Kiev liable for crisis in eastern Ukraine: Analyst
Press TV – May 20, 2014
The Kiev government is actually responsible for the ongoing crisis in eastern Ukraine, a political analyst tells Press TV.
“We can blame the military operation launched by Kiev and this is not just a military operation. It’s not just used military forces of the Ukrainian army; it has also used militias, irregular troops, terrorist units, simple violent hooligans,” Manuel Ochsenreiter, chief editor of news magazine, Zuerst, said in an interview with Press TV on Tuesday.
He held the Kiev government and not Donetsk and Lugansk or even Moscow accountable for the ongoing crisis.
The acting Kiev government has been staging military operations in the eastern and southern regions since mid-April in a bid to root out pro-Moscow demonstrations.
Nearly 130 people have so far been killed during clashes and operations by Ukrainian troops in the east and the south, according to figures from the United Nations.
The commentator further emphasized that the recent referendum in Ukraine’s eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk is not responsible for the humanitarian situation as it did not take the social services from the country.
He added that an election or referendum has never changed the direct humanitarian situation of the people on the ground in any time of history, noting that Kiev and the West are likely to use it as an excuse.
“It’s a very cynical interpretation of the situation to say, well, you wanted to be independent, now take starve, don’t find a doctor, now don’t get medicine,” the analyst pointed out.
On May 12, Ukraine’s two eastern regions of Donetsk and Lugansk declared independence following local referendums in which the regions’ residents voted overwhelmingly in favor of independence from Kiev.
~~~
Emmanuel Eisenberg explains his right to disregard international law and destroy private property
Excavations continue on Abu Haikel Land
CPTnet | May 19, 2014
AL-KHALIL (HEBRON) – The Israeli Antiquity Authority (IAA) continues to expropriate Palestinian land in Hebron, on the Tel Rumeida hillside. On Sunday 18 May 2014, the IAA workforce, under the instruction of project coordinator Emmanuel Eisenberg, continued to cause structural damaged to the Abu Haikel land, deploying questionable and illegal archeological practices, while at the same time utilizing the Al Jobeh family’s land without the family’s consent.
The excavations are illegal under Israeli law, according to the Oslo Agreement, which Israel signed in the mid-90s— a process jointly agreed upon by Israel and Palestine as a vehicle to peace and stability. Article 2 of the Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement describes in detail how Israeli and Palestinians would jointly administer archeological projects in Palestinian territory. The IAA has not abided by this agreement in Tel Rumeida.
As previously reported, the IAA had verbally agreed to halt the archeological excavations on the land bordering the Abu Haikel plot until the borders of the property were properly demarcated. Despite the agreement, the IAA illegal activities continued onto the Abu Haikel’s property, eventually undermining a retaining wall, causing it to collapse and exposing the roots of a centuries-old olive tree to the elements. These breaches were not the first damage to the Abu Haikel land as a result of the excavations.
The disregard of both international law and Israeli law, combined with verbal and physical assaults of the families living on Tel Rumeida is not an isolated incident, but rather constitute a colonial methodology by the Jewish settler enterprise in Israel. These tactics were the same political instruments that led to the establishment and expansion of the Israeli settlement of Tel Rumeida.
Explaining how he could destroy the foundations of the Abu Haikel’s wall, Emmanuel Eisenberg said explicitly that he, “Doesn’t give a shit,” and articulated at length the nature of his work, in which he envisioned the site becoming a tourist destination with a kiosk or restaurant on the Palestinian lands. At one point during the dialogue, Eisenberg had attacked a human rights observer.
As has been chronicled by Israeli Jewish historian Illan Pappe, among others, forced displacement, harassment, and the suppression of basic rights has been the central component of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians. This reality is demonstrated with facts on the ground in Hebron specifically, with over a thousand Palestinian homes and shops evacuated, razed, or confiscated for the benefit, protection, and expansion of Jewish settlements.
Eisenberg’s work on Tel Rumeida is an extension of formal Israeli policy to settle in “Judea and Samaria” and another instrument of the settlement plan to force Palestinians to leave Hebron.
The gate to the Abu Haikal house
Can the United States Come to Terms with an Independent, Technologically Sophisticated, and Truly Sovereign Iran?
By Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett | Going to Tehran | May 16, 2014
As negotiations on a final nuclear deal between Iran and the P5+1 proceed, CCTV’s news talk program, The Heat, invited Hillary earlier this week to offer her perspective on the requirements for successful negotiations, click on the video above or see here. The program also included interview segments with Seyed Mohammad Marandi from the University of Tehran and with former Iranian diplomat and nuclear negotiator Seyed Hossein Mousavian. All three segments are worth watching. We want to highlight here some of Hillary’s more important points.
