In other words: The usual prophecy related news.
Things moved fast today—Yanukovich denying his resignation; the security forces switching sides; the parliament ousting him and setting new elections; his political allies, and perhaps Yanukovich himself, fleeing the country; members of his party in parliament fleeing the party; his jailed political rivalYulia Tymoshenko being popped out of a prison hospital and boarding a plane for Kiev—but it all moved peacefully, joyously, and seemingly in the right direction. This was no longer a referendum on the EU or Russia, who stood helplessly by as Ukrainians finally determined their own fate without them; this was not about the east or west of the country. Today was about getting rid of a man who had stolen a lot of their money and killed a lot of their countrymen.
There will, inevitably, be a hangover. I won't try to predict what's going to happen in Ukraine in the coming weeks and months, but here are some of the moving pieces to watch.
There is a huge element of anti-colonialism in this revolt. Most of the crowd in the Maidan speaks Ukrainian and the tents are marked with the names of cities of the Ukrainian-speaking West.
The Russian-speaking east of the country doesn't share this sense of oppression. They feel closer to Russia, and don't mind the Russian embrace. They also have most of the country's industry. For the last week, there has been talk of the country splitting, or, worse, civil war. While I think civil war is highly unlikely, the East-West divide is going to be one to watch: will the Russian-speaking East go along with the change, or not?
The Crimea: The home of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, the Crimean peninsula has long been a subject of contention between Ukraine and Russia, with the latter deliberating whether it should have been kept by the Russian Federation in the 1991 split. Russia has been fanning those fires, handing out Russian passports to local residents, and there are reports that pro-Russian separatism is on the rise. And, given the number of Russian speakers in the area, these tensions could escalate. Watch, for example, these Russians yelling at local activists who tried to set up their own Maidan in the Crimean city of Kerchi.
A new report by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) relating to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine says that United States President Barack Obama was “stunned” yesterday after President Putin warned him in a telephone dialoguebetween these two leaders that Russia was prepared to send over 250,000 heavily armed troops into Crimea to protect the sovereignty of its citizens against further US-EU aggression.
Crimea is an autonomous parliamentary republic within Ukraine with a population over 2 million whose ethnic makeup is over 70% Russian and Crimean Tartars as opposed to 24% Ukrainian and is the home base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet located in Sevastopol.
Putin first became involved in this latest Ukraine crisis this week, this report says, after receiving a call from Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych who called for direct intervention by Moscow due to his nation being under “direct attack” from Neo-Nazi and right-wing nationalist mobs supported by the EU and US in conflicts that have left, at least, 67 dead.
Important to note, this report continues, is that the Obama regime has instigated a number of “silent coups” against democratically elected governments it wishes to destabilize, fragment and then reabsorb into its Western alliance.
Unfortunately for the people of Ukraine, this report says, the Obama regime and their EU counterparts have aligned themselves with the much feared Right Sector opposition group that consists mostly of young men with right-wing, ultra right-wing, borderline fascists, and the even more feared far-right nationalist Svoboda Party.
In heeding Yanukovych’s call for direct intervention against these Western supported fascists, this report says, Putin ordered Human Rights Commissioner Vladimir Lukin to broker an immediate halt to the crisis by warning that Russia “was ready to go to war over Crimea”.
Should the most extreme measures be used in this crisis by the Russian military, this report further states, the legal authority to do so rests with the appeal of the Supreme Council of the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to Yanukovych that was presented by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of Crimea to the President urging him to take extraordinary measures to preserve the constitutional order and unity in Ukraine, and which Putin is bound to support by treaty.
One of the first “unintended blowbacks” for the West following their “silent coup” attempts in Ukraine, this reportstates, was Iceland’s decision earlier today to cancel their referendum on joining the EU as they are no longer interested in joining this trade bloc, a move made by Ukraine this past November that started this latest crisis in the first place.
With Foreign Minister Lavrov noting Western hypocrisy relating to Ukraine violence by stating, “When something like this happens within a European country, no one questions the need to curb the disorder and violence with firm measures”, this report concludes, it remains up to Obama to heed Putin’s warning to avert an all-out war.
The clock is ticking and Russia is calling. Putin will almost assuredly come down hard, send in tanks and military and take back his rogue satellite country and solidify power and territory. And that is just the beginning. Next on tap… Georgia and Europe, you are on Vladimir’s dance card. You didn’t think oil, gas and protection would come without a high price, right? Get ready to dance with the Russian bear. Ukraine is a look into America’s possible future if we don’t get a hold on our Republic and clean House and Senate in 2014. Here’s to the damned, the lost and the forgotten. Read the Tea leaves.
It always seems to start with the BBC. Months ago when the Ukrainian president patiently explained that his country’s economic and energy realities — which Vladimir Putin underscored — required that it stay close to Russia and not yet enter into a closer relationship with the EU, the BBC flooded Kiev with correspondents. These “independent” journalists began covering every angle of the crisis, or at least the angles that coincided with the view of pro-EU Ukrainian demonstrators and the BBC’s own, now thoroughly institutionalized, worship of the divinity known as the EU.
