Jews Told to Register In Eastern Ukraine

(Power Line Blog) – More evidence that we are living through a reprise of the 1930s:

Jews in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk where pro-Russian militants have taken over government buildings were told they have to “register” with the Ukrainians who are trying to make the city become part of Russia, according to Israeli media.

Jews emerging from a synagogue say they were handed leaflets that ordered the city’s Jews to provide a list of property they own and pay a registration fee “or else have their citizenship revoked, face deportation and see their assets confiscated,” reported Ynet News, Israel’s largest news website.

The leaflets were issued in the name of Denis Pushilin, as chairman of “Donetsk’s temporary government.” Pushilin reportedly has denied responsibility for them. The leaflets obviously don’t constitute any sort of official order, but they aren’t just something somebody scrawled on a sign, either. This is a picture of one of them:

It is possible that this might be a false flag operation, although no suspicions of that nature have been reported. In any event, it is chilling that when cracks begin to appear in the West’s hold on this part of the world, signs of vicious anti-Semitism immediately appear.

[H/T PowerLineblog: John Hinderaker]

Russian jet passes at close range over US warship in Black Sea

(Fox News) – A Russian warplane made several close-range passes by an American warship in the Black Sea over the weekend, in what the Pentagon is calling a “provocative” move amid escalating tensions in the region.

The jet, a Russian Su-24, made numerous low-altitude passes on Saturday over the USS Donald Cook, a guided-missile Navy destroyer in the western Black Sea, the Pentagon confirmed.

According to officials, the jet made a total of 12 passes over the course of 90 minutes. It did not once respond to multiple contacts and warnings from the USS Donald Cook, despite the fact that the U.S. Navy ship was able to reach the cockpit directly.

The Pentagon says that the jet had no visible missiles attached to its wings and that the incident ended without any exchange of fire.

“This provocative and unprofessional Russian action is inconsistent with international protocols and previous agreements of a professional interaction between our militaries,” Pentagon spokesman Col. Steve Warren said.

The low altitude of the jet varied at times from “virtual sea level to several thousand feet,” Warren said.  The jet did not “buzz” the Cook, but “flew too close,” he said.

A second Russian Su-24 was in the area the entire time, but did not make any similarly provocative maneuvers.

The Pentagon says there has been no official communication with the Russians since the incident, and that a formal protest has not yet been filed.

It’s not unusual for U.S. Navy ships to operate in the Black Sea. The Donald Cook moved into the region last week for what the Navy called “routine operations,” though the deployment is seen mostly as a symbolic response to tensions along the Ukrainian-Russian border.

The jet encounter further escalates those tensions as pro-Russian protesters seize or block government buildings in eastern Ukraine. U.S. officials have accused Moscow of fueling the unrest, as was alleged in the Crimean Peninsula last month.

The Obama administration has threatened further sanctions amid the violence.

[H/T FoxNews]

Chickens come home to roost for Obama…

(New York Post) – Today’s quiz: What do Vladimir Putin’s aggression and ObamaCare’s troubles have in common? OK, that was too easy.

It is impossible to dismiss as mere coincidence the Russian Bear’s invasion of Ukraine and the continuing mayhem of the Affordable Care Act. In their own ways, each reflects the full flowering of the policies of Barack Obama.

His chickens are coming home to roost, and what a mess they are making.

Obama’s sixth year in the White House is shaping up as his worst, and that’s saying something. He’s been in the Oval Office so long that it is obscene to blame his problems on George W. Bush, the weather or racism. Obama owns the world he made, or more accurately, the world he tried to remake.

Nothing important has worked as promised, and there is every reason to believe the worst is yet to come. The president’s casual remark the other day that he worries about “a nuclear weapon ­going off in Manhattan” inadvertently reflected the fear millions of Americans have about his leadership. Not necessarily about a bomb, but about where he is taking the country.

We are racing downhill and he is stepping on the gas. Will he stop before the nation crashes?

Ideologues love to dream, and some do it eloquently. Robert Kennedy famously said: “There are those who look at things the way they are, and ask why . . . I dream of things that never were, and ask why not?”

Mario Cuomo, no slouch at dreaming, nonetheless offered a caveat, saying, “You campaign in poetry, you govern in prose.”

Obama hasn’t figured out the difference. Even more alarming, he shows no signs of trying to learn. In the ways of the world, he remains a know-it-all rookie.

The view from his faculty lounge has no space for reality. Anything that doesn’t fit the grand plan is dismissed as illegitimate. So while global hot spots multiply and the world grows dangerously unstable, the president still plans to slash the military.

His trip abroad last week further secured his reputation for historic ineptitude. It wasn’t that the trip was a disaster — it never rose to that level. His presence and his promises simply made no difference.

