocent humanitarian gestures. Samantha The Humanitarian arguably gives a better performance invoking Sinead O'Connor in her shower.

Russian ambassador Vitaly Churkin was polite enough to say, "these insults addressed to our country" are "unacceptable". It's what he added that carried the real juice; "If the delegation of the United States of America expects our cooperation in the Security Council on other issues, then Power must understand this quite clearly."

Samantha The Humanitarian, as well as the whole bunch of juvenile bystanders in the Obama administration, won't understand it. Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov gave them a little help; Russia didn't want to use the Iranian nuclear talks to "raise the stakes", but if the US and the EU continue with their sanctions and threats, that's what's going to happen.

Ukraine and Detroit: How Different?

Daily Mail: Russia demands parts of Ukraine are given regional autonomy as NATO condemns build-up of forces on the border

Daily Mail: The weapons used by our Nazi friends in Kiev that brought down the democratically elected government of Ukraine

Alaska back to Russia Petition approaches 24,000 signatures this AM

Global Research: Ukraine: The Corporate Annexation. “For Cargill, Chevron, Monsanto, It’s a Gold Mine of Profits”

Patrick Buchanan: Putin Crazy Like a Fox

... if Putin is not a Russian imperialist out to re-establish Russian rule over non-Russian peoples, who and what is he?

In the estimation of this writer, Vladimir Putin is a blood-and-soil, altar-and-throne ethnonationalist who sees himself as Protector of Russia and looks on Russians abroad the way Israelis look upon Jews abroad, as people whose security is his legitimate concern.

Which in the estimation of this blogger explains the extraordinarily high regard in which Putin is held, not just in Russia, but in Europe and America. The European peoples are being systematically genocided by their own ruling elites, and payback could come any time now. It is not Russia that is most likely to collapse like a house of cards as that old psychopath Senator MacCain seems to think, but the American Empire that currently occupies and seeks to destroy the European peoples.

See also: Universal Genocide and the New World Order

Mish: Ukraine's currency collapse

NYTimes: For Ukraine Military in Crimea, Glum Capitulation and an Uncertain Future

As usual, suavely written misdirection by the NYTimes. Capitulating to the Russians offered Ukrainian service-men the chance of enlistment in the Russian armed forces without loss of rank and with double pay. What's to be "glum" about that? No wonder 18,000 Ukrainian service men out of a total of 20,000 in Crimea opted to remain in Crimea, which is the place that most of them call home.

Washington Times: Obama threatens harsher sanctions on Russia — if Russia "seizes" more territory

That's a bit rich after Obama's Nazti friends in Kyiv "seized" the whole of Ukraine.

But, whatever. It looks increasingly as though there was, if not a deal, a realization in Washington, that if Nazi-NATO grabbed Ukraine, Russia would have Crimea back. How else explain why, with at least 20,000 troops in Crimea to match Russia's 16 - 22,000 (as allowed by treaty), the forces of the Ukrainian rebel government fired not a single shot to prevent the referendum and the subsequent re-absorption of Crimea into the Russian Federation?

Zero Hedge: Russia Prepares Mega-Deal With India After Locking Up China With "Holy Grail" Gas Deal

Or as Putin might say, Frack the EU, let them produce their own gas.

Stevwe Weissman: Meet the Americans Who Put Together the Coup in Kiev

Jim Dean: Ukraine’s Ku Klux Klan – NATO’s New Ally

CBS: 61 percent of Americans think the U.S. has no responsibility for events in Ukraine

65 percent of Americans do not think the U.S. should provide military aid and equipment to Ukraine in response to Russia's actions

CBC: Ukraine in talks with IMF for $15-20B loan package

Having spurned Russia's offer of $15 billion, Ukraine now has to accept a loan with binding conditions and strict supervision from the IMF.

