Tag Archives: Ukraine

Worst cyber-crime is in US, Russia

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As I blogged yesterday, the IP addresses attacking me trace back to a Netherland hosting company called Ecatel Network.

ECATEL NETWORK

Ecatel has become notorious for hosting bad actors, from the Russian spammers to pedophile networks.  It also has a reputation for brushing off requests for help from the victims.

Trying to figure out what was going on, I did a bit of research into the world of cyber-crime.

AKAMAI REPORT – CHINA LEADS CYBER-CRIME?

The mainstream media likes to portray cyber-crime as essentially a foreign threat. China, especially, is fingered as the bad guy.

For instance, in January,  US-based Akamai Technologies issued a report  placing China at the head of global hacking, responsible for 35% of cyber-attacks world-wide.

More recently,  the US government pressed cyber-warfare charges against five of China’s army officers.

Nigerians scamsters are rumored to run a close second.

There are two things wrong with this picture. The first is the source of the information.

Akamai Technologies is a “content-delivery network” head-quartered in Cambridge, Massachussetts.

It was founded by an MIT applied math professor, Tom Leighton, and a graduate student at MIT, Daniel Lewin, later killed on AA flight 11, which crashed during the September 11, 2001 attack.

According to his MIT bio, Leighton is a specialist in cryptography,  digital rights, and algorithms for network applications. He also chaired a Presidential committee on Cyber-Security.

Akamai’s co-founder,  COO, and President was the founder of the Road-Runner cable service. Its CEO was a senior VP from IBM.

Akamai’s privacy policy states that it collects IP addresses and effectively tracks clients.

Its partners include Microsoft and Apple and its clients include the BBC, the White House,  Facebook, Twitter, Adobe Systems, Netflix, Yahoo, ESPN Star (India),  China Central Television and Al Jazeera, among many others.

How likely is it that reports from Akamai on cyber-crime are untouched by political pressure?

WORLD HOSTS REPORT –  US, RUSSIA LEAD CYBER-CRIME

Point two. The statistics don’t support Akamai’s pious propaganda.

The Chinese do indeed have a very high number of IP addresses attached to their malicious activity. If sheer volume were the only criterion, China would dominate.

However,  as far as the number of malicious sites and the level of threat involved, the world’s leading cyber-criminals aren’t Chinese.  Not even close.

They are in the US and in Russia, closely followed by smaller countries like the Netherlands, the Ukraine, and Romania.

In Host Exploit’s authoritative World Hosts Report of March 2013, five of the top twenty  malware hosts were based in the US; four were in Russia, two each in the Netherlands, Germany, and the Ukraine.

Chinanet Backbone was the only host from China that made the top twenty.

What was especially interesting to me was to find the originator of the attacks on my computer, Ecatel network, at the top of the list of the world’s leading hosts for malware.

Host Exploit also breaks down cyber-crime by country, with Russia leading the pack.

This is its list of the world’ top ten cyber-crime havens in 2013:

1. The Russian Federation (RU)

2. Belarus (BY)

3. Ukraine (UA)

4. The British Virgin Islands (VG)

5. The United States (US)

6. Romania (RO)

7. Netherlands (NL)

8. Poland (PL)

9. Turkey (TR)

10. Bulgaria  (BG)

 

Palin, the Prophetess? (Updated) – Part One

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Image Credit: Townhall.com reposted at FreeRepublic.com

PALIN, THE PROPHETESS?

Conservatives have been pointing out that Sarah Palin was derided for predicting in 2008 that an Obama presidency might set the stage for a Russian invasion of the Ukraine:

Speaking Tuesday at a rally in a Reno, Nevada, Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin had a little fun with her counterpart on the Democratic ticket, thanking Joe Biden for warning Barack Obama’s supporters to “gird your loins” for an international crisis if the Illinois senator wins.

Palin helpfully offered four scenarios for such a crisis, one of which was this strange one:

After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.”

On the other hand,  prophecy might have nothing to do with it.

Palin was not just the running-mate of John McCain in the 2008 elections,  she is his close friend.

MCCAIN HELPED PROVOKE THE UKRAINE CRISIS

This is interesting, since Palin is identified with the more conservative base of the Republican party, while McCain is often praised by Democrats, which makes him either a thoughtful moderate or an undependable RINO (Republican in Name Only), depending on where you stand.

The second interesting angle is that John McCain was one of the chief rabble-rousers on the ground in the Ukraine in December 2013:

Senator John McCain on Sunday told thousands of Ukrainian protesters camped on Kiev’s main square that Ukraine’s destiny lay in Europe and that it would make Europe better”

Numbers of observers like this one have shown up the Western media for its black-out of the real Ukraine story.

