MH17 and Some Basic Police Work

The U.S. government and media have accused Russia of being behind the downing of Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 (July 17, 2014), either directly (for which zero evidence has been offered) or indirectly, via "pro-Russian rebels", for which all the evidence offered has been outright falsified - from "audio intercepts" (here) to "videos" (here and here) to interviews doctored to sound as if the "rebels" had Buk launchers. All of it taken at face value by the Western media, and even amplified by misrepresentations of photos.

Conspicuously absent from any coverage has been the thought of the Kiev junta shooting the airplane down. Yet the junta fits the classic police trifecta of means, motive and opportunity perfectly.

Means: the Ukrainian armed forces possess multiple Buk launchers in working order, over a dozen of which were deployed in the region at the time.

Motive: Blame Russia and the "rebels", which Kiev has been doing for months anyway, but especially at the moment when four of their brigades had just been cut to pieces by the "rebels" in the Marinovka/Saur-Mogila "cauldron" along the southern border.

Opportunity: MH17 was diverted from the regular flight path, and directed to a lower altitude, by the Dnepropetrovsk Air Traffic Control (ATC), i.e. officials loyal to the Kiev regime. Its normal flight path would have taken it nowhere near the war zone.

Then there was the immediate attempt to pin this on Russia and the rebels, through doctored "audio intercepts" and YouTube videos.

Yet the U.S. government continues to insist that Russia is to blame, based on super-double-secret "intelligence" it refuses to show, or "social media" - and deliberately ignores the factual evidence pointing to its clients in Kiev.

On July 3, 1988 the missile cruiser USS Vincennes shot down IranAir Flight 655 over the Persian Gulf, killing 290 civilians on board. When denial didn't work, Washington shrugged it off and apologized... not.

The question now is, who do you think is credible here, and who is lying through their nose?

Bring Psaki Back

Marie Harf of the State Department, being "impartial" and "objective" (photo via Ron Paul Institute)

From the State Department press briefing, July 21, 2014; Marie Harf (A) responding to questions from Matt Lee of AP (Q). Original transcript here.

Q: Well, I mean, again, you might be right, but I don’t see how you can say that everything we say is right and everything the Russians say is a lie.
A: That’s not what I said.
Q: That’s exactly what you just said right now.
A: That’s not what I said. I said I would say that we are not two credible, equally credible parties when it comes to what we say publicly about the conflict in Ukraine.
Q: And your argument would be that the U.S. is more credible than the Russians are, right? Is that what you’re –
A: I’m not even dignifying that question with a response.
Q: But you’re leaving that impression, Marie.
A: That we’re more credible? Yes. We don’t put out mass amounts of propaganda. We don’t put out misinformation about what’s happening there repeatedly over the course of this conflict, which I've spoken about from this podium day after day. Absolutely.

Who are you going to believe, Marie Harf, or your own lying eyes?

Where do they find these people? Barf, indeed.

Hat tip: Niqnaq.

Rebuilding Besenovo

The Serbian Orthodox Church has begun a campaign to rebuild Besenovo (Бешеново) monastery on Fruška Gora in northern Serbia, the 13th-century legacy of King Dragutin, destroyed in 1944. See here for the instructions on how you can help the rebuilding effort. And here is what the abbot of the monastery says about its remarkable history:

According to oral tradition, the Monastery was built by King Dragutin Nemanjić, who was the ruler of Srem. He placed the monastery on one of main springs that provided water for the old Syrmium, today’s Sremska Mitrovica. The cross of the Monastery of Bešenovo was mentioned already in 1292, that is, during Dragutin’s rule.

The written traces of the Monastery date back to the 15th century. The Monastery played an important role in the cultural and spiritual life of the Orthodox people. The Turks pillaged the Monastery on several occasions, chasing away the monks, and the Hapsburg Monarchy, also, was not positively inclined toward it. Wise Metropolitan Pavle Nenadović, who was well-aware of its spiritual and national importance, played an important role in the restoration of the Monastery in the time of the Habsburg Monarchy.

An Afghan in Donbass

Here is something one does not see every day: an Afghan Muslim, who came to Novorossia to fight for his Russian brethren. He talks of "whole family of tribes" fighting against the junta forces, who "know not what they do", and points to the Empire as the force that destroyed Afghanistan, and is now targeting the Russians:

"With Slavs, they will do much worse. Slavs, they have their own civilization, their own cultural code. And at its root, that code is contrary to all this business, to all this world domination. They don't want Slavs, you understand? They don't want their spirit... That's how it is."

You can also watch on YouTube,

Of Geopolitics and Emotions

A video posted over at Vineyard of the Saker (and on YouTube) schools the "Runet patriots" - what we'd call "laptop bombardiers" in the U.S. - about geopolitics and emotions:

In other words, if you want war so much, go fight it. Howling on Twitter for Putin to "send in the troops" is not only counterproductive, but facetious to boot.

Haters of Decency

Although Novak Djokovic won the title at Wimbledon yesterday, and with it the world number one ranking (which he had conceded last fall to Rafael Nadal), the crowd at Centre Court was rooting for his opponent. Today Max Davidson of the Daily Telegraph gushes over the "demi-god" Roger Federer "who deserves all the adulation he gets."

Why, exactly? Davidson himself is at a loss to explain, aside from the fact that Federer is "a paid-up fashionista" who hobnobs with the rich and snooty. As an example, he mentions that Federer flaunts his Wimbledon titles, wearing sneakers emblazoned with the number (seven), and had a pair with the number 8 ready. Such grace! Such humility!

On the other side of the court was Novak Djokovic. No gloating sneakers for him, or smarmy smiles. When Djokovic mingles with celebrities, they let their hair down and kick their shoes off.
He treats ball-boys as fellow human beings, not as staff:



Clearly unforgivable.

Djokovic also loves his country and people, another unforgivable sin in the eyes of the transnational "elites":

"Novak Djokovic has donated his entire prize money for winning the Internazionali BNL d'Italia title in Rome to his foundation to help the flood relief efforts in Serbia.
Heavy rainfall in Bosnia and Serbia from 14-16 May has affected more than 1.6 million people, with at least 48 people dying as a result of the flooding."
(ATP, May 21 2014)

He... donated his winnings? How dare he!

But it gets worse. In what was called "a show of sportsmanship rarely seen at the professional level, especially at a crucial moment in one of sports' biggest events," earlier on during the tournament at Wimbledon, Djokovic conceded a critical point to his opponent. He literally gave Radek Stepanek a point that could have cost him the match and the tournament - because he wanted to win fair and square. And so he did.

All three are examples of what Djokovic's ancestors called "choistvo" - human decency towards the other.