Shanghai Daily: Russia denies mobilizing troops near Ukrainian border

Zero Hedge: US Prepares To Provide A Billion To Ukraine As Detroit Plans Mass Water Shutoffs Over $260 Million

BBC: Ukraine far-right leader Muzychko dies 'in police raid'

Now the Nazti scum have done their work in ousting the legitimate government in Ukraine, time to wipe them out? More about Muzychko's death, which he predicted only days ago, from RT.

Afghanistan Recognizes Crimean Union With Russia

In a snub to its Western backers, Afghanistan joined Syria and Venezuela this weekend to become one of the few countries to publicly support Russia's recent annexation of Crimea (TOLO News). On Sunday, Afghan President Hamid Karzai's office released a statement saying: "[W]e respect the decision the people of Crimea took through a recent referendum that considers Crimea as part of the Russian Federation"

Ingrates. We waged war in their country for more than a decade to make them democratic now they refuse to ignore the democratic will of the people of Crimea when it suits us.

Russian sanctions Cause Canadian businesses Pain

Theodore Dalrymple: Why Europe Sleeps: It has no appetite for conflict with Putin

It is not only cleanliness, but concision that is next to godliness. In theory, then, Twitter should promote near-godliness, for it encourages people to express their thoughts in few words. A good example of such admirable concision was the tweet from Laurent Fabius, the French foreign minister, reproduced in the electronic version of Le Monde on March 19, 2014: “On the one hand we cannot imagine delivering arms to Russia, on the other there is the reality of employment” (the French have a $1.7 billion deal to build a miniature aircraft carrier for the Russians). This will hardly have Russian president Vladimir Putin quaking in his shoes; on the contrary, it will set him laughing and reassure him that he can mock Western Europe to his heart’s content.

Thank Goodness Romney Isn’t President

Look to Solidarity, Not Sudetenland

Among the less helpful historical analogies that have been rolled out by neoconservative publications such as National Review, the New Republic, and the Washington Post since the onset of the Crimean Crisis are comparisons between what is happening now in Ukraine and what occurred three quarters of a century ago during the Munich Crisis. While anyone possessed of even a modicum of education understands that analogies to Munich serve more to obscure rather than clarify, it should hardly need stating that Vladimir Putin, unlike Hitler, is not an unhinged geopolitical revisionist who harbors a desire to re-make Europe to fit some demonic plan. And yet the tenor of the American media’s coverage of the man actually demands that it be said.

 A Coup in Crimea—or in Russia?

... Several days ago, a delegation of senators led by John McCain decamped to Kiev, where they issued the expected statements about freedom and democracy. McCain promised bipartisan support for Ukraine’s “territorial integrity”—meaning Crimea belongs to Ukraine—and against “Russia’s baseless violation of these principles and efforts to divide the country.” He promised to lobby for long-term American military assistance to Ukraine. Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy promised to “deliver a blow” to Russia to make clear the price to be paid for “aggression.” Dripping patronizing scorn, Arizona Senator Jeff Flake reminded Russians, “This is not your grandfather’s war.”

It’s not simply senators, of course. John Kerry lectures Putin about being stuck in a 19th-century mindset while condescendingly offering him an “off-ramp”—a face-saving way to allow the Western alliance to move right up to Russia’s borders. EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton tells reporters that she is “trying to send the strongest possible signals to Russia … trying to ensure that they understand the seriousness of the situation.” But who is it really who fails to “understand the seriousness?” The senators who parachute into Kiev for a frisson of media coverage or the Russians who gag when the United States tries to push NATO down their throats, contradicting assurances given to Moscow as the Soviet Union broke up? As John Mearsheimer pointed out in an important Times op-ed:

Washington played a key role in precipitating this dangerous situation, and Mr. Putin’s behavior is motivated by the same geopolitical considerations that influence all great powers, including the United States.

What is the goal of the West here? If you listen to some, it is to provoke Maidan-type demonstrations in Moscow, to overturn Putin. National Endowment for Democracy’s chief, Carl Gershman, one of the major dispensers of the “pro-democracy” money being spread about in Kiev, warned last year that Putin risked losing not just his “near abroad” but Russia itself. “Dear Vlad,” McCain tweeted two years ago, “Arab Spring is coming to a neighborhood near you.”...