He failed to move the European Union toward a firmer stance on Russia, created bizarre headlines by differing with the Vatican over what he and the pope discussed, and got not-so-veiled threats from the Saudis about Syria and Iran.

He could have stayed home and not done worse.

No president can win ’em all, but Obama’s foreign-policy record is unblemished by success. From east to west and north to south, America’s standing and influence have declined universally.

It is impossible for a US president to be irrelevant, but Obama is testing the proposition.

The frequent reports that Putin laughs when Obama warns of consequences can’t be far from the truth. Otherwise, Putin would be cautious instead of carving up neighbors and massing his military. It was also noteworthy that, after their Friday phone talk, ­Putin copied the Vatican and put out his own version of the discussion. Two can play the spin game, he seemed to be saying.

ObamaCare is the domestic expression of the president’s ineptitude. The law that was supposed to fix health care has become a problem for millions, and now enjoys mere 26 percent approval, a poll finds. It is proving so unworkable that the White House has given up defending it as written and instead simply changes key provisions when they prove impossible to implement or politically inconvenient.

Change No. 38 came when officials extended the March 31 deadline for signing up. Never mind that those same officials said recently there would be no extension, and that the law wouldn’t allow it.

Presto — the limits on his power are moot because the president says so. Meanwhile, aides claim they don’t know how many of the 6 million who enrolled actually paid for insurance.

A Caesar at home and a Chamberlain abroad, Obama manages to simultaneously provoke fury and ridicule. He bullies critics here while shrinking from adversaries there.

He divides the country and unites the world against us, ­diminishing the nation in both ways. His reign of error can’t end soon enough, nor can it end well.

Bronze meddle by gov’t tan foes

A chain of tanning salons has learned an important lesson: Only the government can legally lie.

Hollywood Tans, which has seven franchises in New York and scores around the nation, promises to stop promoting certain health benefits of tanning in a deal with New York’s attorney general.

I guess that means the company can’t claim that “if you like your tan, you can keep your tan.”

A backpedalin biz

Color me confused. The Wall Street Journal reports that business experts say the big problem with Citi Bike is that the system is “underpriced and underused.”

In theory, then, raising prices will yield more customers. Really — that’s how business works?

Water under Chris’ bridge

Outrage! Scandal! Waste! You have to marvel at the absolute certainty of those who are denouncing a report that found Gov. Chris Christie knew nothing about the Bridgegate lane closings.

It is true Christie’s office hired the lawyers who did the report, but does that make it less credible than the probes being conducted by Jersey Democrats who repeatedly accuse him of lying? And the report is no more biased than The New York Times’ breathless coverage, which is as naked as the ladies in Bada Bing!

The Gray Lady outdid itself in Saturday’s paper with a snarling package that included a front-page story, a full page inside the paper, an editorial and an op-ed column. The editors also chose a photo of Christie that made him look film-noir sinister.

Of special note was a convoluted article on a conversation that may or may not have happened and may or may not have included any relevant exchange between the governor and a former associate.

The headline on the piece was a master of innuendo without a smidgen of fact: “Potentially Explosive Detail in Bridge Scandal is Unlikely to Be Confirmed.” The paper should have included tin-foil hats so readers could decipher the coded message to partisans.

None of this is meant to suggest that Bridgegate isn’t newsworthy, or that Christie is blameless. Rather, the issue is one of proportion and fairness, not to mention at least a pretense of respect for evidence.

Compared to the unanswered questions about the deaths of four Americans at the hands of terrorists in Benghazi, Bridgegate is more chaff than wheat. Similarly, compelling evidence that the IRS denied conservative groups equal treatment is a far more important story about government abuse of power than a traffic jam.

But those stories reflect badly on a Democratic president, so the Times doesn’t have much interest in getting the truth, especially when there is a Republican they can turn into a piñata.

[H/T NewYorkPost: Michael Goodwin]

Obama Must Show He’ll Use Military Means to Deter Russia in Ukraine

(The Daily Beast) – To deter Putin and other aggressors, diplomatic and economic slaps are not enough; the U.S. needs a military dimension.

Don’t pop the champagne corks just yet because Vladimir Putin phoned Barack Obama to pursue diplomacy on Ukraine and environs. It may be just a ploy, like Moscow’s proposal to denude Syria of chemical weapons to head off a potent U.S. air strike against President Assad’s forces. It may just be a gambit to tamp down the West’s drive toward greater sanctions against Russia. And all sinister explanations of the call gain weight by the fact that some 25,000 Russian troops still threaten Ukraine’s borders.