MCCAIN’S CONNECTION TO THE MAFIA

(Added, June 16, 2014. H/T to Charles Burris, LRC blog for reminding me)

THE STAGE-MANAGEMENT OF HISTORY

Alternative blogs have called attention to the considerable evidence that the Ukraine situation was engineered, an instance of the much-flogged Hegelian Dialectic by which the Western governments and allied corporations draw greater and greater power to themselves:

Thesis (Proposition)

[A problem is created, encouraged, or exacerbated by the powers-that-be]

It is opposed by an

Antithesis (Counter-proposition) 

[This the reaction by the population, victims, or public opinion, to the problem. It demands a solution or a resolution.]

The conflict is resolved by the

Synthesis

[In turn this becomes a new thesis and the basis of the next triad of conflict.]

  1. The  solution is presented as a novel remedy to the population, but it is pre-planned. It is the intended goal of the powers-that-be.
  2. The new problems that lie in the solution are carefully hidden from the public until the next triad is activated. Then they become the basis for further conflict, which demands more solutions.
  3. The succeeding conflicts lead to greater and greater control by the powers-that-be.
  4. This control can be governmental or extra-governmental.

 

PALIN, THE PROPAGANDIST?

Seen in this light, Putin’s annexation of the Ukraine could be an intended consequence of the provocations staged by the CIA, with politicians like McCain, Nuland, and Kerry to lend them clout.

Palin, as a close friend of McCain’s, might have been privy to the plan, or, at least, to parts of it.

And her “prediction” of 2008 could simply be an accidental slip, exposing something she’d heard.

More likely, it’s an intentional leak to the public, with the intention of creating retrospective gravitas for Palin herself, as well as embarrassment for Obama.

One can of course take the speculation even further. Obama himself might have been selected to play this role in the weakening of the American empire…..

The NY Times’ Propaganda Campaign over Ukraine

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Walter Uhler, an independent scholar, has written an exhaustive analysis of the New York Times’ mendacity in its Ukraine coverage.

Here is a short excerpt from Part II:

In contrast to the incompetent or dishonest on-the-spot reporting by the Times, the “White Book,” gathered evidence months after the events and found that “among the participants of the Euromaidan” were “large and permanent groups of militants, numbering several thousand people, who organized the attacks…”

These groups had “military and official body armor…helmets, shields, knee and elbow pads, masks, respirators, [and] gas masks.” They had fire arms and cold arms, radio communication equipment and stun grenades. They dismantled stones, to be thrown at police, from bridges and pavements. And they manufactured Molotov cocktails and other explosive devices. (White Book, p. 37)

Unfortunately, the “White Book” fails to specify precisely when such weapons were used. I suspect that the most deadly weapons were not introduced until mid-January 2014.

These groups were “constantly present,” unlike most of the protesters, and were most active in initiating violence. According to the “White Book,” on December 1 some “protesters” attempted “to break through the Interior Ministry troops and police officer cordon on Bankovaya street in Kiev,” in order to assault the Presidential Administration of Ukraine. (Imagine an attempt to assault our White House.)

In addition, “supporters of Pravyi Sektor entrenched themselves on the fifth floor of the House of Trade Unions. Party activists in AUU Svoboda actually took control of the Kiev City State Administration building.” (p. 9-10)

The see-no-evil Times did not even mention Right Sector (Pravyi Sektor) until 1 February 2014 and paid no serious attention to the group until 16 February. Imagine that! The Times was self-righteously pontificating about events at Maidan – from late November to mid-February — without having a clue about Right Sector violence. In fact, the incompetent or dishonest Times would not take the threat posed by Right Sector seriously, until it began to menace the very provisional government (the coup regime) that it had just brought to power.

As early as 3 December 2013, John Allen Gay (writing in The National Interest) complained that “Western coverage of the protests has ignored or downplayed the role of the crypto-fascist All-Ukrainian Union party, ‘Svoboda.’” “Svoboda’s leaders have associated themselves with the protest’s most radical action, the occupation and barricading of the Kyiv City Hall.” On December 8, a group of extremists, led by Svoboda, demolished the Lenin statue on Shevchenko Boulevard.

Yet, it wasn’t until 16 December 2013, when the Times finally got around to Svoboda. In an article titled “Unease as an Opposition Party Stands Out in Ukraine’s Protest,” Andrew E. Kramer noted that Svoboda “traces its roots to the Ukrainian partisan army of World War II, which was loosely allied with Nazi Germany.” Until 2004 it was known as the Social-Nationalist Party – a word flip away from the National socialism of the Nazis — and that same year its leader, Oleg Tyagnibok, was expelled by the Ukrainian Parliament, due to his speech that extolled “World War II-era partisans bravely fighting Germans, Russians, Jews and ‘other scum.’”

