31
   

COUP IN KYIV?

 
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  1  
Reply Thu 3 Apr, 2014 09:18 am
@revelette2,
I think that the Cold War is back - the creation of a 'Cuban Twitter' dubbed 'ZunZuneo' by the USA is another sign for the Cold War campaigns of disruption, disinformation and espionage.
JTT
 
  -2  
Reply Thu 3 Apr, 2014 09:33 am
@Walter Hinteler,
The Cold War never ended, Walter. The USA just invented new boogeyman.

Seriously, did you notice any decline in USA military spending?

Did you notice the USA attempting to get along with the nations of the world?

Let's get serious. Most of the world's problems can be laid squarely at the usa's doorstep and those countries that have turned a blind eye to the USA terrorism and war crimes.

Quote:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY DEMANDS END TO CUBA BLOCKADE FOR TWENTY-SECOND YEAR

AS SPEAKERS VOICE CONCERN OVER IMPACT ON THIRD COUNTRIES


Foreign Minister Cites Economic Damage;
United States Delegate Says Resolution Distracts from Real Problems

The General Assembly, voting nearly-unanimously, adopted its twenty-second consecutive resolution calling for an end to the United States’ decades-long economic, commercial and financial embargo against Cuba.

By the text, adopted by a recorded vote of 188 in favour to 2 against (United States and Israel) with 3 abstentions (Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Palau), the Assembly expressed concern about the continued promulgation and application by Member States of laws and regulations, such as the 1996 “Helm-Burton Act”, the extraterritorial effects of which affected the sovereignty of other States, the legitimate interests of entities or persons under their jurisdiction and the freedom of trade and navigation.

The resolution reiterated the call on States to refrain from applying such measures, in conformity with their obligations under the Charter, and urged those that had applied such laws to repeal or invalidate them as soon as possible.


...


http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2013/ga11445.doc.htm
0 Replies
 
revelette2
 
  1  
Reply Fri 4 Apr, 2014 09:49 am
Russia debuts new, sleek force in Crimea, rattling NATO

The last time the Russian military machine was on public display in Europe, its performance did not impress. But this is no longer the force that NATO observed blundering its way through a brief but messy war with its tiny neighbor, Georgia, back in 2008.

A new, leaner and meaner Russian Army has been on display in Crimea and war-gaming on the Ukrainian border over the past month or so. Its vanguard is now made up of just a few elite divisions of highly-motivated, well trained, and fully equipped volunteer soldiers, capable of deploying swiftly anywhere in the former Soviet Union on the Kremlin's command.

And that fact is raising alarms about the potential for wider Kremlin aggression that haven't been heard in the West since the end of the cold war.

Since it last went into action in 2008, the Russian military has seen huge funding increases and undergone radical reforms that have stripped it down, reorganized it, and professionalized it. Though the old Soviet-era model of a "mass mobilization" army still exists on paper, radical Kremlin-backed changes have effectively abolished about 80 percent of former military units, furloughed tens of thousands of officers, and doubled the pay for those who remained.

"At the end of the day, Russia will have between 50,000 and 80,000 of these highly mobile, professional forces, which will make it the most effective army in our region," albeit one that's not a plausible threat to NATO, says Alexander Golts, a leading independent military expert. "This process has been moving very rapidly."

As the Ukrainian crisis unfolded over the past month, Russia's military staged unprecedented maneuvers all along the Ukrainian frontier that experts say showed a new level of speed, agility, and tactical integration among the different branches of the armed forces. In early March, Russian special forces surprised observers again by mounting a lighting fast operation that effectively seized the Crimean peninsula, virtually without casualties, despite the fact that some 18,000 Ukrainian troops were stationed in the region.

There seems little doubt that the West is rattled. On Wednesday NATO commander General Philip Breedlove warned that some 40,000 Russian troops deployed near the border could roll over eastern Ukraine in "between 3 and 5 days," even though experts say that Russian military doctrine would call for a force of at least 100,000 to accomplish that task. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov insisted Thursday that such rhetoric was over-hyped, and that Russian troops were being gradually withdrawn from Ukrainian border areas. He added, though, that Russia had the right to post troops anywhere on its own territory.

The operation to seize Crimea, which began just over a month ago, offered a dramatic illustration of the Russian Army's new capabilities. In the space of a few hours on March 1, hundreds of Russian special forces – bearing no identifying insignia – landed in Crimea and fanned out across the peninsula, seizing road junctions, airports, railroad terminals, administrative buildings, and also keeping Ukrainian military personnel bottled up on scores of bases around the territory. Journalists covering that operation focused on the Kremlin's fairly transparent lie that those "little green men" weren't actually Russian soldiers.