Even if Putin is serious about diplomacy for the moment, there is a deeper problem afoot for Obama. It is one that the White House rejects outright, but one that officials outside the White House and experts outside the administration are certainly fretting about. It is that Obama’s idea of combating aggression essentially by means of economic sanctions and “diplomacy” is not nearly enough, that the costs of aggression have to be raised, and that there has to be a stronger and more credible military dimension to U.S. national security policy. Whether the White House admits it or not, foes the world over seem to have concluded that Obama has taken the U.S. military force option off the table and made aggression easier.

In that vein, take a second look at what Obama said last Wednesday about a Russian attack on Ukraine: “Of course, Ukraine is not a member of NATO, in part because of its close and complex history with Russia. Nor will Russia be dislodged from Crimea or deterred from further escalation by military force.” That sounds awfully close to telling Putin that if he wants to grab more of Ukraine or all of it he need not worry about a U.S. military response. In effect, the U.S. president is saying that the only cost to Russia for totally violating the basic rules of international behavior is the threat of tougher sanctions (and this only if the Europeans and others can get their act together). Why on earth would Obama give Putin this virtual free ride?

Did the White House fear that unless the Ukrainians felt totally abandoned they might be foolhardy enough to actually precipitate a war with Russia? If this was the White House’s worry, Obama could have warned Ukrainian leaders publicly and privately that their only chance of help from the West was to make it absolutely clear that Moscow was the guilty party.

When Obama said that the United States would do nothing militarily to protect Ukraine against an attack, he was in effect walking away from the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 signed by Ukraine, Russia, Britain and America. By this paper, Ukraine gave back its nuclear weapons to Russia on a pledge by all parties not to violate Ukraine’s security and sovereignty. To be sure, neither London nor Washington was legally obliged to defend Ukraine if attacked. But it is perfectly obvious that Kiev never would have given up its nukes unless it believed the U.S. would come to its defense in some meaningful fashion.

The Budapest document makes sense historically only as a quid pro quo agreement resting upon American credibility to act. The United States cannot simply walk away from the plain meaning of the Budapest Memorandum and leave Ukraine in the lurch. And how would this complete washing of U.S. hands affect U.S. efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, supposedly a top national priority? Why should any nation forego nukes or give them away like Ukraine, if other nations, and especially the U.S., feel zero responsibility for their defense? It’s not that Washington has to send ground troops or start using its nuclear weapons; it’s just that potential aggressors have to see some potential military cost.

It’s bad enough that Obama thinks of the U.S. response to Russia in Ukraine almost exclusively in terms of diplomatic isolation of the bad guy, plus economic sanctions such as they are or might be, and a touch of military aid. But the real worry is that this has become his pattern worldwide.

If potential aggressors come to think that their power grabs will be met solely by diplomatic harassment and some economic squeezing, they will be tempted increasingly to snatch whatever they want first and worry later. Greedy lawbreakers have been  emboldened by Obama’s unenforced “red lines” in Syria. Same goes for North Korean rockets landing on South Korean lands without serious penalty. And the same holds for China’s new pattern of muscle flexing to establish its interests in the East and South China Seas. Ukraine only reinforces the pattern.

Economic sanctions are a good tool, but not a substitute for a credible military option. Even potent economic sanctions over decades have not brought Cuba, Iran, and North Korea to their knees.  Russia will be even more difficult to break with economic sanctions because it is the eighth largest economy in the world.

How can the U.S. add muscle in the present Ukraine crisis?

The boldest and riskiest course would be to dispatch 50 or 60 of the incredibly potent F-22s to Poland plus Patriot batteries and appropriate ground support and protection. Russian generals and even Putin surely know that the F-22s could smash the far inferior Russian air force and then punish Russian armies invading eastern Ukraine or elsewhere in the region.

There’s no sense at all in making this move unless Obama unambiguously resolves to use the F-22s. The worst thing to do is bluff. Nor would the dangers end there even if Obama were not bluffing; Putin might think he was bluffing anyway and start a war.  With all these complications and risks, the Obama team still should give this option a serious look—and let Russia and our NATO partners know this tough course is under serious consideration. Obama has sent a few F-15’s and F-16’s to Eastern Europe, some military aid to Ukraine and other states. But everyone knows this is tokenism.

Another plausible and perhaps less risky measure: help prepare Ukrainians for guerrilla war against an invading Russian force. Pound for pound in conventional war, the Ukrainian forces are no match whatsoever for the Russians. But irregular Ukrainian troops armed with first-class rifles, mortars, and explosive devices would do Russian troops great damage. Russians know this. They have surely not forgotten the horrors fighting guerrillas in Afghanistan.

These steps would be plausible, purely defensive, and a deterrent for starters. They would demonstrate to Moscow that further aggression against Ukraine would result in much more than economic and diplomatic slaps.  Credible force has been the missing ingredient in U.S. policy. Support for what might be the Ukrainian Resistance, combined with an F-22 deployment to Poland “to protect U.S./NATO security interests in the region,” should give Putin pause. And this approach would make the dictators in Pyongyang, Damascus, and Beijing think twice now as well.

