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They can either take this opportunity or they can wait for the next
explosion.<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 02/26/2015 08:53 AM, Karen Aram via
Peace-discuss wrote:<br>
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<hr id="stopSpelling">From: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:globalnet@mindspring.com">globalnet@mindspring.com</a><br>
To: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:globenet@yahoogroups.com">globenet@yahoogroups.com</a><br>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2015 09:03:57 -0500<br>
Subject: [ufpj-activist] Ready for Nuclear War over Ukraine?<br>
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<div><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/23/ready-for-nuclear-war-over-ukraine/"
target="_blank">https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/23/ready-for-nuclear-war-over-ukraine/</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div>
<header>
<h1 class="ecxentry-title">Ready for Nuclear War over
Ukraine?</h1>
<h2 class="ecxentry-meta"><time class="ecxpublished
ecxupdated" datetime="2015-02-23"><font size="3">February
23, 2015</font></time></h2>
</header>
<div class="ecxentry-content">
<em><strong>Exclusive:</strong> A year after a U.S.-backed
coup ousted Ukraine’s elected president, the new powers
in Kiev are itching for a “full-scale war” with Russia —
and want the West’s backing even if it could provoke a
nuclear conflict, a Strangelovian madness that the U.S.
media ignores, writes Robert Parry.</em><br>
<span id="ecxmore-14293"></span>By Robert Parry<br>
A senior Ukrainian official is urging the West to risk a
nuclear conflagration in support of a “full-scale war”
with Russia that he says authorities in Kiev are now
seeking, another sign of the extremism that pervades the
year-old, U.S.-backed regime in Kiev.<br>
In a recent <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/ukraine-preparing-for-full-scale-war-says-former-envoy-to-canada-1.2964887"
target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">interview with Canada’s CBC Radio</span></a>,
Ukraine’s Deputy Foreign Minister Vadym Prystaiko
said, “Everybody is afraid of fighting with a nuclear
state. We are not anymore, in Ukraine — we’ve lost so many
people of ours, we’ve lost so much of our territory.”<br>
Prystaiko added, “However dangerous it sounds, we have to
stop [Russian President Vladimir Putin] somehow. For the
sake of the Russian nation as well, not just for the
Ukrainians and Europe.” The deputy foreign minister
announced that Kiev is preparing for “full-scale war”
against Russia and wants the West to supply lethal weapons
and training so the fight can be taken to Russia.<br>
“What we expect from the world is that the world will
stiffen up in the spine a little,” Prystaiko said.<br>
Yet, what is perhaps most remarkable about Prystaiko’s
“Dr. Strangelove” moment is that it produced almost no
reaction in the West. You have a senior Ukrainian official
saying that the world should risk nuclear war over a civil
conflict in Ukraine between its west, which favors closer
ties to Europe, and its east, which wants to maintain its
historic relationship with Russia.<br>
Why should such a pedestrian dispute justify the
possibility of vaporizing millions of human beings and
conceivably ending life on the planet? Yet, instead of
working out a plan for a federalized structure in Ukraine
or even allowing people in the east to vote on whether
they want to remain under the control of the Kiev regime,
the world is supposed to risk nuclear annihilation.<br>
But therein lies one of the under-reported stories of the
Ukraine crisis: There is a madness to the Kiev regime that
the West doesn’t want to recognize because to do so would
upend the dominant narrative of “our” good guys vs.
