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Delays and More Costs for Plant Vogtle Nuclear Expansion

By Sonal Patel – Power – June 26, 2014

In-service dates for two nuclear units under construction at Plant Vogtle in Georgia have been moved out to December 2017 and December 2018, and the total project cost is now estimated at $6.76 billion—$650 million more than the certified cost—staff from Georgia Public Service Commission (PSC) reported this week.

Steven Roetger and GDS Associates consultant William Jacobs, who testified on behalf of the PSC’s public interest advocacy staff on June 20 cited the 9th/10th Vogtle Construction Monitoring Report—which is yet to be made public—when they reported that companies building the project are behind on scheduled milestones.

The consortium building the project had originally projected the first of the two new reactors would be operational in April 2016.

Developers continue to be in litigation with the contractors Westinghouse and Chicago Bridge and Iron per an engineering, procurement, and construction agreement to determine which party is responsible for certain delays in the project schedule. Delays posed several risks, including mounting capital and financing costs, and replacement fuel costs, Roetger and Jacobs told the regulatory commission.

Much progress had been accomplished on the Unit 3 and Unit 4 nuclear islands last year, the staff members noted. But, “The engineering completion schedule identified that hundreds of activities were pushed out past the construction need date due to late engineering which delayed necessary procurement,” they said. “This in turn pushed out the start and end dates of some construction activities.”

Further delays are likely because some components for the AP1000 units have never been built before. The shield building, for example, is a first-of-a-kind design, fabricate, and assemble activity, and the design of the fully digital control system is also a first-of-a-kind activity, staff said. Schedule risks include technical difficulties with development of other key pieces of equipment as well, including the canned rotor coolant pumps, and the squib valves. Meanwhile, startup testing and resolution of problems identified during startup “will take longer than presently planned,” Roetger and Jacobs projected.

Southern Co. this week told the commission in its own monthly report that its “uncompromising focus continues to be on quality and safety of the project as decisions are made concerning schedule and cost.”

Construction of the two AP1000 reactors, each about 1.1 GW, was approved by the Georgia PSC in 2009. Southern Co. subsidiary Georgia Power, which owns 45.7% of the project with three other entities, received a combined construction and operating license from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in February 2012. The Department of Energy finalized a $6.5 billion loan guarantee in February 2014 for two of Vogtle’s owners: Georgia Power and Oglethorpe Power Corp. The DOE is working on the remaining $1.8 billion for the expansion project’s third owner, Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia. … Full article

June 30, 2014 Posted by | Economics, Nuclear Power | , | 1 Comment

Israel threatens to “eradicate” Hamas after missing settlers found dead

Al-Akhbar | June 30, 2014

Israel on Monday confirmed finding the bodies of three settlers who disappeared in the occupied southern West Bank on June 12, blaming Hamas for their kidnapping and murder despite showing any evidence that the Islamist movement was behind it.

“During the search for Eyal Ifrach, Gilad Shaer and Naftali Frankel, the IDF discovered 3 bodies near Hebron,” the Israeli army said in a statement on Twitter.

It was not immediately clear how they died.

Deputy defense minister Danny Danon also confirmed their bodies had been discovered, saying they had been murdered by “Hamas terrorists” and calling for a widespread operation to “eradicate” the Islamist movement.

Public radio said the bodies were discovered in a field near Halhul, a town north of Hebron, about 10 minutes from the roadside in the southern West Bank where they were last seen.

The Ynet news website said the bodies were found by soldiers and civilian volunteers.

Shortly before the news was made public, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin called an urgent meeting of his security cabinet from 9:30 pm (1830 GMT) with ministers expected to take “operative” decisions, public radio said.

Earlier in the evening, Israeli troops could be seen carrying out widespread searches in the Halhul area which is some five kilometers (three miles) north of Hebron, an AFP correspondent said.

“We will not stop until Hamas is completely defeated,” Danon said.

“The homes of the terrorists must be demolished and their arms caches destroyed.

“Our mission will not be complete until all the terror organizations are deterred from attacking Israelis and understand once and for all that the people of Israel will not be threatened,” he said.

Israeli occupation forces have killed five Palestinians in the West Bank since the settlers went missing. Another two elderly Palestinians died of heart attacks during raids on their homes.

Hundreds of others, mostly youths, had been rounded up and jailed since the search began without any evidence of involvement in the disappearance of the three from an illegal settlement.

(AFP, Al-Akhbar)

June 30, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

Swimming bear video used to promote climate change threat to polar bears

Dr. Susan J. Crockford | Polar Bear Science | June 25, 2014

A video being hyped around the internet – “Witness a polar bear’s heartbreaking swim for ice in the Arctic” said one headline – is simply shameless propaganda, facilitated by the US Geological Survey and its polar bear biologists. USGS scientists involved in this work should be ashamed of themselves.

The caption for the Youtube video (published Jun 21, 2014) says this:

Take a swim with a polar bear family as they traverse the Arctic Ocean in search of sea ice.

This is a load of nonsense and a total misrepresentation of the facts.

In addition, the text added to the video is pure propaganda: it is being used to promote the US government position that sea ice loss due to climate change is a massive threat to polar bears. Unfortunately, recent studies contradict the contention that polar bears have already been harmed by declines in summer sea ice.

Here are some background to the video you should be aware of:

1) The bears were swimming away from the USGS researchers and film crew who had shot them full of sedatives and attached a camera to one of their necks — they were not swimming toward sea ice 100 miles away.

2) The video was shot in the Bering Sea, in April 2014, when sea ice was about its maximum extent of the year — there was lots of ice around when this video was filmed.

3) The company doing the filming is using this video as a fundraiser.

Details below, including a sea ice map for April 2014.

UPDATE  Below

Andy Revkin at the New York Times DotEarth blog promotes it as something spectacular (as he did a couple of weeks ago with an earlier offering from the same team, June 10), admitted in the comments section in response to someone who said it looked like these bears were being harassed by a boat:

“The cameras are on bears that were sedated (which counts as a kind of harassment, yes, but is part of a broader research project; see the earlier post linked from this one).”

Sea ice map for April (average extent for the month, label added), courtesy NSIDC Click it to enlarge.

Sea ice extent 2014 April average Bering Sea

The youtube video includes a link to the Arctic Exploration Fund of filmmaker Adam Ravetch’s Arctic Bear Productions company.

“To learn more about the Arctic Exploration Fund visit:
http://www.arcticbearproductions.com”

Here is the stated mandate of Ravetch’s NGO:

“Arctic Exploration Fund, AEF, is a non profit 501c 3 whose mission is to arm wild animals around the world, with groundbreaking new cameras, who go out and gather multiple hours of footage of their own lives, which we track using on-board satellite GPS, and together create a brand new natural history archive filmed entirely by the animals themselves.”

Nothing there about deliberately misrepresenting the facts shown in the film footage and using the video for propaganda purposes.

Finally, shame on the USGS: its work in the Bering and Beaufort Seas is being promoted as scientific polar bear research (like collecting blood samples), yet the real products being generated are propaganda videos.

UPDATE:

Swimming bear video used for propaganda was not shot with bear-mounted cameras

Dr. Susan J. Crockford | Polar Bear Science | June 27, 2014

pbear_swimming_USGSI just went back to Andy Revkin’s blog post on the swimming polar bear video story that I wrote about on Wednesday to see what kind of feedback it was getting. I found that it pays to check up.

A reader from Oregon questioned the filming techniques used for this video.

Revkin followed up.