Hillary notes that, while the chances for diplomatic breakthrough between Washington and Tehran are “the best they have been for at least a decade,” gaps between the United States and Iran remain “wide” on key issues. Most importantly, “at this point, the United States doesn’t want Iran to have an industrial-scale nuclear program.”
In Hillary’s view, the “big picture” strategic challenge for the United States in pursuing a diplomatic opening with Iran is recognizing that the Islamic Republic “has sovereign rights, treaty rights, and can be treated like a normal state.” In the context of the nuclear talks, more specifically, the question is whether the United States “can countenance a country that will be strong, independent, and a real nuclear power—not a weapons power, but a real nuclear power.”
On this point, Seyed Mohammad Marandi says that, from an Iranian perspective, “the crux of the problem is the very notion that Western powers are in a position or they have the authority to determine what Iran is allowed to have and is not allowed to have. Iran is not going to accept anything less than its full rights within the framework of international law.”
Hillary describes how, to a considerable degree, Washington has been compelled to drop thirty-five years of rejecting the Islamic Republic’s very legitimacy and to consider cutting some sort of deal with it because of the erosion of U.S. military options vis-à-vis Iran and the strategic failure of American sanctions policy.
–With regard to military options, Hillary observes that “one of the things that has made these negotiations possible in a constructive manner is that, from August 2013, when President Obama declared that the United States would attack Syria after chemical weapons were used there, and then had to walk it back and say, “No, actually I can’t do that, Congress isn’t going to support me, no one around the world is going to support me’—with that, the United States’ ability to credibly threaten the effective use of force greatly diminished. So now you don’t hear President Obama say nearly as much, ‘all options are on the table’—not because the United States doesn’t want to have that [option], but because we don’t have it. We lost it over Syria, and over some of the other failed military interventions over the last decade.”
–While “the idea that sanctions have so crippled the Iranians, and especially the Iranian leadership, that they have come crawling to the table” is popular in American political discourse, this is a false assessment, “put out there to justify a policy that we have put in place for thirty-five years that has not brought down the Islamic Republic, has not overthrown its government, and has not weakened it. We’ve seen Iranian power rise and rise. And I think in some ways the Iranians are letting us have a bit of that narrative, to justify how sanctions have, in a way, let the United States come to the table…It’s a bit the reverse of what the American rhetoric is here, from Washington—it’s not so much that sanctions brought the Iranians to the table; they really brought the Americans to the table.”
Hillary explains that, because of these difficulties, the Obama administration has, over the last two years, determined that the United States might be able to “accept” the Islamic Republic—but “only if it can become part of a pro-American, U.S.-led security and political order in the Middle East.” To join such an order, “states in the region have to give up some elements of sovereign rights—to have a big, functioning military; to have full industrialization—and to have policies that support the United States. So I think what the U.S. team is really trying to test is whether the Islamic Republic of Iran can join this pro-American political and security order”—and, to show that the Islamic Republic could do this, whether Iran “would limit [its] ability to have a civilian nuclear program, according to American wishes.”
Hillary elaborates that, in broader perspective,
“The nuclear deal is almost like, when Nixon and Kissinger first went to China and the relationship opened, we had the Shanghai Communique. At the end of the day, it was just a piece of paper; it means nothing in the broader scheme of what has become a huge relationship between the United States and China. The nuclear deal between the U.S. and Iran would essentially serve that function; it would be the equivalent of the Shanghai Communique, to allow for this opening of a relationship between Iran and the United States.
Now the big difference is that the United States wants this relationship on terms that would shore up a pro-American political and security order throughout the region, throughout the Middle East. What Iran wants in that relationship is to maintain its independence, maintain its sovereignty, and to continue to have this ability to rise as an important power. Now it may be possible for those two goals to be met, but it’s going to be extremely difficult.”
This difference in fundamental goals is also manifested in U.S.-Iranian disagreements over sanctions, with the Iranians seeking to end sanctions while the Americans talk about suspending them, with specific triggers for re-imposing them. Hillary explains that the U.S. position grows out of Washington’s greater goal,
“which is to bring Iran into this pro-American political and security order in the region that allows the United States to punish states that don’t go along with U.S. policy preferences—including by the re-imposition or increasing of sanctions on them. So that is a big strategic goal for the United States.
