The world at war: The mind, journalism, freedoms... Ukrainian Government Bows to Pressure from Washington, EU and Far-right Opposition

Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych bowed to the demands of the fascistic Western-backed opposition yesterday, signing an agreement curtailing his own powers, allowing the opposition into government, and calling early elections.

This came a day after the bloodiest day of protests in Kiev, the Ukrainian capital. At least 77 protesters and riot police were killed and hundreds injured amid street clashes and gun battles between the far-right protesters and the security forces. Fighting has escalated since the Ukrainian parliament voted down an opposition bill to curtail the president’s powers earlier this week.

After Thursday’s fighting, Yanukovych backed down and gave in to the opposition’s key demands. Within 10 days, he will form a national unity government, including opposition representatives. The 2004 constitution passed after the US-backed Orange Revolution is to go back into effect in September, depriving Yanukovych of control over the chiefs of the security services. That power will be held by the prime minister. By December, early presidential and parliamentary elections are to be held; the presidential election was originally scheduled for March of 2015.

Adrian Karatnycky, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, told the PBS news program in the US that he expected Yanukovych to lose power in a matter of weeks or even days. Yanukovych left Kiev late last night and flew to Kharkov, a city near the border with Russia, the main backer of Yanukovych’s regime.

The Ukrainian parliament moved to free jailed billionaire oligarch Yulya Tymoshenko, the rival of Yanukovych who became prime minister in the Orange Revolution. She was convicted in 2011 of embezzlement in connection with natural gas deals with Russia. The parliament decriminalized the article of the criminal code under which Tymoshenko was prosecuted.

Yanukovych signed the agreement after negotiations lasting throughout Thursday night and into Friday, as bloody battles raged on the streets of Kiev. The foreign ministers of Germany, France and Poland, having arrived in Kiev on Thursday, worked closely with the opposition leaders—Vitali Klitschko of the Udar Party, Arseniy Yatsenyuk of Tymoshenko’s Fatherland Party, and Oleh Tyahnybok of the fascistic Svoboda party.

Signers of the agreement, besides Yanukovych and the three opposition leaders, included Foreign Ministers Frank-Walter Steinmeier of Germany, Laurent Fabius of France, and Radoslaw Sikorski of Poland. However, Russian negotiator Vladimir Lukin, who was originally supposed to sign, declined to do so.

Before the agreement was signed, the German and Polish foreign ministers travelled to the Maidan (Independence Square)—the centre of opposition protests, where tens of thousands of mostly middle-class protesters had gathered—in order to obtain the protesters’ consent. They met in a hotel with 30 members of the Maidan Council, which represent the protesters.

It appears that even the right-wing opposition leaders were straining to control the far-right thugs unleashed by the imperialist powers in Ukraine. When Klitschko tried to speak to promote the deal with Yanukovych, he was shouted down by the protesters, who called out, “Shame!”

Oleh Tyahnybok, whose Svoboda party openly espouses anti-Semitic and racist views, was received at the German Embassy and presented along with Foreign Minister Steinmeier for a photo opportunity.

Yanukovych’s surrender has encouraged the fascistic forces leading the opposition to act even more aggressively. The leader of the neo-Nazi “Right Sector,” Dmitry Yarosh, said on the Vkontakte social network that his movement regarded Yanukovich’s statement as a “deception” and would continue the fight. “The national revolution continues,” he wrote, adding that it would end only when the regime was overthrown.

Washington, while not formally a party to the negotiations, applauded the outcome in Kiev. The White House issued a statement declaring that the Obama administration “welcomes” the agreement, calling it “consistent with what we have advocated.”

These statements underscore the utterly reactionary and reckless policy of the imperialist powers, which have worked with fascist groups to drive Ukraine and the entire region to the brink of war. In November last year, Yanukovych cancelled the signing of an association agreement with the European Union (EU) at the last minute and instead moved closer to Russia. Since then, Germany and the United States have systematically sought to destabilize and divide Ukraine.