Russia’s bad guys. If we begin to notice that the
right-wing regime in Kiev is crazy and brutal, we
might also start questioning the “Russian aggression”
mantra.<br>
According to the Western “group think,” the post-coup
Ukrainian government “shares our values” by favoring
democracy and modernity, while the rebellious ethnic
Russians in eastern Ukraine are “Moscow’s minions”
representing dark forces of backwardness and violence,
personified by Russia’s “irrational” President Putin. In
this view, the conflict is a clash between the forces of
good and evil where there is no space for compromise.<br>
Yet, there is a craziness to this “group think” that is
highlighted by Prystaiko’s comments. Not only does the
Kiev regime display a cavalier attitude about dragging the
world into a nuclear catastrophe but it also has deployed
armed neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists to wage a
dirty war in the east that has involved torture
and death-squad activities.<br>
<strong>Not Since Adolf Hitler</strong><br>
No European government, since Adolf Hitler’s Germany, has
seen fit to dispatch Nazi storm troopers to wage war on a
domestic population, but the Kiev regime has and has done
so knowingly. Yet, across the West’s media/political
spectrum, there has been a studious effort to cover up
this reality, even to the point of ignoring facts that
have been well established.<br>
The New York Times and the Washington Post have
spearheaded this journalistic malfeasance by putting on
blinders so as not to see Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, such as
when describing the key role played by the Azov battalion
in the war against ethnic Russians in the east.<br>
On Feb. 20, in <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/is-mariupol-the-next-target-of-the-rebels-advance/2015/02/20/146fe2ae-b888-11e4-bc30-a4e75503948a_story.html"
target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">a report</span></a> from Mariupol, the
Post cited the Azov battalion’s importance in defending
the port city against a possible rebel offensive.
Correspondent Karoun Demirjian wrote:<br>
“Petro Guk, the commander of the Azov battalion’s
reinforcement operations in Mariupol, said in an interview
that the battalion is ‘getting ready for’ street-to-street
combat in the city. The Azov battalion, now a regiment in
the Ukrainian army, is known as one of the fiercest
fighting forces in the pro-Kiev operation.<br>
“But … it has pulled away from the front lines on a
scheduled rest-and-retraining rotation, Guk said, leaving
the Ukrainian army — a less capable force, in his opinion
— in its place. His advice to residents of Mariupol is to
get ready for the worst.<br>
“‘If it is your home, you should be ready to fight for it,
and accept that if the fight is for your home, you must
defend it,’ he said, when asked whether residents should
prepare to leave. Some are ready to heed that call, as a
matter of patriotic duty.”<br>
The Post’s stirring words fit with the Western media’s
insistent narrative and its refusal to include meaningful
background about the Azov battalion, which is known for
marching under Nazi banners, displaying the Swastika and
painting SS symbols on its helmets.<br>
The New York Times filed <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/11/world/europe/mariupol-ukraine-port-city-braces-for-worst-as-rebels-close-in-again.html?_r=0"
target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">a similarly disingenuous article</span></a>
from Mariupol on Feb. 11, depicting the ethnic Russian
rebels as barbarians at the gate with the Azov
battalion defending civilization. Though providing much
color and detail – and quoting an Azov leader prominently
– the Times left out the salient and well-known fact that
the Azov battalion is composed of neo-Nazis.<br>
But this inconvenient truth – that neo-Nazis have been
central to Kiev’s “self-defense forces” from last
February’s coup to the present – would disrupt the desired
propaganda message to American readers. So the New York
Times just ignores the Nazism and refers to Azov as a
“volunteer unit.”<br>
Yet, this glaring omission is prima facie proof of
journalistic bias. There’s no way that the editors of the
Post and Times don’t know that the presence of neo-Nazis
is newsworthy. Indeed, there’s a powerful irony in this
portrayal of Nazis as the bulwark of Western civilization
against the Russian hordes from the East. It was, after
all, the Russians who broke the back of Nazism in World
War II as Hitler sought to subjugate Europe and
destroy Western civilization as we know it.<br>
That the Nazis are now being depicted as defenders of
Western ideals has to be the ultimate man-bites-dog story.