Mr. Kramer noted that “unabashed neo-Nazis still populate its ranks” and that its black and red banner, which was viewed to be a racist symbol and thus banned at soccer matches by FIFA, is ubiquitous at Independence Square.

Having been bussed into Kiev for weeks, “the activists make up much of the street muscle on the square.” “As the protests have unfolded, the party’s role has grown.”

Although Svoboda took full control of City Hall in mid-December, Mr. Kramer reported that “Western diplomats say they respect Mr. Tyagnibok for keeping control of the unruly nationalist wing on the streets.” Indeed, minimizing the role played by right-wing violence fit neatly with the theme that a popular (and thus legitimate) revolution was occurring at Maidan, not an ugly coup spearheaded by nasty people. The theme of popular revolution allowed Western writers, pundits and politicians to overlook who, precisely, was throwing those Molotov cocktails at police and buildings.

But, if incompetence or dishonesty explains why the Times failed to highlight these particular “bad guys,” what explains the similarly egregious failure by Russia’s reporters? Let’s be clear: What the “White Book” reported after the fact was not what the Russian press was reporting on the spot.

The Russian press took its cue from President Putin. For example, on December 4, Russia Direct quoted Mr. Putin’s assertion that “the anti-government protests in Ukraine were organized and planned by the West as an attempt to overthrow the country’s legitimate government.”

Read the rest of Part II here:

“The New York Times Disinformation Campaign over Ukraine: Part II: The Propaganda War over Ukraine

(Dissident Voice, June 12, 2o14)

Read Part I here:

The Propaganda War Over Ukraine:  The New York Times versus Russia’s White Book: Part One

(Dissident Voice, May 9, 2014)

FEMEN: The empire’s booby-trap

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Update 2 (June 9, 2014):

OK. I just found the first documented direct link to Soros and the Open Society:

The Australian academic who directed the film about FEMEN in 2013, Sophie Pinkham, works for George Soros’ Open Society Institute.

Update 1:

I began this post simply to comment on Femen’s attacks on churches in recent months.

Then I found that, although CIA-backing of Femen is assumed by many bloggers, the links I came across didn’t show exactly how Soros or the CIA was tied into the outfit.

I will be updating the post with that information, as I find it.

ORIGINAL POST

The Times of Israel’s blog has a convincing criticism of one of the most visible Weapons of Mass Distraction – the annoyingly uncivilized radical “feminist” group, FEMEN, which allies itself with neo-Nazis in the Ukraine, openly spews (real) bigotry toward Muslims and Christians  and engages in breast-baring pranks, ostensibly in the service of suffering womanhood but actually in the service of the Anglo-Zionist empire.

“In support of  [Amina] Tyler, the Kiev-based feminist group FEMEN declared April 4th the International Topless Jihad Day, which consisted in white young women protesting topless against Islamist regimes at the entrance of mosques and Tunisian embassies around the globe. Because Muslim women do not have a voice of their own. They are all mute. Because Muslim women are inherently oppressed. Aha. And because the only way to liberate them all is by enforcing Western ideals upon their communities. Of course.…….

Another brilliant idea of FEMEN activists was to burn a Salafist flag in front of the Grande Mosquée de Paris. Three topless FEMEN activists started frolicking around the burning flag offending nearby worshippers. As if Parisian Muslims were responsible for the state of women rights in Islamic regimes. As if ALL Muslims were Salafists. FEMEN, congratulations for your amazing work towards perpetuating the stereotype of the Muslim community as monolithic rather than diverse. Hurrah………

In contrast to Tylor and her fellow FEMEN colleagues, who employ nudity as a tool of protest, talented Egyptian cartoonist Doaa Eladl employed her intellect to highlight issues such as underage marriage and sexual attacks against female demonstrators during the revolution. In late December, she was accused of blasphemy following the publication of one of her pieces in the Al-Masry Al-Youm. Unfortunately, her case did not receive as much attention as Tyler’s physical assets. Clearly, the media is not into pencils and brains as it is into nipples.“

Lila:

The world gives any woman plenty of choices.

But the dialectic promoted in the Western media – a propaganda tool of  centralizing money-power – herds these innumerable real choices of real women into two or three pre-determined avenues that  let those powers reap economic and political rewards in the swiftest possible way.

As for taking away attention from real activists, that is the point of such plastic activism, whether it is from the ubiquitous Julian Assange or from Edward Snowden or anyone else.

