Steven Gaal

Harvey Oswald. Oswald, in the company of his friend, George De

Mohrenschildt, once visited the home of retired Admiral Henry Bruton,

an executive of Collins Radio. The HSCA printed this information in an

appendix to their Final Report; it is contained in De Mohrenschildt's

unpublished manuscript, I Am a Patsy! Bruton and his position with

Collins are also mentioned in Edward Jay Epstein's Oswald biography,

Legend. Bruton had been a lawyer in Virginia before becoming a Naval

Intelligence officer. Bruton's specialty was electronic surveillance, and

this expertise is what he was bringing to Collins Radio.

"In March 1963, Collins Radio was awarded a two-million-dollar-plus

contract from the CIA-connected United States Information Agency (USIA)

to build nine short-wave transmitters to be used in Southeast Asia. Two

weeks later, however, the work had to be postponed when President Kennedy

requested a cut in USIA funds. By October, it appears, the contract had

turned into a scandal. Assistant Secretary of Defense BeLieu was charged

with giving false data to the House Human Resources subcommittee on a

'sole source' contract awarded to Collins. Despite his denials,

subcommittee members urged that BeLieu be dismissed if he did not give a

satisfactory explanation. One week later, however, this heated debate

would be eclipsed by a bigger scandal involving Collins Radio and the

CIA. It also involved a ship with sophisticated electronic -- installed

while Ken BeLieu was Assistant Navy Secretary for Installations and

Logistics under Navy Secretary John Connally" (Richard Bartholomew,

*Possible Discovery of an Automobile Used in the Kennedy Assassination,*

available on-line; see below for URL). In April 1963, The Wall Street

Journal announced that Collins Radio would construct a modern radio

communications system linking Laos, Thailand and South Vietnam.

On November 1, 1963, the New York Times reported that Fidel Castro had

captured a 174-foot ship called the Rex that was based in the Port of

Palm Beach, flew a Nicaraguan flag, and was being leased to Collins Radio

by a Dallas oilman named J. A. Belcher. The next day, one of the captured

Cuban exiles aboard the Rex confessed that the boat had been used to

ferry arms into Cuba, and that "the CIA organized all arms shipments"

(New York Times, November 3, 1963). "Montero Carranzera said he had 'once

landed twelve infiltrators on the North Coast of Matazzas Province from a

yacht which had a crew of American CIA agents.' The US government did not

deny Castro's charges. The Rex mission was not the first time Collins had

provided cover for CIA operations. Two weeks after Kennedy's death, the

Rex and another mystery ship called Leda again left their Florida ports"

(Richard Bartholomew, Ibid.).

According to Bill Kelly (*Back Channels,* Summer 1962), the Rex was the

flagship of the JM/WAVE fleet, the CIA's anti-Castro super station in

Miami. According to Kelly, Castro announced that the arms shipments were

meant for an assassination attempt on top Cuban leaders not an unlikely

possibility. What a striking coincidence: five blocks from Oswald's

arrest we have an Oswald double in a car with plates traced to a close

personal friend of J. D. Tippit, who had just been murdered by an Oswald

double less than an hour before and the friend also happens to work for a

CIA-affiliated company that plays a role in the highly sensitive plots

against Castro and Cuba and one of the company's directors had met at his

home with CIA asset George De Mohrenschildt and alleged CIA asset Lee

Harvey Oswald in April 1963.

Another striking coincidence: Within a year of the assassination, Collins

Radio employee Kenneth Porter quit his job, left his wife and children,

and immediately following his divorce, announced his engagement to Marina

Oswald, now Marina Oswald Porter (Ibid.).

Bartholomew's manuscript is available on-line in *Fair Play* #17:

Click Here">

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For the first time in at least 50 years, a majority of U.S. public school students come from low-income families, according to a new analysis of 2013 federal data, a statistic that has profound implications for the nation.

FALSE FLAG ALERT - 19,000 French websites under attack (CLICK LINK)

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DON GREAT WORK !!

In August, 1988, Prince Philip, husband of England’s Queen Elizabeth, made the following ghastly statement: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.” This was obviously a serious fantasy of Philip’s, as he had mentioned it earlier, in the foreword to the 1986 book If I Were an Animal, where he declared, “I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.” Philip stated his opinion that, “…some animals have to be killed in the interest of maintaining the health and vitality of the species as a whole…” Given his other comments, one can easily surmise what species of “animals” he had in mind......

.....Author G.K. Chesterton understood this issue better than most. In his Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State, Chesterton wrote: “The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science…And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statues, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen—that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the government will really help it to persecute its heretics…I am not frightened of the word ‘persecution’…It is a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof—then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are.”

// JEFFRIES BLOG

DON GREAT WORK !!

In August, 1988, Prince Philip, husband of England’s Queen Elizabeth, made the following ghastly statement: “In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, in order to contribute something to solve overpopulation.” This was obviously a serious fantasy of Philip’s, as he had mentioned it earlier, in the foreword to the 1986 book If I Were an Animal, where he declared, “I must confess that I am tempted to ask for reincarnation as a particularly deadly virus.” Philip stated his opinion that, “…some animals have to be killed in the interest of maintaining the health and vitality of the species as a whole…” Given his other comments, one can easily surmise what species of “animals” he had in mind......

.....Author G.K. Chesterton understood this issue better than most. In his Eugenics and Other Evils: An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State, Chesterton wrote: “The thing that really is trying to tyrannize through government is Science…And the creed that really is levying tithes and capturing schools, the creed that really is enforced by fine and imprisonment, the creed that really is proclaimed not in sermons but in statues, and spread not by pilgrims but by policemen—that creed is the great but disputed system of thought which began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics. Materialism is really our established Church; for the government will really help it to persecute its heretics…I am not frightened of the word ‘persecution’…It is a term of legal fact. If it means the imposition by the police of a widely disputed theory, incapable of final proof—then our priests are not now persecuting, but our doctors are.”