But it goes essentially unreported in the New York Times
and Washington Post as does the inconvenient presence of
other Nazis holding prominent positions in the post-coup
regime, including Andriy Parubiy, who was the military
commander of the Maidan protests and served as the first
national security chief of the Kiev regime. [See
Consortiumnews.com’s “<a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://consortiumnews.com/2014/04/16/ukraine-through-the-us-looking-glass/"
target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">Ukraine, Through the US Looking Glass.</span></a>”]<br>
<strong>The Nazi Reality</strong><br>
Regarding the Azov battalion, the Post and Times have
sought to bury the Nazi reality, but both have also
acknowledged it in passing. For instance, on Aug. 10,
2014, a Times’ <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/world/europe/ukraine.html?ref=world&_r=0"
target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">article</span></a> mentioned the neo-Nazi
nature of the Azov battalion in the last three paragraphs
of a lengthy story on another topic.<br>
“The fighting for Donetsk has taken on a lethal pattern:
The regular army bombards separatist positions from afar,
followed by chaotic, violent assaults by some of the
half-dozen or so paramilitary groups surrounding Donetsk
who are willing to plunge into urban combat,” the Times
reported.<br>
“Officials in Kiev say the militias and the army
coordinate their actions, but the militias, which count
about 7,000 fighters, are angry and, at times,
uncontrollable. One known as Azov, which took over the
village of Marinka, flies a neo-Nazi symbol resembling a
Swastika as its flag.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://consortiumnews.com/2015/02/11/nyt-whites-out-ukraines-brown-shirts/"
target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">NYT Whites Out Ukraine’s Brownshirts.</span></a>”]<br>
Similarly, the Post published <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/as-leaders-talk-peace-some-ukrainians-contemplate-guerrilla-war/2014/09/12/4e36884e-aa74-40d6-8c61-8b6fe3ffd638_story.html"
target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">a lead story</span></a> last Sept. 12
describing the Azov battalion in flattering terms, saving
for the last three paragraphs the problematic reality that
the fighters are fond of displaying the Swastika:<br>
“In one room, a recruit had emblazoned a swastika above
his bed. But Kirt [a platoon leader] … dismissed questions
of ideology, saying that the volunteers — many of them
still teenagers — embrace symbols and espouse extremist
notions as part of some kind of ‘romantic’ idea.”<br>
Other news organizations have been more forthright about
this Nazi reality. For instance, the conservative London
Telegraph published <a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11025137/Ukraine-crisis-the-neo-Nazi-brigade-fighting-pro-Russian-separatists.html"
target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">an article</span></a> by correspondent Tom
Parfitt, who wrote: “Kiev’s use of volunteer
paramilitaries to stamp out the Russian-backed Donetsk and
Luhansk ‘people’s republics’… should send a shiver down
Europe’s spine.<br>
“Recently formed battalions such as Donbas, Dnipro and
Azov, with several thousand men under their command, are
officially under the control of the interior ministry but
their financing is murky, their training inadequate and
their ideology often alarming. The Azov men use the
neo-Nazi Wolfsangel (Wolf’s Hook) symbol on their banner
and members of the battalion are openly white
supremacists, or anti-Semites.”<br>
Based on interviews with militia members, the Telegraph
reported that some of the fighters doubted the Holocaust,
expressed admiration for Hitler and acknowledged that they
are indeed Nazis.<br>
Andriy Biletsky, the Azov commander, “is also head of an
extremist Ukrainian group called the Social National
Assembly,” according to the Telegraph article which quoted
a commentary by Biletsky as declaring: “The historic
mission of our nation in this critical moment is to lead
the White Races of the world in a final crusade for their
survival. A crusade against the Semite-led Untermenschen.”<br>
The Telegraph questioned Ukrainian authorities in Kiev who
acknowledged that they were aware of the extremist
ideologies of some militias but insisted that the higher
priority was having troops who were strongly motivated to
fight.<br>
Azov fighters even emblazon the Swastika and the SS
insignia on their helmets. NBC News <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/ukraine-crisis/german-tv-shows-nazi-symbols-helmets-ukraine-soldiers-n198961"
target="_blank"><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">reported</span></a>: “Germans were
confronted with images of their country’s dark past … when
German public broadcaster ZDF showed video of Ukrainian
soldiers with Nazi symbols on their helmets in its evening
newscast.”<br>
But it’s now clear that far-right extremism is not limited
to the militias sent to kill ethnic Russians in the east
or to the presence of a few neo-Nazi officials who were
rewarded for their roles in last February’s coup. The
fanaticism is present at the center of the Kiev regime,