For Iran, though, Iran has not had trade relations with the United States for thirty-five years. Their strategy is, if they can get all U.S. sanctions lifted, great. But the real goal is not this idea that the United States is somehow going to change overnight. But if the United States can at least get out of the way, stand to the side, not enforce those sanctions, waive those sanctions at least every six months, that would allow room for other states that Iran is very focused on—in Europe, in Asia, especially with China, and other countries—to allow them to trade and invest more freely (and without the constant threat of punishment from the United States), to allow them to invest in the Iranian economy. That’s the real economic prize; it’s not to open up U.S. trade or U.S. investment per se.”
Looking ahead to a prospective final agreement, Hillary cautions that negotiators “are going to try to have it as specific as possible, to really hold each side to account—not to build trust, but essentially to build in triggers to punish the other side if something goes wrong. That is not going to be a durable agreement.” Instead of this approach, Hillary argues that
“the most effective agreement that could come to fruition, whether its July 20 (the self-imposed deadline) or after that, will be something more vague. It will be something more along the lines of the Shanghai Communique between the United States and China, which essentially will say that Iran will be recognized as a sovereign state. There may be some interim period for confidence building, but that will be temporary, and after that interim period Iran will be recognized—especially by the United States, but by all of the P5+1—as a normal sovereign state exercising normal sovereign rights, including those for a civilian nuclear program…If they get bogged down in the details of exactly how many centrifuges Iran can run for exactly how much time, that’s a recipe for failure.”
The rest of Hillary’s interview is worth watching, as are the segments with Seyed Mohammad Marandi and Seyed Hossein Mousavian.
APC set on fire in Ukraine’s Mariupol as Kiev troops announce withdrawal
RT | May 10, 2014
An APC, allegedly captured by self-defense forces from Ukrainian troops, was set ablaze in the center of Mariupol in the aftermath of Friday’s bloody clashes. The Ukrainian National Guard has announced it will temporarily withdraw from the city center.
On Saturday afternoon, the sound of gunshots and explosions was once again heard in the center of the city, which is located on the Black Sea coast in southeast Ukraine.
A Ruptly producer said gunshots could be heard near the hospital where a wounded RT stringer is being treated.
Those were most likely from ammunition exploding inside an armored personnel carrier (APC), which was set on fire.
The APC appears to be the one captured a day earlier by self-defense forces. It was not immediately clear who had set the vehicle ablaze. There are unconfirmed reports that it was done by the locals, who threw Molotov cocktails at it.
Meanwhile, the Ukranian National Guard announced on Saturday it withdrew its troops from the center of Mariupol.
“Now forces of the National Guard have been withdrawn from the epicenter of events in order not to provoke more aggression of the part of activists and also for the sake of ensuring security for peaceful Mariupol residents,” the Guard’s press-service said.
The leadership of the National Guard has described the current situation in Mariupol as “steadily tense”.
Earlier on Saturday a day of mourning was declared in Mariupol by the city administration following Friday’s violence. Seven people died and 39 were wounded then as a result of clashes between Ukrainian troops and local self-defense activists, Mariupol health officials say.
“Because of the tragic events on May 9, 2014, which resulted in casualties, May 10 is declared a day of mourning in the city of Mariupol,” the city administration statement reads.
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry is providing a higher death toll for Friday’s violence in Mariupol, saying that 20 anti-Kiev activists were killed and four more were taken captive, according to a Facebook post by Interior Minister Arsen Avakov.
Kiev’s forces were using heavy weaponry and tanks in Mariupol to storm the local Interior Ministry building, where local police have barricaded themselves in, refusing to take orders from Kiev.
At some point, residents began flocking to the scene. A representative of the self-defense forces said that one of the armored vehicles opened fire at a group of unarmed civilians.
“What happened here was mayhem and genocide,” a Mariupol resident who only gave his first name, Aleksandr, told RT. “Ordinary citizens were killed. They started with the police officers, who approved of the idea of an independent Donetsk People’s Republic… If you go online and search through the social media, you’ll quickly come across videos of people being shot in the streets. How can one possibly conduct a military operation against peaceful citizens, unarmed and unable to fight back?”
Authorities in Kiev intensified their military operation against anti-government protesters in eastern Ukraine in early May. The hotspots for military activity have been the cities of Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Konstantinovka and Mariupol, all situated in the Donetsk region, which is about to hold a referendum on the possibility of independence from Kiev.