The Telegraph's Davidson attributes the elitist snobs' adulation of Federer to the "charismatic genius of one man," yet notes in the very same sentence that the crowd was cheering just as much for Andy Murray last year. Murray may have been a Brit, but his opponent was Novak Djokovic.

I don't think the disrespect for Djokovic is entirely due to him being a Serb - a nation so demonized in the Western mainstream media, the vile bigotry has become the assumed background noise - though I imagine it certainly plays a part to some extent. More likely, the celebrity tranzis resent Djokovic's human decency, since it might raise the inconvenient question of their own conspicuous lack of it.

Much easier to gush over Federer's fancy footwear.

Fourth of July

On this day in 1776, representatives of 13 American colonies declared independence from Britain, citing a "train of abuses and usurpations" starting with unjust taxation and getting worse from there.

I urge you to read the actual text of the Declaration; it's very instructive.

Thing is... the taxes that caused the colonies to rebel were nothing in comparison with what Americans pay today. The government in Washington treats its citizens worse than George III treated his subjects. And America's foreign policy is that of the British Empire: invade, divide and rule, lie and deceive, betray and corrupt - all the while claiming to be a force for good (then it was "civilization," now it's "democracy," in both cases stripped of all meaning).

And the worst thing? Most Americans either don't realize this... or if they do, they don't care. Today is for grilling, beer and fireworks - all fine things, mind you, of which I myself intend to partake. But while I do so, a part of my mind will continue to wonder: is this really what the Founders had in mind when they invoked "the protection of divine Providence" and pledged to each other "our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor"?

Vienna's Big Lie

From Tim Butcher's June 28 article in the Daily Telegraph (emphasis added):

Princip was caught within seconds of firing his pistol, his bid for martyrdom doomed when the dose of cyanide he stuffed down his throat failed to kill him.

Two weeks short of his 20th birthday, Princip was too young to be executed as Austro-Hungarian law said the death sentence could only be given to criminals aged 20 or more. Instead, he was jailed, sentenced to 20 years solitary confinement with the condition that one day a month he was to receive no food. He died in a prison hospital on April 28 1918, his body so badly ravaged by skeletal tuberculosis that his right arm had had to be amputated.

Over the last century his voice has rarely been heard, drowned out by more powerful forces, not least Vienna which was desperate to use the assassination as a pretext to attack its small and potentially troublesome neighbour, Serbia. For this to work, Austria-Hungary worked to represent Princip and the assassination plot as the work of the Serbian government. And this alone is perhaps the greatest misrepresentation of the truth about Gavrilo Princip, with the historical record containing no convincing evidence to support the claim.

Wilfred Owen wrote of the patriotic invocation dulce et decorum est pro patria mori as "the old lie'', but I have come to see an even greater lie at the founding moment of the First World War. It is the lie used by Vienna in its deliberate misrepresentation of the Sarajevo assassination. On its hundredth anniversary, now is high time to straighten the record.

Butcher is the author of "The Trigger: Hunting the Assassin Who Brought the World to War", published June 3 by Grove Press. 

Deutschlandlied in Sarajevo

I used to enjoy the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Concerts. Having been raised in an atheist society, I never stopped to wonder why a traditional concert in the capital of a staunchly Catholic thousand-year empire was held on January 1, rather than, say, Christmas Day. Then I found out the tradition was established in 1938, by none other than Josef Goebbels.

Another revelation came last year: a Bosnian-born journalist tracked down the photograph showing Adolf Hitler gazing at the marble plaque honoring Gavrilo Princip - the Bosnian Serb who assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914 in Sarajevo. A modest monument, funded privately, the plaque had been put up in 1930. Within days of the Nazi occupation in 1941, the plaque was taken down and presented to Hitler as a birthday present. He had it displayed at the same museum as the railway car from Compiegne in which Germany had signed the armistice in 1918 - and where he insisted the French sign their surrender in 1940.

(Heinrich Hoffmann/Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München/Bildarchiv)

In 1914, warmongers in Vienna used the assassination (ironically, it was the Archduke who had kept them in check) to launch a war of extermination against Serbia, which eventually destroyed the Hapsburg empire instead. Attempts have been made to blame the Serbs and Serbia for the Great War ever since.

The latest round of revisionism came as the centenary of the war approached. On June 28, mainstream media throughout the West carried stories about the "Serbian" assassin of the Archduke and his wife (Sophie Chotek was killed accidentally; Princip was aiming at General Potiorek, the hated military governor of Bosnia) and the assassination treated as the actual cause - and beginning - of the war. This fits the current narrative of (Western) European unity - under the Atlantic Empire - fighting the "evil" Russians and "troublemaker" Serbs, but it has little to do with the truth.

Ukraine: Behind the Ceasefire

What's behind the Kiev junta's offer of "ceasefire" and "talks" with the two regions in the East? A genuine effort to achieve peace, or a smokescreen for another attempt to subjugate all of Ukraine to the pro-Imperial, Nazi-dominated regime?

I was one of the guests debating this in today's CrossTalk, with Eric Kraus in Moscow and John B. Quigley in Columbus, Ohio. The embedded video is not yet available, but you can watch the show at the link above.

Between the knowledge that "Ukraine" is about to sign a treaty with the EU (which the EU itself doesn't want, but is being made to sign by guess who), and the fact that events in that country are being directed using the same script created by the West for Yugoslavia, I get the feeling that the ceasefire was a trick. Especially since it didn't hold.

I would not be the slightest bit surprised if the EU put forth a motion to deploy an "international presence" in the East, disarm the rebels (but not the Nazi Guard or oligarchs' militias, as those would become "legal government troops") and buy the Kiev regime some time to get money and weapons from the Empire, in hopes of staging something like "Flash" or "Storm." Sure, Poroshenko and the Nazis aren't thinking long-term, but the people they are taking orders from do. Meanwhile, the media are already claiming Russia has "blinked" and "capitulated" by not sending in the troops - when they aren't lying about Russia having sent troops, that is.

There is something Eric Kraus said that we didn't have time to discuss, but it's very interesting. Namely, the EU treaty would destroy the industry in the East and force Russia to seal the border. While Kraus thinks this will hurt the Ukrainian economy - and he's not wrong - the junta doesn't care about that. It doesn't even care that by strangling the East it's destroying the very tax base that has enabled the west - the stronghold of Banderist and Russophobic "Ukrainianism" - to survive. Had economic considerations been factoring into any of their actions, they wouldn't have staged a coup in February, or started a civil war later.

There is no solidarity among the oligarchs. At best, they prop up one another for short-term gain, but always ready to devour the power and money of whichever one of them falters (e.g. Yanukovich). To me, the EU deal is a tool to bankrupt the East (never mind that the rest of the country would follow) and force it into submission, counting on Russia having to seal off the border to avoid the flood of duty-free EU goods - and then blaming that for the ensuing economic hardship in Kiev-controlled territories.