The US and European press are covering up the fascist politics of the forces they have imposed in government upon the Ukrainian people. The New York Times euphemistically refers to the Right Sector as a “hardline nationalist” group. In fact, it is a pro-Nazi group that criticizes Svoboda—itself a fascist party that celebrates Ukrainians who joined Nazi SS units that carried out mass killings of Jews in the western Ukrainian region of Galicia during World War II—as too “moderate.”

Separatist tendencies are raising their heads throughout Ukraine. The western city of Lviv, the centre of Ukrainian nationalism, has declared itself autonomous.

In the southeast, the parliamentary speaker of the Crimean peninsula, which was tacked onto the then-Ukrainian Soviet Republic in 1954 and is inhabited mainly by Russians, has threatened secession from Ukraine. Speaker Volodymyr Konstantinov said secession “is possible, if the country breaks apart.” He added, “And everything is moving towards that.”

This also raises the possibility of Russian military intervention in Ukraine. The Financial Times of London cited a senior Russian official who said, “If Ukraine breaks apart, it will trigger a war. They will lose Crimea, we will go in and protect it, just as we did in Georgia”—referring to Russia’s 2008 war in Georgia after the US-backed Georgian regime attacked Russian peacekeepers in the separatist region of South Ossetia.

Another Russian official told the Financial Times, “We will not allow Europe and the US to take Ukraine from us. The states of the former Soviet Union, we are one family. They think Russia is still as weak as in the early 1990s, but we are not.”

Germany, the US and the EU share imperialist and geo-political goals in Ukraine, as a commentary that appeared on Spiegel Online two days ago openly noted. “It is no longer just the association agreement with the European Union that is at stake,” Uwe Klußmann wrote. “Nor is the future of President Viktor Yanukovych, a man surrounded by rumours of corruption, the focus any more. Rather, geo-politics has taken centre stage and the question as to which power centres in Europe and the Eurasia region will be dominant in the future has become paramount.”

Global Research

The world at war: The mind, journalism, freedoms...

Ukrainian Government Bows to Pressure from Washington, EU and Far-right Opposition

Dangerous Times: Obama Bows to the Mullahs

It looks like the fix is in. The mullahs will certainly get their nukes and ICBMs, and neither Israel nor the Saudis (who are scared to death of the mullahs) will rely on American protection as long as Obama is in office. Obama just put out the welcome mat for Mullah Rouhani, the killer of 245 U.S. Marines in Beirut in 1984, and the ultraleft UK Guardian just claimed that its readers voted for Great Humanitarian Rouhani to be the next winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. The post-Stalinist Guardian is not known for telling the truth too often, and nobody knows if that “survey” is real or not. But the Guardian and the BBC are the two biggest hard-left organs of propaganda in Europe, and they have long promoted a kind of Hitler-Stalin Pact between European socialists in the EU and radical Muslims of both stripes in the Middle East. These are politically powerful signals, and they will be read as such around the world.

Here is the way the dominos seem to be falling: We are going back to a binary power split between Russia and the United States, with China dominating Asia. Our former allies like Israel and the Saudis are quickly moving away from us and seeking more trustworthy allies, notably Russia, as this column has pointed out before. Putin successfully protected his ally Assad in Syria against a pathetic Obama, who has systematically sabotaged the Pax Americana of the last seven decades. The U.S. only needed to betray a few allies (like Poland on anti-missile defense and Israel against Iran) to spur on our other allies to get the idea. Japan and South Korea may be drawn to China, and Japan is now said to be developing its own nuclear weapons, seventy years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Europeans (who have lost the will to defend themselves) are looking to Russia as well, which is acting like the old Tsarist empire, promising to protect Western civilization against the barbarian hordes of imperial Islam. Vladimir Putin visited Jerusalem last year and sat down to talk with the Israeli Cabinet. He also prayed at a Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where the Russian Orthodox Church has long staked its own claim. Putin says he is a Christian, and is often shown in photos with the ancient Patriarch of Moscow, the equivalent of the Catholic Pope.