The point is to keep even politically discerning people fixated on mouth-pieces set up by the Central Controllers, so that real resistance is rendered impotent.

Notice that FEMEN’s lewd attacks and sacrilege are directed against mosques and mullahs and also against Catholic bishops and cathedrals:

Life-site News.com reports that in April 2014, Femen activists attacked the Archbishop of Madrid, chanting that “abortion is sacred.”

Notice that this attack roughly corresponds to Easter season, the time of resurrection, rebirth, and fertility.

According to another report, “Top-less activists attack Brussels archbishop again,” it was again at Easter, in April 2013, that the Catholic Archbishop of the Brussels Cathedral, a staunch traditionalist on abortion and homosexuality, was attacked by half-naked “activists,” cursing him and dousing him with water from bottles shaped like the Virgin Mary.

The Femen “sextremists” mocked Christianity, altering “agnus dei” (Lamb of God or Jesus Christ) into “anus dei” (anus god), both denigrating Jesus Christ and deifying homosexuality.

Another FEMEN “activist” posed in front of the Cathedral, a black cross over her bare breasts, simulating Jesus on the cross.

Ironically, it turns out that the master-mind behind all this oestrogen run amok is a rather unreconstructed male, Viktor Svyatskiy, who gets a kick out of pretty girls  stripping for him.

And, worse,  spends his time deriding and humiliating his charges, who, some argue suffer from Stockholm syndrome:

 “It’s his movement and he handpicked the girls,” she told The Independent. “He handpicked the prettiest girls because the prettiest girls sell more papers.”

He’s “quite horrible with the girls,” Green adds. “He would scream at them and call them bitches.” One scene in the film has Svyatski displaying utter contempt for his activists. “These girls are weak,” he says. “They don’t have the strength of character… They show submissiveness, spinelessness, lack of punctuality, and many other factors which prevent them from becoming political activists. These are qualities which it was essential to teach them.”

There you have  the left’s conflicted logic:

Denounce traditional families as hotbeds of patriarchal oppression, because a male is considered the head of the house-hold…..but fawn on a thug who uses, abuses and humiliates vulnerable young women publicly for purposes they’re too naive to suspect, let alone figure out.

The bottom line is that a pimp is paying a few  prostitutes (one activist really is a professional prostitute)  good money (2-3 times the average monthly wage in Ukraine) to spew out propaganda about female liberation.

This is the old Chicks Up- front strategy of the 1960s left.

Put attractive young women, preferably half-naked, out in front of any protest movement. That attracts attention to your message and distracts from the other fellow’s.

FEMEN members themselves have seen through this game.

Amina Sboui (Tyler), the Tunisian activist mentioned in the beginning of the this post, later denounced the group for being anti-Muslim.

She said its funding sources were mysterious and suspected they might be from Israel.

A mother of one of the Ukrainian activists, Alexandra Shevchenko, regrets letting her daughter go to Kiev to study economics:

“I work in the city center and when walking to work each morning I have to listen to many people reprimanding me what they think of my daughter’s behavior,” said Lyudmyla Shevchenko, Aleksandra’s mother. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t live worrying about her all the time. I and her dad tried to persuade her not to do [take off her clothes] anymore. But when she’s in Kyiv she does not listen to us. Femen leaders brainwashed girls like her.”

Actually, except for murder, FEMEN’s modus operandi sounds startlingly like the Charles Manson gang in the 1960s:

A charismatic sociopath picks  followers from among young, impressionable women and brow-beats them into promoting his political agenda….which involves promoting social strife…with the CIA not far behind.

But how exactly does FEMEN connect to the CIA, Israel, and/or the Anglo-Zionist enterprise? It’s still not clear to me.

FEMEN – ORIGINS

First, the Victor Sviyatskiy connection.

Sviyatskiy quickly took over FEMEN from Anna Shevchenko Hutsol.

Hutsol is the activist who originally set FEMEN up, it is reported, to protest sex-trafficking in the Ukraine in 2008.

Later, Inna (Anna?) Shevchenko  spread her wings and became a resident of France.

(Lila: I might be confusing Alexandra Shevchenko with Inna. I’ll check and get back to this later today.)

An image of her is now the new Marianne image, the official symbol of France, on postage stamps.

Anna/Inna claims she left for France to avoid the patriarchal set-up in Ukraine, but it’s more accurate to say that she fled there, after she sawed down a Catholic cross and drew the attention of the local police.