[H/T DailyBeast: Leslie H. Gelb]

U.S. military in no shape to face the grandsons of the Red Army

(Press TV) – War fever is in the air. Fifty thousand Russian troops and armor are massed on Ukraine’s eastern border. Europe and Washington worry that the reborn Red Army may sweep west across Ukraine, Moldova, the Baltics – even into Poland.

The West is suffering from a bad case of Cold War chills.

Not only are the Western powers worried, they are discovering that they likely lack the means to stop possible Russian incursions into what was the former Soviet Empire.

They should not be at all surprised that Russia is again showing signs of life.

Frederick the Great, the renowned Prussian warrior-king, warned: “he who tried to defend everything, defends nothing.”

Every young officers should have Great Fredrick’s words tattooed on his right hand. Soon after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a small number of strategists, this analyst included, warned NATO, “do not move east. It’s a bridge too far.”

Soviet chairman Mikhail Gorbachev had agreed to let rebellious East Germany escape Soviet control – but in exchange for NATO’s vow not to push east in previously Soviet dominated areas of Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. The US and NATO agreed, then quickly broke their pledge.

NATO’s advance into Eastern Europe, the Baltic and the Caucasus – not to mention former Soviet Central Asia – that brought the US-led alliance right up to Russia’s borders. US anti- missile systems were scheduled to go into Poland, close to Russian territory. New US bases were set up in Bulgaria, Rumania and Central Asia.

Unsubtle US efforts to bring ex-Russian Ukraine and the vital Sevastopol naval base in Crimea under NATO control – no doubt to punish Russia for supporting Syria and Iran – proved the last straw for the Kremlin.

Talking tough is easy. Defending Eastern Europe from a possible Russian invasion will not be. The main problem is that while US/NATO guarantees have been advanced to Russia’s sensitive borders, their military capabilities have not. In short, commitment without capability.

Russia’s military could take over the Baltic states of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia in an afternoon. Sizeable portions of their populations are ethnic Russians.

NATO is not deployed or equipped to go to war over Ukraine: its troops are far to the west, without supply systems or air cover. Besides, European powers, aside from the little Nazis in Denmark and Ukraine’s nationalists, want no part of war with Russia – that’s left to the war hawks safely at home in Washington.

The barrage of trade sanctions Washington is imposed on Russia is an act of pre-war. We should remember that US sanctions imposed on Japan in 1941 that led Tokyo to attack the Western powers.

During the Cold War, the US had some 400,000 troops in Europe, 800 warplanes and potent naval forces. Today, the US has only 43,000 troops left in Europe: two combat brigades and the rest air force and logistics personnel. The old days when the Soviet Union had 50,000 tanks pointed at Western Europe are long gone, but Russia’s modernized armed forces still pack punch.

Meanwhile, the US has scattered forces all over the globe in what Frederick the Great would call an effort to defend everything. Most notably, US troops have gone to Afghanistan, Iraq, then Kuwait, and many home. America’s strongest divisions are now guarding Kansas and Texas instead of German’s Fulda Gap and Hanover.

America’s military power has been dissipated in little colonial wars, just as Britain’s were in the 19th century. When British imperial troops had to face real German soldiers, they were slaughtered. Similarly, the US military, reconfigured after Vietnam to wage guerilla wars, is in no shape today to face the grandsons of the once mighty Red Army.

Cautious, patient Vlad Putin is not about to invade Poland. The real danger is what would happen if the ethnic Russian inhabitants of the Baltic states, Ukraine and Moldova rise up and demand reunification with Mother Russia?

Would Russia go to their aid? Would Europe and the US be ready to risk nuclear war for obscure places like Luhansk, Kharkov, Chisinau or Kaunus?

In Ukraine and Crimea we are now seeing the results of overly aggressive Western geopolitics. Russia was woefully underestimated. A crisis between nuclear-armed powers should never have been allowed to occur. It’s sheer madness. Like nuclear-armed children fighting over a toy.

[H/T PressTV: Eric Margolis]

This Is How Obama’s Weakness In Ukraine Embarrasses America

(Western Journalism) – My, how the mighty have fallen under the stewardship of Barack Hussein Obama.

This weekend on CNN’s State of the Union, President Obama’s Deputy National Security Adviser, Tony Blinken, revealed a shocking truth.

When asked about the impact of U.S. military assistance in Ukraine, Blinken said, “It’s very unlikely to change Russia’s calculus and prevent an invasion.”