// JEFFRIES BLOG

American biotechnology has turned Argentina into the world’s third-largest soybean producer, but the chemicals powering the boom aren’t confined to soy and cotton and corn fields. They routinely contaminate homes and classrooms and drinking water. A growing chorus of doctors and scientists is warning that their uncontrolled use could be responsible for the increasing number of health problems turning up in hospitals across the South American nation. In the heart of Argentina’s soybean business, house-to-house surveys of 65,000 people in farming communities found cancer rates two to four times higher than the national average, as well as higher rates of hypothyroidism and chronic respiratory illnesses. Associated Press photographer Natacha Pisarenko spent months documenting the issue in farming communities across Argentina.

Historical claim shows why Crimea matters to Russia

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By Julie Kliegman on Sunday, March 2nd, 2014 at 3:51 p.m.

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President Barack Obama has been vocal in his opposition to Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin’s military intervention in Ukraine. Focus has shifted from the new government in Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, to Crimea, a region Russian troops seized control of Saturday.

Meanwhile, politicians and pundits are divided over what the United States’ role should be in the conflict. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius criticized Putin’s actions on Face the Nation, saying Ukraine "is not prepared to go backwards" to a Russian regime. He then offered up some context about Crimea’s history.

"Crimea became part of Ukraine only in 1954," he said. "Crimea was historically part of Russia, and (Nikita) Khrushchev gave it to Ukraine in a gesture that mystified some people."

Ignatius was correct in saying that Ukraine has only controlled the Crimean Peninsula since 1954 -- a claim we also heard from U.S. Rep. Mike Roger, R-Mich., on Fox News Sunday. Not up on your Soviet history? We’ll review the facts.

Crimea is an eastern Ukrainian peninsula located on the Black Sea. It’s connected to the rest of the country by a small strip of land. Out of its 2 million residents, about 60 percent identify as Russian. That’s the highest concentration of Russian speakers in Ukraine. Although the territory belongs to Ukraine, Russia stations part of its Black Sea fleet in Sevastopol as part of a pre-existing agreement between the two countries.

As Ignatius pointed out, Crimea hasn’t always been part of Ukraine. Here’s a quick rundown of what’s happened in the region since the Ottoman Empire used the peninsula as a hub for slave trade.

• 1783: Russia annexed Crimea.

• 1853: The Crimean War began, lasting three years. Russia lost to an alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, Britain and Sardinia. Crimea remained part of Russia.

• 1917: Crimea briefly became a sovereign state before becoming a base for the White Army of anti-Bolshevik forces in the Russian War.

• 1921: The peninsula, now called the Crimean Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, became part of the Soviet Union.

• 1942: Nazi Germany took control of Crimea.

• 1944: Joesph Stalin forcibly deported all Muslim Tatars, a group of 300,000 who had lived on the peninsula for centuries, due to members’ alleged cooperation with Germany during World War II. Many returned to Crimea in the 1980s and 1990s.

• 1945: After World War II, the autonomous Soviet republic was dissolved and Crimea became a province of the Soviet Union called the Crimean Oblast.

• 1954: Russian Premier Nikita Khrushchev transferred the Crimean Oblast to Ukraine. It’s often reported that it was a gesture of goodwill from Khrushchev, who had Ukrainian roots.

• 1991: The Soviet Union collapsed. Many expected President Boris Yeltsin, the new president of the Russian Federation, to take Crimea for Russia. But he didn’t bring it up during negotiations with Ukraine.

• 1997: Ukraine and Russia signed a treaty that allowed Russia to keep its fleet in Sevastopol. The agreement’s since been extended, so the fleet is set to remain there until at least 2042.

As for Ignatius’ claim that Khrushchev’s decision to give Crimea to Ukraine in 1954, we found literature to support that. Slate’s Joshua Keating offered up possible reasons for the land transfer, including the 300th anniversary of Ukraine’s merger with tsarist Russia and Khrushchev’s ties to Ukraine.

Though Khrushchev’s gesture had unclear motives, it didn’t seem like a problem for Russia at the time, only garnering a one-sentence write-up in the official Soviet newspaper. It became a bigger issue in the region once the Soviet Union collapsed decades later.

So the story of the Crimean Peninsula is long and complicated, to say the least. And there could be more news to come as war threatens Eastern Europe. Today, Crimea’s residents are divided on the issue of Russia’s military intervention. Generally speaking, ethnic Russians support Russia’s involvement in the region, while Tatars and Ukrainians express pro-Ukrainian sentiments.

Our ruling

Ignatius said Crimea belonged to Russia until 1954, when Khrushchev gave the land to Ukraine, then a Soviet republic. Ignatius’ history lesson explains why Russians remain so intertwined with Crimea and why some Americans are worried that Russians will try to annex the peninsula.

We rate Ignatius’ statement True.

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Correction: About 60 percent of people living in Crimea identify themselves as Russian. An earlier version of this story described the statistic differently. This post was updated at 1 p.m. March 3, 2014.

Turnout 59.11% Nominee Miloš Zeman Karel Schwarzenberg Party SPOZ TOP 09 Popular vote 2,717,405 2,241,171

Percentage 54.8% = 45.2%

There is only one ongoing news story that’s being systematically censored out of virtually all U.S. news media. This has been the finding from a first-of-its-kind test of virtually all U.S. news media that report national and international news. The most-censored news story during 2014 will be identified here.

The method that I employed in order to determine how heavily the U.S. press censors out a particular news story is: Throughout 2014 I constantly submitted original news reports, regarding specifically the topics that were (and still are) most widely considered by journalists (and often also by historians, and by other interested segments of the American public) to be the most puzzling and the least coherently explained and reported ongoing news stories in the American press. Prominent recent examples of such news stories are (and most of the examples that are being cited here come from my own news reports on them, my actual tests of these stories, as was summarized by me in mid-2014 here, and so that’s where you’ll find the details on these ongoing heavily-censored stories):

— Barack Obama’s zero prosecutions of bank CEOs who were implicated by Senator Carl Levin’s Committee, and by the Inspector General of the U.S. Department of Justice, and by other federal investigations, into the cause of the 2008 economic collapse and the resulting soaring Federal Government (i.e., taxpayer) indebtedness (bailouts) in order to recover from this collapse, which was clearly caused by an explosion in mortgage-backed-securities frauds, though none of the implicated CEOs — the people who were in command and who were making billions from these MBS frauds — was prosecuted for it;