And it turned out, the reader from Oregon was correct — the film used in this video was shot with “an assortment of traditional methods,” not with the strapped on cameras that the USGS were using on the bears.

Revkin assumed from the background provided to him that this was leading-edge technology, bear-generated video. And even though he’d interviewed the filmmaker, the truth hadn’t come out.

Update June 29, 2014 – another damning comment made, added below.

Read the exchange below from Revkin’s blog:

David Cothran  Ashland OR Yesterday

Andrew,
I have spent quite a bit of time observing polar bears during the course of 12 summer seasons working as a guide and photographer in Svalbard. In my view, the bears in this footage often appear quite stressed, swimming rapidly away from the camera, turning to look behind and even diving briefly. I think that it is quite unlikely that all, or even most of this video was shot from cameras mounted on bears. As another commenter said, it very much appears that the bears are fleeing from a boat. I would like to hear from Ravetch’s team and other wildlife film makers about this question. It certainly appears to me that the majority of the footage was shot with pole-mounted cameras.

Stressing bears by chasing them, particularly when they are swimming, is illegal in many parts of their range and certainly unethical anywhere. I have great respect for your blog and the careful attention you give to complex issues; I hope that you will look further into this. Film makers working with politically charged species like polar bears must be very careful that their methods are unassailable.

David

Andrew Revkin
undefined 20 hours ago

I sent your note to Ravetch and he clarified that this footage was not shot with the new strapped-on cameras, as you suspected.

He included this note: “That footage was not taken with strapped on cameras and was documented with an assortment of traditional techniques. Aerial, pole cam, and more traditional filming techniques…. I operate with the greatest respect for animals when I am around them for brief periods of time.” [SJC bold]

Thanks for offering your valuable insight. (I also fixed the photo caption to avoid confusion.)

Kudos to Revkin for not dismissing the comment and for following through.

[See the video here]

This video was strictly propaganda from the get-go. The new-fangled camera technology Ravetch’s company and USGS polar bear biologists had been experimenting with was not used at all in the filming of this video.

Update June 29 – comment left today by Kelsey Eliasson

Kelsey Eliasson, Churchill 13 hours ago

I work as a polar bear guide in Churchill. These images looks like they came from Hudson Bay, likely near Southampton Island, when Ravetch was filming there in the summer of 2012, I believe. I have seen raw footage of this event and the bear is so stressed that at one point, it actually tries to climb into the boat after being followed for a considerable amount of time. Beautiful shot though.

So, this seems like it is not USGS, not in the Beaufort Sea and filmed in the summer. If I am wrong, I apologize, however, the similarities in the footage are striking.

The Arctic Exploration Fund actually seems like it is just raising money for documentary projects not actual research – wish I had thought of that.

It is very unfortunate that management decisions are being based on fictional portrayals of polar bear habitat and behaviour. The bears are the ones that will suffer in the long run.

Kels

* Dr. Susan J. Crockford is a zoologist with more than 35 years experience, including work on the Holocene history of Arctic animals. Like polar bear biologist Ian Stirling, Susan Crockford earned her undergraduate degree in zoology at the University of British Columbia. She is currently an adjunct professor at the University of Victoria, B.C. Polar bear evolution is one of Dr. Crockford’s professional interests, which she discusses in her book, Rhythms of Life: Thyroid Hormone and the Origin of Species.

June 30, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Environmentalism, Science and Pseudo-Science | Leave a comment

Francis Fukuyama to the Box

By Patrick Foy | CounterPunch | June 30, 2014

On Wednesday, June 25th, the Financial Times published an essay by Francis Fukuyama. He is the famed US political scientist, a “neoconservative” apostate and author of The End of History and the Last Man in 1992. The title of his op-ed is “ISIS risks distracting US from more menacing foes”. I first read it in the middle of the night on my “smartphone” and found it confusing. What was the writer getting at? I did not notice the byline. Then I did, and was less confused. Fukuyama is conflicted and his ideas are sometimes contradictory. So you factor that in. No problem. He has had a checkered past, but haven’t we all?

Fukuyama started out as a “neoconservative” during the Reagan Presidency, working alongside such disturbing characters as Paul Wolfowitz and I. Scooter Libby, who were later to become famous, wild-eyed propagandists in the G.W. Bush Administration, aka the Cheney Regency. In the aftermath of 9/11, Fukuyama–like all true blue Neocons and “liberal interventionists”–promoted the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq on bogus grounds. The purported aim was to depose Saddam Hussein and install “democracy” in his place.

You may recall that Iraq had nothing to do with the 9/11 terrorist attacks and possessed no WMD at the time of those attacks. There were no al-Qaeda, no terrorism, and no terrorists inside Iraq prior to “Operation Iraqi Freedom”. Later, when the occupational phase of “Operation Iraqi Freedom” became an instant fiasco–and the whole rotten enterprise was revealed to be a scam based upon breathtaking lies emanating from the very top–Fukuyama broke with his fellow Neocons. He became a critic of the Regency and the Neocons, and has since then taken a more nuanced approach to world affairs.

Although he no longer communicates with Dr. Paul “Mass Destruction” Wolfowitz, Fukuyama was on the steering committee of the legal defense fund for I. Scooter Libby, Dick Cheney’s chief of staff and top “national security” adviser, when Libby got mixed up in the Regent’s campaign to smear Ambassador Joseph Wilson, the husband of CIA agent Valerie Plame whose undercover assignment was WMD. Wilson had the temerity to point out in a July 2003 New York Times op-ed that Iraq had not, in fact, imported “yellow cake” uranium from Niger to build an A-bomb. Ergo, there was no mushroom cloud on the horizon. Ergo, Dick Cheney’s biggest WMD whopper was clarified and exposed to the light of day. At that point Fukuyama must have figured that his friend Libby, the factotum, was falling on his sword for his all-powerful boss, and deserved a break.

Like most big-picture essays, especially those aimed at the general public, Fukuyama’s present effort in the FT is predicated upon hallowed and widely accepted assumptions about American history and America’s place in the world. Many of these assumptions are dubious, fictive and, in some cases, ridiculous. Accordingly, Fukuyama’s conclusions are necessarily suspect. Since he is a savant, he should know better. Perhaps he does know better, but has not the time nor the inclination to correct the authorized version of history and current events. It might upset certain people or further confuse them. Better to embrace the received, conventional wisdom, and use it whenever possible to advance one’s own ideas.

Fukuyama’s first mistake, in my view, is taking the foreign policy pronouncements of Barack Obama seriously, at face value, and worthy of analysis. Certainly at this stage, it does not matter what Obama says. In truth, it never has. Yes, I realize that Obama presides over the lone surviving superpower, but this outlandish circumstance by itself is a red flag and requires that all issues relating to US foreign policy be considered with a jaundiced eye. White House credibility in world affairs is shot, and has been shot for decades. Dishonesty and wholesale deception did not start with Barack Obama. He has simply continued the trend, and taken it to the next level, like G.W. Bush and Bill Clinton did before him.

What the current occupant of the White House brings to the table is salesmanship and fantasies. Obama is a master at speaking out of both sides of his mouth. Whatever sounds good, go with it. He’s a talker. I recall in particular his 2008 US presidential campaign sortie through Israel and Europe, and especially his enraptured, grandiose speech at Tiergarten Park Berlin on July 24th of that year. That speech boils down to flapdoodle, and its messianic quality is all the more remarkable, because Obama was still a private citizen. The day before, his idealism ran in a different direction. He was shamelessly pandering to Ariel Sharon’s successor, PM Ehud Olmert, in Tel Aviv, while giving the Palestinians short shrift and the shaft. John McCain had performed a similar routine four months previously.