US announces opposition to referendum in eastern Ukraine
Press TV – May 7, 2014
The United States has announced its opposition to a planned independence referendum in eastern Ukraine, saying such a move could trigger new sanctions against Russia.
US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Tuesday that the US and its allies “reject” efforts for organizing the referendum set for Sunday, calling the referendum “bogus” and saying “its pursuit will create even more problems in the effort to try to de-escalate the situation.”
Referring to a referendum in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea on March 16 in which nearly 97 percent of the participants voted for independence from Ukraine, Kerry said, “This is really the Crimea playbook all over again.”
Meanwhile, US Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland, who disclosed earlier this year that Washington has “invested” about $5 billion in “promoting democracy” in Ukraine over the past two decades, has said that the independence referendum in eastern Ukraine “will be a trigger” for more sanctions against Moscow.
Pro-Russians are planning their own vote on self-determination in Ukraine’s eastern cities of Donetsk and Luhansk.
Meanwhile, Washington and its Western allies support a May 25 presidential poll that they say can prevent Ukraine from plunging into a civil war.
The US Agency for International Development (USAID), which was recently in the headlines for the covert creation of a text-based social network to stir political unrest in Cuba, has said it will support Ukraine’s media financially so that the pro-Western media outlets can cover the planned presidential election in the country.
USAID officials have said they want to add $1.25 million to the more than $10 million already promised by US government agencies to help bring about the expected election.
Russia has opposed the vote saying holding the election during the current violence would be “unusual” and “absurd.”
Following a military offensive against pro-Russian activists in eastern Ukraine ordered by Ukrainian authorities, nearly 90 people have been killed in less than a week.
According to a report published on Sunday in the German newspaper Bild am Sonntag, dozens of CIA and FBI agents are involved in the offensive against the pro-Russian activists.
Provocation: Murky forces instigating Odessa violence?
RT | May 5, 2014
Video footage filmed during the bloody events in Odessa that claimed dozens of lives on Friday shows a more complicated picture, with provocateurs instigating the violence.
Ukrainian authorities blamed the pro-autonomy activists for starting the clashes that led to the tragic fire at the House of Trade Unions. The interior ministry stated that anti-Kiev activists attacked supporters of Kiev authorities before retreating to the building for shelter, and threw petrol bombs at the crowd triggering the fire.
Russia’s Channel One television reconstructed the chronological order of events using publicly available YouTube videos detailing what happened in Odessa on Friday.
It began with a football match between two teams – Chernomorets Odessa and Metalist Kharkov. Despite the high political tensions in the region, authorities still allowed the match to take place, realizing that a few thousand pro-Kiev football fans would be arriving to the city.
Following the match, around 1,500 supporters of the Kiev authorities and football ultras came together for a march in support of Ukraine’s unity. The rally was sanctioned by local authorities.
Nationalists made their way towards the center of the city chanting “Glory to Ukraine” and “Death to enemies,” as well as “Knife the Moskals (derogatory for Russians).” Some people in the group wore ultra-nationalist movement insignia. They were armed with chains and bats, and carried shields.
The violence started when the pro-Kiev crowd was met by what looked like anti-government activists. They were wearing St. George ribbons – identifying them as pro-autonomy – and red bands around their sleeves. Some of the riot police officers present at the scene were wearing the same red bands around their sleeves.
Image from ontimer.livejournal.com
Then the visibly smaller group of alleged anti-Kiev activists started to attack the march, apparently provoking the demonstrators. Footage then shows a smaller group of men wearing red bands luring the pro-Kiev crowd into a different direction.
At some point, the police line opened up to let the men wearing red bands through and closed back up again. A video then shows a man standing behind the police lines shooting at the pro-Kiev crowd.
The provocations succeeded in triggering clashes, as both sides began to throw stones, and shots were heard.
The alleged anti-Kiev activists then disappeared and angry pro-Kiev supporters headed to the opposition camp based in front of the House of Trade Unions.
However, none of the original attackers with the red bands were there. Instead, a few dozen pro-autonomy activists were surrounding the camp. When the activists saw the angry mob approaching, they took shelter inside the House of Trade Unions.
Survivors of the fire say they had to barricade themselves inside the House of Trade Unions to hide from the agitated mob, which torched their tent camp.
Radicals then began throwing Molotov cocktails at the Trade Unions building, setting it on fire. Witnesses say those who managed to escape the blaze were severely beaten outside by the besiegers of the burning building.