Problem is, by doing this they've left the people of the East with nothing to lose. Even if Kiev offered them federalization - which it won't - why would they take it? There is nothing for them in a Ukraine that just became a strip-mine colony for the EU. Conversely, independence or union with Russia becomes that much more appealing. 

The Desperate Smearbund

Could it be an indicator of the Empire's desperation that they are now trying to "Serb" Vladimir Putin, resurrecting the Serbophobic propaganda of the 1990s to smear the Russians as "aggressors" while whitewashing the Ukrainian (and Croatian) Nazis?

What else is one to think of this June 19 article in The New Republic, by Vera Mironova and Maria Snegovaya, a combination of gross journalistic incompetence and Holocaust denial?

I have written up a reaction over at the Reiss Institute, which Julia Gorin has reposted and accompanied with further helpful links and research.

Don't let this filth go unanswered.

Screenshot of the TNR article whitewashing the Ukrainian and Croatian Nazis,
while blaming the Russians and the Serbs as "occupiers"

Operation Bagration

On June 22, 1944, three years to the day since Axis forces invaded the Soviet Union, the Red Army launched the biggest counterattack of the war, crushing the German Army Group Center.

The offensive was named after prince Pyotr Ivanovich Bagration, hero of Borodino.

Failure to Communicate

I attended the US-Russia Forum in Washington, DC earlier this week, and came away with mixed impressions. On one hand, almost everyone involved was trying to improve relations between Russia and the U.S. On the other, entirely too many Americans involved continue to believe that the problem here isn't the Atlantic Empire's abuse, but some phantom Russian intransigence, "revisionism" or "retrenchment."

(inspired by commenter "bearspaw" below; as seen on Facebook)

I've offered up my overview of the conference in a column over at Antiwar.com. To sum it up here, the presenters had a very real diversity of opinion, rather than being "Putin apologists" as presstwats predictably claimed. Leonid Gozman, for example, openly backed the Kiev junta, illustrating the typical position of what passes for "liberals" in Russia (and explaining why their support runs into low single digits). There were speakers blaming the EU (which has shown its utter inability to do anything but obey Washington), or even asserted that Russia's reaction in the Crimea endangered nuclear nonproliferation talks - without stopping to think it's the Imperial pattern of aggression that's compelling countries to seek nuclear insurance in the first place.

For their part, I don't think the Russians fully understand this, either. It's only normal for everyone to interpret the behavior of others through the prism of their own; so Americans always see others as aggressors, invaders, liars, murderers and terrorists. The latest example of this "flipping the script" is a New Republic feature comparing Putin to Milosevic. In reality, it is the West acting towards Russia the same way they acted towards the Serbs two decades ago. I've argued before that Putin is aware of this, though the Russian public and media in general may not be. The Russians tend to see Americans as rational actors, playing the game of politics by the rules. Perhaps they ought to watch (or better yet, read) some Game of Thrones, lest they end up like the Starks to the Anglo Lannisters.

To borrow a movie quote, what we have here is a failure to communicate. And that's not just depressing, but in the present situation, downright dangerous.

Parsing Putin's Popularity

Here is a handy graphic that explains why Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin's approval ratings are north of 80% these days.

"How has Russia changed in 15 years of Vladimir Putin's governance?" (e.g. between 1999 and 2013)

GDP went from $195 billion (1999) to $2,113 billion in 2013.

Per-capita GDP went from $1,320 to $14,800.

Inflation went from 36,5% to 6.5%.

Gold reserves went from $12,6 billion to $511 billion.

Government debt went from 78% of the GDP to 8% of the GDP.

Average monthly pension went from 499 rubles to 10,000 rubles.

Average monthly wage went from 1522 rubles to 29,940 rubles.

Ah, but Putin put an end to the raping and looting of Russia by Western "reformers" and their pet oligarchs, and stood up to the Atlantic Empire's reign of chaos. Can't have that. So the Western media calls him an "autocrat" (though he obeys the letter of the law punctiliously), but lavishes praise on the ruler that shrugs laws off in favor of "a pen and a phone."

No wonder no one has put together a chart like this for the United States. Those numbers must be terrifying... 

FIFA Upholds Sieg-heiling Conviction

In November last year, when Croatia's soccer team managed to win passage to the 2014 World Cup by the skin of their teeth, one of the players sieg-heiled with the crowd in triumph. While Nazi displays in Croatia - from soccer stadiums to symbols of state - have been ignored for over two decades, FIFA couldn't let this one go. "Crazy Joe" Šimunić was fined and suspended for 10 games - starting with the World Cup.

At the end of April, a Croatian web magazine (billing itself as "one of the world’s leading portals") quoted Šimunić's lawyer Davor Prtenjača, who was optimistic that the decision would be overturned on appeal. Citing the speed of the hearing - just a month after the appeal was filed - as cause for hope, Prtenjača added that "FIFA had given up on the assertion that “Za dom – spremni” was purely a fascist salute, but still claim Šimunić had provoked racial hated at Maksimir stadium."

Both the salute and the shield have been symbols of the Croatian Nazis (Ustasha), who committed genocidal atrocities against Serbs and Jews and Roma so vicious, even some Nazis were appalled. Yet the defense is now that the salute - the Croatian equivalent of the German sieg-heil - was "not purely fascist"? Same with the checkerboard shield, which the Croats claim is an ancient symbol of their people. So? The swastika is an ancient Hindu symbol, yet it's been banned throughout much of the world because of its association with Hitler.

But even allowing for all that, for the sake of argument, what explains this?

Široki Brijeg, Herzegovina, November 2010 (source)

This photo is from a November 2010 game in the overwhelmingly Croat Široki Brijeg, in Herzegovina, where fans of the local team waved around both the actual Nazi flag and that of the Vatican - because the Church of Rome was a major backer of the Croatian Nazis, in WW2 and thereafter.

In any case, the "not solely fascist" defense didn't work. Šimunić lost his appeal on May 13, and the only way he will be involved with the World Cup - which begins this afternoon - is as a spectator. 

Western Economy, Explained

And this is why I enjoy reading Karl Denninger's The Market Ticker:

Oh boy, the imagery this conjures up....

"Just when the European recovery story looked played out, the European Central Bank sent out a new mating call to equity investors with a major policy package that included rate cuts."

You're going to get mated with all right.

The problem is that it's going to be in one of the holes that does not offer the prospect of reproduction.

Today's Western economy, in a nutshell.

This is why I think all the recent protestations of power are just a bunch of hot air. 