In the article in question, Fukuyama critiques Obama’s recent commencement address at West Point on May 28th. The White House hyped it as a major foreign policy speech. It fell flat with Fukuyama. He calls Obama’s approach “wrong-headed”. Too much concern about terrorism and the Middle East and not enough focus on the authentic “menacing foes”–Russia and China. He states, “The extremism of ISIS will in the end prove self-defeating. By contrast, allies the US is sworn to defend are now threatened by industrialized nations with sophisticated militaries.” Say what?!

Fukuyama appears to imply that America needs real enemies to confront, not phantoms. Yet it was a phantom threat that he and his cohorts were hot to confront when it came to Saddam Hussein. The blowback from that misadventure is incalculable. Fukuyama goes on to conclude, “The poles established by the neoconservatives on the one hand and isolationists on the other present false choices. Real strategy always has to lie somewhere in between.” In sum, Fukuyama does not want Washington to get sidetracked. Hmm. May I humbly suggest that the US has been hopelessly sidetracked for at least a century.

Fukuyama begins by paying homage to World War II, which global bloodbath remains the primary justification for all US foreign policy initiatives since 1945. It is the holy grail for the Neocons, along with their flamboyant hero, Winston Churchill. It is key to the modern-day, bipartisan attitude of American exceptionalism. Colonel Andrew Bacevich makes the central importance of the Second World War clear in a recent fascinating interview with Bill Moyers.

Bacevich, author of The Limits of Power, does not fault America’s entry and success in the Second World War, but he does deplore the use to which it has been put to empower a host of ill-advised US foreign policy adventures in the aftermath. My problem, on the other hand, is with the Second World War itself and with its progenitor, the Great War of 1914-18. If we accept them as sacrosanct, legitimate undertakings by Washington, then we lend credence to the myth of American exceptionalism, which has turned out to be a dangerous, self-destructive idea.

Consider an alternative narrative in which America’s entry into both world wars was unnecessary, ill-advised, and brought about by chicanery in service to a private agenda. The idea of American exceptionalism began with Woodrow Wilson, not with creepy neoconservative ideologues. Wilson ran for a second term in 1916 on the slogan, “He kept us out of war!” Yet, Wilson appears to have already decided to join England on the western front in France. Washington’s official neutrality was a sham from the start. Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan resigned in protest to Wilson’s hypocrisy in June 1915.

In the background, English propaganda was beating the drums to drag America into the war. America’s official entry into the Great War in April 1917 meant that the British Empire was saved from near-certain defeat at the hands of the German army and the Central Powers. It meant the rise of fascism and the success of communism in Russia. It meant the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East and the execution of the Balfour Declaration in Palestine. It meant, inevitably, a second European conflict on a grander scale, caused by the injustices of the first conflict, as embodied in the Paris peace treaty. In short, it was a ghastly blunder.

Did Wilson make the right decision? In hindsight, absolutely not. He deceived the American people in 1916, and was then taken to the cleaners by Lloyd George and Georges Clemenceau at the Paris peace conference in 1919. He then suffered a nervous breakdown, then a stroke, and died a broken man. Did Franklin Roosevelt act wisely when he hectored England, France and Poland in the summer of 1939 not to negotiate with Germany over Danzig, thereby assuring the outbreak of a European war? Probably not. He acted recklessly. Did Roosevelt do the right thing by provoking the Empire of Japan to attack US armed forces in the Pacific in 1941 so that he could jump into the war in Europe, a war he felt responsible for instigating behind the scenes? Again, no.  His conduct can easily be regarded as treason. It was certainly deceitful.

We can’t unwind history, of course, but we can see its consequences, set the record straight, and not live in a dream world. Contrary to what you may have learned in school, these were not unselfish wars to make the world safe for democracy. That was a cover story. These were wars for economic advantage on the part of Washington and London, and were fought to maintain the prestige of the near-bankrupt British Empire–and then replace it with the American empire. They were at variance with the dictum delivered by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams in 1821 that America, “… goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.”

Fukuyama assumes, instead, that both global wars of the twentieth century were non-fraudulent and for a good cause, on which foundation Washington has built a better world. This is the conventional view. He believes the struggle to improve humanity should continue in the aftermath of the Cold War. He takes it for granted that the US is entitled–as the indispensable and exceptional nation–to intervene everywhere on earth at its discretion, and has a responsibility plus the resources to do so. To imagine otherwise is isolationism. This vagary constitutes in large measure the mindset of Washington’s foreign policy establishment. It is delusional and grounded in hubris.

Overlaying this Wilsonian mistake is the self-evident, post Cold War fact that Washington–the White House, the Senate, the Congress and both political parties–have, for all intents and purposes, been hijacked by agents of the Israel Lobby, to wit, the Neocons and their “liberal interventionist” fellow travelers. It is a perfect storm. We are witnessing the bloody results today in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and the Ukraine. The fake nuclear crisis with Iran is another dangerous byproduct. Humanity has not profited thereby. Now Fukuyama proposes what amounts to a new crusade against Russia and China, leaving the “war on terror” behind. Alas, he appears not to be joking.

PATRICK FOY is an essayist and short story writer. He graduated from Columbia University, where he studied English literature, European history and American diplomatic history. His work can be found at www.PatrickFoyDossier.com.

Copyright 2014 Patrick Foy.

 

June 30, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Palestinian-American activist held without charges in Jordan

Amer Jubran Defense Campaign | June 29, 2014

We received word this weekend that Amer Jubran was finally granted a visit by family at the General Intelligence Directorate detention facility near Amman, Jordan this past Friday–seven weeks after he was arrested. He appeared to be in good health and his spirit remains strong.

While this news comes as a relief, we are gravely concerned that Amer continues to be detained without charges, in violation both of Jordanian law and of international standards of human rights.

Amer’s detention is a political silencing. It is taking place in the context of new “anti-terrorism” legislation passed in Jordan on June 1, 2014 that criminalizes new categories of speech. According to the human rights organization Alkarama:

“Criticizing or caricaturing a foreign leader, or more generally a policy of a third country, also falls under the definition of terrorism. Thus, any person that has ‘disturbed relations with a foreign country’ can be prosecuted. … More importantly, if an act is qualified as an act of terrorism, authorities can then bring perpetrators of the real or supposed violations, before the State Security Court, an extraordinary jurisdiction. This court lacks independence as it is directly linked to the executive branch, and its members, including one military, are appointed by the Prime Minister.”

Such legislation is designed to protect the interests of US and Israeli political domination, and not the interests of the people of Jordan and the surrounding Arab region.

The Case of Amer Jubran

freeamerAmer is a Palestinian political activist who opposed the warmaking policies of the United States and Israel during his 18 year residence in the United States. Shortly after September 2001 he was harassed by US  authorities, detained, and finally pushed out of the country. He returned to Jordan, his first country of exile, in 2004. This latest arrest is a continuation of the political repression Amer experienced in the United States.

We do not know if Israel or the US ordered Amer’s arrest, but it is clear that his detention is aimed at silencing a strong voice of dissent against their policies.

We call on all supporters to remain committed to the campaign to win Amer’s freedom. We will be sending out more information soon about next steps.

defensecampaign@openmailbox.org

June 30, 2014 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Solidarity and Activism, Subjugation - Torture | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Cameraman for Russia’s top broadcaster killed in E. Ukraine

RT | June 29, 2014

A cameraman for Russia’s Channel One TV station died from injuries after being shot by Kiev troops in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, said the broadcaster’s press service.