Apropos.org.uk points out how characteristic of FEMEN such bigoted attacks are:
In a banner headline, from which we have removed foul language, Femen proclaims “Don’t Rape [us] with Your Crucifixes” , stating that, ‘For two thousand years, the supposed sacrifice of the body of Christ has been used as a tool to control women, our sexuality, our bodies, our freedom.’ This referred to their protest against The March for Life in which white crosses are carried to represent aborted children. According to Femen, ‘ Your white crosses are symbols of hate, control and fear – we will not be your sacrifice.’ As if to emphasise the Satanic nature of their protest the Femen activists who attacked Cardinal Rouco Varela in Madrid had inverted crosses painted on their backs.”
And Pravda (in Ukraine) documents that Inna’s flight had nothing to do with patriarchal oppression and everything to do with the cops:
http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2013/08/31/6997008/
(Google translation, with my edits)
Femen activists fled Ukraine
Saturday, August 31, 2013, 12:00

Femen activists left Ukraine on Friday after having been brought in for questioning.According to the press service, 30 August, Femen activist Yana Zhdanov, Anna and Alexander Shevchenko Hutsol were summoned for questioning by the investigator. This means that the activists will be transferred from the status of “suspect ” to the status of ” charged “.“Fearing for their lives and freedom activists escaped from Ukraine to Europe to continue Femen activities,” so ran the statement from the activists.“

FEMEN – FINANCING

The financing of the group has been as mysterious as its origin, with conflicting reports.

Three names recur in the reports:

HELMUT GEIER

One of FEMEN’s early donors is said to be a German, Helmut Joseph Geier, alias, DJ Hell.

DJ Hell is a disc jockey and exponent of the musical trend known as electroclash.

He popularized it in the 1980s and 1990s in his home town, Munich.

JED SUNDEN

Another figure behind FEMEN is Jed Sunden, a native of Brooklyn, New York.

In 1995  Sunden  founded the Kiev Post, the first English language paper in the area.

Sunden is the owner of KP Media, which publishes the Post.

This article in the Kiev Post in April 2010 says that Sunden was one of the first to support FEMEN, which it describes as having a five-member board of directors (the names are here):

“I confirm that I do give money to Femen,” Sunden said. “I will not state the amount. After meeting with Anna Hutsol, I was impressed with her ideas and have been a supporter. I believe Anna is a young, independent voice in Ukraine. While I do not agree with all of her positions, I believe it is important to give her, and groups like hers, support.”

BEATE SCHOBER

A third figure mentioned as a backer is a Bavarian business-woman, Beate Schober.

An interview with Schober ran in the Kiev Post in Feb 2006.

It describes her as a senior managers at Austrian Airlines and a successful relocation entrepreneur, catering to major companies.

A Berliner Zeitung article in January 2009 states that Schober had been living in Kiev for twelve years, operating her relocation business.

She was very sympathetic to the sex tourism issue raised by the activists and hosted them on her web portal.

The article  also says that fellow Bavarian and German musical entrepreneur, DJ Hell, heard of FEMEN and became interested in publicizing them.

The Swiss Sonntag Zeitung (October 2013) also reported on the funding of the group.

It mentioned that Beate Schober first supported FEMEN, but later concluded that the group was not really interested in women’s emancipation at all.

The SZ piece mentions that 40 percent of the group’s income comes from the sale of T-shirts with their images.

Friends are also mentioned as a source of funds, but no details are given.

DJ Hell is once again mentioned as a backer, but, again, there are no specific figures.

The top four FEMEN activists are reported to get some 700 euros a month  ($1000 in other accounts), which is a large sum in Ukraine.

The outfit in Paris reportedly takes $2500/mth to run.

In Kiev, FEMEN ran out of a popular cafe named after Cupid, the child of Venus (the goddess of sexuality and beauty) and Mars (the god of war).

It provided free Internet access to FEMEN’s members.

The Sonntag Zeitung piece also adds interesting details about the origin of the group.

FEMEN began at a meeting between Sviyatskiy and Anna Hutsol on a park bench in Khmeinitsky in Western Ukraine in the mid-2000’s.

The two were watching married couples at the registry when they came up with the idea.

In the only recorded interview with him, Swiatskiy says Hutsol and he had already decided on FEMEN’s media strategy by that time.

In 2009, Sophie Pinkham, an American academic who was conducting research into Ukrainian feminism,  interviewed the FEMEN chief Anna Hutsol.

She found that the “volunteer” Victor Sviyatskiy was doing most of the answering.

He was extraordinarily passionate about his mission to promote feminism and spoke eloquently about the “eroticism of the social” and his ambition to create an activist group as “cheerful” as Greenpeace.

Despite this, he remains  a shadowy figure, with no foot-print on the Internet.

The non-existent Net footprint certainly suggests an intelligence operation of some kind, but that is only speculation, so far.