Blinken is warning that the United States, a country that was called the world’s only superpower a few short years ago, is powerless to stop Russia from invading Ukraine. Worse yet, that means the United States is incapable of holding up its end of a treaty guaranteeing Ukraine’s territorial integrity.

The situation is desperate, according to Sunday’s AFP reports. Russian troops have consolidated Crimea’s annexation. A sweeping takeover of Ukrainian military bases in Crimea is basically over. The Russians met very little opposition.

Ukraine’s acting Defense Minister, Igor Tenyukh, lamented publicly about how his naval forces were ready to surrender to Putin’s Black Sea Fleet: “You know that in recent days, we have had our ships blockaded and seized, even though our commanders had the authorization to use force,” Tenyukh said. “Unfortunately, the commanders made decisions on the spot. They chose not to use their weapons in order to avoid bloodshed.”

So Barack Obama has decided to fly to Europe to huddle with leaders from Britain, France, and Germany. Up to this point, the sanctions imposed by this merry band of appeasers have elicited yawns and laughs from Russia. And wider economic sanctions are off the table because Russia has the power to dim the lights and lower the thermostats across all of Europe. Without Russian natural gas, Europeans would almost certainly face energy shortages.

That means the United States has no real options. If we actually airlifted troops into Ukraine to counter the Russian buildup, we’d likely be defeated by a stronger opponent on what is essentially its home turf.

A Plan of Action

Meanwhile, an even more threatening development is taking place in our own hemisphere, and it’s gone virtually unreported. Russia is moving advisers and arms, and generally increasing its involvement in Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. Cuba and Nicaragua were both flashpoints of contention with Russia during the Cold War.

Obama needs to make it clear to the leaders of these three Latin American countries that there will be grave consequences for deepening ties with Russia. If Russia wants us out of its sphere of influence, the United States must demand that Russia stays out of ours.

Next, we should do what we can to bolster the current government in Ukraine. Any money used to quickly strengthen the regime would likely be well spent. Yet Obama, who has repeatedly used his power to act unilaterally in domestic affairs, has let the bill to help Ukraine get bogged down in Congress over unrelated issues.

As Commander-in-Chief, Obama has the power to move defense policy through. He should order the Pentagon to immediately provide supplies to the Ukrainian military.

Finally, he should let Russia continue overextending itself financially. Russia has its own economic problems, and carrying Crimea won’t help. As Reagan administration official Dr. Donald Devine wrote recently:

“While President Putin may seem to be riding high about now, he has made a terrible economic mistake. Ukraine already subsidizes Crimea, and Russian parliamentarian Leonid Slutsky estimates it will cost his country $3 billion more in normal expenditures per year, and perhaps $20 billion over the next three years, ‘maybe even $30 billion,’ although he thinks it is worth the cost psychologically.”

Devine concluded that “a struggling Russia can’t afford it. Russian control of any more of economically bankrupt Ukraine would be an unbearable burden. Removing Crimea from Ukraine actually strengthens it. It saves Ukraine [from] paying the subsidies and, more importantly, removes 2,000,000 Russian-speaking citizens who normally vote against Western Ukrainian candidates, making it more likely for an anti-Russia majority to prevail for the foreseeable future.”

Over the longer run, America must get its own domestic and defense policies realigned. Welfare and healthcare overspending has hurt our ability to keep our defenses sound… And the first duty of the U.S. government is to keep its people safe and free.

[H/T WesternJournalism: Floyd Brown]

China Joins Forces With Russia Against U.S.

(Western Journalism) – As Russian military action escalates in the Ukraine, the weakness of American influence is being highlighted on the world’s stage. The White House reported this weekend that Russia is “in an occupation position in Crimea,” a Ukrainian peninsula reportedly being bombarded with more than 6,000 air and naval forces.

 

Secretary of State John Kerry is expected to visit Kiev this week to meet with Ukraine’s current leaders.

 

While American leaders offer rhetorical support for Ukrainian opposition forces, China has recently emerged as a Russian ally in the takeover.

 

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, announcedMonday that he and Wang Li, who holds an equivalent position in China, discussed the ongoing occupation of Crimea, describing “broadly coinciding points of view” regarding the issue.

 

In addition to America and Canada, several European nations issued a statement indicating they “condemn the Russian Federation’s clear violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine.”

 

William Hague, Britain’s foreign secretary, is already in Kiev and called the current action this century’s biggest European crisis.

 

“It’s impossible to be optimistic at the moment,” he asserted. “We’re not in any position to be optimistic about the security situation and what is happening in the Crimea.”

 

Russia, which has military capabilities that best the Ukraine in virtually all respects, is now further emboldened by its alignment with China. The Russian parliament authorized President Vladimir Putin to use force in the region Saturday, leading to an operation that took place as millions of Americans were watching the Oscar awards Sunday evening.