But Viktor Baranets, a military expert and former Defense Ministry spokesman, says that NATO was blindsided by the sudden move, and that helps to explain its present state of high anxiety.

"The fact is that US and NATO intelligence were completely outwitted," Mr. Baranets says. "There was a cover operation, in which Russia had mobilized about 150,000 men from the Baltic to the Urals for war games, and all [Western] attention was focused on that. The true objective was hidden in the shadow of those exercises."

...and its uniqueness

But experts warn that the Crimea operation was probably a unique case, and that even the revamped Russian forces would not find the going so easy in eastern Ukraine or any other part of the former Soviet Union.

"The main reason things went so smoothly is because the overwhelming majority of the Crimean population welcomed these 'little green men' and gave them support," says Mr. Golts. "The local population also helped the Russian forces by surrounding Ukrainian bases with unarmed people, making it very difficult for Ukrainian troops to even think about opening fire."

Another factor is that Ukraine's impoverished army allowed contract soldiers to serve near their homes, meaning that a great many of the Ukrainian soldiers in those bases were actually local Crimean lads, says Valery Ryabkikh, an expert with Defense Express, a Kiev-based security consultancy.

"Our army was chronically underfunded and pacifist moods were widespread. Unfortunately, as a money-saving measure [the army] recruited from the local population, meaning that many of the troops on the ground there had local connections," he says.

Some reports suggest as many as two-thirds of the Ukrainian servicemen stationed in Crimea may have opted to remain and switch their allegiances to Russia rather than return to mainland Ukraine.

Despite NATO's jitters, the Kremlin is likely aware that even its revamped army wouldn't find it quite so easy to enter eastern Ukraine, or anywhere else in the former Soviet Union, says Dmitry Trenin, director of the Moscow Carnegie Center.

"Crimea was always an outlier. Russia used the opportunity to demonstrate resolve," to show that it is capable of acting decisively and effectively in its own region, Mr. Trenin says.

"Playing on the threat of an invasion that's not coming seems more about politics in the West and Ukraine at this point," he says. "But no one really knows for sure."
JTT
 
  -2  
Reply Fri 4 Apr, 2014 10:08 am
@revelette2,
Quote:
"At the end of the day, Russia will have between 50,000 and 80,000 of these highly mobile, professional forces, which will make it the most effective army in our region," albeit one that's not a plausible threat to NATO, says Alexander Golts, a leading independent military expert. "This process has been moving very rapidly."


Of course it's a threat to NATO and every country and body in this world. Russia's might doesn't stop at what the military fronts on a battlefield.

Consider the situation if say, the ignorant asshole Bush was still the pres. And he was mouthing all his ignorant cowboy rhetoric. There would be a fair chance that we would be in the last world war.
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Fri 4 Apr, 2014 11:02 am
@revelette2,
CIA lied to justify torture programme', US Senate report to claim

US Senate committee will vote on Thursday to declassify 400-page summary of damning review exposing failings and exaggerations in the CIA's post-September 11 torture and rendition programme

The CIA lied and exaggerated about its secret kidnap and interrogation programme in the years after September 11, misleading the public and the government about the effectiveness of torture, a comprehensive new report by the US Senate is expected to claim.

The 6,300-page report is likely to shatter claims by George W. Bush administration officials, including the former US vice-president Dick Cheney, that so-called “enhanced interrogation” was an essential tool in the war on terror and the hunt for Osama bin Laden.

The report by the US Senate intelligence committee is based on a close reading of more than six million classified documents and includes case studies on virtually every single prisoner held in CIA “black sites” since 2001.

Its damning conclusions were approved by the 15-member committee in December 2012 but have since been bitterly contested by the CIA. However a vote is now expected on Thursday to declassify a 400-page executive summary that could be published as early as this summer.

Officials with first-hand knowledge of the report said that creating detailed chronologies of individual cases had revealed the extent to which the CIA had exaggerated both the value of information allegedly extracted by torture, and the importance of detainees themselves.

Among key examples was that of Abu Zubaydah, a Saudi-born Palestinian who was arrested in Pakistan in 2002 and water-boarded 83 times by the CIA after disappearing into black jails, before re-emerging at Guantanamo Bay in 2006.

An official who has reviewed the report told The Washington Post that the CIA had wrongly claimed that information obtained from Zubaydah during a regular FBI interrogation in a Pakistani hospital had been obtained as a result of “enhanced interrogation”.

