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NATO is Building Up for War
NATO is Building Up for War
The German city of Frankfurt is continental Europe’s largest financial center and host to the country’s Stock Exchange, countless other financial institutions, and the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) which is responsible for administering the monetary policy of the 18-nation Eurozone. The place is awash with money, as demonstrated by the plush new ECB office building which is costing a fortune.
The original price of the bank’s enormous palace was supposed to be 500 million euros, about 550 million dollars, but the bill has now been admitted as €1.3 billion (£930 m; $1.4 bn). This absurdly over-expensive fiasco was directed by the people who are supposed to steer the financial courses of 18 nations and their half billion unfortunate citizens. If the ECB displays similar skill sets in looking after Europe’s money as it has in controlling the cost of constructing its huge twin-tower headquarters, then Europe is in for a rocky time.
Intriguingly, the Bank isn’t alone in contributing to Europe’s bureaucratic building boom. There is another Europe-based organization of equal ambition, pomposity and incompetence which is building a majestically expensive and luxurious headquarters with a mammoth cost overrun about which it is keeping very quiet indeed.
The perpetrator of this embarrassing farce is NATO, the US-Canada-European North Atlantic Treaty Organization which is limping out of Afghanistan licking its wounds, having been fighting a bunch of sandal-wearing rag-clad amateur irregulars who gave the hi-tech forces of the West a very hard time in a war whose outcome was predictable.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
U.S. to Start Training Nazi Troops in Ukraine, on April 20th, Hitler’s Birthday
U.S. to Start Training Nazi Troops in Ukraine, on April 20th, Hitler’s Birthday
It has just been announced that, on April 20th (Hitler’s birthday), U.S. troops will start training troops of Ukraine’s nazi Azov Battalion.
The Azov Battalion was founded and its members were selected by Andrei Biletsky, a Ukrainian nazi (that’s an ideological term, meaning racist fascist — not a term referring specifically to the first political party with that particular ideology, the National Socialist Party of Germany). When Britain’sGuardian interviewed members, the reporter was shocked to find that they’re nazis (“neo-Nazis”).
Biletsky proudly explains his ideology as follows:
“Social Nationalism is based on a number of fundamental principles that clearly distinguish it from other right-wing movements. This triad is: socialism, racism, imperialism. … On the principle of socialism [in the sense that Hitler used it] follows our complete negation of democracy and liberalism. … Instead there is natural selection of the best representatives of the Nation — born-leaders as Ukraine’s leaders. … Racism: All our nationalism is nothing — just a castle in the sand — without reliance on the foundationstone of blood Races. …
“The historic mission of our Nation, a watershed in this century, is thus to lead the White peoples of the world in the final crusade for their survival. It is to lead the war against Semites and the sub-humans they use. … Social Nationalism raises to shield all old Ukrainian Aryan values, forgotten in modern society.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Why Putin Doesn’t Need To Pander To The West
Why Putin Doesn’t Need To Pander To The West
It’s quiet on the eastern front – as quiet as a conflict between world superpowers can be. Since February’s cease-fire agreement, relative calm has prevailed in Ukraine and world events elsewhere – Iran and Yemen – have shifted the global focus. Still, the West’s frigid relationship with Russia is no less chilly and antagonism, not cooperation, remains the modus operandi. Long-term, the stalemate looks to continue, but can either side afford such a result? And if not, who cracks first?
The prevailing judgment is that Russia cannot. And at surface level it’s a fair assessment. The Bank of Russia predicts the economy will contract by between 3.5 and 4 percent in 2015 and by another 1 percent in 2016; the ruble, while stable, is still down approximately 40 percent since June of last year. In all, former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin believes the events in Crimea will cost the Russian economy as much as $200 billion over the next three to four years. The political and economic situation is fraught with grey area however, and no one turns grey to green quite like president Vladimir Putin.
Related: Is Warren Buffett Wrong About Oil Stocks?
As Putin embarks on his 16th year at the helm – I’m counting 2008-2012 – he faces a situation not too dissimilar from his first year in office: a sluggish economy, falling standard of living, high capital flight, and low foreign directinvestment. Russia’s demographics look good and its equity market is a top pickfor 2015, but in the short-term, the country’s macro indicators don’t yield much hope.