“Our colleague Anatoly Klyan died tonight… he was fatally wounded in the stomach. He was 68-years-old,” Channel One said on air.

Klyan, along with a few other journalists, boarded a bus full of women – mostly mothers – who were traveling to a military base in Donetsk to demand that their sons be dismissed from the unit and allowed to go home, Kulbatskaya added.

When the bus reached its destination, shots were fired from the base and that is when the cameraman was injured.

russian-cameraman-last-video.siKlyan died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital, DNR’s First Deputy Prime Minister Andrey Purgin told RIA Novosti, adding that the driver of the bus was wounded in the neck and is currently in hospital.

A crew from Channel One confirmed to RT’s Maria Finoshina – currently in Lugansk – that Klyan was, in fact, shot and killed.

“We have been able to speak with these journalists and they called their colleagues in Donetsk and this information is now confirmed,” Finoshina said.

She described the victim filming with his crew at one of the military bases in Donetsk when the shooting took place.

“We know the journalists finished their work and they were smoking cigarettes at the moment when suddenly shooting started. It is very hard to say exactly who was firing, but we hear information that this particular bus and its passengers were targeted,” she said.

“The bus that was also carrying the mothers of self-defense fighters. They were heading towards this military base currently controlled by the Ukrainian military to start negotiations over their sons.”

Another team of Russian journalists also came under attack on Sunday. A LifeNews crew was fired at near a Donetsk military base, Kulbatskaya said. Their car was fired at from a grenade launcher. No one was injured in the attack.

The ceasefire between Kiev and self-defense forces in eastern Ukraine expires at 22:00 (19:00 GMT) on Monday.

Journalists under attack

This latest death comes after a number of journalists were killed during the coverage of events in eastern Ukraine.

Earlier in June, Rossiya TV journalist Igor Kornelyuk and his colleague, sound engineer Anton Voloshin, were killed in shelling. They were the first Russian journalists to die while on professional duty in Ukraine, since the coup in Kiev and the beginning of civil unrest in eastern regions began.

ukraine8.si

Rossiya TV journalist Igor Kornelyuk (R) and sound engineer Anton Voloshin (L)

They were working on a report covering Ukrainian refugees fleeing the town of Metallist in Lugansk region when they were hit with mortar shells.

There have also been numerous cases where journalists have been attacked, shot at, and detained while reporting on the crisis in eastern Ukraine.

For example, on June 16 a group of journalists  came under fire while reporting from Slavyansk’s outskirts. One of the journalists was Ruptly correspondent Andrey Krasnoshchyokov.

On June 14, Zvezda TV channel said two of its journalists had been detained.

A Channel One crew was also fired at on June 11 while covering events in the village of Semenovka, located near Slavyansk.

In another incident, RT contributor and UK national Graham Phillips was detained by Kiev military forces at a checkpoint in the city of Mariupol on May 20. He was transferred to army barracks and interrogated by Ukrainian security forces. He was released after 36 hours.

Fedor Zavaleykov, a 23-year-old Ruptly cameraman, was wounded during fighting in Mariupol on May 9.

June 30, 2014 Posted by | Full Spectrum Dominance, Video, War Crimes | | Leave a comment

War is Our Business and Business Looks Good

By Edward S. Herman | Z Magazine | June 28, 2014

It is enlightening to see how pugnacious the U.S. establishment, led by the Peace Laureate, has been in dealing with the Ukraine crisis. The crisis arguably began when the Yanukovich government rejected an EU bailout program in favor of one offered by Russia. The mainstream media (MSM) have virtually suppressed the fact that the EU proposal was not only less generous than the one offered by Russia, but that whereas the Russian plan did not preclude further Ukrainian deals with the EU the EU plan would have required a cut-off of further Russian arrangements. And whereas the Russian deal had no military clauses, that of the EU required that Ukraine affiliate with NATO. Insofar as the MSM dealt with this set of offers they not only suppressed the exclusionary and militarized character of the EU offer, they tended to view the Russian deal as an improper use of economic leverage, “bludgeoning,” but the EU proposal was “constructive and reasonable” (Ed., NYT, Nov. 20, 2014). Double standards seem to be fully internalized within the U.S. establishment.

The protests that ensued in Ukraine were surely based in part on real grievances against a corrupt government, but they were also pushed along by rightwing groups and by U.S. and allied encouragement and support that increasingly had an anti-Russian and pro-accelerated-regime-change flavor. They also increased in level of violence. The sniper killings of police and protesters in Maidan on February 21, 2014 brought the crisis to a new head. This violence overlapped with and eventually terminated a negotiated settlement of the struggle brokered by EU members that would have ended the violence, created an interim government and required elections by December. The accelerated violence ended this transitional plan, which was replaced by a coup takeover, along with the forced flight of Victor Yanukovich.

There is credible evidence that the sniper shootings of both protesters and police were carried out by a segment of the protesters in a false-flag operation that worked exceedingly well, “government” violence serving as one ground for the ouster of Yanukovich. Most telling was the intercepted phone message between Estonia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Urmas Paet and EU Foreign Policy chief Catherine Upton in which Paet regretfully reported compelling evidence that the shots killing both police and protesters came from a segment of the protesters. This account was almost entirely suppressed in the MSM; for example, the New York Times never mentioned it once through the following two months. It is also enlightening that the protesters at Maidan were never called “militants” in the MSM, although a major and effective segment was armed and violent—that term was reserved for protesters in Eastern Ukraine, who were commonly designated “pro-Russian” as well as militants.

There is also every reason to believe that the coup and establishment of a right wing and anti-Russian government were encouraged and actively supported by U.S. officials. Victoria Nuland’s intercepted “fuck the EU” words express her hostility to a group that, while generally compliant and subservient, departed from neocon plans for a proper government in Kiev headed by somebody like “Yats.” So she would surely have been pleased when the EU-supported February compromise plan was ended by the violence and coup. The U.S. support of the coup government has been enthusiastic and unqualified, and whereas Kerry and company delayed recognition of the elected government of Maduro in Venezuela, and have strongly urged him to dialogue and negotiate with the Venezuelan protesters—in fact, threatening him if he doesn’t — Kerry and company have not done the same in Ukraine where the Kiev government forces have slowly escalated their attacks on the Eastern Ukraine, but not on “protesters,” only on “militants!”

The Kiev government’s military is now using jets and helicopters to bomb targets in the East and heavy artillery and mortars in its ground operations. Its targets have included hospitals and schools, and as of June 8 civilian casualties have been in the hundreds. A dramatic massacre of 40 or more pro-Russian protesters in Odessa on May 2 by a well-organized cadre of neo-Nazi supporters, possibly agents of the Kiev government, was an early high point in this pacification campaign. No investigation of this slaughter has been mounted by the Kiev government or “international community” and it has not interfered in the slightest with Western support of Kiev. In parallel the MSM have treated it in very low key. (The New York Times buried this incident in a back page continuation of a story on “Deadly Clashes Erupt in Ukraine,” May 5, which succeeds in covering up the affiliation of the killers.) Kerry has been silent, though we may imagine his certain frenzy if Maduro’s agents had carried out a similar action in Venezuela. Recall the “Racak massacre,” where the deaths of 40 alleged victims of the Serb military created an international frenzy; but in that case the United States needed a casus belli, whereas in the Odessa case there is a pacification war already in process by a U.S. client, so MSM silence is in order.