— Obama’s zero prosecutions also of the individuals who participated in America’s illegal torture program after 9/11, including George W. Bush and possibly also Barack Obama himself (as being an accessory-after-the-fact for his covering up their crimes, if not possibly even as his being a continuer of some of those crimes);

— The failure of any of the State Department’s Environmental Impact studies of the proposed Keystone XL Pipeline to calculate, or even to employ investigators who possessed scientific backgrounds relevant to the calculation of, the likely impact that the proposed pipeline would have on raising the Earth’s mean temperature during coming centuries and millennia — the commonly called “global warming” impact of the pipeline, if built and used — and the amount of sheer corruption which was involved in those Federal studies;

— The massacre in Odessa Ukraine on 2 May 2014 of opponents of the coup that the U.S. had carried out via the State Deportment, CIA and other agencies, which coup had overthrown (on 22 February 2014) the Russia-friendly, democratically elected, Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovych;

— The subsequent U.S.-sponsored Ukrainian ethnic cleansing program which has been carried out since then by the U.S.-backed new Ukrainian regime in order to eliminate the voters in the area of Ukraine called Donbass, which had voted 90% for Yanukovych and which voters therefore presented the threat of possibly electing out-of-office the Obama-installed leaders and thus of restoring a Russia-friendly person to Ukraine’s Presidency.

Those news stories are the main contestants that I have come up with as having been possibly the most-censored news story of 2014. I tested also other ongoing but under-reported news stories (by submitting, to virtually all national U.S. news media, the news reports I did regarding all of the various contesting ongoing suppressed news stories), but the few ongoing news stories, that are listed here, provide some sense of the sorts of news events and stories which I was testing, throughout this past year.

Without question, the most-censored news story of 2014, as determined by this test — a test that I have been constantly carrying out ever since the May 2nd massacre that the new Ukrainian Government perpetrated in Odessa — is precisely the Ukrainian news story: it’s the winner of my contest. This ongoing news story started with the February 22nd coup, then included the May 2nd massacre which led to Donbass’s secession from Ukraine, and it finally is continuing with this ethnic cleansing of Donbass. The purpose of the May 2nd massacre was, in fact, to terrify the pro-Russians in Ukraine’s southeast — especially in Donbass, the most pro-Russian area — so as to precipitate the secession of Donbass, so that there would then be an excuse for the Ukrainian Government to bomb it and so to get rid of the residents there, whose overwhelming votes had clearly made Yanukovych Ukraine’s President. The Obama regime doesn’t want the people there; it wants only the land on which they live. It needs this in order to be able to place nuclear missiles there, aimed against next-door Russia. The Obama Administration’s game-plan is to keep the land, and to kill the people who are living on it.

This sequence of events has been major news, and it’s been thoroughly suppressed in the U.S.

I have found that, whereas I was able to place, at some mainstream and some alternative-news sites, even news reports about President Obama’s violations of his publicly stated policy-commitments, and other such ‘controversial’ matters, only around a half-dozen news-media accepted even a single one of my numerous news-reports about the Ukrainian coup and its aftermaths — events that might even lead to a World War III, and that therefore are unquestionably important news events, which the public in a democracy ought to know about.

Not even President Obama’s promise in which he privately assured the assembled CEOs of Wall Street, at the beginning of his Administration, that he would not prosecute any of them, but instead would protect all of them from being prosecuted — and his following through with that secret promise — not even this protection by him of the mega-bank CEOs, has been as heavily censored out of the American press as has been the Ukrainian story.

Consequently, America’s press-lords are even more determined and united to suppress the reality in Ukraine than they are to suppress the reality about America’s 2008 economic crash and the resulting bailouts and soaring federal debt. There is something about the Ukrainian story that has caused virtually all owners of America’s news media to be determined to prohibit the American public from knowing the reality there. (See here how much in fear of losing their jobs the reporters throughout the West are, and how they are kept in line by their publishers and by the editors whom their publishers hire.)

This finding is, itself, like all of my news reports and commentaries, being distributed free of charge to virtually all U.S. national-news media (print, TV, and radio). The few media that will publish it are likely to be the same ones that have carried one or more of my news reports about the situation in Ukraine (and that’s fewer than ten). As regards all other American news media: those are the ones that are covering-up this important matter — not reporting it to their readers, viewers, and listeners.

It’s clear that they have been covering it up, because they certainly have been informed of the numerous events in this ongoing news-story about Ukraine after May 2nd: I and other investigative journalists have been submitting honest and well-researched and well-written news stories to them throughout that time regarding this U.S.-initiated and backed Ukrainian ethnic-cleansing program.

There is, for some reason, virtual unanimity among the owners of America’s press, that America’s public must be prohibited from knowing about the America Government’s operation in Ukraine. Perhaps one reason why this ongoing news story is so heavily censored is that the entire issue taking place in Ukraine could lead to something that might be far larger and potentially far more dangerous than merely a local ethnic-cleansing campaign. And Americans would then pay close attention to it. The importance of this news story is why it is being suppressed.

For what appears to be the first time on record, Powerball Lottery Sales declined year-over-year. As the following slides show, lottery sales declined 19% in FY14 vs FY13 and even more stunningly reflective of a nation whose disposable income (and hope) is in such short supply, sales in the first half of FY15 are down 40% from the first of FY14. As LaFleurs concludes, this will make it very challenging for most Lotteries to manage their budgets...

_{Posted by Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich on January 14, 2015}

The new information has almost confirmed that Paris attack was a false flag operation carried out by the CIA.

Masked gunman run towards a victim of their gunfire outside the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo’s office, in Paris, January 7, 2015.

Soraya Sepahpour Ulrich

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Listen to the full interview here: PRESS TV

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The new information has almost confirmed that Paris attack was a false flag operation carried out by the CIA.

According to The Associated Press, one of the men responsible for last week’s terrorist attack that killed 12 people in the French capital claimed to have lived with the Nigerian man behind the failed al-Qaeda “underwear bomb” plot five years ago, Yemeni Journalist and researcher Mohammed al-Kibsi who met Said Kouachi, the alleged Paris attacker, said on Monday.