There is nothing Americans can do to stop the EU empire-builders and their BBC cheerleaders from causing war in the Ukraine, but Washington must not help them. For the sake of US security, as the ever-reliable Dr. Ron Paul has said, Americans should just shut up and watch because the United States has no genuine national interest at stake in the Ukraine that would require any involvement whatsoever by our government. “That’s their [the Ukrainians’] business, and it certainly isn’t ours,” Dr. Paul said. “We’ve tried it for too long [to tell others what to do], and the American people are sick and tired of it, and we’re also out of money.”
Cogent and ardently patriotic as always, Dr. Paul is a too-long under-appreciated national treasure, except among some citizens and most U.S. military personnel, men and women who know that he would defend America but not waste their lives in unnecessary wars fought for unsavory allies. Indeed, Dr. Paul stands forthrightly in the tradition of America’s greatest citizen, whose birthday happens to be today.
The combat capability of Russia’s naval task force in the Mediterranean will increase significantly following the first deliveries of Varshavyanka-class submarines to the Black Sea Fleet in 2015, Navy Commander Adm. Viktor Chirkov said Thursday.
Russia formed a permanent naval task force in the Mediterranean last year to defend its interests in the region. The move was widely seen, however, as a response to calls for international intervention in the worsening civil war in Syria, Russia’s longtime ally.
The task force currently consists of 12 warships and auxiliary vessels, including the nuclear-powered missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky and aircraft carrier Admiral Kuznetsov.
According to Chirkov, the Russian warships are taking part in an international operation to remove chemical weapons stockpiles from Syria.
Amid ongoing Western efforts to engage with Iran diplomatically and economically on its rogue nuclear program, a senior Iranian cleric and prayer leader dedicated his weekly Friday sermon to the threat of US military aggression against Iran, saying Iran would easily deliver a “crushing response” to any such attack.
Iran’s “number one option” on the table, according to Jannati, was “Down with the US.”
According to Iran’s Fars News, Jannati said the Iranian military would be prepared to issue a crushing response in the event of an American strike.
Noting that masses of Iranians had attended rallies earlier this month marking the 35th anniversary of the country’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, Jannati said that “the message of the Iranian people was that they are not afraid of your options on the table.”
The Jordanian government Sunday, Feb. 23 vehemently denied reports that Syrian rebels were undergoing training by American and its own military instructors and being sent back to fight government forces. According to US intelligence sources, those training camps have been turning out 250 rebel fighters per course and some 1,000 trainees all told are already in action on Syria’s battlefields. The Syrian government journal Tishrin has repeatedly warned Jordan that it is “playing with fire.”
On Feb. 18, Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon and Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz, quite openly visited injured Syrians at an IDF military field hospital on the Golan. They chatted with wounded rebel soldiers. But on the quiet, our sources report that they took a good look at Quneitra (pop: 10,000), which is located close to Israeli lines on the Syrian side of the enclave.
Bashar Assad is not standing idle.
Exactly a week ago, Saturday night, Feb. 15, the Syrian army ambushed a group of trained Syrian rebels as they crossed in from Jordan. Middle East sources reported that many were killed and others took to their heels and fled.
In the last two days, the Syrian army has moved in for an offensive on the environs of Quneitra to corner the new rebel command center. Two outlying villages, Rasm al-Hour and Rasm al-Sad, fell into the hands of government forces.
Clearly, the US-Israeli-Jordanian effort to establish a rebel-controlled border strip across the Syrian border will not be a cake walk.
Furthermore, a bomb car which exploded Sunday at the town of Atmeh on the Syrian-Iraqi border targeted a rebel-run military field hospital. At least nine people were killed.
This was another message from Damascus – this one picked up in Jerusalem that the field hospital set up on the Golan for injured Syrians is also in the sights of the Syrian army.
This was another message from Damascus – this one picked up in Jerusalem that the field hospital set up on the Golan for injured Syrians is also in the sights of the Syrian army.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday called on Germany and other Western nations involved in nuclear talks with Iran to ensure that the Islamic Republic does not attain the ability to manufacture nuclear weapons or the long-range missile capability to deliver them.
“I see with concern that Iran believes that it will complete its plan to become a nuclear power… with the ability to create a nuclear weapon and also to build intercontinental missiles, which Iran currently is engaged in without hindrance,” he said, speaking before the weekly cabinet meeting in Jerusalem.
The prime minister said that despite the interim agreement signed with the West, Iran is still pursuing three things — uranium enrichment, weapons development and the ability to deliver a payload — meaning that it is “getting everything while giving nearly nothing” in return.
Also see:
Global warming "admitters" -- to distinguish you from those of us you call "deniers" -- I have a question for you: Do any of you have an answer to the cataclysm your settled science has proven beyond any possible doubt is coming which does not require totalitarian measures?