 

It remains to be seen what, if any, support China might offer in Russia’s action. Likewise, America has yet to offer any firm response to the ongoing dispute.

 

Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatseniuk remains defiant, however, insisting the nation will “never give up Crimea to anyone” and imploring Russian occupiers to leave the area.

 

Still, an alliance between China and Russia in any military operation is cause for concern around the world. As Trevor Loudon, a political activist and author from New Zealand, reportedin the recent Western Conservative Conference, both nations have hinted at both the capability and desire to potentially engage in military action against the U.S.

 

Meanwhile, the Obama administration is determined to continue shrinking American armed forces and driving up our national debt, making our potential retaliation to such threats woefully inadequate.

[H/T Western Journalism: B. Christopher Agee]

Obama Warns Putin Against Military Intervention In Ukraine

(Reuters) – U.S. President Barack Obama has warned Russia against any military intervention in Ukraine after the country’s new leaders accused Moscow of deploying forces in the Crimea region.

A week after Russian-backed President Viktor Yanukovich was ousted in Kiev, armed men took control of two airports in Crimea on Friday in what Kiev described as an invasion and occupation by Moscow’s forces in a region with an ethnic Russian majority.

Acting President Oleksander Turchinov said Russia, which has a naval base in Crimea, was following a scenario like the one before it went to war with fellow former Soviet republic Georgia in 2008 over two breakaway regions.

The crisis, which began after Yanukovich triggered protests by spurning a political and trade deal with the European Union, is stoking tensions in a geopolitical battle between East and West that has echoes of the Cold War.

“We are now deeply concerned by reports of military movements taken by the Russian Federation inside of Ukraine,” Obama told reporters in Washington.

“The United States will stand with the international community in affirming that there will be costs for any military intervention in Ukraine.”

Any violation of Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity would be “deeply destabilizing,” he said.

Obama and European leaders would consider skipping a G8 summit this summer in the Russian city of Sochi if Moscow intervened militarily, a senior U.S. official said.

The G8 includes the world’s seven leading industrial nations and Russia, and Russian President Vladimir Putin considers hosting such events as a way to show how far Russia has come since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991.

Washington’s relations with Moscow are already cool because of differences over the conflict in Syria, Putin’s record on human rights and Russia’s decision to harbor former U.S. spy agency contractor Edward Snowden.

Russia’s ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin, dismissed the criticism, saying any movements of its forces in Crimea were in line with agreements with Ukraine.

YANUKOVICH DEFIANT

Gunmen have taken over the regional parliament in Crimea, and control the main international airport and a military airfield on the strategic Black Sea peninsula.

A representative of Acting President Turchinov said 13 Russian aircraft had landed with 150 personnel on each plane. The Ukrainian leadership also said more than 10 Russian military helicopters flew over Crimea, and Russian servicemen blockaded a unit of the Ukrainian border guard near the port city of Sevastopol, home to Russia’s Black Sea fleet.

A local television station reported that another military aerodrome had been taken over by armed men overnight, but the report was not independently confirmed.

Phone lines have been severed in some areas and witnesses say they have seen armored personnel carriers on the move.

There has been no bloodshed and no military clashes despite a warning by Ukraine’s Defense Ministry that “radical forces” planned to disarm Ukrainian military units in Crimea.

Ukraine’s leaders say about 100 people were killed, some of them by police snipers, during protests in the Ukrainian capital Kiev that began last November.

Yanukovich, 63, resurfaced in southern Russia on Friday after a week on the run, defiantly telling a packed room of journalists that he was still leader of the sprawling former Soviet republic of 46 million.

He said he had not ordered police to open fire on the protesters in Kiev and that Russia should use all means at its disposal to stop what he described as chaos in Ukraine.

“Russia cannot be indifferent, cannot be a bystander watching the fate of as close a partner as Ukraine,” Yanukovich told a news conference. “Russia must use all means at its disposal to end the chaos and terror gripping Ukraine.”

He said he had not seen Putin since fleeing to Russia but had spoken to him by telephone and was surprised the Russian leader was not more vocal on the crisis.

Putin has said nothing in public about the crisis since Yanukovich was ousted a week ago.

A Kremlin statement offered conciliatory remarks about international cooperation over heavily indebted Ukraine but Russian officials have blamed the crisis on the West and accused it of meddling in what Moscow considers its back yard. Loss of influence in Ukraine is a bitter blow for Putin.

COOPERATION OVER FINANCIAL ASSISTANCE

The Russian Foreign ministry said on its Facebook page that Russia’s Consulate General in Crimea would hand out Russian passports to the servicemen of Ukraine’s now-disbanded Berkut riot police. Protesters had accused the Berkut of firing the live bullets that killed dozens of protesters in Kiev.