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Ukraine “Loses” Five Indian Airplanes, Shake-Up of Secret Service and Army Underway
Ukraine “Loses” Five Indian Airplanes, Shake-Up of Secret Service and Army Underway
Indian Planes go Missing in Kiev
This is really too funny. As Sputnik reports, India has entered into a contract with a Ukrainian state-owned company to refurbish and upgrade its fleet of military transport planes. Now it has turned out that the company has somehow managed to “lose” five of them. Part of the fleet was to be refurbished in India, but that has recently stopped, because the Ukrainian engineers went back home and the required spare parts failed to turn up.
“India says five of its 40 AN-32 military transport aircrafts have gone missing “without a trace” while the planes underwent upgrades in Ukraine. “These five aircraft are almost lost as it is difficult to trace them and diplomatic efforts to find their whereabouts have failed,” the website Defense News quotes an Indian Air Force official as saying.
In 2009, India signed a contract with Ukraine’s state-owned arms trading agency, Ukrspetsexport Corp., to upgrade its 104 AN-32 transport aircraft at a cost of US $400 million, as the fleet had reached its life expectancy. The upgrade program started in 2011 and was set to run through 2017.
Under the deal, the modernization of 40 warplanes should have been completed in Ukraine at Kiev-based Antonov State Co. facilities, while the 64 others were set to be upgraded in India at the Air Force’s Kanpur-based base, under a technology transfer from Ukraine.
[…]
However out of 40 warplanes sent to Kiev, only 35 made their way back home. The remaining five have been “lost without trace”.
The local upgrade of the remaining 64 AN-32s has been halted as Ukrainian engineers departed and supplies of spare parts stopped, according to the Indian Air Force. A diplomat from the Ukraine Embassy said Antonov must resolve this issue with the Indian Air Force, and that the government cannot help.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
America’s ‘Media Watchdogs’ Hide U.S.’s Ukrainian Nazification and Ethnic Cleansing
America’s ‘Media Watchdogs’ Hide U.S.’s Ukrainian Nazification and Ethnic Cleansing
The U.S.’news’ media are so censored and controlled, so that even America’s ‘media watchdog’ organizations — mediamatters.org and fair.org on the left; and aim.org and mrc.org on the right — have hidden from the American public President Barack Obama’s Ukrainian coup in February 2014 thatviolently overthrew Ukraine’s democratically elected President and replaced him with a Ukrainian nazi (racist-fascist) rabidly eliminationist anti-Russian, police-state regime in Kiev, which, ever since America’s coup there, has been ethnically cleansing the Ukrainian Donbass region that had voted 90% for the man, Viktor Yanukovych, whom the Obama Administration overthrew. None of this is reported in the U.S. ‘news’ media — and America’s ‘media watchdog’ organizations hide the media’s hiding of it, though these events could bring on a nuclear war with Russia, which is America’s real target in Ukraine, right next door to Russia.
On 14 January 2015, I headlined “The Most-Censored News Story of 2014 Was ___What___?” and reported that, after an investigation, I had found that, by far, the most-censored news story of 2014 in America was Obama’s coup and U.S.-supported ethnic-cleansing in Ukraine. Links were provided there to videos of the the U.S.-backed massacre in the Trade Unions Building in Odessa on 2 May 2014, and the following ethnic cleansing in the Donbass region. However, the U.S. even sponsors firebombings of Donbass in order to get rid of the residents there, and our ‘media watchdogs’ are even silent about the ’news’ being silent about that. And, here is a good video of America’s Ukrainian coup, which overthrew Yanukovych. Here is more about that coup.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Recovery, Geopolitics and Detergents
Recovery, Geopolitics and Detergents
Increasingly over the past year or so, when people ask me what I do, and that happens a lot on a trip like the one I’m currently on in the world of down under, I find myself not just stating the usual ‘I write about finance and energy’, but adding: ‘it seems to become more and more about geopolitics too’. And it’s by no means just me: a large part of the ‘alternative finance blogosphere’, or whatever you wish to call it, is shifting towards that same orientation.
Not that no-one ever wrote about geopolitics before, but it used to be far less prevalent. Much of that, I think, has to do with a growing feeling of discontent with the manner in which a number of topics are handled by the major media and the political world. Moreover, as would seem obvious, certain topics lay bare in very transparent ways how finance and geopolitics are intertwined.
