One 77-year-old’s search for the truth: 9/11, election fraud, illegal wars, Wall Street criminality, a stolen nuke, the neocon wars, control of the U.S. government by global corporations, the unjustified assault on Social Security, media complicity, and the "Great Recession" about to become the second Great Depression. "The most important truths are hidden from us by the powerful few who strive to steal the American dream by keeping We the People in the dark."
From Executive Intelligence Review, February 20, 2015
by Jeffrey Steinberg
Feb. 17—As of midnight on Feb. 15, a ceasefire went into force in
eastern Ukraine. The deal that was hammered out among Russian President
Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, French President
François Hollande, and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko—i.e.,
without the direct involvement of the Obama Administration and the U.K.
government—after 17 hours of non-stop negotiations in Minsk last week,
is fragile, to say the least.
The immediate danger lies with an identifiable force—the neo-Nazi
militias who are an integral part of the Kiev government, which came to
power one year ago in a Nazi-driven coup d’état. Those Nazis are acting
as protected assets of the Obama Administration, specifically Assistant
Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland.
These neo-Nazi forces have officially rejected the ceasefire. The
battalions they control in southeastern Ukraine are not fully under the
control of the central government in Kiev, but are armed by Ukraine’s
“oligarchs”—big businessmen such as Dnepropetrovsk Governor
Ihor Kolomoysky. They are the offshoot of the Bandera movement, which
was fascist in its own right even before World War II, then welcomed
Hitler’s invasion of Ukraine and carried out atrocities against the
people of Ukraine and Poland that should have landed them in the dock at
the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal. Instead, they were recruited by
British and American intelligence services for the Cold War against the
Soviet Union.
The neo-Nazi representatives within the government in Kiev are also
out to sabotage any peace agreement. According to Russian media, former
Commandant of the Maidan and current First Deputy Speaker of the
Ukrainian parliament (the Supreme Rada) Andriy Parubiy is coming to
Washington this week. A cofounder of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party and of
one of the paramilitary groups that became the Right Sector spearhead of
the February 2014 coup, Parubiy today is a leader in the People’s
Front, the political party of the man Victoria Nuland hand-picked as
Ukraine’s post-coup prime minister, Arseniy Yatsenyuk.
Speaking Feb. 14 on Ukrainian TV, Parubiy announced the purpose of
the trip: to get weapons. He said that Ukraine needs to strengthen its
armed Forces and get “the USA to give us highly precise modern
weaponry.” He added,
“Next week I am going to the United States, to discuss this in a very concrete and targeted way.”
The possibility that the U.S. would arm Ukraine—a move Moscow would
see as an act of war—is precisely what impelled the leaders of France
and Germany to work frenetically to get a ceasefire in Ukraine. It would
be a step to World War III.
The Rush for a Ceasefire
President Hollande and Chancellor Merkel saw the Minsk talks as
existential. They agreed that, if there were no diplomatic breakthrough,
the Obama Administration would begin arming the Ukrainian military and
this would escalate the crisis. Over the past weeks, more and more
strategic analysts and policymakers have come to view the Ukraine crisis
as a potential trigger for thermonuclear war between the United States
and Russia. Articles headlining the danger have appeared in Germany’s
Der Spiegel and even Britain’s Daily Telegraph.
The specter of a war of annihilation starting in the center of Europe
was a powerful incentive for Merkel and Hollande to team up to preempt
the U.S. weapons flows by the last-ditch diplomacy.
On the eve of the Minsk talks, Chancellor Merkel flew to Washington
on Feb. 9 to confer with President Obama. She delivered a blunt message,
according to German and American sources. First, she told the President
that Europe was adamantly opposed to the U.S. arming the Ukrainian
Army. Second, she told Obama that the lack of a direct dialogue between
him and Russian President Putin was putting the world at risk. Only the
leaders of the two nations with the thermonuclear arsenals that could
destroy the planet could be the ultimate guarantors of mankind’s
survival. They had to resume a direct, personal dialogue, Merkel
insisted.
Her admonition appears to have had some impact. On Feb. 11, on the
eve of the Minsk talks, Obama called Putin, and the two men had a
90-minute conversation, the content of which has been kept secret.
According to Spiegel Online, which published a detailed account of
Merkel’s and Hollande’s diplomatic efforts, the mere fact that the phone
call took place demonstrated that Washington was deeply interested in
the outcome of the Minsk talks.