The Empire of Stupid: Old Map Hoax Taken Seriously

When the tabloid media in Serbia - controlled by foreign conglomerates or oligarchs loyal to whatever quisling government happens to be in charge (since every parliamentary party has been suborned, it doesn't make much difference) - print unverified rumors and fanciful flights of wishful thinking, that's par for the course. A group of satirists even mocked this a few years back, by planting patently false stories written in such a way that they sounded plausible (think The Onion here), but wouldn't hold up to elementary fact-checking. But whether due to laziness or wishful thinking, the press never bothered to check, running the stories because they fit their confirmation bias.

So it says volumes about Foreign Policy - very much a voice of the DC establishment - that it chose to run a serious analysis of a complete and utter hoax, and a stale one at that. On June 4, FP contributor Frank Jacobs wrote about "what Russia could look like in 2035 if Putin gets his wish," referring to a map of Europe allegedly created by "Russian experts."

There is just one tiny little problem: the whole thing is a fabrication. Moreover, it's an old one: the story of it broke in Serbia in January 2013 (here is the state television, taking it at face value), and the map itself appeared in the summer of 2012 in the Russian tabloid "Express Gazeta." But that is not where it originated.

Far from being an actual analysis of the GRU or the KGB or some top-level Moscow institute or even Putin himself (because "everybody knows" Vladimir Vladimirovich is a superhuman mastermind who personally does everything in a country of some 150 million, right?), the map was produced by a Ukrainian web magazine "Obozrevatel", with the author identified as "Pavlo Nikonenko."

Empire's White-Knighting Explained

In an article published in Counterpunch on Friday, Diana Johnstone pulls back the curtain on the Ukraine crisis:

"In September 2013, one of Ukraine’s richest oligarchs, Viktor Pinchuk, paid for an elite strategic conference on Ukraine’s future that was held in the same Palace in Yalta, Crimea, where Roosevelt, Stalin and Churchill met to decide the future of Europe in 1945. The Economist, one of the elite media reporting on what it called a “display of fierce diplomacy”, stated that: “The future of Ukraine, a country of 48m people, and of Europe was being decided in real time.” The participants included Bill and Hillary Clinton, former CIA head General David Petraeus, former U.S. Treasury secretary Lawrence Summers, former World Bank head Robert Zoellick, Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, Shimon Peres, Tony Blair, Gerhard Schröder, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, Mario Monti, Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite, and Poland’s influential foreign minister Radek Sikorski. Both President Viktor Yanukovych, deposed five months later, and his recently elected successor Petro Poroshenko were present. Former U.S. energy secretary Bill Richardson was there to talk about the shale-gas revolution which the United States hopes to use to weaken Russia by substituting fracking for Russia’s natural gas reserves." 

Ah yes, the shale gas canard that's physically and mathematically impossible: the U.S. simply does not have the shipping and processing capabilities to meet Europe's gas needs - nor is there nearly as much shale gas in the fracking wells as originally estimated. Doesn't stop the world's biggest conmen from trying, though.

"U.S. policy, already evident at the September 2013 Yalta meeting, was carried out on the ground by Victoria Nuland, former advisor to Dick Cheney, deputy ambassador to NATO, spokeswoman for Hillary Clinton, wife of neocon theorist Robert Kagan. Her leading role in the Ukraine events proves that the neo-con influence in the State Department, established under Bush II, was retained by Obama, whose only visible contribution to foreign policy change has been the presence of a man of African descent in the presidency, calculated to impress the world with U.S. multicultural virtue. Like most other recent presidents, Obama is there as a temporary salesman for policies made and executed by others."

The truth hurts. But it's blindingly obvious.

Seven Decades Hence

"The world is Hades for me now
and all men in it hellish spirits."
- The Mountain Wreath

Seventy years ago, on June 6 1944, the Western Allies launched the largest amphibious operation in history, landing hundreds of thousands of men and tanks onto the beaches of Normandy. Were they fighting and dying for an American Empire, or the world democratic revolution? The Emperor now says so.

Did those men fight so their country could pick up Hitler's torch 50 years later, back his allies, pursue his policies? With the Luftwaffe bombing Belgrade again, German boots on Serbian soil, SS marches in Latvia, and Banderist torchlight parades in Ukraine, Anglo-American boasting of how they won in 1945 are at best hypocritical and hollow. At worst, a cruel jest.

Bandera supporters march in Lwow, January 2013 (via "Kyiv Post")

The "Greatest Generation" is spinning in their graves. Hitler's ghost cackles with glee.

But the East remembers.

Of Quislings and Censorship

An old Serbian folk tale tells of a peasant who served a Turkish judge (qadi) as a cowherd. He had one cow of his own, which he shepherded along with the qadi's herd. One time, the cows got into an altercation, and the peasant's cow gored the qadi's.
So the peasant hastens into town, and tells the qadi: "Effendi, your cow gored mine!"
"Whose fault was it, did someone make them?" asks the qadi.
"No, effendi, they fought among themselves," answers the peasant.
"Well, then. Can't put cattle on trial," says the qadi.
"But effendi, did you hear what I said? My cow gored yours!" the peasant says.
"What? Wait, then, I must look at the law," exclaims the qadi and reaches for the book.
The peasant grabs his arm and says: "By God and God's faith you won't! If you didn't look at the law for mine, you won't look at the law for yours either."

Contrast that to the Roman expression "Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi" - what Jove may, the ox may not. While the Serbian cowherd insists on equality of justice, the Romans enshrine a double standard. One of the greatest accomplishments - perhaps the only one - of the Enlightenment was the notion that "all men are equal" before the law. That is, that a law is the same for rich and poor alike, for both Jove and the ox.

What if the ox is Jove? (source)

A sea of ink would run dry before one could describe all the instances of double standards and gross violations of this principle just in the case of the country that was once Yugoslavia. And this week there was another.

Fear and Loathing at the New York Times

An autocrat

A toxic mixture of arrogance and stupidity haunts the establishment class of the Atlantic Empire. They really believe they can create reality through willpower alone (as Karl Rove told Ron Suskind back in 2004), that America is the "indispensable country" (M. Albright), and that God - or whatever they believe in these days - has given them the world to do with as they please.

I'm not talking about the Emperor's West Point speech, however deluded it may have been, but about the hysterical reaction of the chattering classes to it, best exemplified by the New York Times' "conservative" columnist David Brooks.

Alarmed that His Most Elevated Imperial Majesty may have had a stray thought or two about - gasp! - restraint, Brooks upbraids Barack Obama for insufficient imperialism. Sure, Obama "argued persuasively" for the need to "mobilize democracies", and his UN envoy Samantha Power gave a "great" (i.e. fiery) speech to the new generation of Harvard drones, but let's remember that World War Two was the fault of America failing at its duty to rule the world.

Er, what? No, really. Brooks actually wrote that:

"In the 1920s and ’30s, for example, Americans were in a retrenching mood, like today. The result was a leaderless world, the gradual decay of the world order and eventually World War II."