Canada Pays Lip Service to Ukraine Neo-Nazi Government. The Ghosts of Baby Yar

Canada’s support [for Ukraine's violent coup d'état] is a continuation of its historical support for Ukrainian war criminals guilty of genocide at the end of WWII, but unprosecuted to further their uses to anti-Soviet policies. The Harper government is championing a political structure with its roots in Babi-Yar. Babi Yar is not an example of fascism, it’s an example of the extremes of Nazism and an inhumanity Europe has been teaching the New World for half a millenium.

Harper’s swift support of a neo-Nazi beachhead far more advanced than the inroads Golden Dawn has made in Greece, or Jobbik in Hungary, may suggest to Canadians that there is something very abnormal about Canada’s current political norm.

Regime Change in Ukraine and the IMF’s Bitter “Economic Medicine”

Living With Lies

When the actions of political elites are contrary to the interests of the masses, they are justified by lies. In failing states, such as the Soviet Union, lies become the standard coin of government communication.

Lies work in the short-run, but the public becomes cynical when they are told lies without end. In Russia, during the Soviet era, it was said that  in the state-owned newspaper Izvestiya (Russian for "news") there was no Pravda (Russian for "truth") and that in the state-owned newspaper Pravda there was no Izvestiya.

Today, the same lack of truth and significant information applies to, say, the New York Times and the Washington Post, which are not state-owned but, appropriately, in a plutocracy, largely or wholely owned by, respectively, Carlos Slim, one of the World's two or three wealthiest men, and Amazon's Jeff Bezos.

And as in Soviet Russia, the American public today has become cynical of government pronouncements. Thousands in Alaska have petitioned the White House for union with Russia, President Obama's approval rating in America is barely half that of President Putin's in Russia, and the British currently have a higher opinion of the Russian Federation than their own European Union.

But the American elite aren't giving up.  Crass Sunstein, former Obama information Tzar, husband of Samantha Power, America's UN envoy who recently auditioned to join the well-known Russian porno group, Pussy Riot, has a plan to keep the dolts deluded.

In his 2008 paper 'Conspiracy Theories' written with Adrian Vermeule, he proposed the following eminently reasonable measures:

1. Government might ban conspiracy theorizing.
2. Government might impose some kind of tax, financial or otherwise, on those who disseminate such theories.
3. Government might itself engage in counter-speech, marshaling arguments to discredit conspiracy theories.
4. Government might formally hire credible private parties to engage in counter-speech.
5. Government might engage in informal communication with such parties, encouraging them to help."

But so far, nothing much has been done. And still people just don't believe half what Western governments tell them, whether it be about 9/11, the Sandy Hook Massacre or the Neo-Nazti coup against a legitimate democratically elected government in Ukraine. This stubborn skepticism has prompted Sunstein to further rumination, the unstated premise of which seems to be the one thing that the public at large does not accept: namely, that whatever the government says must be true.

From that assumption, the challenge is not to distinguish truth from falsehood in the public pronouncements of government, but merely how to treat the mental condition of conspiracy theorists. And to do that, says Sunstein, one must be wary about efforts to establish "the truth" as they may increase suspicion, which obviously will be the case if by "efforts to establish 'the truth'", one means banning conspiracy theories, taxing conspiracy theories, etc., etc.

But the good Harvard professor suggests something new: a means to manipulate the conspiracy theorist by "affirming, rather than attacking, their basic values and commitments," i.e., engaging in deception, since clearly the party attempting to force the government's line down the doubter's throat, and the truth be damned, does not share the doubter's basic values and commitments.

What eludes the Harvard professor apparently, is the idea that the truth is best assessed by honest and open debate, and on the basis of facts that governments often seem anxious to conceal. In that connection, Kevin Barrett has an interesting proposal for Sunstein: a public debate about 9/11.