In the fall of 2013, a documentary debuted at the Venice film festival- Ukraine Is Not a Brothel.

It was directed  by Australian film-maker Kitty Green, who outed Sviyatskiy as the master-mind behind FEMEN.

To sum up:

  • An American female academic calls attention to the group in 2009, only a year after its official founding.
  • Around the same time an American newspaper publisher and libertarian promotes and funds the group. He stops funding FEMEN only in 2011, because it is offending too many people.
  • Two Germans from the same town in Germany back the group. One is  a multi-millionaire corporate senior manager now in the tourism business, who has  a clientele that includes the World Health Organization. The other is a famous disc jockey. The business-woman later says she thinks they are not really feminists.
  • France quickly makes one of the lead activists its national heroine and gives her residence on the spot, to save her from the investigations of the Ukrainian police.
  • The founder and master-mind of the group is a mysterious abusive male, who admires the ultra-left environmental group, Greenpeace, and is an expert on media strategy.
  • Everyone denies this man’s involvement and he  has no trail on the net.
  • An Australian film-maker publicizes the group in 2013 and “outs” its mysterious founder, although print accounts of his involvement in FEMEN long precede her outing.

The political use of “anti-Semitism” in the Ukraine

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Tablet Magazine:

“It’s use the Jew day in Ukraine—again. For millennia, treatment of a country’s Jews has served as the canary in the coal mine, and now the canary is tweeting all over the American and Israeli media. According to reports, a leaflet, now basically debunked and yet still inspiring fury all over Twitter, was handed out in Donetsk, the heavily Russian-speaking town in Eastern Ukraine, instructing Jews to register with authorities.

According to Ynet, the flier read as follows:

“Dear Ukraine citizens of Jewish nationality, due to the fact that the leaders of the Jewish community of Ukraine supported Bendery Junta [Stepan Bandera] and oppose the pro-Slavic People’s Republic of Donetsk, (the interim government) has decided that all citizens of Jewish descent, over 16 years of age and residing within the republic’s territory are required to report to the Commissioner for Nationalities in the Donetsk Regional Administration building and register.”

The media response was predictable. USA Today, the Jerusalem Post, and others were quick to proclaim “Jews ordered to register in Ukraine!” cleverly omitting one important question: By whom? The word “Jews” is even trending on Twitter.

The flyer is both real, and not. It’s important to see this in the context of how the Jews have been used from the beginning of the conflict in Ukraine: as fodder for the provocation machine. Indeed, Julia Ioffe at The New Republic reached out to the Donetsk Jewish community, who dismissed the flier as an attempt by Western Ukrainians to delegitimize the pro-Russian sentiment in the Eastern part of the country, just as the Russians used accusations of anti-Semitism to delegitimize the Maidan revolutionaries.

As Ioffe puts it, “This may be just another tactic to smear the so-called anti-Maidan in the east of Ukraine: you think we’re fascists? Well, take a look at these guys.” The Jews of Ukraine are not registering.”

“Non-interfering” Kerry Cheers Overthrow Of Ukrainian Gvt

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Daniel McAdams at LRC blog comments on John Kerry’s interventionist position on Ukraine:

“I am on RT today discussing John Kerry’s Munich trip, where he met the Ukraine opposition parties and said that the US is “fully behind” those seeking to overthrow the democratically-elected government by force — right before he warned any outside powers against interfering in Ukraine’s internal affairs.”

See also “US and Europe stand with people of Ukraine, says John Kerry,” The Guardian, Feb. 1 , 2014

NATO has joined Kerry to bully the Ukrainians government not to crack down on violence:

“Nato’s chief, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, said he was “very concerned by attempts to involve the military in the crisis”.

The equivalent in terms of international provocation would be if the Russian President were to proclaim solidarity for the Occupy movement on US soil and warn American police against any militarized response.

While Kerry was double-dealing with the Ukrainians and thumbing the American nose at Russia, a little research turns up the interesting point that the largely peaceful Ukrainian protest suddenly turned violent at the same time as  Kerry’s visit and stepped-up support for it.

“Russia slams West’s support for Ukraine opposition,” AP, The Washington Post, Feb. 1, 2014

“The protests had been mostly peaceful until mid-January, when demonstrators angered by the new anti-protest laws launched violent clashes with police. Three protesters died in the clashes, two of them from gunshot wounds. Police insist they didn’t fire the fatal shots.“

See also “Russia slams as circus Kerry Ukraine opposition meetings,” Daily Star, Feb 1, 2014

“Russia’s outspoken Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin called Kerry’s upcoming meetings a “circus” in a tweet on Friday.