In the past year, we’ve seen the crash of the oil price, which will have – financial and political – effects in the future that dwarf what we’ve seen thus far. We’ve seen Europe and its banks stepping up their efforts to wrestle Greece into – financial and political – submission. And then there’s the nigh unparalleled propaganda machine that envelops the Ukraine-Crimea-Russia issue, which has bankrupted the economy of the first and imposed heavy economic sanctions on the latter, for political reasons.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Kiev, Moscow, Bonds and Haircuts
Kiev, Moscow, Bonds and Haircuts
When money managers talk outside their narrow field, nonsense is guaranteed to ensue. No better example than this Bloomberg piece on Ukraine’s ‘debt restructuring’ plans, which are as much a political tool as they are anything else at all. Ukraine’s American Finance Minister has announced a broad restructuring plan with a wide range of severe haircuts for creditors, and she – well, obviously – wishes to include Russia in the group of creditors who are about to get their heads shaved.
And despite all obvious angles to the issue that are not purely economical, Bloomberg presents a whole array of finance professionals who are free to spout their entirely irrelevant opinions on the topic. If you didn’t know any better, you’d be inclined to think that perhaps Russia is indeed just another creditor to Kiev.
Putin Plays Wildcard as Ukraine Bond Restructuring Talks Begin
As Ukraine begins bond-restructuring talks, it finds itself face-to-face with a familiar foe: Russia. President Vladimir Putin bought $3 billion of Ukrainian bonds in late 2013. The cash was meant to support an ally, then-President Yanukovych.
That is, for starters, a far too narrow way of putting it. Russia simply wanted to make sure Ukraine would remain a stable nation, both politically and economically, because A) it didn’t want a failed state on its borders and B) it wanted to ensure a smooth transfer of its gas sales to Europe through the Ukraine pipeline systems. Whether that would be achieved through Yanukovych or someone else was a secondary issue. Putin was never a big fan of the former president, but at least he kept the gas flowing.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Putin Says Attempts To Tip Nuclear Balance Don’t Scare Russia, Moscow Will Uncover “Schemes”
Putin Says Attempts To Tip Nuclear Balance Don’t Scare Russia, Moscow Will Uncover “Schemes”
Russia is once again ratcheting up the rhetoric, this time to a fever pitch. Just a day after Putin’s Security Council posted a remarkably accurate and amusingly concise assessment of US foreign policy aims on its website, a spokesman for the Russian Foreign Ministry as well as President Putin himself are out with strong condemnations of both the NATO presence in Eastern Europe as well as US plans to arm Kiev.
The comments come on the heels of a House vote which showed overwhelming support for the provision of lethal aid to Kiev and just a day after the first batch of American humvees received a warm welcome from President Petro Poroshenko. As a reminder, here’s what both sides had to say about Congress’s willingness to maybe start an all out proxy war in the Baltics:
The prepackaged spin is already ready: “sending weapons to the Kiev government would not mean involvement in a new war for America”, claimed the abovementioned Eliot Engel who sponsored the document. “The people of Ukraine are not looking for American troops,” Engel said. “They are just looking for the weapons.”So the only question is how Russia will responds to this escalation: according to RT,“Washington’s decision to supply Ukraine with ammunition and weapons would “explode the whole situation” in eastern Ukraine and Russia would be forced to respond “appropriately,” Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov said at the end of February.
While it’s not immediately clear what constitutes an “appropriate” response, and while the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Alexander Lukashevich contends that an outright military confrontation between the West and Russia “isn’t something anyone wants,” that’s where the ambiguity and niceties end. Here’s more via Bloomberg:
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
If the U.S. Sends Weapons to Ukraine, “the EU Will Break Up … and the American Century Will Have Ended In Shame, Disgrace and Defeat”
If the U.S. Sends Weapons to Ukraine, “the EU Will Break Up … and the American Century Will Have Ended In Shame, Disgrace and Defeat”
Is the U.S. Digging Its Own Grave?