It is an interesting feature of media coverage of the Ukraine crisis that there is a regular focus on alleged or possible Russian aid, control of and participation in the actions of the protesters/militants/insurgents in Eastern Ukraine. This was evident in the Times’s gullible acceptance of a claim that photos of insurgents included a Russian pictured in Russia, later acknowledged to be problematic (Andrew Higgins, Michael Gordon and Andrew Kramer, “Photos Link Masked Men in East Ukraine to Russia,” NYT, April 20, 2014); and in another lead article which was almost entirely speculation (Sabrina Tavernise, “In Ukraine Kremlin Leaves No Fingerprints,” NYT, June 1, 2014.). But this interest in foreign intrusion in Ukraine affairs, with the implication of wrong-doing, does not extend to evidence of U.S. and other NATO power aid and control. Visits by Biden, Cain, Nuland and intelligence and Pentagon figures are sometimes mentioned, but the scope and character of aid and advice, of U.S. “fingerprints,” is not discussed and seems to be of little interest. It is, in fact, normalized, so that as with the aid plans in which Russian proposals are “bludgeons” but U.S.-EU plans are “constructive and reasonable” the double standard is in good working order here as well.

Isn’t there a danger that Russia will enter this war on behalf of the pro-Russian majority of the eastern part of Ukraine now under assault? Possibly, but not likely, as Putin is well aware that the Obama-neocon-military-industrial complex crowd would welcome this and would use it, at minimum, as a means of further dividing Russia from the EU powers, further militarizing U.S. clients and allies, and firming up the MIC’s command of the U.S. national budget. Certainly there are important forces in this country that would love to see a war with Russia, and it is notable how common are political comments, criticisms and regrets at Obama’s weak response to Russian “aggression” (e.g., David Sanger, “Obama Policy Is put to Test: Global Crises Challenge a Strategy of Caution,” NYT, March 17, 2014). But so far Putin refuses to bite.

In response to this pressure from the powerful war-loving and war-making U.S. constituencies, Obama has been furiously denouncing Russia and has hastened to exclude it from the G-8, impose sanctions and penalties on the villain state, increase U.S. troops and press military aid on the near-Russia states allegedly terrified at the Russian threat, carry out training exercises and maneuvers with these allies and clients, assure them of the sacredness of our commitment to their security, and press these states and major allies to increase their military budgets. One thing he hasn’t done is to restrain his Kiev client in dealing with the insurgents in eastern Ukraine. Another is engaging Putin in an attempt at a settlement. Putin has stressed the importance of a constitutional formation of a Ukraine federation in which a still intact Ukraine would allow significant autonomy to the Eastern provinces. There was a Geneva meeting and joint statement on April 17 in which all sides pledged a de-escalation effort, disarming irregulars, and constitutional reform. But it was weak, without enforcement mechanisms, and had no effect. The most important requirement for de-escalation would be the termination of what is clearly a Kiev pacification program for Eastern Ukraine. That is not happening, because Obama doesn’t want it to happen. In fact, he takes the position that it is up to Russia to curb the separatists in East Ukraine, and he has gotten his G-7 puppies to agree to give Russia a deadline to do this, or face more severe penalties.

This situation calls to mind Gareth Porter’s analysis of the “perils of dominance,” where he argued that the Vietnam war occurred and became a very large one because U.S. officials thought that with their overwhelming military superiority North Vietnam and its allies in the south would surrender and accept U.S. terms—most importantly a U.S. controlled South Vietnam—as military escalation took place and a growing toll was imposed on the Vietnamese (see his Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam). It didn’t work. In the Ukraine context the United States once again has a militarily dominant position. On its own and through its NATO arm it has encircled Russia with satellites established in violation of the 1990 promise of James Baker and Hans-Dietrch Genscher to Mikhail Gorbachev to not move eastward “one inch,” and it has placed anti-missile weapons right on Russia’s borders. And now it has engineered a coup in Ukraine that empowered a government openly hostile to Russia and threatening both the well-being of Russian-speaking Ukrainians and the control of the major Russian naval base in Crimea. Putin’s action in reincorporating Crimea into Russia was an inevitable defensive reaction to a serious threat to Russian national security. But it may have surprised the Obama team, just as the Vietnamese refusal to accept surrender terms may have surprised the Johnson administration. Continuing to push the Vietnamese by escalation didn’t work, although it did kill and injure millions and ended the Vietnamese alternative way. Continuing and escalating actions against Russia in 2014 may involve a higher risk for the real aggressor and for the world, but there are real spinoff benefits to Lockheed and other members of the MIC.

June 30, 2014 Posted by | Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Iraq: The things warmongers said

By Neil Clark  | RT | June 27, 2014

Iraq is in turmoil – with ISIS controlling large areas of the country – but the truth is that it’s been in turmoil since the illegal 2003 invasion.

2013 was Iraq’s bloodiest year since 2008, but as I wrote here members of the elite political class and warmongers in the West weren’t interested.

Iraq post-invasion had become the greatest non-news story of the modern era. The people who could not stop talking about Iraq in 2002/3 and telling how much they cared about ordinary Iraqis were strangely silent. Instead they were devoting their energies into propagandizing for another Middle Eastern military ‘intervention’, this time against Syria.

Now that Iraq is back in the western news headlines again, with calls for ‘intervention’ to counter ISIS, it’s worth bearing in mind what the architects of the Iraq war and the cheerleaders for it said in the lead up and during the invasion about the ‘threat’ from Saddam’s WMDs and how toppling a secular dictator would help the so-called ‘war on terror’ and bring peace and security to the region.

Do we really want to take these people’s advice on what ‘we’ should do now in Iraq? Up to a million people have been killed since the illegal invasion and as critics predicted at the time, the war led to enormous chaos and instability and boosted radical Islamic extremism. By their own words, let the warmongers be damned.

WMDs

“He (Saddam) is probably the most dangerous individual in the world today.

Interviewer: Capable of?

Capable of anything. Capable of using weapons of mass destruction against the United States, capable of launching other military maneuvers as soon as he thinks he can get away with it…”

Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, mid-October 2001

***

The threat is very real and it is a threat not just to America or the international community but to Britain.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, 7th September 2002

***

And every indication we have is that he (Saddam) is pursuing, pursuing with abandon, pursuing with every ounce of effort, the establishment of weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons.

Benjamin Netanyahu, (then former Israeli Prime Minister) testifies to Congress, 12th September 2002

***

The document discloses that his (Saddam’s) military planning allows for some of the WMD to be ready within 45 minutes of an order to use them.

Tony Blair foreword to the infamous ‘dodgy dossier’: ‘Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction, The Assessment of the British Government, (24th September 2002

***

The evidence produced in the Government’s report shows clearly that Iraq is still pursuing its weapons of mass destruction programme…The Government dossier confirms that Iraq is self-sufficient in biological weapons and that the Iraq military is ready to deploy these and chemical weapons at some 45 minutes’ notice’

British Conservative Party leader Iain Duncan-Smith, 24th September 2002.

***

The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary, he is deceiving.

US President George W. Bush, State of the Union address 28th January 2003.

***

For Churchill, this apotheosis came in 1940; for Tony Blair, it will come when Iraq is successfully invaded and hundreds of weapons of mass destruction are unearthed from where they have been hidden by Saddam’s henchmen.”

Andrew Roberts, British neo-con historian, February 2003.

***

He (Saddam) claims to have no chemical or biological weapons, yet we know he continues to hide biological and chemical weapons, moving them to different locations as often as every 12 to 24 hours, and placing them in residential neighbourhoods

Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense, Press conference, 12th March 2003.

***

We are asked now seriously to accept that in the last few years—contrary to all history, contrary to all intelligence—Saddam decided unilaterally to destroy those weapons. I say that such a claim is palpably absurd.