In a phone interview with Press TV on Tuesday, Ulrich said, “The whole Paris incident has been a puzzle for many… and one has to find connections to find what really is going on.”

“We have been told by the mainstream media, the Western media, that a Yemeni reporter has claimed that he had interviewed Kouachi who was responsible for the Paris attack, or one of those who were responsible,” she said.

“And he had ties with ‘the underwear bomber’, ‘the underwear bomber’ who was held responsible for wanting to blow up an airliner at Christmas in 2009,” Ulrich added.

Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab was convicted of attempting to detonate plastic explosives hidden in his underwear while on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253, en route from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan.

“Well, it so happens that the mainstream media here is so busy turning up this information that they turned to forget the very information they gave us in the first place. For example, in 2012, we were told that ‘the underwear bomber’ was in fact working with the CIA intelligence and with the Saudis,” she pointed out.

Underwear bomber’ involved in a plot to attack jet was in fact working as an undercover informer with the CIA. Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA

US and Yemeni officials told The Associated Press in May 2012 that the so-called underwear bomber was in fact working under cover for Saudi intelligence and the CIA when he was given a new non-metallic type bomb aimed at getting past airport security.

Ulrich said it iss important to mention that the so-called underwear bomber slipped past the security “when Israeli intelligence was in charge of the Amsterdam airport — [its] security.”

She added that intelligence officials failed to scrutinize the bomb and helped the bomber get on the plane, which “indicates to me that they all were aware of this individual’s job.”

“Six or seven months ago, the UK airport security supposedly received a warning from the US intelligence… that al-Qaeda terrorists were going to attack airports and airliners using a new generation of non-metallic bombs developed by them in Syria and Yemen,” Ulrich said.

“What is really very alarming for me is all this information, or misinformation we are getting,” she stated. “We have to understand who gain from” all this.

A spate of violent incidents, including the attack at the Paris office of controversial magazine Charlie Hebdo, left at least 17 people dead last week in the French capital.

Two days after the Charlie Hebdo attack, Said and Cherif Kouachi, suspects, were killed after being cornered at a printing workshop in the French town of Dammartin-en-Goele.

“So at the end of the day, we have to understand who is gaining by all these alleged attacks,” Ulrich emphasized. People are not being told the truth; they are “told a bunch of lies that are supposedly not connected and somehow when they do get connected we trace it back to the intelligence services, like the CIA.”

“So we have to be very alert, and do not forget what we read yesterday in order to absorb what we are reading today and connect the dots ourselves,” she warned.

“I mean many have had doubts about the veracity of the incident in Paris. Many had thought it to be a false flag operation. And now with this new information they are feeding us and tying [it] to the underwear bomber who worked for the CIA, it has virtually established the fact that it was indeed a false flag operation,” Ulrich concluded.

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Listening to the US media, even the most diligent news junkie would find it difficult to know that the U.S. State Department played not only a vital role in the violence and chaos underway in Ukraine but was also complicit in creating the coup that ousted democratically elected President Viktor Yanuyovch. Given the Russian Parliament’s approval of Putin’s request for military troops to be moved into Crimea, Americans uninformed about the history of that region might also be persuaded that Russia is the aggressor and the sole perpetrator of the violence.

Let’s be clear about what is at stake here: NATO missiles on the adjacent Ukraine border aimed directly at Russia would make that country extremely vulnerable to Western goals and destabilization efforts while threatening Russia’s only water access to its naval fleet in Crimean peninsula, the Balkans, the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East – and not the least of which would allow world economic dominance by the US, the European Union, the IMF, World Bank and international financiers all of whom had already brought staggering suffering to millions around the globe.

The fact is that democracy was not a demand on the streets of Kiev. The current record of events indicates that protests of civil dissatisfaction were organized by reactionary neo-Nazi forces intent on fomenting a major domestic crisis ousting Ukraine’s legitimate government. As events continue to spiral out of control, here is the chronology of how the coup was engineered to install a government more favorable to EU and US goals.

April 11, 2011 – A Kiev Post article entitled “Ukraine Hopes to Get $1.5 Billion from IMF in June” states that the loan is dependent on pension cuts while “maintaining cooperation with the IMF, since it influences the country’s interaction with other international financial institutions and private investors” and further that the “attraction of $850 million from the World Bank in 2011, depended on cooperation with the IMF.” Well, that about says it all – if Ukraine played ball. then the loan money would pour in.

November 21, 2013 – fast forward to the EU summit in Lithuania when President Yanuyovch embarrassed the European Union by rejecting its Agreement in favor of joining Russia’s Common Union with other Commonwealth Independent States.

November 27, 2013 – it was not until February 23, 2014 when Anonymous Ukraine hackers released a series of emails from a Lithuanian government advisor to opposition leader and former boxer Vitaly Klitschko regarding plans to destabilize Ukraine; for example:

“Our American friends promise to pay a visit in the coming days, we may even see Nuland or someone from the Congress.” 12/7/2013

“Your colleague has arrived ….his services may be required even after the country is destabilized.” 12/14/2013

“I think we’ve paved the way for more radical escalation of the situation. Isn’t it time to proceed with more decisive action?” 1/9/2014

November 29, 2013 – well-orchestrated protestors were already in the streets of Kiev as European Commission President Jose Manual Barroso announced that the EU would “not accept Russia’s veto” of the Agreement.

December 13, 2013 – As if intent on providing incontrovertible evidence of US involvement in Ukraine, Assistant US Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasia Victoria Nuland proudly told a meeting of the International Business Conference sponsored by the US-Ukrainian Foundation that the US had ‘invested’ more than $5 billion and ‘five years worth of work and preparation” in achieving what she called Ukraine’s ‘European aspirations.” Having just returned from her third trip to Ukraine in five weeks, Nuland boasted of her ‘coordinated high level diplomacy’ and a more than two hour ‘tough conversation’ with Yanukovych. Already familiar with Nuland as former Secretary Clinton’s spokesperson at State, one can imagine her discourteous tone and manner when she says she made it “absolutely clear” to Yanukovych that the US required “immediate steps” …to “get back into conversation with Europe and the IMF.” While Western media have portrayed Yanukovych as a ‘weak’ leader, Nuland’s description of a ‘tough’ meeting can only mean that he resisted her threats and intimidations. In what must have been a touching moment, Nuland spoke about a show of force by government police on demonstrators who “sang hymns and prayed for peace.”