In response to the news that the U.S. House of Representatives has just voted to send weapons to Ukraine, guest writer Eric Zuesse send me the following email:
My guess is that if Obama sends weapons [to Ukraine], then the EU will break up, and the U.S. will have, as remaining European allies, only Poland, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia, and maybe two or three other shall nations. The Donbass military (as it now is), will, I think, nonetheless win against the third invasion from Ukraine; and Putin and his ally China will also have, as new allies, Japan and South Korea, and much of Europe, and maybe even including Australia and UK; and the American Century will have ended in shame, disgrace and defeat, without any nuclear war (which would be pointless, even for America’s psychopathic aristocrats). So: I am more optimistic than Paul Craig Roberts and some others are.
I think that the U.S. aristocracy are shocking other nations’ aristocracies at how evil they are, and that this will cause those others to distrust the U.S. aristocrats so much, that the American Empire will end in shame, disgrace, defeat, humiliation, and collapse. I think that this collapse will be unprecedented in world history. But for me, this was decisive in making me as optimistic as I now am. (However, I have been optimistic, though less so, ever since the end of June, which was when Obama lost the first Ukrainian war of invasion against Donbass.)
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
US House Votes 348-48 To Arm Ukraine, Russia Warns Lethal Aid Will “Explode The Whole Situation”
US House Votes 348-48 To Arm Ukraine, Russia Warns Lethal Aid Will “Explode The Whole Situation”
Yesterday, in a vote that largely slid under the radar, the House of Representatives passed a resolution urging Obama to send lethal aid to Ukraine, providing offensive, not just “defensive” weapons to the Ukraine army – the same insolvent, hyperinflating Ukraine which, with a Caa3/CC credit rating, last week started preparations to issue sovereign debt with a US guarantee, in essence making it a part of the United States (something the US previously did as a favor to Egypt before the Muslim Brotherhood puppet regime was swept from power by the local army).
The resolution passed with broad bipartisan support by a count of 348 to 48.
According to DW, the measure urges Obama to provide Ukraine with “lethal defensive weapon systems” that would better enable Ukraine to defend its territory from “the unprovoked and continuing aggression of the Russian Federation.”
“Policy like this should not be partisan,” said House Democrat Eliot Engel, the lead sponsor of the resolution. “That is why we are rising today as Democrats and Republicans, really as Americans, to say enough is enough in Ukraine.”
Engel, a New York Democrat, has decided that he knows better than Europe what is the best option for Ukraine’s people – a Europe, and especially Germany, which has repeatedly said it rejects a push to give western arms to the Ukraine army, and warned that Russia under President Vladimir Putin has become “a clear threat to half century of American commitment to an investment in a Europe that is whole, free and at peace. A Europe where borders are not changed by force.”
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Ukraine Playing Hardball With Gazprom In New Gas Deal
Ukraine Playing Hardball With Gazprom In New Gas Deal
Ukraine plans to suspend its gas purchases from Russia on April 1, the day after the current contract expires, in an effort to strengthen Kiev’s bargaining position as the two countries negotiate a new deal that could lower the price of the fuel.
Ukraine has been shifting its reliance on gas from Russia to Europe, in large part because of growing tensions between the two countries that have previously led to interruptions in the flow of gas through a Ukrainian pipeline that also serves Western Europe.
Europe has been buying about half of its gas from Russia, and about 30 percent of its flows through Ukraine. Moscow has interrupted that flow three times in the past decade because of pricing disputes with Ukraine. Both Europe and Ukraine hope to end most or all Russian gas shipments by shifting to alternate sources of energy.
Related: Natural Gas Prices To Crash Unless Rig Count Falls Fast
Ukraine believes gas it buys under the current contract with Russia’s state-owned Gazprom is too expensive and has been negotiating with Russia for a lower price for the fuel as well as higher transit fees for Russian gas to European customers.
The expiration of the current contract also coincides with the end of winter, when Ukraine needs to buy less gas for heating.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Top Russia Scholar Stephen Cohen: War between NATO and Russia a Real Possibility
Top Russia Scholar Stephen Cohen: War between NATO and Russia a Real Possibility
Professor Stephen Cohen is one of the most respected authorities on Russia among American and Western scholars. He is an American scholar of Russian studies atPrinceton University and New York University. His academic work concentrates on modern Russian history and Russia’s relationship with the United States.
