Clara Weiss

The Ukrainian government is deploying paramilitary groups in close cooperation with the army against opposition in the eastern part of the country. This collaboration has been largely ignored by Western media. While the armed actions of pro-Russian separatists are dealt with at length in the media, there is no discussion of the fascist terror against political opponents of the Kiev regime and the civilian population.

In February, armed groups from the Right Sector and the fascist Svoboda party played a decisive role in the putsch against then-President Viktor Yanukovych. Svoboda was rewarded for this with several ministerial posts and high-ranking positions in the state. Although Svoboda’s presidential candidate, Oleh Tyahnybok, received only 1.2 percent of the vote in the May election, Svoboda continues to be prominently represented in the government.

These paramilitary groups operate with the official protection of the state. At the beginning of March, the parliament decided to build a 60,000-man national guard, principally made up of volunteers recruited from the so-called Maidan self-defense groups.

On April 13, Ukrainian Minister of Internal Affairs Arsen Avakov released a decree that allows the formation of special units for the purpose of countering separatist currents. Since then, a number of battalions, officially operating under the Ministry of the Interior, have been founded with the financial support of certain oligarchs.

Konrad Kreft & Clara Weiss

Skoropadskyi with officers of the Hetman

Part one - The roots of Ukrainian nationalism

The Western media is seeking to downplay the prominent role of fascists in the new Ukrainian government. Several of the regime’s ministries are headed by members of the far-right Svoboda party, and the militias of the neo-fascist Right Sector are active in violently repressing resistance in the east of the country.

Both Svoboda and Right Sector played a crucial role in the February 22 coup in Kiev, which was strongly backed by Berlin and Washington. This is no coincidence. The close collaboration of Germany and the US with Ukrainian fascists has a long history, reaching back over the last hundred years.

In contrast to many other European countries, there has never been a strong bourgeois national movement in Ukraine. Ukraine has been divided between Poland and Russia since the late Middle Ages. After the carve-up of Poland at the end of the eighteenth century, Ukraine became part of the Russian Empire. Only a section of what is now western Ukraine was integrated into the Hapsburg Empire.

The weakness of the Ukrainian national movement was due on the one hand to the country’s economic backwardness and lack of a strong middle class. Significant industrialisation occurred only in the era of the Soviet Union. On the other hand, a large proportion of the urban population consisted of Russians, Germans and Jews, while the rural population was mainly Ukrainian.

When bourgeois forces finally erected a Ukrainian nation-state, following the 1917 February Revolution’s overthrow of the tsar in Russia, they were immediately confronted with a revolutionary working class. The Bolsheviks, who seized power in Russia in October, received powerful support from the workers of Ukraine. Ever since then, bourgeois nationalism in Ukraine has been characterised by virulent anti-communism, pogroms against revolutionary workers and Jews, and attempts to win the support of imperialist powers.

Ray McGovern

President Vladimir Putin of Russia welcomes President
Barack Obama to the G20 Summit at Konstantinovsky
Palace in Saint Petersburg, Russia, Sept. 5, 2013.

Exclusive: The trust between President Obama and President Putin helped avert a U.S. war on Syria and got Iran to agree to limit its nuclear program, but the neocon-driven crisis in Ukraine has dashed hopes of building on that success for a more peaceful world.

The unnecessary and regrettable conflict between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine brings to mind sad remembrances of important junctures at which I watched – as a citizen and a CIA analyst – chances for genuine peace with Russia frittered away.

How vividly I recall John Kennedy’s inaugural address when he bid us to ask not what our country could do for us, but rather what we could do for our country. Then and there I decided to put in the service of our government whatever expertise I could offer from my degrees in Russian. So I ended up in Washington more than a half-century ago.

The missed chances for peace did not wait. On April 17, 1961, a ragtag CIA-trained-and-funded paramilitary group of some 1,500 men went ashore on Cuba’s Bay of Pigs and were defeated in three days by Cuban forces led by Fidel Castro. CIA Director Allen Dulles and the senior military had intended to mousetrap young President Kennedy into committing U.S. military forces to a full-scale invasion, in order to bring what we now blithely call “regime change” to Cuba.