What Nuland did not reveal on December 13 was that her meetings with ‘key Ukrainian stakeholders’ included neo-Nazi Svoboda party leader Oleh Tyahnybok and prime minister wannabe Arsenly Yatsenyuk of the Fatherland Party. At about the same time Nuland was wooing fascist extremists, Sen. John McCain (R-Az) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D- Conn) shared the stage in Kiev with Tyahnybok offering their support and opposition to the sitting government. The Svoboda party which has roots with extreme vigilante and anti-semitic groups has since received at least three high level cabinet posts in the interim government including deputy prime minister. There is no doubt that the progenies of west Ukraine’s historic neo-fascist thugs that fought with Hitler are now aligned with the US as represented by Victoria Nuland.

January 24, 2014 – President Yanukoyvch identified foreign elements participating in Kiev protests warning that armed radicals were a danger to peaceful citizens. Independent news agencies also reported that “not all of Kiev’s population backs opposition rule, which depends mainly on a group from the former Polish town of Lvov, which holds sway over Kiev downtown – but not the rest of the city.”

January 30, 2014 – The State Department’s website Media Note announced Nuland’s upcoming travel plans that ”In Kyiv, Assistant Secretary Nuland will meet with government officials, opposition leaders, civil society and business leaders to encourage agreement on a new government and plan of action.” In other words, almost a month before President Yanukovych was ousted, the US was planning to rid the world of another independently elected President.

February 4, 2014 – More evidence of Ms. Nuland’s meddling with extremist factions and the high level stakes of war and peace occurred in her taped conversation with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt discussing their calculations of who’s in and who’s out to replace Yanukovych. Note mention of Nazi leader Oleh Tyahnybok. Here are some selected excerpts:

Nuland: “What do you think?”

Pyatt: “I think we’re in play… the [Vitali] Klitsch piece is obviously the complicated electron here especially the announcement of him as deputy prime minister. Your argument to him which you’ll need to make, I think the next phone call we want to set up is exactly the one you made to Yats [Yatsenyuk]. And I’m glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario and I’m very glad he said what he said in response.”

Nuland: “I don’t think Klitsch should go into government. I don’t think its necessary. I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

Pyatt: “yeah…I mean I guess. You think…what…in terms of him not going into the government, just let him sort of stay out and do his political homework and stuff. I’m just thinking in terms of the process moving ahead, we want to keep the moderate democrats together. The problem is going to be Tyahnybok and his guys. I’m sure that’s what Yanukoyvch is calculating on all this.”

Nuland: “I think Yats is the guy who’s got the economic experience, the governing experience. What he needs is Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside and he needs to be talking to them four times a week you know…I think with Klitsch going in at that level working for Yats, it’s not going to work.”

Nuland: “My understanding is that the big three [Yatsenyuk, Klitsch and Tyahnybok] were going in to their own meeting and that Yats was going to offer in that context a three plus one conversation with you.”

Pyatt: “ That’s what he proposed but knowing the dynamic that’s been with them where Klitsch has been top dog; he’s going to take a while to show up at a meeting, he’s probably talking to his guys at this point so I think you reaching out to him will help with the personality management among the three and gives us a chance to move fast on all this stuff and put us behind it before they all sit down and he explains why he doesn’t like it.”

Nuland: … “when I talked to Jeff Feltman this morning, he had a new name for the UN guy …Robert Serry – he’s now gotten both Serry and Ban ki Moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday… so that would be great I think to help glue this thing and have the UN help glue it and you know xxxx the EU.”

Pyatt: “Exactly. I think we’ve got to do something to make it stick together because you can be pretty sure the Russians will be working behind the scenes. ….Let me work on Klitchko and I think we want to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help midwife this thing.”

Nuland: ”…Sullivan’s come back to me saying you need Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an” ‘atta’ boy’ and get the deeds to stick so Biden’s willing.”

February 20, 2014 – Foreign ministers from Poland, Germany and France visiting Kiev secured President Yanukovych’s agreement that would commit the government to an interim administration, constitutional reform and new parliamentary and presidential elections. With “no clear sign that EU or US pressure has achieved” the desired effect, opposition leaders rejected Yanukovych’s compromise which would have ended the three month stand-off. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called on the German, French and Polish foreign ministers to step in and take responsibility for upholding the deal they helped forge and not let “armed extremists” directly threaten Ukrainian sovereignty.

February 21^, 2014 – At a special summit in Brussels, European foreign ministers agreed to adopt sanctions on Ukraine including visa bans and asset freezes. The EU decision followed “immense pressure from the US for the European powers to take punitive action against the Ukrainian regime.” Washington had already imposed travel bans on 20 leading Ukrainians.

February 22, 2014 – An hour after refusing to resign, the Ukrainian Parliament voted, according to Russian president Vladimir Putin, in an unconstitutional action to oust President Yanukovych and that pro-EU forces staged a ‘coup’. Yanukovych departed Kiev in fear for his life.

March 1, 2014 – During a conversation initiated by the vice president, Biden delivered his ‘atta boy’ with a phone call to newly installed prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk reaffirming US support for Ukraine’s ‘territorial integrity.”

All of the above machinations expose an incoherent and corrupt American foreign policy with a litany of US hypocrisy that might be hilarious if not for potentially grave global implications. The comment “you just don’t behave by invading another country on completely trumped up pretext” might just win Secretary of State John Kerry the Hypocrisy of the Year Award. Kerry, of course, famously supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq seeking weapons of mass destruction.

But then again, the President’s own comments that “..countries have deep concerns and suspicions about this kind of meddling..” and that “…as long as none of us are inside Ukraine trying to meddle and intervene.. with decisions that properly belong to Ukrainian people…” while announcing $1 billion aid package to Ukraine (but not Detroit) would be a close runner-up for the Award.

