All posts tagged: russia

Stop the Gucci and Prada Talk

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Chinese and Russian People Want to Live Too! Andre Vltchek I hear this again and again, whenever I speak in the West: What kind of Communism is that, in China? In all big cities, they have Prada and Gucci in every major department store.” Western leftists are obsessed with this topic. They do not even realize how ridiculous, how racist their arguments actually are! China, with some 6,000 years long history, 1.3 billion inhabitants and the second largest economy in the world, has almost eradicated extreme poverty in the cities, and in the countryside. For the first time in modern history, people are moving from the urban centers to the villages. The great Ecological Civilization effort is demonstrating to the world how to save the environment, and the planet. The country is firmly back with its brilliant model of “Communism with the Chinese characteristics”. Its foreign policy is more and more internationalist. But the more progressive, independent-minded and kind to its people China becomes, the more it is attacked and antagonized by the West. The …

The Rabidly Hypocritical EU

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Eric Zuesse Unlike America under Donald Trump, who is proudly psychopathic and went so far as to blurt out that his followers would accept his leadership even if he were to shoot someone on Fifth Avenue, the European Union is so rabidly hypocritical (Trump would probably call it “politically correct”) that its leaders routinely moralize about ‘human rights and democracy’ even while their governments indiscriminately rob and slaughter people in foreign lands (as will be documented here). EU leaders assist U.S.-led atrocities while using prettier language to describe their alleged motivation for these policies. Though the U.S. Government also occasionally employs such verbal sucker-punches (insincere or “politically correct” rhetoric), such moralizing is now the exception for the U.S. Government, and is no longer (as it had been under the immediately prior U.S. President, Barack Obama) the routine American practice — very much like the EU’s was, and still remains: such ‘idealistic’ hypocrisy. But even Obama wasn’t as hypocritical as EU leaders still are. The biggest difference between the U.S. and the EU is that, whereas …

Ukraine admitted to interfering in the 2016 US election on Clinton’s side

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Celia Schmidt Special Counsel Robert Mueller has finally released his conclusions of the investigation into Russia’s role in the US Presidential Election 2016. The investigation did not establish that members of the Trump campaign conspired or coordinated with Russians, the press reported. But there is a curious detail: most people charged have no connection to Russia, as in Manafort’s case. The former Trump campaign manager has been accused of money laundry and illegal foreign lobbying for Ukraine. Thus, the Mueller investigation findings are leading to Kiev, not Russia. Moreover, Ukraine did admit to interfering in the 2016 US election helping the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. In this regard, there are fair questions to raise: why American citizens are indicted and sentenced with less charges while the evidence of a foreign conspiracy is omitted? Where are fair debates over the issue? Why there were no special committee hearings to determine the truth? It is clear: a new investigation is coming. The US prosecutors need to interrogate Ukrainian politicians and members of the Clinton campaign as well …

Discuss: Julian Assange Arrested

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This morning, officers of the Metropolitan police were invited into the Ecuadorian embassy by President Lenin Moreno. They proceeded to arrest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and literally drag him out of the building.

Risky travelling through the Baltic States because of military exercises

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Viktors Domburs It is obvious, that if a person is planning his or her travelling through the Baltics, it is absolutely necessary to conform the movements with the schedule of military events. National police, of course, usually warns when you should be especially attentive and responsible on the road and what places you should not visit at all. Thus, you may start planning your unforgivable summer travelling in Latvia, being fully familiarized with the plans of the military. But it turns out not to be so simple. Openness and transparency are the declared principles of all NATO military activity. It is said that “many NATO exercises are open to partners beyond the Alliance. International organisations, including the European Union, are also invited to observe or participate in NATO exercises. As part of this commitment to transparency, NATO exercises are announced months in advance and published on: http://www.shape.nato.int/exercises. As for the Baltic States, they always keep the general NATO course and never challenge Alliance’s decisions. According to NATO’s homepage, numerous manoeuvres at national and multinational levels …

A Russiagate Requiem

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So the Mueller report is finally in, and it appears that hundreds of millions of Americans have, once again, been woefully bamboozled. Weird, how this just keeps on happening. At this point, Americans have to be the most frequently woefully bamboozled people in the entire history of woeful bamboozlement. If you didn’t know better, you’d think we were all a bunch of hopelessly credulous imbeciles that you could con into believing almost anything, or that our brains had been bombarded with so much propaganda from the time we were born that we couldn’t really even think anymore.