The planned mousetrap, shown for example in Dulles’s own handwriting on paper found in his study after his death, didn’t work. Kennedy had warned Dulles emphatically that he would not send U.S. armed forces into the fray. He stuck to that decision, and thereby created a rancid hatred on the part of Dulles, whom Kennedy fired, and from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whom Kennedy should also have fired. The top generals, whom Deputy Secretary of State George Ball described as a “sewer of deceit,” had been in on the cabal.

Nahida Izzat

(This is my thought)

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Stephen Lendman

War criminal B. Netanyahu appears to be celebrating the report.
Partner-in-crime S. Peres would appear to be pretty happy too...

International law is explicit, fundamental, inviolable, and sacrosanct.

In January 2012, Netanyahu appointed a three-member committee headed by former Supreme Court Justice Edmond Levy. Included were former Foreign Ministry legal adviser Alan Baker and former Tel Aviv District Court president Tchia Shapira. They examined three issues:

(1) Legal aspects of Israel's occupation.
(2) The 2005 Sasson Report's conclusion that dozens of outposts built on privately owned Palestinian land were illegal.
(3) Whether Israel's presence in the West Bank is, or is not, an occupation.

Levy's report rewrote international law. It claimed that occupation

"as set out in the relevant international conventions cannot be considered applicable to the unique and sui generis historic and legal circumstances of Israel’s presence in Judea and Samaria spanning over decades."

"Israelis have the legal right to settle in Judea and Samaria and the establishment of settlements cannot, in and of itself, be considered illegal."

It recommended legalizing illegal outposts. It said zoning officials should authorize them without further political approval. It urged no restraints on settlement construction. Netanyahu praised the report.

Stephen Lendman

Zionism is fundamentally racist, extremist, undemocratic, and militant. It espouses Jewish supremacy, exceptionalism, and uniqueness as God's "chosen people." It institutionalized occupation, oppression, violence and dispossession. It justifies structural inequalities. It rules by force, not coexistence. It chooses confrontation over diplomacy and rule of law provisions. It denies Arabs equal rights as Jews. No ideology this destructive can endure.

According to Hamoked, the Center for the Defence of the Individual, Israel revoked residency rights for about 240,000 Gaza and West Bank Palestinians from 1967 to 1994. About 15,000 were aged 90 or older. Another 14,000 East Jerusalemites were included through 2011. HaMoked's Freedom of Information petition provided information not previously available.

Revocations were executed two ways. Palestinians remaining abroad for extended periods or excluded from Israeli 1981 through 1988 census data were affected. Residents under either criteria were assigned a "ceased residency status." No hearings or reviews were held. Official notices weren't given. Diktat authority violated international law. Protected persons were expelled from their homeland. Family separations and other hardships followed.

Clara Weiss

Russia has undertaken intensive preparations during the past few months for a possible military strike by Israel and the United States on Iran. According to recent reports, the Russian General Staff expects a war against Iran this summer, with enormous repercussions for not only the Middle East but also the Caucasus.

Russian troops in the Caucasus have been technically upgraded, and a missile division situated on the Caspian Sea has been placed in readiness. The missile cruisers of the Caspian flotilla are now anchored off the coast of Dagestan. The only Russian military base in the South Caucasus, located in Armenia, is also on alert for military intervention. Last autumn, Russia sent its aircraft carrier Kuznetsov to the Syrian port Tartous following the escalation of the conflict in Syria. Experts believe that Russia would support Tehran in the event of war, at least on a military-technical level.

In a commentary in April, General Leonid Ivashov, president of the Academy of Geopolitical Science, wrote that “a war against Iran would be a war against Russia” and he called for a “political-diplomatic alliance” with China and India. Operations were being undertaken throughout the Middle East in order to destabilise the region and proceed against China, Russia and Europe. The war against Iran, Ivashov wrote, would “end up at our borders, destabilise the situation in the North Caucasus and weaken our position in the Caspian region.”

Of central concern for Moscow are the consequences for the South Caucasus in the event of a war against Iran. Armenia is the only ally of the Kremlin in the region and has close economic links with Iran, while neighbouring Georgia and Azerbaijan maintain military and economic ties with the United States and Israel.

Stephen Lendman

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer, D-Md. speaking
at the Bipartisan Policy Center in Washington.

