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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 1:24:38 AM
From: Broken_Clock  Read Replies (1) | Respond to of 1578054
 
Is it gonna take WW3 for you to choke down your support for Obomber? You sound just like the wingers when Bush was drumming up the Iraqi invasion.

You haven't learned a damn thing. Your hypocrisy stinks worse than the right wing lunatics.


Are You Ready To Fight Putin’s Russia?

by Murray Polner, February 09, 2015
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"Who came down from the mountain and said the U.S. must police the globe from the South China Sea to the jungles of Peru"? ~ Eric S. Margolis

For my sins, I’ve just finished reading the latest report by three of Washington’s centrist think tanks, "Preserving Ukraine’s Independence, Resisting Russian Aggression." From their peaceful, safe and posh offices they urge President Obama to get tough with Moscow and supply "defensive" weapons to Ukraine, while sanctimoniously concluding, as LBJ and Bush Junior’s echo chambers did in 1965 and 2003, that "assisting Ukraine to …. defend itself is not inconsistent with the search for a peaceful political solution."

As if Iraq, Syria, ISIS, Iran, Cuba, Yemen, Obama’s anti-China "pivot to Asia," and the Republican train wreckers who now control Congress aren’t enough, there’s a permanent taste for war among the Imperial City’s hawks, now ready to fight with your kids (never theirs) to teach that bastard Vladimir Putin a lesson and show him who’s boss. We did it to Grenada and Panama and we can do it again.

According to the think tankers, "The West has the capacity to stop Russia. The question is whether it has the will," sounding exactly like the blind and arrogant men who took us into Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq.

Aside from the fact that, given Russia’s military backing, sending in weapons cannot defeat the Eastern Ukrainian separatists, and that we’ve never had any vital interest in Crimea or the Donbass region, what then? Our think tankers are banking on the delusion that Putin, no bargain he, but no Hitler – as Hillary Clinton once mindlessly blurted out, thereby cementing her hawkish credentials for the 2016 run – will cravenly commit to a settlement because of "defensive" weapons. If that doesn’t tame the feral Putin maybe our "Indispensable Nation’s" volunteer military, National Guard, Reserves, even conscripts?

The truth is that every Cold War leader feared a U.S.-Soviet hot war. Dwight Eisenhower, for example, refused to intervene in the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 because, as his biographer Stephen Ambrose wrote, "Eisenhower knew that there were limits to his power and Hungary was outside those limits." Ike also shut down the Korean War. Who in authority now speak of "limits" and mean it? Like it or not, Ukraine is historically within Moscow’s sphere of influence, just as all Latin America has been in Washington’s sphere of influence, at least since 1823 and its unilateral Monroe Doctrine. In 1962, the US was ready to fight a nuclear war to keep the Reds out of Castro’s Cuba, "our Cuba," the playground of foreign exploiters and the Mafia.

The truth is US and NATO instigated the Ukrainian civil war by brazenly drawing ever closer to the Russian border. Unanswered is why Obama has exerted no control over Joe Biden, John Brennan and John Kerry’s alleged State department subordinate Victoria Nuland, all of whom spent time in secret negotiations with Kiev.

Mikhail Gorbachev, no friend of Putin, is adamantly opposed to shipping weapons to Ukraine. He has repeatedly said that in 1990 Bush senior promised him (never put into writing but never denied by the US) that, in return for allowing German unification to proceed and the former satellite states to go their own way, NATO would never approach Russia’s borders. A nation that had lost some 20 million civilians and soldiers after yet another western invasion, remains understandably sensitive about foreign armies camped on their doorstep. Those who dare to speak of this today are often smeared as Putin-lovers and worse.

Then too, the presence of neo-Nazis among the Ukrainian military is rarely if ever reported by our conforming mass media. For that you need to read the British press, where Suemas Milne of the liberal Guardian has been on the scene since the Maidan Square uprising. He wrote, "The role of the fascistic right on the streets and in the new Ukrainian regime has been airbrushed out of most reporting as Putinist propaganda." And more: "By what right is the US involved at all, incorporating under its strategic umbrella a state that has never been a member of NATO, and whose last elected government came to power on a platform of explicit neutrality. It has none, of course."

The Guardian too liberal for you? Then try Tom Parfitt in the conservative Daily Telegraph, who reported that the Azov Battalion, one of a number of Ukrainian militias involved in the Eastern Ukrainian war, "uses the neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner and members of the battalion are openly white supremacists, or anti-Semites."