“The CIA conflated what was gotten when, which led them to misrepresent the effectiveness of the programme,” the official said, adding that the committee had uncovered persistent mis-statements of this kind by senior CIA officials.

The value of CIA detainees was also exaggerated, the officials added, citing Zubaydah as an example of a detainee initially described as a top Al Qa’eda operative but later admitted to be a low-level facilitator.

The CIA is also accused of over-selling the role of Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, another so-called “high-value” detainee who is accused in the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole in Yemen and is currently being tried at a military crimes tribunal trial at Guantanamo Bay.

The report is also expected to provide graphic detail of CIA interrogations to support the committee’s broad conclusion that Bush administration’s use of torture after September 11 2001 was a disastrous misjudgment.

“The creation of long-term, clandestine 'black sites’ and the use of so-called 'enhanced-interrogation techniques’ were terrible mistakes,” Dianne Feinstein, the committee’s Democrat chair, said in a December 2012 statement announcing the approval of the still-secret report.

The publication has been long-awaited by civil rights groups, lawyers and experts who contend that the US public has never been fully acquainted with the facts of CIA torture. A December 2012 YouGov survey found that 47 per cent of Americans still believed torture was “always or sometimes justified”.

“This Senate report is incredibly important. It is the first authoritative, factual account of what really happened,” Alberto Mora, the former top lawyer for the US Navy who argued against the Bush administration’s legal re-definition of torture, said in an interview with The Telegraph.

“It will put an end to the abominable euphemism 'enhanced interrogations’ and it will help to end the myth which has been absorbed by the American public and propagated by Dick Cheney and others that torture was legal, effective and necessary. It wasn’t.”


http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/10738159/CIA-lied-to-justify-torture-programme-US-Senate-report-to-claim.html
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Fri 4 Apr, 2014 11:15 am
Has been in the headlines of German-speaking media all afternoon and evening - now first mentioned in English by the Kuweit News Agency
Quote:
VIENNA, April 4 (KUNA) -- The Austrian Foreign Ministry has suggested a four-point plan to resolve the current political crisis in Ukraine.

The ministry proposed that Ukraine should not join the EU or NATO, but rather declare itself non-aligned or neutral, according to local media reports.

Ukraine should be permitted to have free trade relations with Russia and the EU, but there should be a future free trade zone between the EU and Russia from Lisbon to Vladivostok, they said.

The Austrian ministry also suggested that Ukraine be part of a future East European Economic Area, much like the European Economic Area which currently includes the EU, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein.

Finally, the international community should offer Ukraine aid for strengthening its rule of law, in battling corruption and with the upcoming presidential elections in May, the local reports added. (end) amg.mt
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Fri 4 Apr, 2014 05:39 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
Ukraine is a hugely corrupt broken down state with almost no experience with self government. It is not a candidate for going it alone, it can neither afford it nor can it manage it. Also, Russia would never allow it.

Ukraine used to be a bread basket but now its grain is so low quality that it is only used for animal feed. There is almost no modern manufacturing base. The transit system is decrepit....it would take 10 years and a $500 billion in Western aid to put Austria's plan into action even if Ukrainians had both the skill and the will to do this, which they dont.
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Mon 7 Apr, 2014 07:18 am
Quote:
Russia's delegation at the Council of Europe may face sanctions, but the deputy president of the Council's parliamentary assembly, Axel Fischer, says it's unlikely Russia will be excluded altogether.


Full report: 'Council of Europe must keep talking to Russia'
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Mon 7 Apr, 2014 12:45 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
An opinion by the Russian Foreign Minister in the Guardian:
Quote:
It's not Russia that is destabilising Ukraine

The west has been needlessly whipping up tension – if we don't co-operate soon, chaos may take hold

Sergei Lavrov
The Guardian, Monday 7 April 2014 18.00 BST

The profound and pervasive crisis in Ukraine is a matter of grave concern for Russia. We understand perfectly well the position of a country which became independent just over 20 years ago and still faces complex tasks in constructing a sovereign state. Among them is the search for a balance of interests among its various regions, the peoples of which have different historical and cultural roots, speak different languages and have different perspectives on their past and present, and their country's future place in the world.