Mueller Finally Gives up His Two Year Search For a Non-Existent Needle

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Quelle surprise. After more than two years looking for a non-existent needle in an ever-expanding haystack, Chief Hunter of the Needle, Special Counsel Robert Mueller, has finally declared that he hasn’t been able to find it. This ought to come as no surprise, because as we know non-existent needles don’t exist. Except, of course, in the minds of hundreds of foolish Democrat politicians and their dutiful stenographers in the mainstream media, or Global Pravda as it is known on this blog.

Three Neo-Nazis Lead Ukraine’s Presidential Contest

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Gallup Finds Ukrainians Despise All the Candidates Eric Zuesse Gallup headlined on March 21st, “Ukraine’s Election: Voters Disenchanted Ahead of Key Vote”, and “World-Low 9% of Ukrainians Confident in Government”. Might the reason for both be that no candidate in the contest is respected by the Ukrainian public, and that only three — the candidates with the least-low public approval — are the only ones who have even a remote chance of winning, and that all three of those candidates are racist-fascists, or hold the ideology of nazism? This will be documented here: Nazism, which is the ideology of fascism but with a heavy added component of racism, has been doing well in post-‘revolutionary’, or post-2013, or post ‘Maidan’ ‘revolution’, Ukrainian politics. The form of racism that dominates today’s Ukraine is against Russians more than against Jews, and so though the ideology is the same as was Germany’s nazi ideology, its main ethnic target isn’t the same. Some of Ukraine’s leading nazis are, in fact, Jews who hate Russians. Whereas Germany’s nazis wanted to exterminate …

Mueller-Dämmerung

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If Nietzsche was right, and what doesn’t kill us only makes us stronger, we can thank the global capitalist ruling classes, the Democratic Party, and the corporate media for four more years of Donald Trump. The long-awaited Mueller report is due any day now, or so they keep telling us. Once it is delivered, and does not prove that Trump is a Russian intelligence asset, or that he personally conspired with Vladimir Putin to steal the presidency from Hillary Clinton, well, things are liable to get a bit awkward. Given the amount of goalpost-moving and focus-shifting that has been going on, clearly, this is what everyone’s expecting.

Accountability for War Crimes – USA vs ICC

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James O’Neill The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an international tribunal that sits in The Hague in the Netherlands. It began its jurisdictional life on 1 July 2002, the date when the Rome Statute (the ICC’s fundamental and governing document) came into force. As of March 2019 there are 124 member States. They include all of South America, most of Europe, about half of Africa, and Oceania, including Australia and New Zealand. There are some notable non-members, including China, Israel, Russia and the United States. The Rome Statute is an important element in the structure of international law given that it has the power to investigate and prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and breaches of the Geneva Conventions applicable to armed conflicts. It does not have the power to prosecute crimes of aggression. A further limitation is that the courts will only prosecute an individual if the State of which he or she is a citizen is unable or unwilling to prosecute. Not being a member State does not exonerate that State from an obligation …

Can Russia and China Survive this Unharmonious World?