The Audacity of Delusion

It is one thing when Mad Madeleine Albright declares the U.S. "the indispensable nation", and quite another when Barack "Hope and Change" Obama does so, 15 years after Albright's conceit has been conclusively proven wrong.

As I told Voice of Russia the other day, there is a dangerous combination of arrogance and stupidity in Washington, making the Empire's leadership blind to reality because they've begun to drink their own kool-aid.

In his West Point speech, the Emperor demonstrates the fact of this. It's all hyperbole, outright denial of reality and assertion of virtual facts. Moreover, he admits to it, crediting "our ability to shape world opinion" (!) for the alleged "isolation" and "condemnation" of Russia, even as he describes his camp followers - G-7, EU, OSCE, NATO and the IMF - as "the world."

Jan Oberg of the Transnational Foundation offers an interesting analysis of the West Point speech. I'd like to quote the conclusion here, but I suggest you read all of it:

In its reality-defying arrogance and self-praise it leaves little hope for those of us who have always been fascinated by the American cultural and other creativity and – earlier – leadership while loathed its empire’s arrogance, exceptionalist militarism and insensitivity to the victims of its policies.
The audacity of hope is crushed. Regrettably, with this speech one has to think more in terms of the audacity of fear to begin to perceive the potentially catastrophic combination of militarism, hubris, a decreasing sense of reality and silly self-praise.

Duh-mock-risy

This morning, I was on the newest episode of "CrossTalk" to discuss the farce that is the "presidential election" in Banderastan (formerly the Ukraine). It should air tonight sometime, and I'll try and post it as soon as it is online. (UPDATE: You can watch the show here)

Look at who all was involved: "several US senators," Mad Madeleine Albright and her NDI, the State Department, OSCE... Three cats and a unicycle-riding poodle could have voted, and they'd still call it legitimate. Meanwhile, the exit polls are in. Congratulations, it's an oligarch!

A sharp-eyed Facebook user spotted this attempt at perception management, that best illustrates today's circus:

On the left is a Ukie Twitter feed purporting to show happy voters being democratically democratic (source); on the right, the same photo - taken two weeks ago, in Gorlovka, during the Donetsk referendum on independence (source).

"Oops" doesn't even begin to cover it.

Parsing the Doublespeak on Ukraine

Tomorrow, the people in parts of Ukraine controlled by the Banderist coup regime in Kiev will be given a chance to "vote" in a farce of an election, and pick one of the candidates endorsed by the ruling junta to become "president" of Ukraine - or rather, then Banderastan rump thereof.

No matter how farcical and absurd the "election" turns out to be, it will be declared legitimate, free and fair by the Empire and its stooges. Because - as Phillip Cunliffe observed in 2007, and I keep reminding you here - to them, democracy is whatever they decide it is.

Oleh Yaroslavovych Tyahnybok, Empire's "democratic democrat" (via Novi Standard)

Fellow blogger The Saker has put together a post that cuts through the Imperial doublespeak. I believe it represents the best summation of the events in Ukraine so far, so I am re-posting it here with his permission, just in case someone tries to stop the signal:

Calling things by their proper names in the Ukraine
(Vineyard of the Saker, May 23, 2014)

Life often seems like one long never ending Asch conformity experiment: even when there is overwhelming evidence that something is "A", the media, and those zombified by it, confidently state "non-A". That this kind of doublethink is also applied to the conflict in the Ukraine should surprise nobody, but it is still important to "call a stone and stone" and to give a clear and unambiguous characterization of what has happened so far and what is about to happen this Sunday.

So today I want to re-state the obvious using the most direct and unambiguous language possible. My hope is to contribute to wake up at least one comatose person out there by calling things by their proper names.

Flood testimonial: Doboj

Here is a video-testimonial of the flooding that hit Doboj (Serb Republic, Bosnia-Herzegovina) last Friday, recorded by Ozren Stakić. In just six minutes, the angry river Bosna spills over into the town, drowning a busy intersection.

Here is how high the waters rose - a "before and after" photo of Doboj, found on Facebook:

The waters have receded, but the devastation remains. If you can, please help.

Vignettes from the Deluge

The rains have stopped, but the floodwaters have not receded yet. Reports are coming in like the tide - 1,5 million affected, dozens of dead. Enormous property damage includes crops and livestock, which will have an impact on food supply down the line.

Cataclysms bring out the best and the worst in people. Here are just some tidbits that have reached me over the past couple of days.

First, the good. Tens of thousands have volunteered to shore up the levees and save towns like Šabac from suffering the fate of Obrenovac (now completely underwater). Among them were Serbs from Kosovo, the very same people the current Serbian government renounced and tried to force to become "Kosovians". Reports from Bosnia suggest that Serbs and Muslims have banded together to survive the flooding, while Croats - whose strongholds in the south were unaffected - sent rescue teams to help both. Rescue teams from Croatia proper have lent aid to both Bosnia and Serbia.

Flood Aid for Serbia and Bosnia

Heavy rains over the past several days have resulted in flooding of "Biblical proportions" in much of Serbia and Bosnia.

Obrenovac, Serbia, May 2014

UPDATE: More charities added below

Thanks to a diligent reader, I have been informed that the humanitarian organization "Serbs for Serbs" (Срби за Србе) - which has worked since 2005 to provide assistance to endangered families, especially in Kosovo and among the Krajina refugees - has launched a drive to help those affected by the flooding.

I am passing on this information as a courtesy; for all questions, please contact SZS directly, via email or Facebook.

Here is how to donate:

Bildt's Tweets, Real and Fake

Nils Daniel Carl Bildt is currently the Foreign Minister of Sweden, and a longtime operative for the Transnational Progressivist establishment (e.g. the first Viceroy of Bosnia). He is also on Twitter.

Last week, some online outlets in Serbia reported that Bildt had tweeted: "the biggest mistake of the modern Russian government and Vladimir Putin was the return to Orthodoxy, which is worse than the Islamic terrorism that appears in the east."

Now, anyone even remotely acquainted with Twitter would have realized this could not have been accurate - not because Bildt doesn't dislike Russia or Orthodoxy (more on that in a second), but because the alleged statement is too long for a 140-character tweet. Moreover, a proper Tranzi like Bildt would have never used the phrase "Islamic terrorism" or referred to Islam in anything but properly submissive terms. Especially in Sweden, which has just about criminalized criticism of Islam. But the legacy media - controlled by foreign interests or the puppet government - did not bother to mention any of this, while the blogosphere took 'Bildt's" words and ran with them, because the made-up quote fit in with his other views on Russia and the EU/US policy in the Ukrainian meltdown.