At one point in the marathon diplomatic session, according to the
Spiegel account, Putin, in private, spoke by phone to the heads of the
self-proclaimed Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR). He
secured their agreement to the ceasefire terms. In addition, Kremlin
aide Vladislav Surkov shuttled between the
Hollande-Merkel-Poroshenko-Putin meeting and the Minsk contact group,
which also met through the night at another location in Minsk (because
Poroshenko refused to speak with the DPR/LPR delegation directly). It
was the contact group, consisting of Alexander Zakharchenko (DPR), Igor
Plotnitsky (LPR), Ukrainian ex-President Leonid Kuchma, Russian
Ambassador to Kiev Mikhail Zurabov, and OSCE negotiator Heidi
Tagliavini, who actually signed the 10-point Minsk accord.
In the previous months of renewed fighting in eastern Ukraine, after
the September 2014 ceasefire broke down, the DPR/LPR forces captured an
additional belt of territory, especially within the Donetsk Region, as
they moved to push the Kiev battalions out of the range from which they
could shell Donetsk and other cities. While the Minsk talks were
proceeding, the DPR/LPR militias had nearly encircled 6,000 to 8,000
Ukrainians in the town of Debaltseve, the major rail junction between
Donetsk and Lugansk. With growing defections, collapsing morale, and
widespread draft evasion, the Ukraine Armed Forces were already at a
break-point. For Merkel and Hollande, the idea of arming such a
disintegrating army was a grave mistake, reflecting a lack of
understanding of the reality of the Ukraine crisis in official
Washington.
The Nuland Factor
Indeed, the policy of the Obama Administration towards Ukraine and
Russia has been hijacked from day one by a collection of
neo-conservatives and humanitarian interventionist ideologues—led by
Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria
Nuland. The wife of neo-con Robert Kagan, Nuland served as a foreign
policy advisor to then-Vice President Dick Cheney, before being
appointed as the Bush Administration’s Ambassador to NATO.
Nuland publicly boasted that the U.S. had poured $5 billion into the
“democracy” movement in Ukraine since the end of the Cold War, and she
made clear, in an infamous taped phone call in January 2014, that the
man who is now Ukrainian Prime Minister, Yatsenyuk, was owned by
Washington. She is responsible for covering up the powerful role of the
Banderite Nazis in the Maidan coup and the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Nuland’s current role in sabotaging efforts for peace was highlighted
in a Feb. 15 article in Germany’s Der Spiegel, entitled “America’s Riot
Diplomat.”[1] The column stated that Nuland poses a threat to America’s
allies, and that while she is supposed to solve the crisis of Ukraine
and relations with Russia, “in the crisis, Nuland herself has become the
problem.”
Der Spiegel described a closed-door meeting, apparently reported
anonymously both to it and to the Bild newspaper, held by Nuland at the
Munich Security Conference one week ago, with “perhaps two dozen U.S.
diplomats and Senators.” There Nuland gave instructions to “fight
against the Europeans” on the issue of arming Ukraine to fight Russia.
She was described as referring “bitterly” to the German Chancellor’s and
French President’s meeting with President Putin as “Merkel’s Moscow
junk,” and “Moscow bullshit,” and she welcomed a Senator’s calling
German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen the “Defeatism Minister.”
These reports give the lie to Nuland’s claim on the morning of Feb.
11, when the Minsk Agreement was announced, that “we [the United States]
enthusiastically support it.”
Der Spiegel says that Nuland does not stop short of calling for “heavy weapons” to be given by NATO to Ukraine.
Raising the Alarm
In a statement issued on Feb. 14, Lyndon LaRouche warned that the war
danger would persist until Nuland was fired and her links to hardcore
Banderite Nazis exposed publicly (see box).
The larger threat of thermonuclear war, stemming from the Ukraine
crisis, was a dominant theme behind the scenes at the annual Munich
Security Conference. On the eve of that meeting, three national security
specialists, former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), former Russian Foreign
Minister Igor Ivanov, and former British Secretary of State for Defence
Des Browne, wrote an op-ed calling for an overhaul of the Euro-Atlantic
security architecture, with an inclusive role for Russia.
The same view was echoed in two other high-visibility venues. On Feb.
11, Jack Matlock, who was President Reagan’s ambassador to the Soviet
Union during the closing days of the Cold War, told a packed audience at
the National Press Club in Washington that the West had violated some
of the most essential agreements with Moscow, those which had allowed
for the peaceful demise of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union, and
that the danger of a world war was grave (see transcript in this
Feature).
Two days later, Markus Becker, writing about the Munich Security
Conference in Spiegel Online, warned that the “Threat of War Is Higher
than in the Cold War.” He presented some of the same arguments as the
Nunn-Ivanov-Browne article.