But the Ukrainian Interior Ministry offers a different version of events, saying the victims of the violent unrest started the fire themselves when they began throwing Molotov cocktails from the upper floor.
Multiple videos of the incident, however, show Molotov cocktails flying from outside the building. Another video shows that some radical pro-Kiev elements were also inside the building, waving a Ukrainian flag.
The evidence leads one to conclude that the football fans could have been manipulated while unknown forces instigated the violence.
Which insignia has this “pro-russian activist of united Ukraine” forgotten to take off? (at left – the band of ukrainian flag; at right – the George band (glory anti-fascist world war 2)
A further point from Da Russophile :
The conduct of the British media in response to this massacre has been beyond appalling. So far not a single British newspaper has editorialised about the massacre. Following the sniper attacks on Kiev the British media had no hesitation in putting the blame on Yanukovitch though the evidence (to put it mildly) was far from conclusive. At an earlier stage in the Maidan protests sections of the British media devoted a phenomenal amount of time, reporting and commentary to the attack on Chornovil with all sorts of unsubstantiated speculations that Yanukovitch was personally behind it though evidence of that there was none.
Not only has the British media failed to give the Odessa massacre anything remotely approaching the amount of reporting the scale of the massacre justifies but it persists in pretending that there are uncertainties about who was responsible even though film and eye witness evidence is conclusive and even though (as I understand it) persons involved in the pro Maidan organisations involved in the massacre have openly bragged about it. Instead the Guardian in its editorial the day after the massacre preferred to editorialise about the wickedness of Russia holding a May Day party on Red Square
We had an article in the Daily Telegraph calling the local people who demanded the release of the surviving anti government activists saved from the fire and arrested by the Odessa police following the massacre a “mob” threatening Odessa with “anarchy”
We have an article in the Guardian today calling readers who post comments on Comment is Free critical of its pro Maidan editorial line “Kremlin trolls”.
Whilst The Times editorialises that Putin must stop his campaign of “subversion and coercion” against the Ukraine which has in Odessa has “inspired separatists” into “acts of war”.
I invite people to imagine how the British media would have reported this massacre if roles had been reversed and if it had been Maidan supporters who were burnt alive in the Trade Union building with an anti Maidan crowd filmed throwing in Molotov calls and baying for blood outside.
Radicals shooting at people in Odessa’s burning building caught on tape
RT | May 4, 2014
New video has emerged online which shows a man shooting at the windows of Odessa’s burning House of Trade Unions. At least 39 anti-government activists died in the flames on May 2 in the building besieged and set ablaze by radicals.
A man in the video is wearing a bulletproof vest and shoots several times in the direction of the burning House of Trade Unions.
Another video of the same man shows him speaking on the phone passionately arguing that he and his people are unarmed, while having to confront armed anti-government protesters. The man introduces himself as sotnik Mykola (“sotnik” is what Maidan group leaders in Kiev call themselves) He also says he was wounded in the leg by protesters, although he doesn’t look hurt in the footage.
Both the videos have gathered thousands of views on YouTube, stirring a wave of indignation at the man’s hypocrisy and his shooting at the people trapped inside the burning building.
Survivors of the fire say they had to barricade themselves inside the House of Trade Unions, to hide from an aggressive mob, which had torched their tent camp.
Radicals then began throwing Molotov cocktails at the Trade Unions building, setting it on fire. Witnesses say that those who managed to escape the fire, were severely beaten outside by the besiegers of the burning building.
“We couldn’t go down, we were seeing people from other floors being brought down and then those rioters down there attacked them like a pack of wolves,” a survivor of the fire, who was hiding on the roof of the building, told RT.
Afraid of falling into the hands of radicals, people didn’t leave the House of Trade Unions, where dozens eventually burnt alive, suffocated or jumped out of windows.
The Ukrainian Interior Ministry however offers a different version of events, saying the victims of the violent unrest started the fire themselves, when they began throwing Molotov cocktails from the upper floor.
Multiple videos of the incident, however, show Molotov cocktails flying from outside the building.
Several hundred people rallied overnight in Odessa outside the local police headquarters, demanding the release of the fire survivors who had been detained on May 2.
People claim around 60 survivors of the Trade Unions House are currently being held in jails. The rally participants told journalists that anti-government activists who managed to get out of the burning building were first beaten by nationalist militants outside and then detained by police.
Many of the rally participants were holding pictures of their relatives and friends, who have been missing since clashes broke out in Odessa two days ago.
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Insanely disproportionate use of violence against unarmed civilians… continue
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