Moscow has also promised to defend the interests of its citizens in Ukraine. It has said it will not intervene by force, but its rhetoric has echoed the run-up to its war in Georgia, where it said ethnic Russians in the breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia needed protection.

Any armed confrontation in Crimea would have major global repercussions.

Moves are under way, however, to prop up Ukraine’s faltering economy. The new Ukrainian leadership has said the country needs about $35 billion over the next two years to stave off bankruptcy. It said on Friday it hoped to get financial aid soon and was prepared to fulfill the reform criteria of the International Monetary Fund, which will visit Kiev next week.

The fate of a $15-billion Russian bailout package is unclear, with only about $3 billion of it released so far.

http://www.reuters.com/resources_v2/flash/video_embed.swf?videoId=285137047&edition=BETAUS

[H/T Reuters]

George Soros Funded “Libyan Scenario” Now Unfolding in Ukraine

Back in 2011 the Party of Regions warned that if left unchecked the globalist financier George Soros would unleash a “Libyan scenario” on Ukraine.

“I even have information that Soros has allocated certain funds in order to prepare a certain group of young boys here in Ukraine who could launch any existing projects based on the North Africa examples,” said Aleksandr Yefremov, head of the Party of Regions parliamentary faction.

A “certain group of young boys,” namely violent gun-toting hooligans from the Right Sector and associated neofascist groups, are reportedly in control of Kyiv as of Saturday. Members of 31st Hundred, an opposition group from Lviv, were said to be in control of Ukraine’s Parliament building, The New York Times reports, and the president, Viktor Yanukovych, has fled the capitol. Protesters have taken control of his home.

The United States and NATO supported mercenaries in Libya who overthrew the government and murdered its leader, Col. Muammar al-Gaddafi. Libya is now paralyzed by factional, regional, tribal and ideological divisions, a fate Ukraine now confronts as stores are looted, cash machines emptied, and a mass exodus departs the capitol for Odessa, Simferopol and Kharkov, Ukrainian cities largely loyal to the government and less affected by the turmoil, according to Russia Today.

In 2008 the now imprisoned former prime minister, Yulia Timoshenko, talked about the role George Soros played in Ukrainian politics and the advice he gave following the financial crisis.

“This raised suspicions that through such advice George Soros could influence the rate of the Ukrainian national currency in his own speculative interests. Several officials from president Yushchenko’s administration said they wanted to launch a probe into Soros’ Ukrainian activities, but it did not happen,” RT.com reported in 2011.

In 2010 the Ukrainian State Security Service began monitoring the activities of the Soros sponsored and funded Vozrozdeniye (“Renaissance”) foundation and its connection to other NGOs operating in the country. The investigation did not produce actionable results.

In response to the accusations leveled by Aleksandr Yefremov, the Soros Foundation “said in a special statement that all funds allocated for Ukrainian programs are being spent on the development of the open and democratic society and also for helping Ukrainian citizens, who suffered from the effects of the international financial crisis.”

In January we reported on the cynical attempt George Soros Funded “Libyan Scenario” Now Unfolding in Ukraine by Soros to undermine Ukraine and other nations in the Russian Federation. Soros’ Open Society Institute, now known as Open Society Foundations (OSF), doles out grants to activist NGOs in central Europe and builds upon and continues the work of the Ford Foundation. Since the early 1950s, the CIA has used the Ford Foundation as a funding cover. Soros and a handful of U.S. organizations such as the National Endowment for Democracy destabilize and overthrow governments, tasks formerly accomplished by the CIA.

The destabilization of the Ukrainian government is part of an ongoing geostrategic move by the globalists to undermine any challenge to their hegemonic designs. Libya suffered the result of what is essentially an order out of chaos plan. A similar plan on Russia’s frontier is now underway.

[H/T Info Wars]

Ukraine: You Better Pay Attention Because That’s How It’s Eventually Going to Play Out in North America

(Ann Barnhardt) — There is basically a media blackout on the counter-revolution in Ukraine, but y’all better pay close, close attention, because A.) decent human beings are being slaughtered in the streets for standing up to an illegitimate government and this ALWAYS merits attention as a function of simple charity and B.) I think the events in Ukraine are basically a foreshadowing or prototype of what will eventually play out in North America.  The two situations have many similarities.