Tony Blair, House of Commons, 18th March 2003.

***

But if we leave Iraq with chemical and biological weapons, after 12 years of defiance there is a considerable risk that one day these weapons will fall into the wrong hands and put many more lives at risk than will be lost in overthrowing Saddam.

Former US President Bill Clinton in article, ‘Trust Tony’s Judgement’, 18th March 2003.

***

Saddam Hussein is there- and he’s a dictator and he has weapons of mass destruction and are you going to do something about it or not?

William Kristol, neo-con pundit, chair of The Project for the New American Century and editor of the Weekly Standard, as quoted on BBC Panorama Programme, The War Party, broadcast May 2003.

And when the WMDs did not turn up?

Interviewer: Is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven’t found any weapons of mass destruction?

Not at all…We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

Donald Rumsfeld, US Defense Secretary, 30th March 2003

***

Before people crow about the absence of weapons of mass destruction I suggest they wait a little bit. I remain confident they will be found.

Tony Blair, 28th April 2003.

Saddam and the war on terror

***

There can be no victory in the war against terrorism if, at the end of it, Saddam Hussein is still in power

Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, mid-October 2001

***

Interviewer: If we go into Iraq and we take down Hussein?

Then I think it’s over for the terrorists.

Richard Perle, chairman of the Defense Policy Board, mid October 2001.

***

I have certainly made up my mind, as indeed any sensible person would that the region in the world, most of all the people of Iraq, would be in a far better position without Saddam Hussein… It will be far better if he was not leading Iraq; the whole of the world would be safer if that were the case.

Tony Blair, television interview, May 2002

***

If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.

Benjamin Netanyahu, addressing Congress, 12th September 2002

***

We know that Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade…We’ve learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases.

George W. Bush, 7 October 2002.

***

Some have argued that confronting the threat from Iraq could detract from the war against terror. To the contrary; confronting the threat posed by Iraq is crucial to winning the war on terror. When I spoke to Congress more than a year ago, I said that those who harbor terrorists are as guilty as the terrorists themselves. Saddam Hussein is harboring terrorists and the instruments of terror, the instruments of mass death and destruction.

George W. Bush, 7th October 2002.

***

The idea that this action (war vs Iraq) would become a recruiting sergeant for others to come to the colours of those who are “anti” any nation in the west is, I am afraid, nonsense. The biggest recruiting sergeant of all has been indecision, and the failure to take action to show that such resolve matters.

Iain Duncan-Smith, 18th March 2003

A bad bet

I feel no doubt that he (Saddam) has stockpiled some of the most vile weapons known to man. They include nuclear material. Saddam wants to dominate the Middle East, he wants to terrorise the world.. I would lay my life savings in a bet that information will emerge which proves Iraq helped al-Qaeda in the orchestration of September 11.

Ex-SAS Major Peter Ratcliffe, in the interview with the pro-war British newspaper The Sun, 4th April 2002.

Economic benefits of the war

The greatest thing to come of this to the world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil. That’s bigger than any tax cut in any country.

Pro-war media mogul Rupert Murdoch, interview with The Bulletin magazine, February 2003

The new Hitler

Saddam is no Bismarck. He is more a Hitler. As his fate closed in, Hitler dreamt of terrible weapons. Saddam has done more than dream. He already possesses biological weaponry, including botulinum and anthrax. He does not yet have a missile system which could deliver a biological attack, but hideous damage could be inflicted by a single suicide agent with a suitcase.

Pro-war commentator Bruce Anderson, July 2002

***

A majority of decent and well-meaning people said there was no need to confront Hitler and that those who did were war-mongers..

Tony Blair, 28th February 2003.

Triumphalism

What a wonderful, magnificent, emotional occasion – one that will live in legend like the fall of the Bastille, V-E Day, or the fall of the Berlin Wall….. All those smart Europeans who ridiculed George Bush and denigrated his idea that there was actually a better future for the Iraqi people – they will now have to think again…Thank God for Tony Blair and those other European leaders who defied the axis of complacency

William Shawcross, Wall Street Journal, 10th April 2003 on the toppling of the statue of Saddam.

~

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter

June 29, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , , | Leave a comment

FEMEN And The Suppression Of Native Voices

By Roqayah Chamseddine | Letters From The Underground | April 6, 2013

I loathe the premise that people of colour should be ‘grateful’ that others are taking notice of their subjugation, or that they should bite their tongues and clench their fists and instead show gratitude because their varied plights are being in some way ‘acknowledged‘ by others.

“Shouldn’t you be glad that people are recognizing these issues?” is the arrogant lamentation which customarily follows even the most cautious criticism of these perverse pseudo-solidarity actions – FEMEN’s nude predominantly white, predominantly thin photo-ops “for Amina,” a 19 year-old Tunisian woman who posed for them with the words “my body belongs to me, it is not the source of anyone’s honour” scrawled across her torso, being the latest example, and KONY2012 being an earlier one. This aforementioned response contends that we should withhold criticism, alleging that even being ‘noticed’ should be good enough.

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Despite having our religious attire, skin colour and even facial hair, being routinely mocked and worn as makeshift costumes as a part of ‘solidarity actions’ it is said time and time again that we should be ‘grateful’ that anyone simply has reason enough to ‘care.’

Despite the watered down slogans of liberation and freedom being copy-pasted by the parade of online followers of groups such as FEMEN many of these same activists are so inebriated with colonial feminist doctrine that they gleefully take part in patronizing, Islamophobic and misogynistic rhetoric in response to women of colour telling them that they take great offence, that their voices will not be usurped, that they are the sole guardians of their plights and no one has the authority to speak on their behalf, no matter how allegedly ‘well-intentioned’.

In response to FEMEN’s topless “jihad day” event Muslim women created #MuslimahPride on Twitter; Sofia Ahmed, one of the women behind “Muslimah Pride Day” described the campaign as follows:

“Muslimah [term for a female Muslim] pride is about connecting with your Muslim identity and reclaiming our collective voice. Let’s show the world that we oppose FEMEN and their use of Muslim women to reinforce Western imperialism.”

Using #MuslimahPride many Muslim women began voicing their disapproval of FEMEN, one such woman was Zarah Sultana who posted the following photograph on her public Twitter page, which I have received permission to post here, and which in turned catalyzed many other Muslim women to do the same in an array of languages, by women from multifarious backgrounds:

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The responses Sultana received were drenched in perverse Islamophobia, sexism and pure, unashamed hatred: “Fuck off back to your own country”, “burn in hell”, “grab your ankles and remain silent”, “Mohammad was a pedophile”, “put on your burka”, “she’s happy with her chains” etc.- all coming from those who, just moments earlier, were tweeting gleefully in support of Muslim women.

When it comes to non-natives speaking in regards to native issues – it is a path that must be tread upon lightly in order to avoid (a) tokenization and (b) the usurpation of native voices. Solidarity is great, but it is when campaigns turned publicity stunts like the ones FEMEN indulges in begin using brown bodies as props while at the same time perpetuating orientalism and engaging in blatant prejudicial acts to promote their idea of ‘liberation’ does this become more a theft of native voices than a rallying cry for ‘freedom’. FEMEN, and other such groups, offer no solution to the undeniable subjugated of women present in the Middle East-North Africa, it is all a show of thin, white grandeur.

Simply stating that you are in solidarity, that you support a woman’s right to don the headscarf, remove it, cover/uncover etc. is in no way dubious. It is when aforementioned solidarity crosses the red line and veers into the seizure of native voices and the tokenization of these voices does this become intensely problematic, ineffective and perverse.