Statism at its "finest"

You can read through volumes of political theory, philosophy and analysis to understand the basic libertarian argument against government - as a tyrannical force routinely initiating aggression against people's lives and property. Or you could take one look at this video, put together by the Danish government, as an inducement to vote in the upcoming European Parliament elections.


Why in the blazes would any government, much less a transnational bunch of busybodies, legislate the amount of cinnamon on a bun? But you're not supposed to ponder that question. Yours is to vote (for whatever's on offer) or else. And by "else" this Danish government-funded video means getting decapitated, roughed up or defenestrated (after a home invasion), by "Voteman."

Forget "civic duty" or "representative government" or "subsidiarity" or any of the fine vestments devises to cover up the force and fraud. This is what they mean by democracy, folks. This is distilled statism. 

Murdering History, Again

Two days ago, as I posted about the meaning of St. George's day and the victory ribbon, news came of this:

So, in addition to murdering or burning alive any Ukrainians who disagree with them, the Banderite regime in Kiev is now butchering history. Where oh where have we seen this before?

What exactly are "European symbols"? The poppy flower is an English thing, traditionally associated with November 11 and the armistice that ended the Great War (1914-18), inspired by the poppies of Flanders. What exactly do Flanders, Britain or WW1 have to do with 1945? Also, why would Ukraine commemorate 1939, when Hitler invaded in 1941?

Unless... in addition to sucking up to the English (and maybe payback for rescuing the Banderites in 1945), the red-and-black poppies could be a wink and a nudge to the Banderite flag (see the "Right Sector" symbols). And the focus on 1939 might be the preparation for claiming that "Ukraine" was "invaded" by the Soviets. Anything to properly "integrate" Banderastan with the West, where Victory Day has already been politically corrected into "Europe Day."

Either way, considering it was the Soviet Union that deserves the overwhelming credit for actually destroying Nazism, the decision to use "European" symbols is a travesty. Worse, it is a deliberate insult to all those murdered by Hitler's hordes. And let's by all means remember - since they seem so proud of it - that among Hitler's allies were the Ukrainian SS and militias, whose heirs now "rule" in Kiev on behalf of the Atlantic Empire.

As I noted on Tuesday, I'll keep flying the Ribbon of Saint George to let them and their sponsors know that they were defeated then, and will be defeated again. Here is that message in Russian - courtesy of KP - so they may understand precisely what I mean:

Когда я надеваю георгиевскую ленточку, я делаю это во имя моих предков, которые веками сражались с турками, завоевывая свою свободу. Я делаю это во имя моего деда, который выжил в лагере для военнопленных. В память о бабушке, которую я не знал; ради многочисленных родственников, погубленных усташами. Я делаю это, чтобы выразить свое презрение нацистами, усташам, сегодняшним бандеровцам. И чтобы напомнить им (и их спонсорам), что мы победили их тогда, и победим снова.
Потому что они и есть дракон, которого убил Георгий Победоносец.
И Восток помнит.

The Sound of Russian Silence

The following essay was written on May 5, 2014, by Roman Nosikov. Its Russian original is here. As my Russian is not equal to the task, I have taken the liberty of translating it from a Serbian version, posted here. Any errors, omissions or infelicities are mine. 

The world is full of calls to Russia. The world calls to Russia and her president to influence the "pro-Russian separatists" in southeast Ukraine. The international community, the Russian intelligentsia, the Ukrainian media clique, all choke on the cries reminding us of our peacefulness, our non-resistance to evil, of Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi.

"Peace! Peace! Peace! Mercy!" is what we hear, 24 hours a day.

But at the same time, those same throats spit out threats: "Sanctions! You shall starve! We shall drive you into huts, into caves! We shall take away everything, select everyone, buy everything! We order you! We condemn you!"

And what answer do we hear? What do our colleagues hear from the Russian president? What do they hear from our people?

Silence.

Heavy, unbearable Russian silence that rests over the world like a calm before the storm.

Saint George's Day

In the Orthodox (Julian) calendar, today is April 23 and the feast of St. George, the fabled dragonslayer and patron saint of many Serbs.

According to the legend, Saint George came upon a kingdom beset by a foul, plague-breathing dragon. To appease the dragon, they began to give it a daily sacrifice of livestock, and later even their children. When the saint came along and killed the dragon, the grateful citizens embraced Christianity.

In Serbian folklore, the feast of Saint George is the beginning of hayduk season - guerrilla resistance to Ottoman overlords that had conquered Serb lands in the 15th century. The season traditionally ended on the feast of Saint Demetrius (Mitrovdan), October 26.

The distinctive orange/black ribbon shown above belongs to the Order of Saint George, the highest military decoration of Imperial Russia. During the Great Fatherland War (1941-45), the Soviets resurrected the ribbon to reward elite and Guards units, as well as individuals decorated for valor. The 1945 victory medal given to all veterans of the war also had the ribbon of Saint George. Starting with the 60th anniversary of the victory, in 2005, the ribbon has become a symbol of Russian patriotism and victory over the Nazis.

While Hitler was defeated in 1945, the Western allies immediately began using the Nazis and their sympathizers as allies in the struggle with "Communism" (i.e. the Soviet Union): from the actual Nazi scientists brought over in Operation Paperclip, to the Croatian Ustasha, Baltic Waffen-SS veterans and the Ukrainian Banderovtsi. Following the Soviet Union's demise in 1991, many of them, and their ideas, made a comeback - to the point where those who once fanatically served Hitler are now the most fanatical allies of NATO.

When I fly the ribbon of Saint George, I do it for my ancestors who fought the Turks for centuries, until they won their freedom. I do it for my grandfather, who survived a German POW camp; the grandmother I never knew; the scores of relatives murdered by the Ustasha. I do it to defy the Nazis, the Ustasha and the Banderovtsi today, to let them (and their sponsors!) know that they were defeated then, and will be defeated again.

Because they are the dragon. And the East remembers.

Remembering the "Blitz"

At 0530 hours on May 1, 1995, some 16,000 Croatian troops attacked the Serb-inhabited portion of Western Slavonia known as Sector West (a UN Protected Area, UNPA).

Following the failure of Croatian militias to conquer this and other Serb-inhabited areas (later united in the Republic of Serbian Krajina - RSK) that rejected Croatia's anti-Serb, neo-Nazi regime in Zagreb. In January 1992, an armistice was signed ("Vance Plan") and a UN force deployed to safeguard the Serb-inhabited areas following the withdrawal of the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA).

Operation "Blitz", May 1-2, 1995 (source: CIA, via Wikipedia)

Backed by the United States government, Zagreb launched the May 1 operation as a trial balloon. Within 36 hours, the Croats had expelled the area's 15,000 Serbs, and killed 283 (including 57 women and 9 children). The UN troops charged with protecting the zone did nothing. The so-called "international community" (the Atlantic Empire and its vassals, in practice) did nothing.