In 2007, former Senators Howard Baker, Tom Daschle, Bob Dole, and George Mitchell established their Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) imperial project front group.

Among other issues addressed, warmaking's prioritized. Its board of directors include:

● Norman Augustine, former Lockheed Martin chairman and CEO;
● General Charles Wald, USAF (ret.);
● John Rowe, Exelon chairman and CEO, the nation's largest proliferator of dangerous nuclear power plants;
● Frances Fragos Townsend, Baker Botts partner; James Baker's a senior partner;
● former FAA head Jane Garvey, BPC chairperson;
● former National Commission on Energy Policy (NCEP) head Jason Grumet, BPC president;
● Walter Isaacson, president and CEO of the right leaning, pro-corporate Aspen Institute; formerly he was CNN chairman/CEO and Time managing editor; and
● former Senators Charles Robb and John Danforth, as well as five former senators and General James L. Jones (ret.), former Supreme Allied Commander Europe and National Security Advisor, serving as senior fellows.

BPC's new report, released February 1, is titled "Meeting the Challenge: Stopping the Clock on Iran's Nuclear Development."

Previous Iran reports included:

● "Meeting the Challenge: US Policy Toward Iranian Nuclear Development" (September 19, 2008);
● "Meeting the Challenge: Time is Running Out" (September 15, 2009);
● "Meeting the Challenge: When Times Runs Out" (June 23, 2010); and
● "Iran's Nuclear Program: Status and Breakout Timing" (September 12, 2011).

They all urged a robust US response "to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons capability" even though BPC and Obama officials know Tehran's development is entirely peaceful, commercial, and legal according to Nuclear Non-Proliferating Treaty provisions.

Signed on July 1, 1968, NPT became effective March 5, 1970. Notably, Iran was one of its first signatories in 1968. It permits uranium enrichment for peaceful, commercial purposes.

Stephen Lendman

"The illegal Israeli settlements being built on Pale-
stinian land are the crux of the matter at the center
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

Israeli West Bank Annexation Bill
The Horrors Of Israeli Settlements
Settlements cover 42% of West Bank
Calls to Annex West Bank Settlements - Must Read
Israeli / Washington Peace Process Rejectionism
Settlement Construction Jeopardizes Palestinian Statehood Plans
By Hook and By Crook: Israel’s Settlement Policy in the West Bank

Netanyahu's Likud Party platform says the following about Palestinian self-determination:

Unilaterally establishing a Palestinian state "will constitute a fundamental and substantive violation of the agreements with the State of Israel and the scuttling of the Oslo and Wye accords. The government will adopt immediate stringent measures in the event of such a declaration."

In fact, on November 15, 1988, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) proclaimed an independent Palestine. At the time, Washington provisionally recognized its independence.

According to UN Charter Article 80(1), it can't reverse its position by vetoing a Security Council (SC) resolution calling for Palestine's UN admission. Doing so is illegal, subject to further SC action under the Charter's Chapter VI.

The SC only recommends admissions. The General Assembly affirms them by a two-thirds majority. An overwhelming majority of states support de jure Palestinian membership. Abbas could have had it last fall by petitioning the General Assembly through the 1950 Uniting for Peace Resolution 377. Not doing so revealed his longtime collaborationist credentials. As a result, the issue remains in limbo.

Adam Horowitz
Mondoweiss

Students for Justice in Palestine responds to its inclusion on the ADL's "top ten anti-Israel groups" in the U.S. This statement represents over 60 student groups promoting Palestinian freedom across the US:

On October 14th, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) named Students for Justice in Palestine on its list of the “Top 10 Anti-Israel Groups in America,” claiming that “SJP chapters regularly organize activities presenting a biased view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, including mock ‘apartheid walls’ and ‘checkpoint’ displays.” As members of several student groups working for justice in Palestine, we affirmatively state that the ADL’s characterization of our campus educational efforts and activism about Israeli injustices against Palestinians as “biased” is a disingenuous and misguided attempt to vilify students that criticize Israel’s occupation, which denies Palestinian human rights and self-determination. In this statement, we clarify our principles and invite the ADL to reconsider its categorical silence on egregious Israeli human rights violations by joining the movement for freedom, equality, and justice in Palestine.