Also it has long been chronicled that women of colour are often left out of mainstream feminist discourse, unless it is by means of humanitarian imperialism channels where they are simply tokenised. Bell Hooks (Gloria Jean Watkins), a feminist, social activist, does a magnificent job describing this in much of her work.

In terms of the mounting questions in regards to how one is to raise awareness in light of such groups as FEMEN: you raise awareness by highlighting native voices, not co-opting them. It is your duty to amplify, not commandeer.

As Sara Salem, PhD researcher at the Institute of Social Studies in the Netherlands, notes:

“Feminism has the potential to be greatly emancipatory by adopting an anti-racist, anti-homophobic, anti-transphobic and anti-Islamophobic rhetoric, instead of often actively being racist, homophobic, transphobic and Islamophobic. By clearly delineating the boundaries of what is “good” and “bad” feminism, Femen is using colonial feminist rhetoric that defines Arab women as oppressed by culture and religion, while no mention is made of capitalism, racism, or global imperialism. It is actively promoting the idea that Muslim women are suffering from “false consciousness” because they cannot see (while Femen can see) that the veil and religion are intrinsically harmful to all women.

Yet again, the lives of Muslim women are to be judged by European feminists, who yet again have decided that Islam – and the veil – are key components of patriarchy. Where do women who disagree with this fit? Where is the space for a plurality of voices? And the most important question of all: can feminism survive unless it sheds its Eurocentric bias and starts accepting that the experiences of all women should be seen as legitimate?”

Post-Colonial feminists worth mentioning, a few of many:

Arundhati Roy
Gloria Anzaldúa
Chandra Talpade Mohanty
Audre Lorde
June Jordan

Responses to FEMEN by women of colour, others:

The Inconsistency of Femen’s Imperialist “one size fits all” Attitude – Bim Adewunmi
Femen’s Neocolonial Feminism: When Nudity Becomes A Uniform – Sara Salem
The Fast-Food Feminism of the Topless FEMEN – Mona Chollet
That’s Not What A Feminist Looks Like – Elly Badcock
The African History of Nude Protest – Maryam Kazeem

My piece on rediscovering Feminism

Suggested reading:
“Is Western Patriarchal Feminism Good For Third World/Minority Women?” By Azizah Al-Hibri

“Women and Gender in Islam” by Leila Ahmed

And two relevant books by Edward Saïd:
Culture and Imperialism
Orientalism

June 29, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Islamophobia, Timeless or most popular | , , , , | 2 Comments

Kurdish forces attack Iraqi military bases in Kirkuk: Military commander

Press TV – June 29, 2014

A senior Iraqi military commander says Kurdish Peshmerga forces have seized heavy weapons and military equipment in Kirkuk governorate.

Lieutenant Abdul Amir al-Zaidi said on Sunday that the Kurdish forces attacked military bases and disrupted the security situation in Diyala and Kirkuk.

This comes after the president of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said on Friday that the KRG will not return the oil-rich hub of Kirkuk to Baghdad.

Masoud Barzani’s comments sparked angry reactions from some Iraqi politicians who warned of an armed conflict with the Kurds in the near future. Also, some lawmakers have accused the Kurdish forces of having relations with Israel.

Kurdish security forces took control of Kirkuk after Iraqi troops entered a battle with the so-called Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) earlier this month.

The latest developments come as tensions rise between the Kurdistan’s regional leaders and the central government in Baghdad.

The Iraqi government has repeatedly slammed the Kurdistan region for exporting oil without Baghdad’s consent.

Baghdad says it has the sole right to export the country’s crude, but the Kurds say they are entitled to market the resources of their own region

The regional government has recently used a pipeline to the Turkish port city of Ceyhan for crude oil exports.

A spokesman for the regional government says the money has been deposited in Turkey’s Halkbank.

Most refineries are reluctant to get involved in the trade which the Iraqi central government has called smuggling.

Baghdad has also opened arbitration against Turkey for allowing and facilitating the sales and has threatened to pursue buyers.

June 29, 2014 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

Netanyahu endorses Kurdish independence citing chaos in Iraq

RT | June 29, 2014

Citing the “collapse” of Iraq amid the ISIS insurgency and sectarian violence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has endorsed the de-facto independence of Iraqi Kurds. Netanyahu has also called to support the “Kurdish aspiration for independence.”

The hawkish Israeli leader said on Sunday that Kurds are “fighting people that has proved its political commitment, political moderation, and deserves political independence,” Reuters reported.

Speaking to Tel Aviv University’s INSS think-tank, Netanyahu described the situation in Iraq and the Middle East in general as a “collapse,” due to strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims.

Amid the recent insurgency of the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIS/ISIL) militants, Kurds have seized the opportunity to bring a long-sought independent state of Kurdistan closer to reality. Kurdish Peshmerga armed forces have been guarding their provincial borders from ISIS, but also seized the contested Iraqi city of Kirkuk, proclaiming it part of their territory.

Now, in an apparent clash against the international community’s support of a united Iraq, the Israeli leader has called to back the de-facto independence of Kurds.

“We should… support the Kurdish aspiration for independence,” Netanyahu was quoted as saying.

June 29, 2014 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Who Violated Ukraine’s Sovereignty?

By Ray McGovern | Consortium News | June 28, 2014

Did Russia’s annexation of Crimea on March violate the 1994 Budapest agreement among Ukraine, Russia, Great Britain and the U.S.? Specifically, in Paragraph One, Ukraine agreed to remove all nuclear weapons from its territory in return for a commitment by Russia, Britain and the U.S. “to respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine?”

I’m no lawyer, but I can read the words. And, taken literally, the answer seems to be Yes – despite a host of extenuating circumstances that can be adduced to explain why Crimea rejoined Russia, including the alarm among Crimean leaders over the unconstitutional ouster of Ukraine’s elected president and the Russian government’s fear about the possible berthing of NATO’s nuclear-missile warships at the naval base at Sebastopol.

But there’s also the item in Paragraph Three in which Russia, the UK, and the U.S. also commit “to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty.”

Might the EU’s take-it-or-leave-it proposal last fall offering Ukraine “associate” status in return for draconian economic austerity imposed on the Ukrainian people come under the rubric of the “economic coercion” prohibited at Budapest? An arguable Yes, it seems to me.

Some will try to dismiss President Viktor Yanukovych’s ill-fated rejection of these International Monetary Fund demands to make the hard lives of average Ukrainians even harder as “history,” now that the EU and Ukraine’s replacement President Petro Poroshenko signed on June 27 that “associate” status agreement – the same agreement that Yanukovich rejected in favor of what appeared to be a better deal from Russia.

Was Yanukovich also under pressure from Moscow to maintain Ukraine’s historic, cultural and economic ties to Russia? Of course. Putin reportedly weighed in heavily with Yanukovich last October and early November when U.S. and EU diplomats were pressuring the Ukrainian president as well.

But did Yanukovich expect to be overthrown if he opted for Moscow’s offer? If he did not, he sorely underestimated what $5 billion in U.S. “democracy promotion” can buy. After Yanukovych’s decision, American neoconservatives – the likes of National Endowment for Democracy President Carl Gershman and Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs Victoria Nuland – pulled out all the stops to enable Ukraine to fulfill what Nuland called its “European aspirations.”

The central problem confronting Ukraine, however, was not whether it leaned toward Europe or toward Russia. It was that after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, some ruthless businessmen used their insider connections to snap up (or “privatize”) the natural and industrial resources of the country. These handful of “oligarchs” then corrupted the political process, buying off politicians from both pro-EU and pro-Moscow perspectives.