Unless LaRouche’s demand for Nuland’s ouster is acted upon swiftly,
the chances of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine wrecking the fragile peace are
immense. Nuland’s ouster must be followed by the agreement among
governments to disqualify and remove the Nazi elements now running
rampant, and participating in government, in Ukraine. This demand has
been raised repeatedly by the Russian government, and by LaRouche.
If the cycle of violence in eastern Ukraine resumes full-force, the
prospects of escalation into a direct Russia-U.S. military confrontation
are very high.
Richard Burt, who was one of the chief U.S. arms control negotiators
with the Soviets, told Spiegel Online (Feb. 9) that the danger of
nuclear war is very great. “Both American and Russian nuclear arms are
essentially on a kind of hair-trigger alert. Both sides have a nuclear
posture where land-based missiles could be authorized for use in less
than 15 minutes.” He acknowledged that the kind of “hybrid warfare” now
underway in eastern Ukraine adds greatly to the danger of miscalculation
into thermonuclear confrontation. Former Russian Foreign Minister Igor
Ivanov concurred, telling Spiegel, “Now the threat of a war is higher
than during the Cold War.”
It must be understood, in addition, that the primary driver for war
is the bankruptcy of the trans-Atlantic financial system, centered in
London and Wall Street. The desperation of financier circles over the
looming doom of their system and the collapse of their political power
is driving the war danger. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has
observed in recent statements, if there had been no Ukraine crisis,
some circles in the West would have created one—to deal with the larger
collapse they are facing.
As Washington is not a partner to the Minsk peace deal, how can there
be peace when Washington has made policy decisions to escalate the
conflict and to use the conflict as a proxy war between the US and
Russia?
The Minsk agreement makes no reference to the announcement by Lt.
Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of US Army Europe, that Washington is sending
a battalion of US troops to Ukraine to train Ukrainian forces how to
fight against Russian and rebel forces. The training is scheduled to
begin in March, about two weeks from now. Gen. Hodges says that it is
very important to recognize that the Donetsk and Luhansk forces “are not
separatists, these are proxies for President Putin.”
How is there a peace deal when Washington has plans underway to send arms and
training to the US puppet government in Kiev?
Looking at the deal itself, it is set up to fail. The only parties to
the deal who had to sign it are the leaders of the Donetsk and Lugansk
break-away republics. The other signers to the Minsk deal are an OSCE
representative which is the European group that is supposed to monitor
the withdrawal of heavy weapons by both sides, a former Ukrainian
president Viktor Kuchma, and the Russian ambassador in Kiev. Neither
the German chancellor nor the French, Ukrainian, and Russian presidents
who brokered the deal had to sign it.
In other words, the governments of Germany, France, Ukraine, and
Russia do not appear to be empowered or required to enforce the
agreement. According to RT, “the declaration was not meant to be signed
by the leaders, German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said.” http://rt.com/news/231571-putin-minsk-ukraine-deal/
The terms of the agreement depend on actions of the Ukrainian
parliament and prime minister, neither of which are under Poroshenko’s
control, and Poroshenko himself is a figurehead under Washington’s
control. Moreover, the Ukrainian military does not control the Nazi
militias. As Washington and the right-wing elements in Ukraine want
conflict with Russia, peace cannot be forthcoming.
The agreement is nothing but a list of expectations that have no chance of occurring.
One expectation is that Ukraine and the republics will negotiate
terms for future local elections in the provinces that will bring them
back under Ukraine’s legal control. The day after the local elections,
but prior to the constitutional reform that provides the regions with
autonomy, Kiev takes control of the borders with Ukraine and between the
provinces. I read this as the total sell-out of the Donetsk and
Lugansk republics. Apparently, that is the way the leaders of the
republics see it as well, as Putin had to twist their arms in order to
get their signatures to the agreement.
Another expectation is that Ukraine will adopt legislation on
self-governance that would be acceptable to the republics and declare a
general amnesty for the republics’ leaders and military forces.
Negotiations between Kiev and the autonomous areas are to take place
that restore Kiev’s taxation of the autonomous areas and the provision
of social payments and banking services to the autonomous areas.
After a comprehensive constitutional reform in Ukraine guaranteeing
acceptable (and undefined) autonomy to the republics, Kiev will take
control over the provinces’ borders with Russia.
By the end of 2015 Kiev will implement comprehensive constitutional
reform that decentralizes the Ukrainian political system and provides
privileges of autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions.
Both Putin and Poroshenko are both reported as stating that the main thing achieved is a ceasefire starting on February 15.