Given these circumstances, the role of external forces should have been to help Ukrainians protect the foundations of civil peace and sustainable development, which are still fragile. Russia has done more than any other country to support the independent Ukrainian state, including for many years subsidising its economy through low energy prices. Last November, at the outset of the current crisis, we supported Kiev's wish for urgent consultations between Ukraine, Russia and the EU to discuss harmonising the integration process. Brussels flatly rejected it. This stand reflected the unproductive and dangerous line the EU and US have been taking for a long time. They have been trying to compel Ukraine to make a painful choice between east and west, further aggravating internal differences.

Ukraine's realities notwithstanding, massive support was provided to political movements promoting western influence, and it was done in direct breach of the Ukrainian constitution. This is what happened in 2004, when President Viktor Yushchenko won an unconstitutional third round of elections introduced under EU pressure. This time round, power in Kiev was seized undemocratically, through violent street protests conducted with the direct participation of ministers and other officials from the US and EU countries.

Assertions that Russia has undermined efforts to strengthen partnerships on the European continent do not correspond to the facts. On the contrary, our country has steadily promoted a system of equal and indivisible security in the Euro-Atlantic area. We proposed signing a treaty to that effect, and advocated the creation of a common economic and human space from the Atlantic to the Pacific which would also be open to post-Soviet countries.

In the meantime, western states, despite their repeated assurances to the contrary, have carried out successive waves of Nato enlargement, moved the alliance's military infrastructure eastward and begun to implement antimissile defence plans. The EU's Eastern Partnership programme is designed to bind the so-called focus states tightly to itself, shutting down the possibility of co-operation with Russia. Attempts by those who staged the secession of Kosovo from Serbia and of Mayotte from the Comoros to question the free will of Crimeans cannot be viewed as anything but a flagrant display of double standards. No less troubling is the pretence of not noticing that the main danger for the future of Ukraine is the spread of chaos by extremists and neo-Nazis.

Russia is doing all it can to promote early stabilisation in Ukraine. We are firmly convinced that this can be achieved through, among other steps: real constitutional reform, which would ensure the legitimate rights of all Ukrainian regions and respond to demands from its south-eastern region to make Russian the state's second official language; firm guarantees on Ukraine's non-aligned status to be enshrined in its laws, thus ensuring its role as a connecting link in an indivisible European security architecture; and urgent measures to halt activity by illegal armed formations of the Right Sector and other ultra-nationalist groups.

We are not imposing anything on anyone, we just see that if it is not done, Ukraine will continue to spiral into crisis with unpredictable consequences. We stand ready to join international efforts aimed at achieving these goals. We support the appeal by foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland to implement the 21 February agreement. Their proposal – to hold Russia-EU talks with the participation of Ukraine and other Eastern Partnership states about the consequences of EU association agreements – corresponds to our position.

The world of today is not a junior school where teachers assign punishments at will. Belligerent statements such as those heard at the Nato foreign ministers meeting in Brussels on 1 April do not match demands for a de-escalation. De-escalation should begin with rhetoric. It is time to stop the groundless whipping-up of tension, and to return to serious common work.
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Mon 7 Apr, 2014 12:53 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
On the other side:
Quote:
Kerry warns Lavrov Russia faces 'costs' if it further destabilizes Ukraine
Source: Reuters - Mon, 7 Apr 2014 06:39 PM
Author: Reuters

WASHINGTON, April 7 (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday that Washington was watching events in eastern Ukraine with great concern and any moves by Moscow to destabilize Ukraine would "incur further costs for Russia."

State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said that in the telephone call Kerry "called on Russia to publicly disavow the activities of separatists, saboteurs and provocateurs" in Ukraine.

She said the two discussed convening direct talks in the next 10 days between Ukraine, Russia, the United States and the European Union to defuse tensions.

The government in Kiev has said the overnight seizure of public buildings in three cities in eastern Ukraine's mainly Russian-speaking industrial heartland were a replay of events in Crimea, the Black Sea peninsula Moscow annexed last month.

Kerry noted that the actions in eastern Ukraine "do not appear to be a spontaneous set of events," the spokeswoman said.

She said Kerry "noted the Ukrainian government's assertion that this appeared to be a carefully orchestrated campaign with Russian support," and said he referred to "the recent arrests of Russian intelligence operatives working in Ukraine."

Kerry noted that Ukrainian government leaders were traveling on Monday to all the affected cities "to try to negotiate evacuation of government buildings and de-escalation of tensions," Psaki said.

The secretary called on Russia "to publicly disavow the activities of separatists, saboteurs and provocateurs, called for de-escalation and dialogue and called on all parties to refrain from agitation in Ukraine," she said.

