We’re not facing a new Crimean War – yet. Only up to a point. NATO’s wet dream is one thing; it is quite another to pull it off – as in ending the Russian fleet routinely leaving Sevastopol across the Black Sea through the Bosphorus and then reaching Tartus, Syria’s Mediterranean port. So yes, this is as much about Syria as about Crimea.
The U.S. and EU sponsored coup against the elected government and president of the Ukraine had several strategic implications and aims. One of them is the Black Sea base of the Russian Navy which is used to supply and defend Syria. A takeover of the government in Kiev was necessary but not sufficient to neutralize the base as a strategic Russian asset. To do that a takeover of the local government of the Crimea and all its powers would also have to take place. The Crimea is historically Russian and most of it inhabitants are Russians.
Russia’s parliament has approved President Putin’s request for the use of force inside neighboring Ukraine, as the latest neocon-approved “regime change” spins out of control and threatens to inflict grave damage on international relations, ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern explains.
As mentioned earlier, US Secretary of State John Kerry and President Obama made public statements regarding the protests in Venezuela. Both demanded that students arrested in Venezuela be released, without regard as to whether any had been arrested for allegedly committing crimes such as arson and assault. There were no such statements from U.S. officials regarding the hundreds arrested in Colombia.
Regime change in Ukraine is part of a covert and overt war against the Russian Federation. The installment of a puppet government in Ukraine will remove one of the most important partners that Moscow has. If Ukraine joins the EU and NATO, it will be a direct threat to the western borders of Russia and the security of one of the most important Russian naval bases, which is the home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet and located at Sevastopol in the Crimean Peninsula.
the use of knowledge of private lives to embarrass or destroy reputations of perceived enemies through the use of smear campaigns, disinformation and honey traps. The only difference is that what was once only possible by use of a vast network of informants is now made easy via the utilization of modern technology. Such tactics might be acceptable to members of the public if used against real enemies of society such as dangerous criminals or terrorists, but as Greenwald makes clear, the targets of these measures are ordinary people
Mainstream opposition leaders have failed to earn a popular mandate from the majority of the population, or to secure the confidence of most Venezuelan citizens during the Latin American country’s elections. Failing to win any of Venezuela’s presidential elections or most of the South American republic’s parliamentary, regional, or municipal elections in the last fifteen years, the leaders of the mainstream opposition are now resorting to color revolution tactics and a Ukraine-style disruption strategy.
The center of Kiev has been transformed into a battleground as rioters clash with police on Independence Square.
Ukraine has seen some of the worst scenes of violence over the last few days, with over thirty five dead and dozens injured in the escalating conflict.
The lawsuit was filed in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia three years to the date of Mr. McGovern’s brutal and false arrest at GWU during a speech of then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. After the arrest, the PCJF uncovered that then 71-year-old McGovern was put on a “Be On the Look-Out” list, and agents were instructed to stop and question him on sight. The reasons cited included his “political activism, primarily anti-war” — a clearly unconstitutional order.
Hicks was about ideas. When he railed about television as a soporific drug to lull the populace into a state of complacency and consumerism, or the Rodney King trial, or his more psychedelically inspired visions of a universe of vibrations, he was selling an agenda. He was punching at the establishment and the status quo and his stand-up was a statement saying our world can be better if we start thinking and questioning it.
The US Empire, in its efforts to contain, and therefore dominate and control such a strategic and resource-rich region, is more than content to allow its reactionary and sectarian clients to incite the conflict necessary to subvert, fracture and divide the inevitable power a unified Middle East could claim: if only their progressive aspirations and unity were not repeatedly “set back” by Zionist occupation and manufactured antagonism.
Suspicions are being raised in Geneva, Syria and among certain UN aid agencies in Homs and elsewhere that those they are trying to save from starvation, were ‘set-up’ to fail as a result of power politics and influences emanating from Washington and Tel Aviv.