Dear Cass Sunstein,

As one of the “purveyors of conspiracy theories” you want the government to “disable,” I am writing to invite you to “cognitively infiltrate” my radio show and “disable” my 9/11 conspiracy theories by arguing against them using logic and evidence.

I have a large audience interested in the topic; my Press TV op-ed published last July may be the most-read article ever published on conspiracy theories. By conspiring to do a radio show, we could get a lot of attention and sell a lot of books. So if you turn me down – keeping in mind that this is my third interview request – there must be a nefarious explanation ; – )

Seriously, I think we have more common ground than meets the eye. I agree that conspiracy theories seem to be spinning out of control, and that the “everything’s a conspiracy” mind-set is a threat to rational discourse and democratic institutions. But your proposed solution – a government conspiracy to suppress conspiracy theories – would just make the problem worse.

A better solution: Radical transparency, starting with an American Glasnost campaign to expose every secret ever held by the post-WWII national security state, featuring a truth-and-reconcilation commission to deal with the malefactors, followed by a radical redesign of our institutions.

American Glasnost could begin with a no-holds-barred official effort to fully expose the truth about coups and false flag events, economic and actual hit men, UFOs, etc. Then we could re-tool our democratic institutions and mandate hand-counted paper ballots, transparent public currency rather than privately-printed Fed funny-money, rigorous enforcement of antitrust laws with extra rigor for big media, and a much-scaled-down and largely secrecy-free national defense sector.

Douglas Rushkoff, an author you should be familiar with, has eloquently explained that new communications technologies undermine secrecy and mandate transparency. For example, when American officials conspire to illegally overthrow governments, as recently happened in Ukraine, Putin can intercept the conversations, post them on the internet, and create a PR disaster for the conspirators.

The rise in “conspiracy theories” is driven by this kind of widespread dissemination of information about the misdeeds of the powerful, and there is no way to turn the clock back and restore a culture of official secrecy, short of a brutal totalitarian lockdown on information.

Your program of “nudging” the public away from both real and fanciful conspiracy memes just won’t work. My friends and I can nudge the public toward fact-based conspiracy memes more effectively than you and your co-conspirators can nudge them in the other direction, even if you outspend us by billions of dollars. Truth is the great equalizer.

Since you are an illustrious law professor, I am sure you can argue ably against the positions outlined above. Please do so – by joining me on my radio program and getting your message out to the audience you want to convince. Stop preaching to the choir – go straight to the conspiracy theorists and explain to us why we are wrong!

I await your reply, and look forward to speaking with you.

Such a debate is something to look forward to. But what odds would a rational person offer on the chance of it happening?

Ukraine Update: March 24, 2014

The Enigmatic Arse Yatsenyuk:
>


How Germans Really Feel About Russia's Annexation Of Crimea: Yawn 

Lavrov: Stuff the G8

Crazed Ukrainian Ex-Convict, Ex-President (Future Mental Hospital Patient?) Urges Nuclear Genocide of Russians



after being asked, rhetorically, by her counterparty, "what should we do now with the 8 million Russians that stayed in Ukraine. They are outcasts"... to which she replies: "They must be killed with nuclear weapons."

These people are really Nazti.

Interpreting Putin

With Europe rotten and United States weakened, a resurgent and confident Russia will definitely not let a geo-strategically important former Soviet republic fall entirely into the West’s camp. By annexing Crimea, Putin not only secured Russia’s naval base and its strategic gateway to the Black Sea, he also sent a powerful message to Ukraine and the West: Ignore Russia’s legitimate strategic concerns at your own peril.

Stevie Harper's Foolish Ukraine Intervention Earns Russian Sanctions
It has also cost Canadian tax-payers $220 million, a gift from Harper to an illegitimate Neo-Nazi regime that took power by murderous force, despite an agreement accepted by the legitimate government of Ukraine and endorsed by three European heads of state for new elections. (See also: Harper's Dilbert Inspired Governing Style)

Ottawa has provided $220 million in aid to the interim Ukrainian government and has slapped travel bans and economic sanctions on dozens of officials and oligarchs aligned with Putin and the former Viktor Yanukovych government. 