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Andre Vltchek Does it pay ‘to be good’? Is it still possible to play by the rules in this mad world, governed by brigands? What if the rules are defined and ratified by all countries of the world, but a small group of the strongest (militarily) nations totally ignores them, while using its professional propagandists to reinterpret them in the most bizarre ways? Describing the world, I often feel that I am back in my primary school. When I was a child, I had the misfortune of growing up in a racist Czechoslovakia. Being born in the Soviet Union, and having an half Russian and half Asian mother, I was brutally beaten up between classes, from the age of seven. I was systematically attacked by a gang of boys, and humiliated and hit for having ‘Asian ears’, for having an ‘Asian mother’, for being Russian. During winters, my shoes were taken out into the bitter cold and pissed into. The urine turned into ice. The only consolation was that ‘at least’ I was Russian and …

Russian Stalemate

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Frank Lee The brewing conflict between the Russian Oligarchy and the Russian people is reaching a crisis point. The side that prevails will determine the future of Russia and perhaps the world. On 17 March 1991 a referendum was held in the Soviet Union on whether or not the USSR should continue to exist. There was an 80% turnout (some 185,647,355.00 of registered voters). The upshot of this election was that 113,512,812.00 voted to preserve the USSR. That’s 71.92%. Their wishes were disregarded, however. The entrenched bureaucracies and business interests, collectively the nomenklatura, decided that this was too good an opportunity to pass up; there was money to be made in this once in a lifetime situation. Which sounds eerily rather like EU referenda practise. The sunny interlude of Gorbachov was to give way to the beginning of the Yeltsin catastrophe – a catastrophe not equalled since WW2. The emergence of the cosmopolitan business oligarchy and its political hangers-on was to consolidate its power and create a new kind of political, economic and social structure. …

WATCH: Crashes of Convenience – KAL 007

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Episode 187 of The Corbett Report explores Korean Airline disaster that could have triggered World War III On September 1, 1983, Korean Airlines Flight 007 was shot down by a Soviet fighter interceptor as it crossed through Soviet air space. But what was it doing so far off course, flying over Soviet military installations the day of a secret missile test? What happened to the bodies? And what does all of this have to do with Larry McDonald, the sitting US congressman who was on the flight and warning America about the coming of the New World Order? Find out this week on The Corbett Report. For sources, shownotes and an audio-only version click here.

Idlib – Reportage from the Last Front in Syria

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Andre Vltchek For a while, all the guns have fallen silent. I am near Idlib, the last stronghold of the terrorists in Syria. The area where the deadliest anti-government fighters, most of them injected into Syria from Turkey, with Saudi, Qatari and Western ‘help’, are literally holed up, ready for the final showdown. Just yesterday, mortars were falling on villages near the invisible frontline, separating government troops and the terrorist forces of Al Nusra Front. The day before yesterday, two explosions rocked the earth, only a couple of meters from where we are now standing. They call it a ceasefire. But it’s not. It is one-sided. To be more precise: the Syrian army is waiting, patiently. Its cannons are pointing towards the positions of the enemy, but the orders from Damascus are clear: do not fire. The enemy has no scruples. It provokes, endlessly. It fires and bombs, indiscriminately. It kills. Along the frontline, thousands of houses are already ruined. Nothing gets spared: residential districts, sport gymnasiums, even bakeries. There is an established routine: assaults …

Syria Accuses US of Stealing 40+ Tons of Gold

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Eric Zuesse The Syrian National News Agency headlined on February 26th, “Gold deal between United States and Daesh [ISIS]” and reported that: Information from local sources said that US army helicopters have already transported the gold bullions under cover of darkness on Sunday [February 24th], before transporting them to the United States. The sources said that tens of tons that Daesh had been keeping in their last hotbed in al-Baghouz area in Deir Ezzor countryside have been handed to the Americans, adding up to other tons of gold that Americans have found in other hideouts for Daesh, making the total amount of gold taken by the Americans to the US around 50 tons, leaving only scraps for the SDF [Kurdish] militias that serve them [the US operation]. Recently, sources said that the area where Daesh leaders and members have barricaded themselves in, contains around 40 tons of gold and tens of millions of dollars. Allegedly, “US occupation forces in the Syrian al-Jazeera area made a deal with Daesh terrorists, by which Washington gets tens of …

Putin Now Thinks Western Elites Are ‘Swine’

