Heads of State, foreign ministers and popular leaders from all over the world remember this Saturday the historical legacy of the leader of the Bolivarian Revolution of Venezuela, Commander Hugo Chávez, in commemoration of the ninth anniversary of his physical disappearance.
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Following last two days’ lull in fighting, Russia’s ‘special operations’ in Ukraine will be entering a critical phase. As the prelude, humanitarian corridors have been opened in four sectors, per a personal intervention with President Putin by French President Emmanuel Macron. A ceasefire has also been announced.
These four sectors are: capital city of Kiev, the two eastern cities of Sumy and Kharkiv and the southern strategic port city of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov.
Coincidentally, it was on March 5 that Russia projected its latest demand for sanctions waiver in a written guarantee “at least” from President Joe Biden or at the very minimum from Secretary of State Antony Blinken in regard of its ambitious economic, scientific-technological and military collaboration in the pipeline with Iran. March 5 also happens to be the anniversary of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The fate of the NPT may now hinge on the US response. For, if the Biden administration rides the high horse, that will almost certainly be a deal-breaker for the current negotiations at Vienna on the US’ return to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA).
An innocuous tweet from Russia’s Permanent Representative to International Organisations in Vienna Mikhail Ulyanov earlier today in the afternoon said that he met with the EU Coordinator at the Vienna talks on Iran nuclear issue Enrique Mora and “raised a number of questions which need to be duly addressed now in order to ensure smooth civil nuclear cooperation with Iran.”
A couple of hours later, he again tweeted, “The #ViennaTalks continue. I had today a useful meeting with Deputy Foreign Minister of Iran for Economic Diplomacy Mr. Mehdi Safari.”
Ukraine is now a running story. It’s developing almost daily, and sometimes hourly. To a section, a war is going to be there; to the rest, it’s a war-war scene, but a hot war will not follow.
Actors on the Ukraine stage are many—from the world’s strongest military power, the US, to Ukraine’s neighbour with legitimate claim to security, Russia; from the Empire’s poodle, the UK, to a fringe country assaying to be a player in the game, Turkey; from European country joining the play with one or two fighter planes to the gas market and the war industry. The feeblest actor is Ukraine itself—the Empire is pushing Ukraine like a pawn towards a firing line while the unwilling pawn is trying to lie low in the charging circumstance. It seems it’s the Empire’s hock.
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Values for U.S. oil soared Sunday evening, driving prices above $125 a barrel in electronic trade as discussions about a ban on Russian oil heated up following the Ukraine crisis.
Oil prices have soared to the highest level since 2008 after the U.S. said it was discussing a potential embargo on Russian supplies with its allies.
Brent crude – the global oil benchmark – spiked to above $139 a barrel, before easing back to below $130.
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Media reports said:
Russian President Vladimir Putin warned Saturday that Ukrainian statehood is in jeopardy and likened the West’s sanctions on Russia to “declaring war,” while a promised cease-fire in the besieged port city of Mariupol collapsed amid scenes of terror.
Putin continued to pin the blame for the war squarely on the Ukrainian leadership and slammed their resistance to the invasion.
“If they continue to do what they are doing, they are calling into question the future of Ukrainian statehood,” he said. “And if this happens, it will be entirely on their conscience.”
Read More »Emmanuel Macron said in a speech Wednesday it’s a lie that Russia is fighting Nazis in Ukraine. But in 2014, the BBC, the NYT, the Daily Telegraph and CNN — not just CN — reported on the Nazi threat.
Exclusive: Throughout the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. State Department and mainstream media have downplayed the role of neo-Nazis in the U.S.-backed Kiev regime, an inconvenient truth that is surfacing again as right-wing storm troopers fly neo-Nazi banners as they attack in the east, Robert Parry reports.
The New York Times reported almost in passing on Sunday (Aug. 10) that the Ukrainian government’s offensive against ethnic Russian rebels in the east has unleashed far-right paramilitary militias that have even raised a neo-Nazi banner over the conquered town of Marinka, just west of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.
That might seem like a big story a U.S.-backed military operation, which has inflicted thousands of mostly civilian casualties, is being spearheaded by neo-Nazis. But the consistent pattern of the mainstream U.S. news media has been since the start of the Ukraine crisis to white-out the role of Ukraine’s brown-shirts.
Read More »Exclusive: The U.S. House of Representatives has admitted an ugly truth that the U.S. mainstream media has tried to hide from the American people: that the post-coup regime in Ukraine has relied heavily on Nazi storm troopers to carry out its bloody war against ethnic Russians, reports Robert Parry.
Last February, when ethnic Russian rebels were closing in on the Ukrainian port of Mariupol, The New York Times rhapsodically described the heroes defending the city and indeed Western civilization the courageous Azov battalion facing down barbarians at the gate. What the Times didn’t tell its readers was that these “heroes” were Nazis, some of them even wearing Swastikas and SS symbols.
The long Times article by Rick Lyman fit with the sorry performance of America’s “paper of record” as it has descended into outright propaganda hiding the dark side of the post-coup regime in Kiev. But what makes Lyman’s sadly typical story noteworthy today is that the Republican-controlled U.S. House of Representatives has just voted unanimously to bar U.S. assistance going to the Azov Battalion because of its Nazi ties.
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Journal of People 