Putin has dealt ruthlessly with his own Islamist terror threat from Chechnya, and the Europeans will huddle under any umbrella in the nuclear proliferation storm that is about to break loose. Serious nations defend themselves seriously. In the nuclear missile age, non-serious nations have to buy protection.

Huge discoveries of shale deposits around the world are promising to liberate industrial countries from the chokehold of the Persian Gulf oil — and once that’s gone, who will defend the Sunni Arabs against Iranian aggression? Texas is becoming the biggest oil and gas producer in the world. Both Saudi Prince Bandar and Al Waleed, the richest zillionaire in Arabia, are publicly warning that the price of oil will soon go down as China, Poland, Russia, Germany, Britain and of course the United States are expecting domestic energy to supply their own needs for decades to come.

Even today, Obama is supporting the radical Muslim Brotherhood in the Middle East, in spite of its defeat by a modernist alliance in Egypt. Indeed, the U.S. has just cut off supplies to the armed forces of Egypt, the biggest political force for stability. In Syria, the news is now out that yes, we are supplying the 60,000 jihadis who are trying to overthrow Assad, Russia’s ally.

Obviously we are siding with the barbarians in the jihad war. We have given up any moral justification for our foreign policy. In Obama’s world, as the ACORN Manual proclaims, “Might is right.” Until Obama’s is gone, the world will grab any life preserver within reach.

The United States is still trying to disorganize the Middle East, just like the “Arab Spring” that overthrew Sunni regimes in Egypt and Libya. Jordan is reporting violent unrest against the Hashemite King who is considered to a foreigner by many Jordanian Arabs.

The Middle East is indeed in already in a regional war — the prime minister of Libya was just kidnapped — and the United States is no longer supporting stability anywhere. Just the opposite.

In the ME only Israel is rock-solid domestically — and it is preparing for war. More than 60% of Israelis now believe that war with Iran is inevitable. The idea of a stable Israeli-Palestinian agreement emerging in this storm-whipped ocean looks increasingly unlikely.

If there is any logic behind Obama’s actions, it is to increase the pressure on Israel for dangerous territorial concessions by empowering its worst enemies: The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, and Iran on the Shi’ite side of the Muslim world. The Iranians control tens of thousands of missiles in Lebanon, Syria, and Iran, confronting Israel with its most dangerous threat.

As everybody knows by now, Obama is a high-stakes gambler with other people’s freedom, safety, and welfare. The whole Arab Spring fiasco has spread medieval Shari’a rule, reversing a century of gradual modernization in the Muslim world. That means reactionary tyranny for many millions of women, for religious minorities like Christians and for any Jews who have not yet fled yet, along with Muslim modernists (they do exist) and scores of other religious minorities. Obama is not a believer in civilization.

Nobody knows the outcome. So far, Obama’s gambles have not paid off. Egypt revolted against his favorite, Mohammed Morsi of the Muslim Brotherhood. By now an estimated 120,000 Arabs have died in Syria, with millions of refugees destabilizing neighboring countries, and the United States immorally supporting the Al Qaida-linked rebels. The Arab Spring is now a winter of warfare from Libya to Yemen.

Here are some possible outcomes.

1. Israel will be forced to explode an underground nuclear weapon to stop the triumphalist advance of the mullahs and Sunni radicals. Or it may attack Tehran using EMP-type weapons, which do not have to be nuclear, and which can strike energy plants without killing people. Israel has no interest in killing its enemies; it only needs to scare they daylights out of them, in the most unambiguous way possible. The Yom Kippur War allowed the 40-year Egypt-Israel peace treaty to be signed.

Israel will be pressured to place its nuclear forces under some sort of international inspection regime. However, when Stalin’s Soviet Union had overwhelming conventional superiority in Europe, the U.S. refused to bargain down its nuclear weapons, because only nukes could stop a massive Soviet tank attack into Western Europe. The U.S. didn’t surrender its nukes, and it is extremely doubtful that Israel will do so.