And then there’s this final consideration which somehow escaped the think tankers: Russia has almost as many nuclear bombs as we do. Sending American military "trainers" and eventually more and more into a killing zone next door to Russia means that an unexpected blunder leading to an exchange of nukes could happen. Sarajevo anyone?

For now, despite intense pressure to "Do Something," Obama is offering no hint what he will do. There are of course peaceful alternatives, among them establishing Ukraine as a neutral state, unattached to any one side. But now more than ever, he needs to sit down and talk to some antiwar people who helped elect him but who he has snubbed. Andrew Bacevich for one. A West Pointer, Vietnam War veteran, recently retired professor of history and International relations whose son was killed in Iraq, he’d be an excellent partner for a private chat in the Oval Room. Maybe Bacevich could bring along his valuable book Washington Rules, which ends this way: "Promising prosperity and peace, the Washington rules are propelling the United States toward insolvency and perpetual war. Over the horizon a shipwreck of epic proportions awaits…. To willfully ignore the danger is to become complicit in the destruction of what Americans profess to hold dear. We, too, must choose."

Call him, Mr. President. It’s getting late.




To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 1:30:58 AM
From: Broken_Clock  Respond to of 1578054
 
Europe gives Obomber the middle finger…..
+++

Europe Fractures: France Pivots To Putin, Cyprus Offers Moscow Military Base, Germany-US Splinter On Ukraine


Submitted by Tyler Durden on 02/08/2015 13:30 -0500

France Germany headlines Nicolas Sarkozy Ukraine White House

Following yesterday's summary of the utter farce that the Minsk Summit/Ukraine "peace" deal talks have become, the various parties involved appear to be fracturing even faster today. The headlines are coming thick and fast but most prescient appears to be: Despite John Kerry's denial of any split between Germany and US over arms deliveries to Ukraine, German Foreign Minister Steinmeier slammed Washington's strategy for being "not just risky but counterproductive." But perhaps most significantly is France's continued apparent pivot towards Russia... Following Francois Hollande's calls for greater autonomy for Eastern Ukraine, former French President Nicolas Sarkozy has come out in apparent support of Russia (and specifically against the US), "we are part of a common civilization with Russia,” adding, "the interests of the Americans with the Russians are not the interests of Europe and Russia." Even NATO appears to have given up hope of peace as Stoltenberg's statements show little optimism and the decision by Cyprus to allow Russia to use its soil for military facilities suggests all is not at all well in the European 'union'.



German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier doubled down on Germany's rejection of weapons deliveries to Ukraine in a speech here Sunday...

  • *GABRIEL SAYS GERMAN SPD WOULD NEVER BACK ARMS TO UKRAINE
  • *EUROPE SEES U.S. ARMS DELIVERIES TO UKRAINE AS BAD IDEA: LAVROV
"I see this, to say it openly, as not just for risky but for counter-productive," Mr. Steinmeier said at the Munich Security Conference. Mr. Steinmeier also hit back at open criticism of Germany's position on weapons deliveries from U.S. Senators and others here on Saturday. The White House is mulling delivering weapons to Ukraine to support the country's fight against pro-Russia separatists in the country's east.



"Perhaps we are so insistent because we know the region a bit," Mr. Steinmeier said.

But John Kerry says, everything's fine... as he denies any split between U.S. and Europe on Russia policy...

Secretary of State John Kerry on Sunday denied any divisions between the U.S. and Europe over how to handle Russia, as Germany announced another high-level summit aimed at stemming the crisis in Ukraine.



Kerry told a security conference in Munich that he wanted to "assure everybody there is no division, there is no split" between Washington and its European allies amid the crisis in Ukraine.



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 1:34:37 AM
From: Broken_Clock  Respond to of 1578054
 
NATO Divided as US, Britain Oppose Ukraine Peace EffortsCrisis Talks Eye Immediate, Unconditional Ceasefire
by Jason Ditz, February 08, 2015

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The Munich security conference is showing NATO increasingly divided, in pretty stark terms, on the ongoing Ukraine Civil War, with British and US officials being more and more public in their objections to French and German efforts to broker a peace.

British Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond insisted his nation won’t accept any ceasefire dealthat recognizes the gains of the eastern rebels in recent days, a puzzling stance since Britain is not directly involved in this war.