The ceasefire is of no benefit to the Donetsk and Lugansk republics
as they are prevailing in the conflict. Moreover, the deal requires the
republics’ forces to give up territory and to pull back to the borders
of last September and to eject fighters from France and other countries
who have come to the aid of the break-away republics. In other words,
the agreement erases all of Kiev’s losses from the conflict that Kiev
initiated.
All of the risks of the agreement are imposed on the break-away
republics and on Putin. The provinces are required to give up all their
gains while Washington trains and arms Ukrainian forces to attack the
provinces. The republics have to give up their security and trust Kiev
long before Kiev votes, assuming it ever does, autonomy for the
republics.
Moreover, if the one-sided terms of the Minsk agreement result in failure, Putin and the republics will be blamed.
Why would Putin make such a deal and force it on the republics? If
the deal becomes a Russian sell-out of the republics, it will hurt
Putin’s nationalist support within Russia and make it easier for
Washington to weaken Putin and perhaps achieve regime change. It looks
more like a surrender than a fair deal.
Perhaps Putin’s strategy is to give away every advantage in the
expectation that the deal will fail, and the Russian government can say
“we gave away the store and the deal still failed.”
Washington’s coup in Kiev and the attack on the Russian-speaking
Ukrainians in the east and south is part of Washington’s strategy to
reassert its uni-power position. Russia’s independent foreign policy
and Russia’s growing economic and political relationships with Europe
became problems for Washington. Washington is using Ukraine to attack
and to demonize Russia and its leader and to break-up Russia’s economic
and political relations with Europe. That is what the sanctions are
about. A peace deal in Ukraine on any terms other than Washington’s is
unacceptable to Washington. The only acceptable deal is a deal that is a
defeat for Russia.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Russian government
made a strategic mistake when it did not accept the requests of the
break-away provinces to be united with Russia. The people in the
Donetsk and Lugansk provinces favored unification with the same massive
majorities that the people in Crimea showed. If the provinces had been
united with Russia, it would have been the end of the conflict. Neither
Ukraine nor Washington is going to attack Russian territory.
By failing to end the conflict by unification, Putin set himself up
as the punching bag for Western propaganda. The consequence is that
over the many months during which the conflict has been needlessly drawn
out, Putin has had his image and reputation in the West destroyed. He
is the “new Hitler.” He is “scheming to restore the Soviet Empire.”
“Russia ranks with ebola and the Islamist State as the three greatest
threats.” “RT is a terrorist organization like Boco Haram and the
Islamist State.” And so on and on. This CNN interview with Obama
conducted by Washington’s presstitute Fareed Zakaria shows the image of
Putin based entirely on lies that rules in the West.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Duu6IwW3sbw
Putin could be no more demonized even if the Russian military had invaded Ukraine,
conquered it, and reincorporated Ukraine in Russia of which Ukraine was
part for centuries prior to the Soviet collapse and Ukraine’s separation
from Russia at Washington’s insistence.
The Russian government might want to carefully consider whether
Moscow is helping Washington to achieve another victory in Ukraine.
Ukraine ceasefire deal agreed at Minsk talks Ceasefire will come into force on Sunday, but Hollande and Merkel say much work still to be done after marathon overnight negotiations. Original Here
Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, says fighting will end at midnight on 15 February and that both the Ukrainian government and separatist rebels will withdraw heavy weapons from the front line The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany have reached a ceasefire deal after 17 hours of talks in Minsk, Belarus, on the Ukrainian conflict. The ceasefire will come into force on Sunday as part of a deal that also involves the withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line. Russian president Vladimir Putin was the first to announce the deal, saying: “We have agreed on a ceasefire from midnight 15 February.” Putin added: “There is also the political settlement. The first thing is constitutional reform that should take into consideration the legitimate rights of people who live in Donbass. There are also border issues. Finally there are a whole range of economic and humanitarian issues.” The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, who helped to broker the deal alongside the French president, François Hollande, said “we now have a glimmer of hope”, but added that the leaders were under no illusions and that “there is very, very much work still to do”. Merkel also confirmed that Putin put pressure on the separatists to agree a truce. Hollande said the deal covered all the contentious issues, including border control, decentralisation, and the resumption of economic relations, but also warned that much more needed to be done to resolve the crisis. Hollande and Merkel will ask the European Union to support the agreement later on Thursday. European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini sounded a note of caution, saying the Minsk agreement was important but not definitive. She added that she did not expect EU leaders to discuss sanctions against Russia at their summit on Thursday after the deal. The main points of the agreement are: Ceasefire to begin at midnight on 15 February
Heavy weapons withdrawn in a two week period starting from 17 February
Amnesty for prisoners involved in fighting
Withdrawal of all foreign militias from Ukrainian territory and the disarmament of all illegal groups
Lifting of restrictions in rebel areas of Ukraine
Decentralisation for rebel regions by the end of 2015
Ukrainian control of the border with Russia by the end of 2015 The participants also agreed to attend regular meetings to ensure the fulfilment of the agreements, a Russian-distributed document said.