Last fall, Yanukovych, who was elected from a political base in the more industrial Russian-ethnic east, was looking for how to bail Ukraine out of the financial and economic crisis that it was facing amid widespread unemployment and the hangover from the Great Recession.

In a layman’s way of understanding what happened in Ukraine, Yanukovych issued what in the consulting world is called a Request for Proposal (RFP), i.e., a feeler to see who could offer the most promising plan for helping Ukraine escape insolvency. After initially tilting toward the EU proposal (before he learned of its draconian IMF small print), he later shifted to the less onerous offer from Russia.

In the world of contractors and RFPs, there are orderly procedures for firms whose bids are turned down to contest the selection of the eventual winner. But I know of no case where one of the losing firms turned around and violently removed the leadership of the RFP-issuing institution, installed new leadership and got the contract.

Abortive Feb. 21 Agreement

And, in assessing which side – the U.S./EU or Russia – is in the wrong on Ukraine, there was also the agreement, facilitated on Feb. 21 by the foreign ministers of Poland, Germany and France, in which then-President Yanukovich acceded to demands from the opposition by accepting limits on his powers and agreeing to early elections to vote him out of office.

Yanukovych also fatefully agreed to pull back the police, opening the way for right-wing militias, including neo-Nazis, to seize government buildings and force Yanukovych and his government officials to flee for their lives. With these paramilitary forces patrolling government offices, what was left of the Parliament voted to replace Yanukovych and install a new regime, giving four ministries to the far right and the neo-Nazis in recognition of their crucial role.

As the U.S. and the EU hailed the “legitimacy” of this new regime — with Nuland’s hand-picked leader Arseniy Yatsenyuk appointed as the new prime minister – the Western “mainstream media” quickly forgot the Feb. 21 agreement (surprise, surprise!). But Russian President Vladimir Putin had a personal representative there, Russian Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin.

Yet, because the MSM was already parading Putin (and Yanukovych) around the op-ed pages and talks shows as the black-hatted villains of the Ukraine saga, few Americans got to hear Putin’s perception of what happened, as he explained at a Moscow press conference ten days after Yanukovich was overthrown:

“First of all, my assessment of what happened in Kiev and in Ukraine in general. … This was an unconstitutional takeover, an armed seizure of power. Does anyone question this? Nobody does. … The question is why this was done? …

“President Yanukovich, through the mediation of the foreign ministers of three European countries – Poland, Germany and France – and in the presence of my representative signed an agreement with the opposition on Feb. 21. I would like to stress that under that agreement (I am not saying this was good or bad, just stating the fact) Mr. Yanukovich actually handed over power. He agreed to all the opposition’s demands: he agreed to early parliamentary elections, to early presidential elections, and to return to the 2004 Constitution, as demanded by the opposition.

“He gave a positive response to our request, the request of western countries and, first of all, of the opposition not to use force. … he issued orders to withdraw all police forces from the capital, and they complied. He went to Kharkov to attend an event, and as soon as he left, instead of releasing the occupied administrative buildings, they [the opposition] immediately occupied the President’s residence and the Government building – all that instead of acting on the agreement.

“I ask myself, what was the purpose of all this? … He had in fact given up his power already; and as I believe, as I told him, he had no chance of being re-elected. … What was the purpose of all those illegal, unconstitutional actions, why did they have to create this chaos in the country? Armed and masked militants are still roaming the streets of Kiev. …

“If you want, I can tell you even more. He [Yanukovich] called me on the phone and I told him not to do it. I said, ‘You will have anarchy, you will have chaos in the capital. Think about the people.’ But he did it anyway. And as soon as he did it, his office was seized, and that of the government, and the chaos I had warned him about and which continues to this day, erupted.”

If Putin’s account of how the Feb. 21 agreement was violated the very next day is accurate, and by almost all indications it is, then we have the anatomy of an undisguised putsch – an unconstitutional overthrow of a duly elected president of a sovereign state. The apparent aim, to install a government friendlier to the EU, is relevant but not essential here. The fact of the coup is essential.

Guaranteeing Ukraine’s Sovereignty

Friday’s lead editorial in the neocon flagship Washington Post, “Potemkin drawdown: The West must hold Russia to a real withdrawal from Ukraine,” charged that “the rebellion in the east is manufactured by Russia to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty. The United States and Britain guaranteed support for that sovereignty in 1994 when Ukraine gave up its nuclear weapons.”

That claim brought my thoughts back to a conference of distinguished scholars at the U.S.–Russia Forum in the Hart Senate office building on June 16. With Professors Stephen Cohen and Robert Legvold presenting, it was the most sensible discussion of the Ukraine imbroglio that I have witnessed to date.

The point was made that Russia had violated the Budapest agreement in annexing Ukraine. But were the Russians the only culprits? What about the rest of the story? Russia, the UK and the U.S. all pledged “to respect the independence and sovereignty and existing borders of Ukraine?” Okay. Gotcha on Putin considering the “existing borders.”

But what about the political destabilization supported by the U.S. government, including the $5 billion that Assistant Secretary of State Nuland publicly announced had been invested in Ukraine’s “European aspirations” – or the scores of projects financed by the U.S.-funded National Endowment for Democracy, training activists, supporting “journalists” and organizing business and political groups.

During the crisis, U.S. officials even showed up in Kiev’s Maidan square to urge on the protesters seeking to overthrow Yanukovych. Sen. John McCain gave a speech on a platform of the right-wing Svoboda party under a banner hailing the late Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. Nuland went so far as to pass out cookies to the demonstrators and discuss with the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who should be take over after Yanukovych was ousted.

How does this overt and covert interference square with the Budapest pledge “to respect the independence and sovereignty … of Ukraine?” And how do the strong-arm tactics of the EU square with the commitment “to refrain from economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by the Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty?”

Luckily, at the U.S.-Russia Forum, I was able to go first during the Q and A. [To see my question and the answer, click on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8iH50BR0EQ  and go to the 2:01:00 point near the end.]

I said: “I have a brief question having to do with the Budapest agreement and also in the perspective of Vladimir Putin being more in a reactive mode than anything else. He’s been accused, of course, of violating that agreement because of the Crimea [annexation].

“I’m wondering, if you look at the putsch, if you look at the coup d’etat of Feb. 22nd, supported to the tune of $5 billion by outside forces over the course of several years, of course, could that not also be regarded as a violation of the Budapest memorandum?”

Columbia University Professor Legvold’s answer was, I think, instructive – instinctive, perhaps. His first thought was to associate my point with an argument the Russians have made. For many listeners, that might put me in the category of some kind of apologist for Putin. I know Legvold well enough to doubt this was his intent. But still: Is Putin’s account of the Feb. 21-22 events to be dismissed out of hand simply because it is from Putin?

The main takeaway for me from the forum was the Cohen-Legvold common assertion that we have already entered a New Cold War. Cohen was very direct in exposing the extraordinary abuse regularly accorded to scholars and specialists who try to discern and explain honestly Moscow’s point of view.

Legvold suggested it would be “naïve” not to recognize that the new Cold War is already upon us, that it will be “immensely expensive and immensely dangerous,” and that all of us need to do whatever we can to make it “short and shallow.”

That endeavor of averting the costs and the risks of Cold War II might well start with a truthful narrative of what happened, not the one-sided account that the American people have been seeing and hearing in the U.S. media.

June 29, 2014 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | , , , | Leave a comment

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