"He made clear that any further Russian efforts to destabilize Ukraine will incur further costs for Russia," Psaki said. (Reporting by David Storey; Editing by Sandra Maler)
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Apr, 2014 01:30 pm
@Walter Hinteler,
Quote:
The secretary called on Russia "to publicly disavow the activities of separatists, saboteurs and provocateurs, called for de-escalation and dialogue and called on all parties to refrain from agitation in Ukraine," she said.


Now that's funny!


In how many countries has the USA done exactly that over even just the last decade?

This is SOP for advancing the will of Washington, The list is dozens long.
panzade
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Apr, 2014 01:37 pm
@hawkeye10,
More like embarrassing. What hypocrisy.
hawkeye10
 
  1  
Reply Mon 7 Apr, 2014 01:45 pm
@panzade,
panzade wrote:

More like embarrassing. What hypocrisy.


This is like the third time in a month I have seen a quote from Kerry that clearly assumes that everyone who is listening is grossly ignorant. He was advertised to be a good diplomat...insulting your audiences intelligence is rarely a good move in that line of work.
panzade
 
  2  
Reply Mon 7 Apr, 2014 03:12 pm
@hawkeye10,
Quote:
insulting your audiences intelligence is rarely a good move in that line of work.

It's a prerequisite in that line of work.
Kissinger, Rogers and Rice all had that skill.
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Mon 7 Apr, 2014 03:40 pm
@hawkeye10,
Hooray for you, Hawkeye!!!
0 Replies
 
JTT
 
  0  
Reply Mon 7 Apr, 2014 03:42 pm
@panzade,
Hooray for you too, Panzade!!!

Where's Finn, Brandon, glitter, ... ?
0 Replies
 
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Tue 8 Apr, 2014 12:46 pm
From the NYT-report Ukraine’s Jews Dismiss Claims of Anti-Semitism
Quote:
From his office atop the world’s biggest Jewish community center, Shmuel Kaminezki, the rabbi of this eastern Ukrainian city, has followed with dismay Russian claims that Ukraine is now in the hands of neo-Nazi extremists — and struggled to calm his panicked 85-year-old mother in New York.

Raised in Russia and a regular viewer of Russian television, she “calls every day to ask, Have the pogroms happened yet?” Rabbi Kaminezki said. He tells his mother that they have not, and that she should stop watching Russian TV. “It is a total lie,” he said. “Jews are not in danger in Ukraine.”
[...]
A few Jewish leaders do endorse Russian claims of a resurgence of anti-Semitism in Ukraine, but they are nearly all outsiders, most notably Berel Lazar, Moscow’s chief rabbi and a firm ally of the Kremlin. In an interview with The Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Rabbi Lazar criticized Ukrainian Jews for denouncing Mr. Putin and suggested they had played down the risk of anti-Semitism in Ukraine out of fear for their safety.

Mr. Kolomoysky, the new governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region, derided Rabbi Lazar’s support for Mr. Putin as Kremlin-orchestrated propaganda. Russia, he said in an interview, has put pressure on Jewish leaders to fall into line with Moscow’s contention that Ukraine has fallen in a fascist coup by extreme Ukrainian nationalists. “Unlike in Russia, Ukraine’s Jewish community is not a tool of the state,” he said.

Mr. Kolomoysky, who has both Israeli and Ukrainian passports, scoffed at the Kremlin’s pledges to protect Jews, Russian-speakers and other minorities. “We can protect ourselves. We don’t need any protection from Russia,” he said. “There is no fascism here. It does not exist.”
... ... ...
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Wed 9 Apr, 2014 03:59 am
@Walter Hinteler,
Senior figures from Russia, Ukraine, the EU and the US are set to meet for talks on the situation in Ukraine next week, it has been announced.
(That will be the first meeting of the four since the crisis erupted.)
Walter Hinteler
 
  2  
Reply Wed 9 Apr, 2014 10:14 am
@Walter Hinteler,
There has been a great deal of concern that what has happened in Crimea could repeat itself in eastern Ukraine. But experts maintain that there are few similarities between the two regions.
More here: Crimea scenario in eastern Ukraine is unlikely
Walter Hinteler
 
  3  
Reply Wed 9 Apr, 2014 10:17 am
@Walter Hinteler,
Interesting, I think, as well this here

The Ukrainian conflict is having serious consequences even for people living far away from Crimea and the Eastern part of the country, a US Russian scholar currently residing in Ukraine tells DW.
Full report:
'Ukrainians divided by two narratives of the conflict'
0 Replies
 
 

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