Let me rephrase that, in case the connotations of the phrase "totalitarian measures" have not yet passed peer review, in which case their meaning may not be able to reach minds occupying the rarefied atmosphere of pure science. My question, then, is: Do you, or any of your gods of peer review, propose solutions to anthropogenic global climate change which do not involve the violation of property rights, the restraint of individual liberty regarding matters of self-preservation (i.e., jobs and wealth-creation), the weakening of every nation's sovereignty in favor of increased "global governance," and the expanded empowerment of thousands of bureaucrats, think-tankers, and advisors accountable to no one?
I ask this only because it has become apparent that you admitters, who are undoubtedly on the right side of history -- at least compared with the anti-science Neanderthals over on this side of the fence -- are absolutely at wit's end (or even a little beyond that) in seeking to understand how anyone could possibly continue in ignorance, when both Leonardo DiCaprio and Scarlett Johansson are on the side of Truth. Concerned about your shattered (but scientifically settled!) nerves, I propose to help you out with a little inside baseball concerning the intellectual (yeah, I know, silly word choice) reticence of the unbelievers to join in your celebration of the revealed religion.
Why is every "concerned" response to the settled science some variation on tyranny, Goebbels-style propaganda ("97 percent of scientists agree"), or violent accusations of "idiocy" (polite version) against everyone who does not swallow the propaganda whole, and follow you into your tyranny? This is your problem: credibility. This may seem strange, given that you have all the peer-reviewed settled science on your side. Unfortunately, you also have Al Gore, Barack Obama, Herman van Rompuy, the United Nations, Prince Charles, and sundry other progressive elite men and organizations on your side. And they are using your settled science as an excuse to impose tyranny. And you are saying nothing against this -- quite the contrary, in fact.
In brief, "I need to take over your life, but it's for your own good," is not a line of argument men who still imagine themselves to be human are likely to accept, regardless of how many computer models you can provide to show them why you are demanding it. You see? It's a credibility issue after all. For, in our (admittedly unsettled) minds, you are not enlightening us with science; you are enslaving us with lawless government.
Progressives will do virtually anything to advance their agenda. In the arena of global warming, they have resorted to hysteria and angry denunciation of those who dare to question their infallible “wisdom.” And as it is with every aspect of their agenda, such wisdom must be imposed at the expense of liberty.
White House science adviser John P. Holdren, who co-authored a book describing government forced abortions and putting sterilants in the drinking water as legitimate population control measures, rode to the president’s rescue. While agreeing that no single episode of extreme weather can be linked to climate change, “the global climate has now been so extensively impacted by the human-caused buildup of greenhouse gases that weather practically everywhere is being influenced by climate change.”
The Los Angeles Times brought another angle to the mix, one that plumbs the depths of climate change hysteria. It cites a study by Matthew Ranson of Abt Associates, a Massachusetts research and consulting firm, that contends climate change “can be expected to cause an additional 22,000 murders, 180,000 cases of rape, 1.2 million aggravated assaults, 2.3 million simple assaults, 260,000 robberies, 1.3 million burglaries, 2.2 million cases of larceny and 580,000 cases of vehicle theft,” between 2010 and 2099.
Far more devastating, climate change promoters virtually ignore the disastrous economic effects their policies would engender. As Bjorn Lomborg, director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a nonprofit group focused on cost-effective solutions to global problems explains, 81 percent of the world’s energy needs are provided by fossil fuels, with billions of people depending on them for survival. “For many parts of the world, fossil fuels are still vital and will be for the next few decades, because they are the only means to lift people out of the smoke and darkness of energy poverty,” he writes.
...the president quietly announced a major policy shift last June, whereby the U.S. would place severe restrictions on federal financing of coal plants in foreign countries. ”This new policy sends a message that coal is not an acceptable fuel source for the 21st century,” said Justin Guay, international climate and energy representative of the Sierra Club at the time.
That such a message condemns billions of people around the world to a life of subsistence survival — when they survive at all — is of little consequence. Apparently for progressives, “saving the planet” has little to do with saving the people who inhabit it.
The real generational challenge, in America at least, is figuring out how to prevent progressives in general, and the Obama administration in particular, from fundamentally transforming the United States into a nation where liberty, freedom and free-market capitalism are regulated out of existence. Make no mistake: those who would employ questionable science to impose what amounts to a death penalty on millions of Third-World residents struggling for their very existence don’t think twice about imposing untold economic hardship on their fellow Americans, 76 percent of whom live “paycheck to paycheck,” for the same reason.
And its not about the environment. As a study by the Science and Public Policy Institute reveals, if Americans completely stopped emitting all carbon immediately — stopped driving, stopped cooling and heating our homes, shut down all the power plants, and even stopped talking – the global temperature would decrease by only 0.17 degrees Celsius by 2100.
One can only wonder when Americans will tire of the progressive lust for power wrapping itself as noble intentions.
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