US officials are doing the same, with hawkish Sen. Lindsey Graham (R – SC) spending the weekend at Munich railing against the peace efforts as “turning their back” on the Ukrainian military, which the administration is considering arming to escalate the war.

US General Philip Breedlove openly talked about direct NATO involvement in Ukraine, saying the alliance shouldn’t preclude military escalation of the conflict.

With the rebels overwhelmingly ethnic Russians, the US seems keen on turning Ukraine’s Civil War into a US-Russia proxy conflict, insisting they can throw enough arms at Ukraine’s military to defeat the separatist rebels.

France and Germany, however, see the war as undesirable, and are pushing Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko to reach a ceasefire with the rebels before the situation gets even more out of hand.

After the last ceasefire held for about three months, Ukraine launched a full-scale offensive on the rebels last month. The offensive went poorly, and now the rebels are taking more territory.

For the Poroshenko government, the question seems to be whether they will be in an even worse bargaining position now, having refused the September reforms that likely would’ve ended the conflict, and are stuck with the choice of either starting another ceasefire in a worse position than they had in September, or gambling that US arms can change the battle more in their favor before they stop.



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 1:46:15 AM
From: Broken_Clock  Respond to of 1578054
 

Your messiah is rapidly approaching the pinnacle of idiocy.

+++

Kiev’s Bloody War Is Backfiring

And the War Party is pushing to prop up their Ukrainian sock puppets

by Justin Raimondo, February 09, 2015
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When Ukrainian army officers came to the Ukrainian village of Velikaya Znamenka to tell the men to prepare to be drafted, they weren’t prepared for what happened next. As the commanding officer was speaking, a woman seized the microphone and proceeded to tell him off: "We’re sick of this war! Our husbands and sons aren’t going anywhere!" She then launched into a passionate speech, denouncing the war, and the coup leaders in Kiev, to the cheers of the crowd.

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What she did is now a crime in Ukraine: the only reason she wasn’t arrested on the spot is that the villagers wouldn’t have permitted it. But in Ukrainian Transcarpathia, well-known journalist for Ukrainian Channel 112 Ruslan Kotsaba has been arrestedand charged with "treason" and "espionage" for making a video in which he declared: "I would rather sit in jail for three to five years than go to the east to kill my Ukrainian brothers. This fear-mongering must be stopped." Kotsaba may sit in jail for twenty-three years, the prescribed term for the charges filed against him.

Kotsaba’s arrest is part of a desperate effort by the Ukrainian government to intimidate the growing antiwar and anti-draft movement, which threatens to upend Kiev’s dreams of conquering the rebellious eastern provinces. Kotsaba’s particular crime, according to prosecutors, was in describing the conflict as a civil war rather than a Russian "invasion." This is a point the authorities cannot tolerate: the same meme being relentlessly broadcast by the Western media – that an indigenous rebellion with substantial support is really a Russian plot to "subvert" Ukraine and reestablish the Warsaw Pact – now has the force of law in Ukraine. Anyone who contradicts it is subject to arrest.

Also subject to arrest, and worse: the thousands who are fleeing the country in order to avoid being conscripted into the military. In a Facebook post that was quickly deleted, Defense Minister Stepan Poltorak wrote: “According to unofficial sources, hostels and motels in border regions of neighboring Romania are completely filled with draft dodgers.” President Petro Poroshenko, the Chocolate Oligarch, is readying a decree imposing possible restrictions on foreign travel for those of draft age – which means anyone from age 25 to 60. Ukrainians may soon be prisoners in their own country – but they aren’t taking it lying down.

Draft resistance is at an all-time high: a mere 6 percent of those called up have reported voluntarily. This has forced the Kiev authorities to go knocking on doors – where they are met either with a mass of angry villagers, who refuse to let them take anyone, or else ghost towns where virtually everyone has fled. In the Transcarpathia region of western Ukraine, entire villages have been emptied, the inhabitants fleeing to Russia to wait out the war – or the fall of the Kiev regime, whichever comes first. "It may seem a paradox," says Transcarpathia’s chief recruitment officer, "but from the western Ukrainian region of Ternopyl people have fled to Russia in order to escape army conscription." The frantic Ukrainian regime is now contemplating conscripting women over 20.