“It’s also necessary to involve Verka Serdyuchka in the talks,” he said in apparent sarcasm, referring to Ukraine’s bombastic drag queen pop star.

“Her/his authoritative opinion should be heard by the White House and taken into account!”

Is this another covert destabilization effort in the tradition of the color revolutions?

Evidently so.  At Storyleak.com, Michael Thomas breaks down the history:

“What is particularly surprising about the current color revolution unfolding in the Ukraine is that this nation was the site of the very same CIA implementation plan back in 2004/2005.  The Orange Revolution, as it was known at the time, was a classic CIA-engineered plot to impose their political outcome on the Ukrainian people. And they succeeded with flying colors.

That CIA-sponsored coup d’etat was so successful that it has since been used as a model for every other CIA-manufactured scheme that has toppled governments and reversed fair election outcomes the world over. In fact, the Ukraine is where the various social network utilities were used so effectively that the new MO has become known as the digital blitzkrieg. Never in human history have so many citizens been stampeded in the direction of overthrowing their government while being completely ignorant of the real forces manipulating the cattle prods.”

The article suggests that the Ukrainian government seems to be master-minded, as well the protesters. The result is that the Ukraine is being shepherded into the Eurozone, a communistic/fascistic scheme that will allow the patrons of the Eurozone to replenish their depleted treasuries:

“…. the Ukraine is looked to as a temporary savior because of its many large and robust markets, well established industrial base and transportation links to Asia, as well as it vast natural resources and raw materials.”

Ukraine: In Russia’s Sphere Of Influence, Not America’s

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At Forbes, Doug Bandow at Cato has written an excellent piece on the turmoil in Ukraine, over which the imperial bullies in DC (and their covert adjutants are salivating:

“Washington should endorse justice and human dignity, which justifies support for honest elections and warnings against police brutality.  Of course, America’s message would have greater credibility if Washington better respected such values both at home and in its dealings with other nations which don’t always share America’s “interests and values.”

But Ukraine’s “economic health,” “European future,” “turn toward Moscow,” and reengagement “with the European Union” aren’t American values and are barely American interests.  Indeed, they really aren’t proper U.S. concerns.  How would Americans feel if Ukrainian politicians showed up at an “Occupy Wall Street” rally in Washington vowing to stand with protestors in demanding economic redistribution, a North American Union, and a turn away from Europe—all in the name of Ukrainian “interests and values”?

It’s obviously difficult for Washington to imagine any issue that doesn’t warrant U.S. meddling, but Ukraine’s status is one.  Alexander J. Motyl of Rutgers University (Newark) spoke of Washington and Brussels having “vital interests at stake in Ukraine.”  Only in Kiev’s dreams.

More extreme was former UN Ambassador John Bolton, who contended “that tectonic plates are being realigned in Europe” and that Ukraine is “the great prize.”  Robert Zubrin of Pioneer Energy argued that “the events unfolding in Ukraine right now are of global historic importance.”  Indeed, he added, Moscow’s reach for influence in Kiev is part of a “dark program” which “threatens not only the prospects for freedom in Ukraine and Russia, but the peace of the world.”   To suggest that Ukraine is vital to global peace is beyond exaggeration.

A stable, democratic Ukraine would be good for all concerned—and America’s Ukrainian diaspora deserves credit for its long-standing support for its homeland—but Kiev’s orientation isn’t important to Washington.  Ukraine spent centuries subject to Moscow and the U.S. never noticed. Vladimir Putin wants to reestablish Russian influence, but that doesn’t mean he can put the Soviet Humpty Dumpty back together.  Today’s protests in Kiev demonstrate that Ukraine will never be a quiescent tool of Moscow.

On the security side, Russia’s activities in Ukraine do not threaten the U.S.  The reverse, however, is not true.  Bringing NATO up to Russia’s southern border cannot help but be seen as dangerous by Russia—imagine Americans would view the Warsaw Pact expanding to Mexico. Washington’s policy today looks like the fabled “Brezhnev Doctrine,” what is mine is mine, and what is yours is negotiable.  America seeks to dominate not only the Western Hemisphere, Europe, and Central Asia, but all along Russia’s borders.  Washington wants to hold all of the geopolitical chips.

The better strategy would be for the West to treat Russia with respect, acknowledging that it has legitimate interests in Ukraine, while using the prospect of greater economic opportunity to convince Kiev to look westward.  Yanukovich has been rented, not bought.  Complained the Economist:  “Mr. Yanukovich’s favored option seems to be to preserve the status quo and refrain from joining either camp while continuing to milk both.”  Which sounds like a sound strategy from Ukraine’s standpoint.  The EU, which obviously has the most at stake, could up its offer and reconsider its political demands.  How badly does it want to “win”?