Let's see, that's about $220 per elligible Canadian voter of Ukrainian extraction. Canada's 2015 election's gonna be expensive.

Vladimir Zhirinovsky Proposes Ukraine Carve-up

RT: Massive anti-Maidan rallies grip eastern Ukraine as residents demand referendum

Thierry Meyssan: Is Crimea’s Shift the First of a Long Series?

Stephen Harper, satrap of America's remote Northern colony of
Canada, visiting with fascists in Kyiv. During his visit, Harper
declared Russia to be a rogue state. Source.

Criminal Actions by Obama; Two Wrongs Make a Right

Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/03/criminal-actions-by-obama-two-wrongs.html#92R1pyWyhR8QS0Bu.99

Mish: Criminal Actions by Obama; Two Wrongs Make a Right

Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/03/criminal-actions-by-obama-two-wrongs.html#92R1pyWyhR8QS0Bu.99

Criminal Actions by Obama; Two Wrongs Make a Right

Read more at http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2014/03/criminal-actions-by-obama-two-wrongs.html#92R1pyWyhR8QS0Bu.99

Would America Go To War With Russia?

Ukraine Official Warns "Chance Of War With Russia Growing" As Mike Rogers Calls For Sending Weapons To Ukraine

Ukraine's east rallies for secession referendum

Alaskans seek to join Russian Federation

Pepe Escobar: Russian sanctions as war and farce

Peter Hitchens: We're being dragged into a new Cold War by a puffed-up bullfrog (and I don't mean President Putin)

...the silly, half-educated politicians of today still like to pose as tough guys with the following formula, addressed to anyone who suggests that Russia might have a case over Ukraine and Crimea.

It goes: ‘Putin is Hitler. You are Neville Chamberlain. I  am Winston Churchill – hear me roar.’

Apart from knowing nothing about European history, and apart from their bone-headed inability to distinguish Christian Russia from the communist USSR, these people also don’t understand what is going on in Ukraine.

It never occurs to them that Russia has good historical reasons to fear its neighbours. It never crosses their mind that the borders drawn by the victorious West in 1992, like those drawn at Versailles in 1919, are an unsustainable, unjust mistake.

They never ask why Britain (or the USA) should be hostile to Russia, or what the quarrel between us actually is. What is it to us whose flag flies over Sevastopol? Yet it matters greatly to those who live there....

 Putin is making the West's Cold Warriors look like fools

William Hague was on rather shaky ground when he argued this week that Moscow has chosen ‘the route to isolation’ by recognising Crimea’s referendum. On the contrary, it is the European Union and the United States who look as if they have seriously overplayed their respective hands in Ukraine. Across Asia, Africa and Latin America, the cry of ‘western hypocrisy’ has been heard much louder than complaints about Vladimir Putin. 

Ukraine fiasco marks end of the EU’s imperial dream

 

Medvedev Warns Ukraine of Possible State Collapse

Putin to put Russian bases in Latin America
Read more at http://www.wnd.com/2014/03/putin-to-put-russian-bases-in-latin-america/#MJwuCHDelw5eMYRT.99

EU-Ukraine trade pact paves way for brutal austerity

The pact, signed in Brussels, declares that the Ukrainian government must “embark swiftly on an ambitious program of structural reforms” and submit to “an agreement with the [International Monetary Fund].” The plans being drawn up are based on the “Greek model”—the savage cuts imposed on Greece by the IMF and the EU that have produced a massive growth in unemployment and poverty.

LA Times: Shaping a response to Russia will be a high-stakes test for Obama The LA Times having no particular response in mind except for the West (the Europeans, anyhow) to cut of their nose to spite their face by killing trade with Russia, their chief energy supplier, with no particular object in mind, and ignoring the fact that Russia will never voluntarily slough off Crimea, a Russian-speaking region of mainly ethnic Russians that just voted by a huge majority for union with Russia.

