Ukraine

God damn but the propagandists are hitting us hard. We haven't seen a blitzkrieg like this since 2003 and the run-up to the Iraq misadventure. (Although we did see something similar when Assad was accused, probably falsely, of using CBWs against the rebels in Syria.) Both The New Republic and George Will are beating the same war drum. You know mayhem is at hand when mainstream "liberals" and establishment conservatives get with the rhythm.

For a different take, check out the latest from Paul Craig Roberts:

People ask for solutions, but no solutions are possible in a disinformed world. Populations almost everywhere are dissatisfied, but few have any comprehension of the real situation.

Those words belong on the tombstone of western civilization.

We are witnessing this today in western Ukraine where a mixture of witless university students, pawns in Washington’s drive for world hegemony, together with paid protesters and fascistic elements among ultra-nationalists are bringing great troubles upon Ukraine and perhaps a deadly war upon the world.

Many of the protesters are just the unemployed collecting easy money. It is the witless idealistic types that are destroying the independence of their country. Victoria Nuland, the American neoconservative Assistant Secretary of State, whose agenda is US world hegemony, told the Ukrainians what was in store for them last December 13, but the protesters were too delusional to hear.

In an eight minute, 46 second speech at the National Press Club sponsored by the US-Ukraine Foundation, Chevron, and Ukraine-in-Washington Lobby Group, Nuland boasted that Washington has spent $5 billion to foment agitation to bring Ukraine into the EU. Once captured by the EU, Ukraine will be “helped” by the West acting through the IMF. Nuland, of course, presented the IMF as Ukraine’s rescuer, not as the iron hand of the West that will squeeze all life out of Ukraine’s struggling economy.

Nuland’s audience consisted of all the people who will be enriched by the looting and by connections to a Washington-appointed Ukrainian government.

There. Isn't it nice to see a golden nugget of truth illuminate a dark pit of nonsense?

Obama has said that the protests in Ukraine should be blamed on the government of that country. Yeah? Then why would the U.S. even need to pay the protestors? 

Victoria "Fuck the EU" Nuland increasingly seems to be the key player here. Some will see her as a neocon rat who has snuck aboard the Good Ship Obama, while others will insist that Obama is himself the Rat Admiral of a Rat Navy. Right now, I see no reason to fuss about that distinction. It's more important to take a closer look at Nuland -- and the best place to start is here. She's clearly hoping to determine who runs what in the Ukraine:

Now who exactly is Victoria Nuland?

According to Nuland’s Wipedia bio:

“Nuland is a career Senior Officer of the United States Foreign Service and has worked for both Democratic and Republican administrations. During the Bill Clinton administration, Nuland was chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott before moving on to serve as deputy director for former Soviet Union affairs. During the George W. Bush administration, she served as the principal deputy foreign policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney and then as U.S. ambassador to NATO. During the Barack Obama administration, she was special envoy for Conventional Armed Forces in Europe before assuming the position of State Department spokesperson in summer 2011, which she held until February 2013.[2]”

Nuland is married to Neo-con Robert Kagan, co-founder of “The Project For a New American Century”, the ultra-conservative think-tank that opined for “A new Pearl Harbor” for their middle-east regime-change plans to hatch.

As described by one critic, No family since John and Allen Dulles has had this much influence on American policy.

The last thing we need is another Cold War, yet here it comes. The American people are now willing to admit that even the invasion of Afghanistan was a mistake. Do we really need this? Let's get back to Paul Craig Roberts:

According to RT, which has much more credibility than the US State Department (remember Secretary of State Colin Powell's address to the UN setting up the US invasion of Iraq with his “evidence” of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, a speech Powell later disavowed as Bush regime disinformation), Ukrainian rioters have seized 1,500 guns, 100,000 rounds of ammunition, 3 machine guns, and grenades from military armories.

The human-rights trained Ukrainian police have permitted the violence to get out of hand. A number of police have been burned by Molotov cocktails. The latest report is that 108 police have been shot. A number are dead and 63 are in critical condition. http://rt.com/news/ukraine-kiev-firearms-weapons-police-934/ These casualties are the products of Nuland’s “peacefully protesting protesters acting with enormous restraint.” On February 20, the elected, independent Ukraine government responded to the rioters use of firearms by allowing police to use firearms in self-defense.

Perhaps the Russophobic western Ukrainians deserve the IMF, and perhaps the EU deserves the extreme nationalists who are trying to topple the Ukraine government. Once Ukrainians experience being looted by the West, they will be on their knees begging Russia to rescue them.

A few weeks ago, The Guardian published a good overview of what's happening:

You'd never know from most of the reporting that far-right nationalists and fascists have been at the heart of the protests and attacks on government buildings. One of the three main opposition parties heading the campaign is the hard-right antisemitic Svoboda, whose leader Oleh Tyahnybok claims that a "Moscow-Jewish mafia" controls Ukraine. But US senator John McCain was happy to share a platform with him in Kiev last month. The party, now running the city of Lviv, led a 15,000-strong torchlit march earlier this month in memory of the Ukrainian fascist leader Stepan Bandera, whose forces fought with the Nazis in the second world war and took part in massacres of Jews.

But any doubt that the EU's effort to woo Ukraine is closely connected with western military strategy was dispelled today by Nato's secretary general, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who declared that the abortive pact with Ukraine would have been "a major boost to Euro-Atlantic security".

Which helps to explain why politicians like John Kerry and William Hague have been so fierce in their condemnation of Ukrainian police violence – which has already left several dead – while maintaining such studied restraint over the killing of thousands of protesters in Egypt since last year's coup.

Not that Yanukovych could be mistaken for any kind of progressive. He has been backed to the hilt by billionaire oligarchs who seized control of resources and privatised companies after the collapse of the Soviet Union – and fund opposition politicians and protesters at the same time.