including its deputy foreign minister who speaks casually
about a “full-scale war” with nuclear-armed Russia.<br>
<strong>An Orwellian World</strong><br>
In a “normal world,” U.S. and European journalists would
explain to their readers how insane all this is; how a
dispute over the pace for implementing a European
association agreement while also maintaining some economic
ties with Russia could have been worked out within the
Ukrainian political system, that it was not grounds for a
U.S.-backed “regime change” last February, let alone a
civil war, and surely not nuclear war.<br>
But these are clearly not normal times. To a degree that I
have not seen in my 37 years covering Washington, there is
a totalitarian quality to the West’s current “group think”
about Ukraine with virtually no one who “matters”
deviating from the black-and-white depiction of good guys
in Kiev vs. bad guys in Donetsk and Moscow.<br>
And, if you want to see how the “objective” New York Times
dealt with demonstrations in Moscow and other Russian
cities protesting last year’s coup against Ukrainian
President Viktor Yanukovych, read Sunday’s <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/world/europe/kerry-says-further-sanctions-on-russia-will-be-discussed-over-ukraine.html?_r=0"
target="_blank">dispatch</a> by the Times’ neocon
national security correspondent Michael R. Gordon, best
known as the lead writer with Judith Miller on the
infamous “aluminum tube” story in 2002, helping to set the
stage for the invasion of Iraq in 2003.<br>
Here’s how Gordon explained the weekend’s anti-coup
protests: “The official narrative as reported by state-run
television in Russia, and thus accepted by most Russians,
is that the uprising in Ukraine last year was an
American-engineered coup, aided by Ukrainian Nazis, and
fomented to overthrow Mr. Yanukovych, a pro-Russian
president.”<br>
In other words, the Russians are being brainwashed while
the readers of the New York Times are getting their
information from an independent news source that would
never be caught uncritically distributing government
propaganda, another example of the upside-down Orwellian
world that Americans now live in. [See, for example, “<a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://consortiumnews.com/2014/04/23/nyt-retracts-russian-photo-scoop/"
target="_blank">NYT Retracts Russian Photo Scoop</a>.”]<br>
In our land of the free, there is no “official narrative”
and the U.S. government would never stoop to propaganda.
Everyone just happily marches in lockstep behind the
conventional wisdom of a faultless Kiev regime that
“shares our values” and can do no wrong — while ignoring
the brutality and madness of coup leaders who deploy Nazis
and invite a nuclear holocaust for the world.<br>
<strong>Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of
the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and
Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, </strong><em><strong>America’s
Stolen Narrative,</strong></em><strong> either in </strong><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="https://org.salsalabs.com/o/1868/t/12126/shop/shop.jsp?storefront_KEY=1037"
target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">print here</span></strong></a><strong> or
as an e-book (from </strong><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Stolen-Narrative-Washington-ebook/dp/B009RXXOIG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350755575&sr=8-1&keywords=americas+stolen+narrative"
target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">Amazon</span></strong></a><strong> and </strong><a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/s/americas-stolen-narrative?keyword=americas+stolen+narrative&store=ebook&iehack=%E2%98%A0"
target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">barnesandnoble.com</span></strong></a><strong>).
You also can order Robert Parry’s trilogy on the Bush
Family and its connections to various right-wing
operatives for only $34. The trilogy includes </strong><em><strong>America’s
Stolen Narrative</strong></em><strong>. For details on
this offer, </strong><a moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://consortiumnews.com/2014/06/25/continuing-parrys-3-book-offer/"
target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration:
underline;">click here</span></strong></a><strong>.</strong><br>
</div>
</div>
<div><strong></strong> </div>
<div><strong><font color="#008000">Sign the petition to the US
Senate "No Weapons to Ukraine"</font></strong> <a
moz-do-not-send="true"
href="http://diy.rootsaction.org/petitions/no-weapons-to-ukraine?bucket&source=facebook-share-button&time=1424815500"
target="_blank">here</a></div>
<div> </div>
<div> </div>
<div>Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in
Space<br>
PO Box 652<br>
Brunswick, ME 04011<br>
(207) 443-9502<br>
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href="mailto:globalnet@mindspring.com">globalnet@mindspring.com</a><br>
<a moz-do-not-send="true" href="http://www.space4peace.org"
target="_blank">www.space4peace.org</a> <br>
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href="http://space4peace.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://space4peace.blogspot.com/</a>
(blog)</div>
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