Ukraine’s president, Petro Poroshenko, said: “The main thing which has been achieved is that from Saturday into Sunday there should be declared without any conditions at all a general ceasefire.” Speaking after the talks, Donetsk rebel leader Alexander Zakharchenko called the treaty a “major victory for the Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics”. Luhansk leader Igor Plotnitsky said they would “give Ukraine a chance, so that the country changes its constitution and its attitude”. But despite the celebratory words, the fledgling peace process remained very fragile. Zakharchenko warned that all “responsibility will be on Petro Poroshenko”, and that the peace process would fall through if Kiev violated the new agreements, Russian news agency Interfax reported. “All the points require additional approval, and for this reason there will be no meetings and new agreements if any violations take place,” Zakharchenko said. http://youtu.be/_vGK63sbiks
Residents of Donetsk, where civilians have continued to be killed by shelling this week, greeted the news of the peace agreement with cautious optimism. A small group of people rallied outside the rebel government’s headquarters in the Donetsk regional administration building, and a woman on stage declared that “today is a holiday.” More hardcore supporters of the rebels were disappointed with the new agreement. The popular Russian nationalist publication Sputnik i Pogrom called the Minsk treaty a “betrayal of all that the rebels fought for, including some of our readers” and derided the “clownish half-autonomous status” offered to the breakaway republics. Earlier, Ukraine had played down speculation about a possible ceasefire agreement, accusing Russia of imposing “unacceptable” conditions. At one point during the negotiations Putin signalled his apparent frustration at the lack of progress by snapping a pen or a pencil.
More than 5,300 people have died since April in the conflict between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists in two eastern provinces, and the bloodshed rose sharply in recent weeks. Although the Minsk agreement represents a breakthrough in a long-frustrated peace process, several key points will be difficult and time-consuming to achieve. It remained unclear what actions were to be taken in Debaltseve, the current major point of contention between the warring sides in eastern Ukraine. Pro-Russian fighters have been trying to take the town and its railroad junction from Ukrainian forces in weeks of heavy fighting, with violence escalating in the buildup to the peace talks. The rebels have said they have Debaltseve surrounded, while the Ukrainian military has repeatedly denied this. But a volunteer battalion commander said on Thursday morning that Kiev’s forces were storming Lohvynove, a town located along the only highway leading out of Debaltseve to Ukrainian positions, suggesting that the troops really were surrounded. Speaking to Russian channel RT, Putin said he had ordered “military experts” to look into how to solve the situation in Debaltseve peacefully. The Minsk agreement stipulates that the rebel republics withdraw their forces from the demarcation line laid down in the September ceasefire, and that Kiev withdraws its forces from the current de facto frontline. “If it really is surrounded, then according to the normal logic of things, those who are surrounded will make attempts to break out, and those who are outside will make attempts to organise a corridor for the surrounded troops to leave,” Putin said.
“Look what the Russians are now bargaining for,” tweeted Ukrainian
foreign ministry representative Dmytro Kuleba on Thursday, with a link
to rebel claims that they had Debaltseve surrounded. “Without
Debaltseve, the [Luhansk and Donetsk people’s republics] are in a
transportation bind.”
Another particularly difficult point to implement will be
re-establishing Kiev’s control of the border, through which Russian
volunteers, arms and allegedly troops have been coming to the rebels’
aid. Many of the border crossings with Russia are under rebel control,
and the boundary between the two countries is notoriously porous anyway.
Poroshenko said Kiev will only restore full control of the border by
the end of 2015.
The US president, Barack Obama, has faced rising calls at home to send military aid to Ukraine,
but European leaders fear it would only aggravate the violence. Russia,
meanwhile, faces a severe economic downturn driven in part by sanctions
the west has imposed for supporting the separatists with troops and
equipment, which Moscow vehemently denies it is doing.
The urgency felt by all sides appeared to be underlined by the
extraordinary length and discomfort of the talks between the leaders of
Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany. They sat down with each other
Wednesday evening in the Belarusian capital and the talks continued as
sunrise neared on Thursday.
In a diplomatic blitz that began last week, Merkel and Hollande
visited Kiev and Moscow to speak to Poroshenko and Putin, paving the way
for the marathon session in Minsk.