Three months later, Croatia launched an all-out assault against the Serb-inhabited areas, with full diplomatic and political support of the United States government, killing 930 (with another 922 missing and presumed dead), while expelling almost all the remaining Serbs from the territories claimed by the Croatian state. By 2001, there were 380,032 fewer Serbs living in Croatia than in 1991, when Zagreb declared independence.

Both "police actions" were named in the true tradition of WW2 Croatia: "Flash" (Blitz, in German) and "Storm" (Sturm).

Croatian map of the "liberation" of Western Slavonia;
Serb-inhabited territories in blue were "liberated" in 1991,
in operation "Hurricane" (Orkan)  

Because Croatia was a proxy of the Atlantic Empire, it got away with this murder. Now the neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, which seized power in the illegal coup of February 22, is expecting to do the same, launching a military attack against the Ukrainians refusing to submit to them. But while they expect May 2014 will be like May 1995, they should remember what happened when someone else tried to replicate August 1995 in August 2008.

God is just, and His justice does not sleep forever.

The East remembers.

It's the Spelling, Stupid

A report that a "French" woman was stopped from visiting the U.S. - allegedly because her name sounded (vaguely) like al-Qaeda - reminded me of the peculiar quandary of Balkans spelling (or lack thereof).

RT reported that Aida Alic, 33, residing in southern France, was turned back from a flight to New York with her husband and two children, and told she had been "blacklisted". No official explanation was given, so Alic speculated to the regional daily Le Dauphiné Libéré that it must have been her name. All passports list surnames first, so hers identified her as "Alic Aida," which she says, when pronounced, may have sounded like "Al-Qaeda" to the Americans.

Except her name is really Aida Alić. The ć is pronounced as "ch", and it is the most common ending to surnames in what used to be Yugoslavia. If the name was Aida's problem (which may or may not be the case; mysterious are the ways of Homeland Security), it could have been resolved simply by knowing how to spell.

One of the first articles I wrote for Antiwar.com, back in 2000, dealt with the problem of Balkans spelling. Because Serbian - and the languages derived from it - is a phonetic language, there is no such thing as "spelling" in it: every letter always sounds the same. While solving the spelling problem, this feature of the mid-19th century linguistic reform also played merry Hell with etymology, grammar, and dialects. But that's another subject for another time.

There are always variations when transliterating names from languages with non-Latin alphabets, such as Russian, Greek, Chinese, Arabic or Hebrew. But there is no transliteration standard for Serbian (or its derivations), which is properly written in Cyrillic. An additional wrinkle is that many modern Serbs (and almost all derivative languages) use the Modified Latin alphabet invented in the early 1800s to replicate the Cyrillic reform for the benefit of Slavs living in Austria-Hungary.

Allow me to illustrate. The last Serbian royal house was named Карађорђевић, after their progenitor, Карађорђе. In Modified Latin, these names would be Karađorđević and Karađorđe, respectively. Properly transliterated, they might look like Karageorgevich and Karageorge. But the lazy, illiterate butchery of language simply erases the modifier marks, turning it into Karadordevic! Even ""Karadjordjevic" would be better, since it at least offers a nod to proper pronunciation of the ђ/đ (like the j in jam). But it still leaves us with a "c" at the end that is pronounced wrong.

Even though modern technology absolutely allows for multiple input alphabets - as demonstrated above - we still get "Alic" and "Vucic" and "Milosevic" and so on. But the problem goes beyond casual usage of lazy illiterates: documents issued in Modified Latin (passports, etc) do not transcribe the names either - so they simply get entered without what the clerks (wrongly) assume are "accent marks." Because of this combination of ignorance and stupidity, most people from the former Yugoslavia emigrating to the West end up with misspelled and unpronounceable names.

Transliteration after the fact is a cumbersome process, and even then, most people don't know how to actually spell their names in English, French, German, Dutch, etc. Previous generations of immigrants have tried, with varying success: Kucinich from Kucinić was a relatively minor change, while Mihajlo Pejić (Михајло Пејић) got turned into Mitchell Paige. Though he was still a hero either way, so there is that.

The Kiev Gambit

In my newest column on Antiwar.com, I argue that "the Atlantic Empire establishment may be looking for a new Cold War as a way to give the Empire meaning." Having failed at imposing the "end of history", the Empire desires to revert to the comfortable state of perpetual war - "in their minds... the best kind of conflict, in which the national security apparatus expanded exponentially, the military-industrial complex grew fat on government contracts, and the eventual victory of the West was foreordained by the superiority of morals and values."

as seen on Facebook

That won't work, of course, but they are too far gone in the world of their own lies to realize this. Which is why the "government" in Kiev - encouraged by the Empire - has launched a crackdown on the east of the country and ratcheted up the propaganda war. Neither effort is really working; Army convoys are being stopped by civilians in a repeat of the Kosovo Serb tactic, while the propaganda gets debunked almost as soon as it appears. See, for example, the case of the "OSCE observers" that weren't, or the anti-Semitic flyer, or the "photo evidence" even the New York Times felt compelled to retract.

Listening to the speech John Kerry made Thursday evening didn't quite make me gag. It did, however, make me feel very happy he was defeated by George W. Bush in 2004 - that's how dire it was. Moon of Alabama does a thorough debunking of Kerry, which I commend to your attention, and The Saker believes it signals desperation:

His statement is a desperate attempt to do what the lawyers call the "last resort rule".  It goes like this: “If you have the law, hammer the law. If you have the facts, hammer the facts. If you have neither the law nor the facts, hammer the table”.  Kerry was hammering the table really very, very strongly... Had the facts or the law been on his side, there would have been no need for table hammering, of course.

As I mentioned before, it is really useful to keep in mind this rule of propaganda: "The propagandist will not accuse his opponent of just anything, but precisely of the deed that the propagandist himself aims to perpetrate." (Ellul)

The Russians do, apparently. They have stopped taking phone calls from Imperial officials. 

Forbidden History: Yugoslavia in WW2

I rarely do advertising here, but today I'll make an exception.

Over the past year, Kragujevac historian Miloslav Samardžić has worked to make a documentary about the untold history of WW2 in Yugoslavia. The first six episodes of the series, "Kingdom of Yugoslavia in WW2", are now available for purchase here.

Proceeds from the first six episodes will go towards the funding of the following six. You can also buy the book on which the series is based.

I had a small part in this endeavor as well, as a pro bono translator/consultant on the series' English subtitles. So while I have no financial stake in this documentary either way, I would like to see it continue out of both professional curiosity and a desire to dig up as many facts as possible about this crucial period in history.

Truly He is Risen

Resurrection of Christ

"Pascha is not some beautiful legend, not some theoretical theology and not a nod towards a popular custom established in the distant past. It is the essence and kernel of Christianity. It is the victory that God has granted to us.