Israel is now talking to Putin, to the Gulf Arabs, and even to China and India to strengthen its international alliances. With fast-growing domestic energy supplies, high technology, a strong economy, and a major military, Israel can build new alliances before Iran goes nuclear. China is now constructing a railroad across Israel to the Red Sea to compete with the Suez Canal. That would give China new energy supplies that it desperately needs.

2. Absent a reliable U.S. nuclear umbrella, the Saudis will seek protection from the only serious nuclear world power in the neighborhood, Putin’s Russia. If not, the Saudis will activate a longstanding plan to import nuclear weapons from Pakistan to arm its own Arab protector, Egypt. Nuclear proliferation will accelerate.

3. Europe is in a self-inflicted economic crisis, and needs a more reliable protector than Obama’s United States. Much of Europe is still in economic despair, with the resulting rise of neo-fascist parties like Golden Dawn in Greece, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement in Italy, and nearly fascist parties in Hungary, Bulgaria, and Spain. Without reliable U.S. protection, NATO countries desperately need a new military umbrella. In France, the National Front is now receiving high poll numbers after proposing a French-Russian alliance against Germany. Europe has world-class industries but it has cannibalized its military to feed the welfare state.

In sum, the safety and security we have provided the world for seventy years is crumbling. Countries at great risk are looking to Moscow for military protection. Russia is still much weaker than it was when the Soviet Union looked dominant, but it has two big sources of clout: Its military and its energy supplies. Russia is also the only nation that can intimidate the mullahs — it is far more willing to use its full range of weapons than the United States. Putin has proven that in Chechnya.

Under Obama, the United States is letting the world fall into crisis. Chances are that he wants to use the resulting chaos to force Israel into making concessions. But countries do not willingly commit suicide, and Israel has a much better option, which is to bring in Putin’s Russia to balance a far-left-ruled United States.

In previous Middle East crises the United States could act as a trusted mediator — but nobody can trust Obama, as the Republicans in Congress know so well. Any peace settlement will therefore require a two-nuclear-power guarantee to be trustworthy.

Obama is a crisis-monger. It is the only way he knows how to operate. But nobody can predict how his crises will come out. So far he has mainly destroyed American credibility. 

American Thinker

Dangerous Times: Obama Bows to the Mullahs

Gen. Allen bows out

By DONOVAN SLACK |

2/19/13 1:03 PM EST

Gen. John Allen will not be accepting the job to lead NATO and is instead retiring to take care of health issues within his family, according to a statement from President Obama.

“Today, I met with Gen. John Allen and accepted his request to retire from the military so that he can address health issues within his family,” the president said. “I told General Allen that he has my deep, personal appreciation for his extraordinary service over the last 19 months in Afghanistan, as well as his decades of service in the United States Marine Corps.”

Allen has been considering the decision for a while. The White House said last week that the administration had put his NATO nomination on hold until he made up his mind.

Obama hailed Allen’s leadership in Afghanistan, where he was a commander for 19 months.

“Gen. Allen presided over the significant growth in the size and capability of Afghan National Security Forces, the further degradation of al Qaeda and their extremist allies, and the ongoing transition to Afghan security responsibility across the country,” the president said. “He worked tirelessly to strengthen our coalition through his leadership of the International Security Assistance Force, and to improve our relations with the Afghan government.

“Above all, he cares deeply for the men and women in uniform who serve our nation – as well as their families – and I am grateful for the sacrifices made by his family in supporting him during his service,” he continued. “John Allen is one of America’s finest military leaders, a true patriot, and a man I have come to respect greatly. I wish him and his family the very best as they begin this new chapter, and we will carry forward the extraordinary work that General Allen led in Afghanistan.”

Allen was recently cleared in an investigation of emails he exchanged with Florida socialite Jill Kelley.

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Gen. Allen bows out