BBC: Nato concerned about the threat to Moldova's Trans-Dniester region
As if any one cares about Transnistria, a useless sliver of land, far-removed from Russia's border, with a poverty stricken population of barely half a million people. But Russia's gone rogue, folks, anything can happen: Russian tanks could be rolling down the Champs Elysee any time now.

Meantime: Brits Want Vote on Joining Russia

Russia plans large investments in Crimea’s economy

Big Lie On the Dnieper: False Flag Murders in Kiev? 

MIT Technology Review: The U.S. Can’t Really Undermine Russia by Exporting Gas

Yatsenyuk: Ukraine will have to buy Russian gas even at $500 per 1,000 cubic meters

“Our country is fully energy dependent on Russia. It is impossible currently to give up Russian gas [imports],” Yatsenyuk stated Friday.

And might have added that: we think by continually insulting Russia they will give us a bigger discount on the price of gas — not.

The West's antiquated unipolar world collides with the East's vision of a mulipolar future

Specter of Western Mercenaries Hangs Over Ukraine Crisis

Crimea and Punishment

U.S. politicians and pundits want the American people to get so upset about Crimea’s decision to split with Ukraine and rejoin Russia that they will support more U.S. military spending and more U.S. interventions around the world ...

BS of the Week (Weak?): MacCleans Mag Cover: Russia on the March

"Vladimir Putins invasion of Crimea is the biggest threat to peace in decades. Why the West is powerless to stop him."

Putin has actually marched nowhere. And while nearly powerless to stop him — if and when Putin starts to march anywhere — there's Harper, the pipsqueak power of the North, throwing his full weight behind the Kyiv Nazties (see below)."

Ukraine Troops In Crimea Refuse To Leave

...it appears it is not so much a question of figuring out how to evacuate the troops, but rather motivating them. As RIA reports, "less than 2,000 of Ukrainian troops serving in Crimea decided to leave the peninsula for Ukraine, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Saturday. "As of March 21, less than 2,000 out of 18,000 Ukrainian servicemen staying on the territory of the Republic of Crimea decided to go to Ukraine," the ministry said in a statement.

Global Research: Israel backs Ukraine Neo-Naztis

Dmitry Orlov: Follow the Incompetent Leaders: From Washington to Kyiv

What are these people doing trash talking the Russians? What would these people do without Russia? How would they ... visit the international space station? Who would negotiate international deals with Syria and Iran because all they can do is blunder and lose face.” Russia doesn’t need the United States for anything. The United States is the most dispensable country on earth.

... On possible war between Ukraine and Russia: “They are not going to fight because the Ukraine military is part of the Russian military. There really isn’t any opposition. The Ukrainian military will decide what to do in a few days, and then they will inform the Russians, and after that, maybe they will inform their own government. Maybe they will just go into the government offices and just round them up. Last I heard, 60% of Ukrainian military accepted Russian passports already. The remaining parts are being shipped out to the mainland. That is happening peacefully. So, there isn’t going to be any fight. The really important point is the Ukrainian military all over Ukraine does not support the government in Kiev. They are withholding support, and what they really want is to join the Russian military. . . . The best thing Russia can do is sit back and relax and let this work out. I don’t think the government in Kiev has any legs.”

Ukraine Raises Gas Prices 40% — Freedom's Expensive

Could the U.S. Face a Cruise Missile Threat from the Gulf of Mexico?

The US begins to notice that there is a downside to poking a bear with a stick. See:
Reaping the Ukrainian Whirlwind: Tyranny in Kiev, Russian Nukes 90 Miles off America's Southern Shore

While Signing Ukraine to an Alignment With the West, Germany Accuses Russia of Dividing Europe

But the Germans have nothing to say about the US Crassly and Officially Promoting Opposition to the Russian Government 

Russia Wants Ukrainian Nationalist Put on International Wanted List

Russophobes Confer: Harper in Kyiv

Or as Mike Rivero comments: Harper is the first G7 leader to visit Kiev. "He lectures about democracy by supporting thugs who took over democratically elected government by the power of gun."