Please note that I used the term “counter-revolution” with regards to Ukraine.  Remember, “revolution” refers to any movement that turns AWAY from God.  Without doubt or question, the tyrannical Ukrainian oligarchy executed a cold revolution in which it turned away from God and toward Moscow, Putin and their own personal enrichment.  The “revolution” is a fait accompli.  What the people of Ukraine have been and are now doing is COUNTER-REVOLUTION.  They are sick and tired of being used and abused by a cadre of oligarchs who are toadies of Putin.  They want to turn back toward justice, honesty in government and the rule of law.  Again, Putin is an evil, evil, evil man.  You people who are still falling for his garbage need to wise up.  He is playing you for a fool.  Just because he goes into a church and crosses himself and makes token gestures against sodomites doesn’t make him good.  It makes him politically savvy and nothing more.  If Obama learns to cross himself (assuming that the action wouldn’t cause him to burst into flames or melt), are you going to fall all over him too?  Guys, Putin and Obama are cut from the same cloth.  It is not impossible that Obama has explicit ties to Moscow, and may have even been in Moscow for a time during the missing two years in the early 80′s when he claims to have been at Columbia in NYC, but was almost certainly nowhere near that sulfuric hive of iniquity.

With Putin’s approval, the Kiev oligarchs are now murdering people in the street, and are HAPPILY ADMITTING IT.  Check out this quote from one of them who spoke at a memorial service for one of the first killed.  And remember, this was said AT THE MEMORIAL SERVICE:

A local legislator from the Luhansk region, who is a member of the ruling Party of Regions said, at a memorial service for those killed in Kyiv, “it is ‘correct’ that they were killed. In fact, more severe measures should be taken against the demonstrators.”

Okay.  When the oligarchs stop pretending and happily admit that they are murdering people and that they intend and desire to murder more people, you quit talking, suit up and boot up, and fight until you are either gloriously dead or gloriously victorious.  Remember the Lord of the Rings scene I posted last week of King Theoden at the Battle of the Pelennor Fields giving his speech before the charge?  Do you remember the battle cry of the Rohirim?  ”DEATH!”  Were you taken aback by that?  It isn’t that the Rohirim were suicidal, because that would be a grave sin.  The battle cry “DEATH!” is simply a declaration that they did not fear death and were ready to lay down their lives in service to truth, justice and goodness – and many of them did.  And they understood that to die in that way was, in fact, glorious.  In any action involving a massive charge, there WILL be casualties.  Americans, it seems to me, only want to partake in a “charge” if they don’t have to A.) get up from their sofas, and B.) can be guaranteed that there will be zero risk of personal harm –  be it physical, financial or even mere harm to their reputation or social standing.  If those are your criteria, that’s fine, but understand you have ZERO chance of victory, and frankly, deserve to live under a tyranny for being utterly self-absorbed, cowardly and effeminate at that point.  Sow the wind – even through passivity, and you will still be made to reap the whirlwind.

Now, let me post a quote from a piece published today about Ukraine titled “Bloodlands”, and I will put in red brackets substitutions in the U.S. context and tell me that the two situations aren’t eerily similar:

…It is far more a criminal syndicate than a classic totalitarian regime. The tactics Yanukoych{the Obama regime} has employed as president — forging alliances with oligarchs (who have funded the president’s political party and also made him vastly wealthy personally); hiring gangs of brutes to cow potential opponents; assassinating opponents who didn’t get the message from the thugs or who refused to kowtow; aggregating power in the hands of a single party held together by greed, the lust for power, and the fear of retribution; the thoroughgoing corruption of the justice system and the courts; the eventual strangulation of parliament — were all previewed in the late 1990s and the early years of the new century when Yanukovych was governor of the Donetsk oblast in eastern Ukraine {an Illinois state representative and then U.S. Senator}. There, Yanukovych {Obama} honed his capacity to acquire, and then hold on to, a form of power that is cemented together by personal loyalties, financial cupidity, and fear rather than by any common ideology. Call it clan politics; call it Mafia politics; call it whatever you like, only don’t call it “democratic.” Yanukovych {the Obama regime} may have come to power through the formal mechanisms of democracy (although the legitimacy of recent elections in Ukraine {the former United States} is certainly open to doubt). But as EuroMaidan leaders {screeching American harpies}  such as former world heavyweight champion Vitaliy Klychko {Ann Barnhardt} have long insisted, Yanukovych {the Obama regime}has destroyed constitutional governance in Ukraine {the former United States}, and Ukraine{the now-overthrown United States} can no longer be considered a democracy.

Sadly, the author of this piece is George Weigel, who is a dyed-in-the-wool American neo-con, and as a big-time fanboi of Cardinal Timothy Dolan, I suspect, would scarcely admit to the similarities outlined above, and if he did would be in total denial as to the root causes, much less the solution.  So many Americans today can see things that are happening on the other side of the planet, but simply cannot bring themselves to acknowledge the same evils within the context of their own country.  This isn’t merely a blindSPOT, it is a de facto blindFOLD.  Indifferent, cowardly, and willfully blind.  Forgive me for despairing of a solution that does not involve legions of angels with flaming swords.

[H/T Ann Barnhardt]