From the time of the apostles and up to the present the Church has preached Christ’s resurrection as the greatest miracle in the history of humanity. She speaks of this miracle not only as a fact of the Gospels, but – and what is especially important – as a moment of destiny for all those who have received the Paschal good news. This feast bears the most direct relationship to us, for Christ’s resurrection, the Lord’s redemption of the fallen world, is the greatest joy which the human person can experience. No matter how difficult our life, no matter what everyday troubles besiege us, no matter what grief and imperfections we have to endure from the world around us – all of this is nothing in comparison to the spiritual joy, to the hope of eternal salvation that God gives us."

(from the Paschal Proclamation of His Holiness Patriarch Kirill, of Moscow and All Russia)

Christ is Risen!
Христос воскресе!
Χριστός ἀνέστη!

The Great Betrayer

Urged by their masters, the Maydan junta in Kiev has moved to suppress the pro-Russian regions in the east. According to reports coming in from the field, the "overwhelming military force" has fizzed and failed, due to the junta troops defecting or refusing orders to fire on civilians.

It is perhaps too late for the junta to think about this soberly; they are committed, 100% invested in doing the Empire's bidding, else they will be fed to their own "Right Sector" attack dogs. And even if that were not the case, they would still fear the retribution of ordinary Ukrainians whose livelihoods they have ruined with yet another "color revolution."

They are not the first people to think and act so. Many have served the Empire before, only to find themselves deposed and discarded; Wayne Madsen lists just some examples:

The CIA also virtually ran the intelligence services of Zairean dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, Dominican Republic caudillo Rafael Trujillo, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega, and Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza. However, in what may cause some apprehension among the interim leaders of Kiev, it should be noted that when the CIA grew tired of these dictators, it quickly helped eject them from power. Mobutu died in exile in Morocco after being overthrown by forces aided by the CIA. Trujillo was assassinated in his chauffeured Chevrolet Bel Air by plotters trained by the CIA. Noriega was arrested while seeking asylum in the Vatican embassy in Panama City after a U.S. military invasion; he served prison sentences in Florida and France and is now rotting away in a Panamanian jungle prison; and Somoza was forced to flee Nicaragua after a cut-off in U.S. support; his car was later hit by an anti-tank rocket while he lived in exile in Paraguay.

And just the other day, Justin Raimondo wrote about the Empire's propensity for betrayal, using the example of the failed, false twitter in Cuba (all emphasis mine):

This episode shows that the US government, far from being the champion of liberty in a decidedly un-free world, is actually the main danger to liberty on earth. It systematically betrays those it seeks to "liberate," ruthlessly and cruelly manipulating those who dream of freedom from tyrannical regimes – and then abandoning them at the critical moment, just as they left thousands of ZunZuneo subscribers hanging after luring them in with promises of "free" text messaging.

From Cuba to Crimea, Washington is engaged in a global shell game, luring sincere freedom-loving people into its various front organizations, and using them as pawns in order to pursue its own agenda – one that has little if anything to do with the natural aspirations of oppressed peoples. And they won’t even do it under their own banner – as bloodstained and ragged with abuse as it is. So distrusted and hated are they that they have to sneak around setting up "false flag" operations: they don’t dare do it in their own name.

And that should tell you something.

Pushkov: "PACE betrayed its own principles"

Last Thursday, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) - voted to suspend Russia's voting rights in that body, explaining that:

...the military occupation of Ukrainian territory, threat of military force, recognition of the illegal so-called referendum and annexation of Crimea "constitute, beyond any doubt, a grave violation of international law".

The decision was based on a report by Austrian delegate Stefan Schennach.

Following the vote, Alexei Pushkov, head of the foreign affairs committee of Russia's Duma (lower house of parliament), gave a statement to the press. The video below, as well as the full English transcript of the remarks (delivered in Russian), are provided by fellow blogger The Saker, an outstanding source of information and analysis on the Ukraine situation.

Empire: It's Not Repression When We Do It

When the "Maidan" crowd was besieging and occupying government offices in Kiev, Brussels and Washington were cheering them on, and sending stern words of warning to President Yanukovich not to dare use force to re-establish order. Now that Kiev is controlled by their pet regime, however, they are demanding the use of force to suppress dissent. As Moon of Alabama points out:

[EU foreign policy chief] Ashton then:

"I call upon president Yanukovych, the government together with the leaders of the opposition to find an immediate way out of this deepening crisis, and to continue the work to find a way to solve the political crisis through dialogue."

Ashton now:

"The EU commends the Ukrainian authorities for pursuing their law and order operations in a measured way, in order to establish the authority of the state."

As for Washington, it sent CIA director Brennan to Kiev this past weekend. It must be a remarkable coincidence that Ukrainian "president" Turchinov then announced an "anti-terrorist" operation against demonstrators in the East.

Meanwhile, former head of Ukraine's security service (SBU), Alexander Yakimenko, claimed that his successor is a CIA stooge:

"Nalivaychenko was recruited by the US when he was Ukraine's Consul General in Washington [2001-2003]," said Yakimenko [to Russia's Channel One], for whom an arrest warrant has been issued in Kiev since he left the country last month... "The US is currently creating a sort of controlled chaos that is helping to blow up the bridges between Russia and Ukraine." (RT)

So while Moscow denies it wants Ukraine dismembered or destabilized - if it did, it could have done so at any point by now - Washington is feeding the flames. Samantha Power talks about "Russian propaganda" and accuses Moscow of organizing protests in the East. If this were actually the case, surely the all-listening NSA would have produced the Russian equivalent of the Nuland-Pyatt Call by now. But it hasn't. Which suggests such conversations do not actually exist - ergo, neither does the alleged Russian interference.

Moreover, John McCain (who the Hell put that lunatic in charge of foreign policy?) is doing the media circuit clamoring for U.S. weapon deliveries to the coup regime. So, Washington (and the EU), who justified their invasions of places like Serbia and Libya by claiming it was a crime for governments to oppress their own people, are telling (and helping) their puppet regime in Kiev to do just that.

UPDATE April 15, 2014): MoA offers this quote as further proof of Who/Whom in action:

Obama says the U.S. urges Ukraine's military not to get involved in a conflict that must be resolved politically. He's expressing outrage about images of Ukrainian security forces firing automatic guns on Ukrainian people.
Obama says in a statement that Ukraine should respect the right of protest and that protesters must be peaceful. He's calling for dialogue to reduce tensions and address the people's grievances.

Confused? Don't be - this was a statement made on February 20, calling on the Yanukovich government to appease the (pro-Empire) protesters. Now that it's his stooges have taken over in Kiev, the Emperor is all about crushing the (pro-Russia) protesters with overwhelming force.