It makes one proud to be a Canadian. Doing our bit to renew the cold war and driving Russia into a closer embrace with China. Well done Stevie.

But then does Harper really deserve any credit, or is he just acting, once again, as a New World Order mouthpiece?

Mish: Buffoon Bluffery; What are Sanctions Really About?

Zero Hedge: Petrodollar Alert: Putin Prepares To Announce "Holy Grail" Gas Deal With China

RT: Backtrack Ukraine: Self-proclaimed govt fails to deliver on promises

New Eastern Outlook: Ukraine—International Law for the Lawless

The EU wants the Ukraine because it is big, but it has lost it by demanding that Ukraine should never deal with Russia, despite the fact every EU country does. The United States and NATO want Ukraine because it is next door to the Russian Federation, which is still perceived as a geopolitical and geo economic threat. The RF wants Ukraine independent because it doesn’t want other people’s rockets next door to it.

But what all sides are doing is trying to retain control of their own influence. They don’t want to admit that whoever sells the guns and controls the economy will win, right or wrong. That’s why they never admit to talking to lobbyists, those thousands of people who earn good livings doing nothing but talk to politicians privately and subvert the democratic process. All the sides from the so-called democratic West are fighting for themselves, not Ukraine, not any moral principle.

Ria-Novosti: 72 Crimean Military Units Request Joining Russia

Oleaginous Andrew Neil Fails to Put Over the BBC's Cold War Spin on Ukraine

CounterPunch: Putin’s Triumph

Actually, the acquisition of Crimea was not a triumph for Putin or Russia, it was merely a sop to wounded pride.

Crimea accounted for no more than 5% of Ukraine's land mass and adds barely one half of one percent to Russia's land mass, less than one and a half percent to Russia's population, and about one percent to Russia's GDP.

The Western empire, having gained 95% of Ukraine, the largest country in Europe, has added almost 10% to its land mass and population, and hugely incrementing its control of agricultural land and a number of critical mineral resources. It is also now able to ring Russia even more tightly with missiles designed to destroy Russia's second-strike nuclear capacity in the event of a US first-strike.

As for Ukraine itself, it has lost its independence. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians were, for the first time in over a thousand years, free to dictate their own future. But with the US/EU/Nato-backed fascist coup in Kyiv, Ukraine lost its democracy, and its short-lived independence. Instead of being free to trade with both East and West, Ukraine will now, in due course, be incorporated within the EU trade bloc and subjected to the EU's undemocratic dictates on all matters from immigration, social policy, and measures to combat climate change to the minimal acceptable curvature of bananas.

It is essential, though, to paint the voluntary accession of Crimea to the Russian Federation as an illegitimate theft of territory contrary to the will of the people, since the Western empire can acquire new territory where it has a grievance against the existing ruling establishment. The game now, therefore, is to justify further Eastward projection of US/Nato power in terms of punishing Russia for its evil anti-democratic ways.

Annoyingly, for the champions of Western empire, Putin's approval rating in Russia is about twice O'Bomber's rating in the US, but naturally the media aren't focusing on such a crude measure of public support when assessing a country's democratic credentials.

Crazy English Spelling

Jew Among You has an amusing post on the irregularities of English plural noun forms, which prompted reflection on the craziness of the English language in general, and the mismatch between English spelling and pronunciation in particular. How one wonders does anyone, even the English, learn English.

The challenge of pronouncing English, pronounced "Inglish," is well exemplified in the poem Chaos by Gerald Nost Trenité.

As also by the following shorter poem by Richard Krogh (source):

I take it you already know
Of tough and bough and cough and dough?
Others may stumble but not you,
On hiccough, thorough, lough and through,

Well done. And now you wish, perhaps,
To learn of less familiar traps.
Beware of heard, a dreadful word
That looks like beard and sounds like bird.

And dead: It's said like bed, not bead
For goodness sake don't call it "deed".
Watch out for meat and great and threat,
(They rhyme with suite and straight and debt).