Poroshenko’s military mobilization is due not only to numerous setbacks in the east – Ukrainian troops are being pushed back on all fronts by highly motivated rebels defending their own towns and villages – but also because thousands are deserting, throwing down their arms and fleeing to Russia. In response, the Ukrainian parliament has passed a law authorizing local commanders to shoot deserters on the spot.

With Poroshenko’s war looking like a major disaster, one that could easily topple his EU/US-installed regime, the War Party in the US is turning up the heat, demanding that Washington provide Kiev with arms. Sen. John McCain is – naturallyleading the charge, but prominent liberals are also in the front ranks, with leading scholars of the Brookings Institution recently calling for heavy weapons to be sent. That provoked a response from a dissident within Brookings, former State Department official Jeremy Shapiro, who argues that the Ukrainian conflict is a civil war that cannot have a military solution, and is more than likely to provoke a dangerous military confrontation with Russia.

The Obama administration is under considerable pressure from within the President’s own party to start arming the Ukrainian army, but America’s European allies are reluctant to let this war go on much longer, especially now that their sock puppet Poroshenko is increasingly unpopular. With protests erupting all over western Ukraine, Germany’s Angela Merkel is openly opposing escalation of the war. She made that clear at a recent conference in Munich, where Merkel spoke after returning from talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin and French President Francois Hollande. Meanwhile, on the sidelines, McCain was telling reporters: "If we had provided Ukraine with weapons they wouldn’t have had to use cluster bombs."

They don’t call him " Mad John" for nothing.

The United States is providing the Kiev regime with military training, and we already have American boots on the ground there, ostensibly to " strengthen the rule of law." What that means in practice is that we are bolstering a government that has declared war on its own people, and is rapidly closing off all legal means of dissent – charging political opponents with "treason," banning political parties, and unleashing ultra-nationalist mobs on anyone who dares dissent. While the US State Department regularly canoodles with Russian "dissidents" who defile Orthodox churches and bare their breasts for the Western cameras, you won’t hear Marie Harf so much as mention Ruslan Kotsaba’s name. As far as I know, the Global Post is the only Western media outlet that has noted his existence – and I’ve not seen a single mention in English about his arrest.

Ukraine is a tripwire that could easily set off World War III – and US provocations are edging closer to that by the day. The crisis was initiated by Washington’s regime-change campaign which succeeded in violently overthrowing elected President Viktor Yanukovych, whose electoral victory was made possible by the criminal incompetence and outright thievery of his predecessor, US-supported Viktor Yushchenko. The so-called "Orange Revolution" led to economic chaos, rampant corruption, and the unleashing of a virulent nationalist current that has culminated in the rise of open neo-Nazis taking seats in the Ukrainian parliament. We are seeing its openly fascistic culmination in the current gang lording over Kiev.

All this was done in the name of sticking a finger in Vladimir Putin’s eye, whose great sin has been kicking out thieving oligarchs and opposing US pretensions to global hegemony. Washington’s ultimate goal is regime-change in the Kremlin, and the reinstallation of a Yeltsin-like sock puppet who, when Washington says "Jump!", will answer: "How high?"

That they’re willing to risk World War III in order to achieve their goal underscores the sheer craziness of US foreign policy. The latest official US "National Security Strategy" puts the new cold war at the center of Washington’s military-diplomatic vision – an emphasis so monstrously misplaced that it’s hard to believe they’re serious. Yet you had better believe it: this is what we can expect from a future Democratic administration, if one should come to pass, with Hillary Clinton taking her husband’s Slavophobia – remember the Kosovo war? – to new heights of unreason.

The US has no business interfering in Ukraine’s civil war, and no legitimate security interest in the question of who gets to administer Crimea – which has been Russian since the days of Catherine the Great. The idea that we are going to confront Russia over this issue is dangerous nonsense – and, unfortunately, it is just the sort of nonsense politicians of both parties find hard to resist.

There are even some ostensible "libertarians" who can’t resist the temptation to refight the cold war, notably the voluble and well-placed NATO-tarian faction of "Students for Liberty" (SFL), who denounced Ron Paul for his supposedly "pro-Putin" (i.e. anti-interventionist) statements on Ukraine. Ron is appearing at their upcoming "International Conference," with several of the loudest NATO-tarians in attendance: one hopes he’ll give them a good talking to, although perhaps a spanking is more appropriate for these noisy brats. These juvenile blatherskites claim "Compelling arguments can be made for both advocates of globalist and noninterventionist foreign policy positions," but aver that "Ron Paul has crossed the line." It is they who have crossed the line: no libertarian is or can be an advocate of a "globalist" foreign policy – because conquering the globe is, you know, a statist thing.