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Renee Parsons was a staffer in the U.S. House of Representatives and a lobbyist on nuclear energy issues with Friends of the Earth. in 2005, she was elected to the Durango City Council and served as Councilor and Mayor. Currently, she is a member of the Treasure Coast ACLU Board.

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The United States plotted the coup which took place in Ukraine in February 2014 in response to Russia’s policy in Syria, says George Friedman, the founder and CEO of Stratfor, known as “Shadow CIA”.

The United States is behind the February coup in Kiev, which came in response to Russia’s stance on Syria, said George Friedman, the founder and CEO of Stratfor, a global intelligence company.

Russia has repeatedly said that the coup in Kiev was organized by the US, Friedman told Kommersant newspaper. Indeed, it was the most overt coup in history, the political analyst stressed.

The United States decided to act following Russia’s successes in the Middle East, a key region for the US. Americans saw that Russians could influence what was happening in the Middle East, Friedman said. Russians are one of the many challenges in the region that the US faces, he stated. The US thought Russia’s activities were an attempt to harm Washington, the political analyst told the newspaper, adding that events in Ukraine should be viewed in this context.

Russians seem to have underestimated how seriously the US would react to Moscow’s activities in the region and that they would easily respond, Friedman said. The US understood that the thing Russia wants the least is instability in Ukraine, he added.

The head of Stratfor, also known as “The Shadow CIA,” insisted that Russia’s involvement in Syria was not the only reason for the Ukrainian crisis. However, many in Washington started to perceive Russia as a problem, the expert told the newspaper, adding that at that time the US decided to divert Russia’s attention away from the Middle East.

Syria has been in a civil war since March 2011. Over 100,000 people have died as a result of the armed conflict. Russia repeatedly stated that the election of Syria’s president Bashar Assad was legitimate, and that the people of Syria should control their future. From the beginning of the war the US supported the opposition and stated that the conflict would not be over with Assad in power.

The recent Ukrainian Maidan (Independence Square) mobilizations are a grotesque caricature of the mass protests of workers and youth in Egypt that led to the demise of the U.S.-backed dictator, Hosni Mubarak.

At the recent Kiev “mass mobilizations” of 250,000 that drove Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych out of the country to seek refuge in Russia, the best organized forces were those of the fascist, anti-Semitic, hyper-nationalist groupings—most prominently, the Svoboda (“Freedom”) Party, which traces its roots to the pro-Nazi Social-National Party of World War II.

These armed, club-wielding, and often Molotov-cocktail bomb-throwing beasts had been let loose by the rump Fatherland Party “opposition” Ukrainian parliamentary oligarchs. And this was accomplished with the complicity, if not overt support, of U.S. officials, who likely seized on the charge (now highly suspect) that Yanukovych had employed snipers to attack and murder 89 demonstrators and wound 100 others on Feb. 20 as the perfect moment to shift the debate over a European Union vs. Russian “trade agreement” toward a violent mobilization for Yanukovych’s removal.

A now confirmed taped phone call between the Estonian Foreign Minister Urmas Paet and European Union Foreign Affairs Minister Catherine Ashton, originally reported by a Russian press agency and then in the British Guardian and other newspapers, reveals Paet’s view that forces among the Maidan protesters had orchestrated the deadly sniper fire on Feb. 20. Paet stated in the taped conversation that “the same snipers [were] killing people from both sides. … There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition.” The call took place after the Estonian foreign minister had visited Kiev on Feb. 25, at the height of the Maidan protests. The Estonian government later denied that Paet “was giving an assessment of the opposition’s involvement in the violence.” There is little doubt, however, that U.S. officials have applied pressure on the Estonians to “reinterpret” the tape.

While the full truth may never be revealed, it is unquestionable that U.S. imperialism has never rejected using manufactured “smoking guns” to achieve reactionary ends. Need we refer to Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” and the Vietnam-era “Tonkin Bay incident,” both of which were consciously manufactured by the U.S. government to justify the mass murder of the people of Iraq and Vietnam—in the latter case 4 million Vietnamese? Even today, reports by independent investigators question U.S. intelligence allegations that Syrian government missiles carrying deadly sarin gas killed hundreds of civilians.*

This rump Ukrainian government, convened without the presence of Yanukovych or his Party of the Regions, cleared the streets of the official police and military in order to give free rein to the extreme right. The tiny handful of revolutionary socialists who were present, intent on trying to present a working-class and socialist alternative to Ukrainian and Russian capitalism to workers who had legitimate grievances against government corruption, violence, and the selling of Ukraine to the highest bidder, included a few Ukrainian members of the Fourth International. They and other socialists were run off the streets, their flyers torn to shreds.

Evidence of the reactionary nature of the new Ukrainian regime appears in a March 5 on-line British Channel 4 news account: “The man facing down Putin’s aggression as secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council is Andriy Parubiy. He oversees national security for the nation, having previously served as security commandant during the anti-government protests in Kiev.” Channel 4 identifies Parubiy as a member of Svoboda and a founder of its pro-Nazi predecessor, the Social National Party. Moreover, “overseeing the armed forces alongside Parubiy as the Deputy Secretary of National Security is Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of the Right Sector—a group of hardline nationalist streetfighters, who previously boasted they were ready for armed struggle to free Ukraine.”

Other Svoboda leaders in the top echelons of the new government include Deputy Prime Minister Oleksandr Sych, Ecology Minister Andriy Mokhnyk, Agriculture Minister Ihor Shvaika, and acting Prosecutor General Oleh Makhnitsky.

Top U.S. officials visit Kiev

U.S. Republican Party firebrand and former presidential candidate John McCain had paid a previous visit to the Maidan, sharing the stage with Svoboda’s anti-Semitic leader Oleg Tyahnybok. McCain tried to rouse the crowd with cries of “democracy” and promises of “freedom and independence”—American style. But “democracy” was to be granted only after the looting government of oligarchs had approved the austerity terms that came with the European Union’s (EU) proposed “bailout” package, called the “Association Agreement.”

U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Victoria Nuland also participated in the protests—to pass out cookies, no less—in a well-orchestrated imperial stage-crafting effort to present the United States as a nation with the most benevolent and generous of intentions. She had previously boasted about U.S. funding of the “democratic opposition” to the tune of $5 billion over the past 10 years, not to mention the creation of some 40,000 NGOs to spread the “democracy” of U.S. imperialism.