Moreover, Europe should look for compromise opportunities with Moscow.  Kiev has proposed creation of “a tripartite commission to handle complex issues.”  Such an approach has promise.  Former congressional staffer Jim Jatras cited recent talks between the EU and Russia over “aspects of the AA with Ukraine that Moscow considers detrimental to its own economy, specifically a massive flow of EU products into Russia via Ukraine.”  All would benefit with greater links between the EU and the Russian-lead CU, which might reduce Moscow’s pressure on Kiev.

Ukraine matters, to Ukraine.  It also matters to Russia.  But less to Europe and much less to the U.S.  If Kiev wants to look east, so be it.  The West is most likely to win influence if it makes itself more attractive, not if it treats the issue like a new Cold War.  Despite Russia’s money Yanukovich’s reelection prospects are weak and Ukraine is likely to eventually join the West.  If not, however, so be it.  The country never was the EU’s or Washington’s to lose.”

State Terrorism: The Ukrainian Genocide, 1933

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The Ukrainian genocide at the hands of Stalin was as great as the Holocaust engineered by the Nazis, but is much less well known. The silence of prominent Western journalists is one reason why.  Walter Duranty of The New York Times, a Pulitzer prize-winner, admitted privately that ten million or so peasants had been intentionally starved and/or killed, but in public he dismissed reports of this as exaggeration and anti-Soviet propaganda. It turned out later that Duranty was being sexually blackmailed by the KGB.

“Estimates of how many people died in Stalin’s engineered famine of 1933 vary. But they are staggering in their scale — between seven and 11 million people.

But despite the horrific number of people who died, the world is relatively unfamiliar with this grisly chapter in Soviet history which claimed lives on the same scale as the holocaust. One of the main reasons is that the Germans were eventually defeated, and thousands of eyewitnesses told  their stories  about concentration  camps and massacres.  The experience  was also  captured  unforgettably in photographs, film, and written accounts, and many of those responsible for the genocide were captured and put on trial………

British historian Robert Conquest is an expert on the period and his 1986 study of the famine, “Harvest of Sorrow,” brought much information about the tragedy to Western audiences for the first time. Conquest said another contrast between the famine and the holocaust is that while Adolf Hitler had written down much of what he intended to do, Stalin did not go on record about the famine.

“In the first place, [the Germans] were caught, so it ended and they had themselves got into an operation where they said what they were doing. Stalin never said he was trying to starve anyone to death. He just took away their food. He never went on record. It was all done under the auspices of humanist talk, socialist talk — or else denied altogether. The operations were different. And in other ways they were different, too. Hitler did many horrible things but he didn’t torture his friends to tell lies. The operation was a different one.”

Conquest is in no doubt that the famine was primarily aimed at Ukrainians and that Stalin hated not only the country peasants but even senior Communist leaders, like Mykola Skrypnyk, who eventually killed himself…………

“[Stalin] was trying to break the Ukrainians, as you know, with the leading Ukrainian Bolshevik Skrypnyk committing suicide under the pressures that were put on them when they tried to defend just the ordinary alphabet of the Ukrainians. Here [Stalin] was trying to alter it, things like that. I think he also proved he never trusted Ukrainian Communists. The whole Ukrainian Central Committee was totally purged in 1937, even the ones who supported him. He had this terrific distrust of everybody, but particularly of Ukraine.”

Luciuk of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association has a different theory for why news of the famine never reached the West. He blamed a number of Western journalists based in Moscow at the time who knew of the forced starvation but chose not to write about it or deliberately covered it up.

The journalist he says played the most influential role in the cover-up was “The New York Times” correspondent Walter Duranty. A drug addict with a shady reputation, Duranty was also an avid fan of Stalin’s, whom he described as “the world’s greatest living statesman.” He was granted the first American interview with the Soviet leader and received privileged information from the secretive regime.

Duranty confided to a British diplomat at the time that he thought 10 million people had perished in the famine. But when other journalists who had traveled to Ukraine began writing about the horrific famine raging there, Duranty branded their information as anti-Soviet lies. Conquest believes that Duranty was being blackmailed by the Soviet secret police over his sexual activities, which reportedly included bisexuality and necrophilia.

The year before the famine, in 1932, Duranty won the Pulitzer Prize, America’s most coveted journalism award, for a series of articles on the Soviet economy. Luciuk says members of the Ukrainian diaspora, as well as Ukrainian politicians and academics, earlier this month launched a campaign to have Duranty’s award posthumously revoked. He said he hopes the campaign will make more people in the world aware of the famine….”