A moth is not a moth in mother,
Nor both in bother, broth in brother.
And here is not a match for there,
Nor dear and fear for bear and pear.

And then there's dose and rose and lose -
Just look them up - and goose and choose;
And cork and work and card and ward
And font and front and work and sword

And do and go and thwart and cart -
Come, come I've hardly made a start! 

For those encountering English as a foreign language the frustration of it is well exemplified by Charles Battell Loomis's poem, quoted in Our Accursed Spelling, edited by E.O. Vaile." Blancke, Wilton W. (1953) (Source).

I'm taught p-l-o-u-g-h
Shall be pronounced "Plow."
"Zat's easy when you know," I say,
"Mon Anglais I'll get through."

My teacher say zat in zat case
O-u-g-h is "oo."
And zen I laugh and say to him
"Zees Anglais make me cough."

He say, "Not coo, but in zat word
O-u-g-h is `off.'"
O sacre bleu! Such varied sound
Of words make me hiccough.

He says, "Again my friend is wrong;
O-u-g-h is `uff.'"
I say, "I try to spik your words,
I can't pronounce them, though."

"In time you'll learn, but now you're wrong;
O-u-g-h is `owe'!"
"I'll try no more, I shall go mad,
I'll drown me in ze lough."

And the same source offers this:

From George Bernard Shaw's plea for spelling reform:

'GHOTI"

GH as in "rough"
O as in "women"
TI as in "nation"

GHOTI = "fish"

Which prompted someone to point out that things are actually worse than Shaw realized. Consider:

GH as in "night"
O as in "people"
T as in "bouquet"
I as in "piece"

Then, GHOTI = ""

And another spelling joke:

If GH stands for P as in Hiccough
If OUGH stands for O as in Dough
If PHTH stands for T as in Phthisis
If EIGH stands for A as in Neighbour
If TTE stands for T as in Gazette
If EAU stands for O as in Plateau

The right way to spell POTATO should be GHOUGHPHTHEIGHTTEEAU!

And, the case for consigning English speakers to an asylum for the verbally insane:

Let's face it -- English is a crazy language. There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England or French fries in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig.

And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese? One index, 2 indices?

Doesn't it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend, that you comb through annals of history but not a single annal? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it?

If teachers taught, why didn't preacher praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat? If you wrote a letter, perhaps you bote your tongue?

Sometimes I think all the English speakers should be committed to an asylum for the verbally insane. In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? Park on driveways and drive on parkways?

How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and wise guy are opposites? How can overlook and oversee be opposites, while quite a lot and quite a few are alike? How can the weather be hot as hell one day and cold as hell another.

Have you noticed that we talk about certain things only when they are absent? Have you ever seen a horseful carriage or a strapful gown? Met a sung hero or experienced requited love? Have you ever run into someone who was combobulated, gruntled, ruly or peccable? And where are all those people who ARE spring chickens or who would ACTUALLY hurt a fly?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which an alarm clock goes off by going on.

English was invented by people, not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race (which, of course, isn't a race at all). That is why, when the stars are out, they are visible, but when the lights are out, they are invisible. And why, when I wind up my watch, I start it, but when I wind up this essay, I end it. 

The trouble with the English language, I suspect, is a fundamental lack of gravity among the English.

Shakespeare, obviously, bears much responsibility for the chaotic state of the language, with his reckless word play, verbifying nouns, adjectivalizing substantives, and then just making up almost two thousand completely bogus words, including absurdities such as eyeball, puke, obscene, hot-blooded, epileptic, worm-hole and alligator, ill-coinages that people perversely use to this very day.

The other person to blame is Sam Johnson, who was given good money to write the first proper dictionary of the English language and who, instead of standardizing everything, decided that standardization of English was impossible and that the only thing to do was use words just about any which way one pleases, but particularly as justified by literary precedent. The result of this liberal approach is an unruly mess of one million words, of which a good few thousand are bound to trip almost anyone.

The Song of Pi

Via Wimp.com