Nuland has since become famous for her off-the-cuff “xxxx the EU” statement, which has been circulated by bloggers around the world. A Russian surveillance team caught her red-handed in denouncing the European Union negotiating team for its deal with former President Yanukovych. Nuland’s Russian-acquired exchange with U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt called for the U.S., rather than the EU, to determine who would compose the new Ukrainian government. Yanukovych’s agreement with EU top officials from Germany, France and Poland, his third reversal regarding who would plunder and subject his country to imperial control, had him appointing top opposition leaders to major government posts. Nuland disagreed with key appointments, indicating that “Yats” was to be the U.S. choice. Indeed, “Yats,” or Arseniy P. Yatsenyuk, is today’s Ukrainan Prime Minister. Nuland preferred figures who had shown themselves to be loyal to Western interests and to IMF-type austerity.

If there is a “war” in Ukraine today, it is to determine which of the imperialist Western powers will have priority “rights” in absorbing this nation of 46 million people into its orbit to become yet another sub-colony of imperialism, along with the other nine nations that two decades ago constituted the former Soviet Union and today are largely incorporated in Europe’s capitalist economy and military alliance, NATO. With the U.S.-instigated coup, Russian capitalism has been effectively marginalized as a player in the Ukraine.

Nuland’s apology for her poor choice of words was not accompanied by any apology for U.S. moves to dominate the future neoliberal exploitation of Ukraine, as opposed to handing over this right to longstanding U.S. competitors—not to mention to the wannabe imperialist Russian President Vladimir Putin and his billionaire oligarch regime. He and his predecessors gave birth to the Russian oligarchy some 20-plus years ago when the USSR’s wealth and resources were stolen, with U.S. complicity, by the tiny layer of former Stalinist bureaucrats who now preside over capitalist Russia, today a minor player in the world imperialist configuration.

Assistant Secretary Nuland directed her ire not against Russia but rather Germany, France, and Poland—who brokered the deal as to the future composition of the Ukrainian government and the distribution of that nation’s industrial strength and rich and fertile agricultural resources. This was an unacceptable arrangement in the eyes of imperial America.

The irrefutably recorded discussions between Nuland and Pyatt revealed their choice of United Nations “glue,” said Nuland, to cement any Ukraine deal. In that scenario, the U.S.-handpicked and subservient UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon would be called in to “negotiate” the nation’s future, rather than a more pro-EU assortment of capitalist plunderers.

On March 4, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry visited Kiev in a further attempt to shoulder aside EU competitors in a deal. Kerry offered $1 billion in loan guarantees to the Ukrainian coup-makers and promised to send in a host of U.S. “technical experts” to help re-align the country’s national bank and finance ministry.

In today’s game of re-dividing and re-colonizing the world, the Russians are bit players as compared to the U.S. imperialists and their not-too-happy lesser competitors in the EU, ever scrambling to maintain their perceived share of the booty extracted from their former colonies and new ones to be assimilated across Eastern Europe. At the level of military power, Russia’s less than a handful of bases outside its borders pales before the 1100 maintained by the U.S. around the world and another 1000 or so stationed in the U.S.

Today’s Russian billionaires are puny compared to the multi-trillionaire U.S. bankers who looted the U.S. Treasury (the term was “government bailout”) to the tune of some $30 trillion. This was accomplished with the absolute complicity of the subservient Obama administration, which is little more than the governmental mask or façade of America’s real ruling class. In the United States, according to Oxfam International, the wealthiest one percent has captured 95 percent of post-financial-crisis growth since 2009, while the bottom 90 percent has become poorer.

Yanukovych and his government’s original intention to resolve its virtual bankruptcy via the EU austerity plan momentarily gave way to Russian President Putin’s counter-offer of $15 billion in bail-out loans to the Ukrainian oligarchs—mostly former Stalinist bureaucrats themselves—which are peanuts in comparison to the $51 billion the Russians spent on the Sochi Olympic spectacle. The latter, aimed at glorifying Russia’s pretended emergence as a great power (it came in first in the medal total in Sochi!), was a trifle as compared to what U.S. and Western imperialism had to offer to buy Ukraine’s near bankrupt government and its workers and resources. The Russians’ subsequent offer to reduce the price of oil and gas by 55 percent to the heavily oil-dependent Ukraine was nearly instantly countered by EU pledges to substitute Polish coal and other fossil fuels.

The coup regime has also agreed to a deal with Chevron Corporation for large-scale shale-gas fracking operations in western Ukraine. The Yanukovich government, before its ignominious demise, had previously signed production-sharing agreements with Shell and Chevron. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reports that Ukraine has Europe’s fourth largest shale-gas reserves.

EU-IMF economic agenda for Ukraine

The original EU offer to Ukraine (the one that Yanukovych temporarily rejected on Nov. 21) had certainly come with strings attached. These debilitating conditions were outlined by Marilyn Vogt-Downey, a revolutionary socialist with a long career as an analyst of Ukrainian and Russian politics, in a Feb. 27 CounterPunch article entitled, “An Imperialist Invasion Without an Imperialist Army: Whither Ukraine?” Her assessment rings with a truth that has rarely entered the discussion.

Vogt-Downey suggested that Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych might have “easily calmed the rebellion in Independence Square in Ukraine’s capital Kiev early on if he had simply told the crowds the truth about what the Association Agreement with the European Union would mean to their lives and futures.” She pointed out that the “Free Trade section alone—removing tariff barriers and export duties—would convert Ukraine into one big “free trade zone,” where the anti-environment, anti-labor, and pro-business laws would prevail. … It would create the economic devastation of the type that NAFTA has created in Mexico.

Vogt-Downey said that Yanukovych might then have “gone on to outline what the pending IMF ‘financial aid package’ would do to further worsen their lives. ” She cited the Feb. 23 New York Times report on Yanukovych’s flight, which summarized what the “EU option” would mean. “The economy will remain the greatest problem facing the country,” The Times reported, and then went on: “The International Monetary Fund remains a potential source of financing to replace the $15 billion that Russia had made available before the protests. But that comes with an insistence on austerity and economic changes that will inflict considerable pain.”