Of course now that Ukraine – where SFL held a conference – is jailing draft-resisters and clamping down on all dissent, we don’t hear a peep from these adolescent cold warriors. They talk a lot about "liberty," but not in places where it can get them into trouble.

The main danger to liberty and peace in the world isn’t in the Kremlin, or Peking, or North Korea – it’s right here in these United States of America, in the global epicenter of evil otherwise known as Washington, D.C. This, our "libertarian internationalists" claim, is vulgar "anti-Americanism," but these foreigners have little conception of what true Americanism is all about. The Founding Fathers of this country are rolling in their graves as the usurpers in Washington sully the good name of America with the blood of innocents worldwide and defile the Constitution in the process. True Americanism means opposing these monsters as they rampage over the earth and destroy our civil liberties at home – not dutifully echoing their rationalizations for endless wars of aggression.




To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 1:55:51 AM
From: Broken_Clock1 Recommendation

Recommended By
locogringo

  Respond to of 1578054
 
merkel speaks….but will our clown in the WH listen?

“The problem is that I cannot envisage any situation in which an improved equipment of the Ukrainian army leads to a situation where President Putin is so impressed that he will lose militarily,” she said, reiterating the importance of a negotiated peace without military intervention. “I have to put it in such a blunt manner.”

Facing Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in the audience, she said: “There’s no way to win this militarily -- that’s the bitter truth. The international community has to think of a different approach.”




To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 7:51:07 AM
From: joseffy2 Recommendations

Recommended By
FJB
Taro

  Respond to of 1578054
 
University of London Historian Thomas Asbridge also told ABC News that the suggestion of any causal link between the Islamic State terrorists and the medieval Crusades is “grounded in the manipulation and misrepresentation of historical evidence.”



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 7:53:34 AM
From: joseffy1 Recommendation

Recommended By
POKERSAM

  Respond to of 1578054
 
PAPER: 'GLOBAL WARMING' BIGGEST SCIENCE SCANDAL EVER...

Official records systematically 'adjusted' to show heating...

Meteorologist: 'In the business world, people go to jail for such manipulations of data'...



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 7:54:08 AM
From: joseffy  Respond to of 1578054
 
Meteorologist: 'In the business world, people go to jail for such manipulations of data'...

Official records systematically 'adjusted' to show heating...
..



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 8:07:56 AM
From: joseffy  Respond to of 1578054
 
Lefties LIE about 'global warming.'



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 8:08:29 AM
From: joseffy1 Recommendation

Recommended By
steve harris

  Respond to of 1578054
 
Lefties LIE about the Crusades.



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 8:09:42 AM
From: joseffy1 Recommendation

Recommended By
steve harris

  Respond to of 1578054
 
Lefties LIE about muslim terrorism--mass murder.



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 8:10:46 AM
From: joseffy1 Recommendation

Recommended By
steve harris

  Respond to of 1578054
 
Lefties LIE continually about their own "exploits."--- Hillary, Brian Williams.



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 10:18:51 AM
From: joseffy  Respond to of 1578054
 
Maybe we should just replace the Democratic Party with NBC. They’re hard to tell apart anyway.



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 10:24:18 AM
From: joseffy2 Recommendations

Recommended By
FJB
TideGlider

  Respond to of 1578054
 
Obama lied and claimed that his uncle had liberated Auschwitz during his Memorial Day remarks.

In real life Obama skipped the 70th anniversary commemoration of Auschwitz in order to visit the Saudis.



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 10:25:44 AM
From: joseffy2 Recommendations

Recommended By
FJB
TideGlider

  Respond to of 1578054
 
When a news organization like NBC News tells constant lies in support of the political agendas of Obama, Clinton and Biden, should one of its big talking heads really be expected to draw the line at lying about their records to lying about his own?

Brian Williams did the same thing that Hillary Clinton had been doing throughout her career.



To: tejek who wrote (835437)2/9/2015 10:57:24 AM
From: joseffy1 Recommendation

Recommended By
FJB

  Respond to of 1578054
 
It's a sad society that puts a man on a pedestal because he can read a teleprompter.