The key points of Cohen’s extraordinary speech:
- The possibility of premeditated war with Russia is real; this was never a possibility during Soviet times.
- This problem did not begin in November 2013 or in 2008, this problem began in 1990’s when the Clinton administration adopted a “winner-takes-all” policy towards post-Soviet Russia.
- Next to NATO expansion, the US adopted a form of a negotiation policy called “selective cooperation” – Russia gives, the US takes.
- There is not a single example of any major concession or reciprocal agreement that the US offered Russia in return for what it has received since the 90s.
- This policy has been pursued by every president and every US Congress, from President Clinton to President Obama.
- The US is entitled to a global sphere of influence, but Russia is not entitled to any sphere of influence at all, not even in Georgia or Ukraine.
- For 20 years Russia was excluded from the European security system. NATO expansion was a pivot of this security system and it was directed against Russia.
- Putin started as a pro-Western leader, he wanted partnership with the US, provided helping hand after 9/11 and saved many American lives in Afghanistan.
- In return he got more NATO expansion and unilateral abolition of the existing missile treaty on which all Russian security was based.
- Putin is not an autocrat, he’s maybe very authoritarian as an ultimate decider, but he is answerable to other power groups.
- Putin is not anti-Western, or as Khodorkovsky said, he is more European than 99 percent of Russians. He has become less pro-Western and particularly less pro-American.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
NATO Launches “Wide-Scale” War Games Near Russian Border, Creates “Line Of Troops”
NATO Launches “Wide-Scale” War Games Near Russian Border, Creates “Line Of Troops”
Washington looks to be throwing more than the full faith and credit of the US government behind Ukraine. On the heels of news that the US is set to guarantee a Ukrainian international bond issue (while Greek pensioners implicitly subsidize the country’s natural gas exports), NATO is in the midst of conducting large scale military maneuvers along the Russian border in a move Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov says encourages “Kiev to pursue a military solution.”Over the course of 10 days, NATO will parade 120 combat vehicles across the region in an effort to prove how quickly the West can confront perceived Russian aggression. Here’s more from Military News:
The [Russian] ministry warned that it hopes Europe “does see the risk of unconditionally following advice from U.S. generals and will not opt for approaches that will rule out the risk of a slide towards a military confrontation between Russia and NATO.”While the U.S. Army acknowledges the convoy’s movement is “a highly visible demonstration of U.S. commitment to its NATO allies,” Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, the commander of U.S. Army Europe, insists “the focus should be on what is the desired end state, and can we get there using diplomatic and economic pressure and support.”
So basically, the US is saying the following: “…although we’re intent on showing just how quickly we can deploy our forces in the event an armed confrontation becomes necessary, we hope you’ll see this for what it is which is our best effort demonstrate that we long for a peaceful solution.” We’ll let you judge for yourself how committed the West is to a peaceful resolution (note the US soldier teaching the small child how to fire a high caliber weapon):
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
Russia Under Attack
Russia Under Attack
While Washington works assiduously to undermine the Minsk agreement that German chancellor Merkel and French president Hollande achieved in order to halt the military conflict in Ukraine, Washington has sent Victoria Nuland to Armenia to organize a “color revolution” or coup there, has sent Richard Miles as ambassador to Kyrgyzstan to do the same there, and has sent Pamela Spratlen as ambassador to Uzbekistan to purchase that government’s allegiance away from Russia. The result would be to break up the Collective Security Treaty Organization and present Russia and China with destabilization where they can least afford it. For details go here: http://russia-insider.com/en/2015/03/18/4656
Thus, Russia faces the renewal of conflict in Ukraine simultaneously with three more Ukraine-type situations along its Asian border.
And this is only the beginning of the pressure that Washington is mounting on Russia.
On March 18 the Secretary General of NATO denounced the peace settlement between Russia and Georgia that ended Georgia’s military assault on South Ossetia. The NATO Secretary General said that NATO rejects the settlement because it “hampers ongoing efforts by the international community to strengthen security and stability in the region.” Look closely at this statement. It defines the “international community” as Washington’s NATO puppet states, and it defines strengthening security and stability as removing buffers between Russia and Georgia so that Washington can position military bases in Georgia directly on Russia’s border.
…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…