Marilyn Vogt-Downey continued: “Considerable pain, indeed!! The IMF loans will require in Ukraine, as they do everywhere, that the government undertake broad-scale privatization of resources and basic public services, cut government spending on education, health care, pensions, housing, and benefits for the needy, as well as laws that hinder the accumulation and free movement of capitalist profits. And that’s just for starters. All this will further lower the wages and standard of living of the mass of the population of Ukraine, which are already lower than the European average.”

Vogt-Downey pointed out that Ukrainian acceptance of the Association Agreement with the EU and the IMF aid package would remove any semblance of independence for the country. She listed the following points to back up her thesis:

Russian troops enter Crimea

Despite the onerous conditions that it imposed, Yanukovych’s deal with the EU was initially approved by the parliament but quickly unraveled when the fascist-led and undoubtedly U.S.-instigated protests caused Yanukovych to flee, in his own words, for his life. In a matter of hours, Ukraine’s rump parliament changed course, adopted some 21 of the most reactionary and chauvinist laws imaginable, and effectively agreed to the terms imposed by the Western powers. The super-nationalist regime now in power even eliminated the Russian language as one of the country’s official languages, disregarding the fact that half of all Ukrainians speak Russian as their primary language.

Putin’s response was to send Russian soldiers to the Crimea, a semi-autonomous region of Ukraine where Russia maintains its Black Sea fleet via a lease that expires in 2045. The corporate media initially sounded the alarm, along with the new Ukrainian regime’s proclaiming that Russia has issued a “declaration of war.”

But the real war in Ukraine is over. U.S. imperialism and its subservient EU allies have won, at least for the time being—that is, until the Ukrainian working masses absorb the lessons of imperialist exploitation and organize independently of their capitalist oppressors everywhere, in the West and in the East. Indeed, the terribly poor Ukrainian people have already tasted the effects of Western “aid.” Eighty percent of all Foreign Direct Investment in that country has been from the West, with little or no tangible results for the Ukrainian people and billions in profits, as always, for the corporate investors and financial speculators.

Clearly, Putin is alarmed at the prospect of having a slavishly pro-EU and American regime established on Russia’s border. The Western powers are salivating at the possibility of establishing oil-drilling rights on Russia’s Arctic frontier, and perhaps eventually in Russia itself. But his momentary display of “power” by sending in some 16,000 soldiers to the Crimea, according to the new Ukrainian regime, is his version of imperial stagecraft, more akin to his Olympic victory than a military threat to Ukraine. Not a single shot has been fired to date. Putin is fully capable of compromising with Western imperialism in a deal that would require him to withdraw the troops in the not too distant future. Indeed, as of March 4, Putin was already in negotiations with Secretary of State John Kerry. In truth, the future of the people of the Crimea will be determined by their own independent and revolutionary mobilization as opposed to reliance on any capitalist power, West or East.

Putin had no problem voting for the UN’s “humanitarian” resolution that paved the way for the NATO/U.S. devastation of Libya and its subsequent sequestration of Libyan oil. We hear no Russian objections to the recent U.S. declaration to send an army of 5000 U.S. troops to Libya, with that nation now reduced to warring and out-of-control fundamentalist militias.

After a few rhetorical threats, the Obama administration made clear that it had no intention of going to war with Russia—a largely defanged and pathetic world power, although one with a nuclear arsenal. The worst that the Obama administration could threaten were possible economic sanctions or staging a boycott of the upcoming G-8 conference in Sochi.

Legacy of Great Russian chauvinism

Whatever threat Russia poses to the people of the Ukraine reflects its legacy of plunder and repression, beginning with the pre-1917 Tsarist era. This was interrupted with magnificent results immediately following the 1917 Russian Revolution, which guaranteed not only the right of self-determination to all of Russia’s former colonies but the right to independence and succession. The leadership of Lenin and Trotsky during this historic period brought enlightenment, solidarity, and equality between the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. But this was abruptly ended with the coming to power of Stalin and his counter-revolutionary bureaucratic regime.

Since that time, the Ukrainian people have once again been subjected to the brutal tyranny of Great Russian chauvinism, including after the break-up of the former USSR. The very same Stalinist core of largely Soviet-era bureaucrats-cum-oligarchs that dominated the Ukraine then still prevails today. They have continued the Stalinist policy of subjugating the Ukraine, today in the name of capitalism and aimed at the enrichment of the few at the expense of the many. This is central to understanding the receptivity to pro-Western propaganda of Ukrainians who have suffered greatly under both the grotesque caricature of socialism that Stalinism always represented and the present capitalism brought in by these same bureaucrats.

The absence of a mass revolutionary socialist alternative in Ukraine, as well as in the Middle East and worldwide, weighs heavily on the world’s working masses, who have proved capable of rising up in the tens of millions time and again against the most powerful of tyrants and dictators, only to suffer setbacks and defeats because an authoritative, deeply rooted, and revolutionary mass party of all the oppressed and exploited has yet to be constructed. This is the critical task for revolutionary-minded activists everywhere.

Vogt-Downey pointed out in CounterPunch that “what is unfolding right now in Ukraine is not a revolution but imperialist consolidation of the capitalist counterrevolution by imperialist finance capital and the army of international capitalist investors who seek unfettered opportunities to milk every ounce of profit they can from the Ukrainian working class and the resources in their territory.”

For the moment, U.S. imperialism, the central player in a crisis-ridden world economy in decay, has undoubtedly scored a significant victory in the Ukraine, again at the expense of the working masses. Opposition to U.S. imperialism in all its manifestations must be a top priority of any successful antiwar movement.

Ukraine demonstrates in bold relief that oppression and exploitation can be achieved in more ways than overt military intervention. Privatized death squads and drone warfare around the globe, surveillance of the world’s people and the corporate media’s manufacture—Orwellian style—of a pseudo-democracy in America that masks mass murder, racism, and plunder everywhere are also in today’s imperialist arsenal. The imperial beast takes many forms, all aimed at advancing, by any means necessary, the interests of the ruling-class minority.