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Dmitry Orlov via Russia Insider An article I published close to five years ago, “Putin to Western elites: Play-time is over”, turned out to be the most popular thing I’ve written so far, having garnered over 200,000 reads over the intervening years. In it I wrote about Putin’s speech at the 2014 Valdai Club conference. In that speech he defined the new rules by which Russia conducts its foreign policy: out in the open, in full public view, as a sovereign nation among other sovereign nations, asserting its national interests and demanding to be treated as an equal. Yet again, Western elites failed to listen to him. Instead of mutually beneficial cooperation they continued to speak the language of empty accusations and counterproductive yet toothless sanctions. And so, in yesterday’s address to Russia’s National Assembly Putin sounded note of complete and utter disdain and contempt for his “Western partners,” as he has usually called them. This time he called them “swine.” The president’s annual address to the National Assembly is a rather big deal. Russia’s …

The Skripal Case: An Alternative Narrative

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Michael Antony The recent titbit fed to us by Bellingcat (reputedly close to MI6) that a third Russian agent was booked on the flight from Heathrow to Moscow on the night of 4th March 2018 — the flight taken by the two alleged GRU officers filmed in Salisbury — but didn’t show up for it, has pointed to a possible solution to the baffling Skripal puzzle. What if the third man, or perhaps the man who was supposed to take his place, was by then lying in Salisbury Hospital in a coma from opiate poisoning? What if Sergei Skripal was a triple agent trying to escape back to Russia to tell the world the truth about the Steele Dossier, which he had helped to concoct as a scurrilous, obscene joke and which had unexpectedly become the new bible of the insane war party in Washington? This is the alternative narrative I will set out in detail here so that the reader can judge whether it forms a more plausible and coherent story than the mishmash …

Why has CounterPunch spiked Andre Vltchek’s ‘Lies of the Empire’?

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Ramin Mazaheri I first started reading Andre Vltchek on the website CounterPunch, which is a truly great leftist website… even though I will probably never get published on there, even if I was relaying the cure for cancer: CounterPunch appears totally opposed to working with any state media, and I work for Iran’s PressTV. Rather anarchist and ivory-tower, but… whatever. Reporters have only two choices: work for either privately-owned or state-owned media. I.e., you can work for shareholders, a patrician family (whether urban giants or rural petty tyrants), or some billionaire whose new sports team is in the middle of a boring rebuild, or you can work for the People. I chose the People. Even if this closes a million doors to me – and the fact that I work for the Iranian People closes a million others – I have zero regrets. (Blogging – working for Yourself – is now a third choice, but I don’t have the tech savvy to make that economically viable, and the vast majority of blogging journalists say the …

Iron Ladies and Golden Dreams

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Steven Keith It was Margaret Thatcher who as Prime Minister was the principal driving force behind the expansion of the European Union. It was she who advocated the broadening of the physical, philosophical, financial and spiritual scope of the European Community as it was then known, to include the eastern European and Baltic, former Warsaw Pact states. Her nemesis at that time was Jaques Delors, a bureaucrat and a Frenchman. He of course (being that he had risen to the appointed post of a Commissioner) came from the Brussels mindset that was then and remains to this day of the same view, that being, that Brussels, Berlin and Paris run the show between them. The physical structures of the EU project in Brussels, Belgium being underpinned by the financial and philosophical capacities of Germany and France. Thatcher attempted to weaken that triumvirate by expanding the number of nations and taking advantage of the fact that those countries were existing in their post-Soviet incarnation, that being, in a state of virtual financial anarchy, masquerading as liberalism. …

Venezuela: An Open Letter to the UN Secretary General

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The most noble task of the United Nations is to create the conditions conducive to local, regional and international peace, to work preventively and tirelessly to avoid armed conflicts, to mediate and negotiate to reach peaceful solutions, so that all human beings can live in human dignity and in the enjoyment of the human right to peace and all other civil, cultural, economic, political and social rights. I am particularly worried by the Orwellian corruption of language, the instrumentalization and weaponization of human rights and now even of humanitarian assistance.