wsws blows the lid off days 3 & 4 of the Impeachment hearings
Given that a) I figure all their quotes are verifiable, and b) that editor Joseph Kishore has given me permission to use the site’s content at will…I’ll copy/paste freely, as I was sincerely gobsmacked when I’d read this coverage this a.m..I’l add an inconsequential c): even though I despise wsws author Andrea Lobo’s coverage of the OAS/US/CIA putsch against Evo Morales.
‘Who decided the US should fight a “hot war” with Russia?’, 23 November 2019. Andre Damon, wsws
“There is a saying attributed to the banker J.P. Morgan: “A man always has two reasons for what he does—a good one and the real one.”
If the alleged “organized crime shakedown” by Trump was the “good” reason for the impeachment inquiry, the “real” reason has emerged over two weeks of public congressional hearings. The hearings have lifted the lid on a massive US conspiracy to spend billions of dollars to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014 and foment a civil war that has led to the deaths of thousands of people.
The impeachment drive is itself the product of efforts by sections of the intelligence agencies and elements within the State Department to escalate Washington’s conflict with Russia, with potentially world-catastrophic consequences.
(the photo)
https://www.wsws.org/asset/b1b0532e-c1c2-4265-851c-7585d61378ab?renditio...On Thursday, Democratic Congressman Eric Swalwell showed a photo of Ukrainian President Zelensky in body armor on the “front lines” of the civil war in eastern Ukraine. He asked the State Department witnesses “why it’s so important that our hard-earned tax dollars help President Zelensky and the men standing beside him fight Russia in this hot war?”
David Holmes, political counselor at the US embassy in Kiev, replied:Now is not the time to retreat from our relationship with Ukraine, but rather to double down on it. As we sit here, Ukrainians are fighting a hot war on Ukrainian territory against Russian aggression.
Later in his testimony, Holmes pointed to the massive sums expended by the United States and its European allies to fight this “hot war,” saying the US had provided $5 billion and its European allies $12 billion since 2014.
In her testimony last week, the former ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovich recalled that as ambassador:I went to the front line approximately 10 times during a hot war… sometimes literally as we heard the impact of artillery, and to see how our assistance dollars were being put to use.
She added:
Ukraine, with an enormous land mass and a large population, has the potential to be a significant…force multiplier on the security side… And now Ukraine is a battleground for great power competition with a hot war for the control of territory and a hybrid war to control Ukraine’s leadership.She explained that the US-funded and fascist-led “Maidan Revolution” of 2014, which she and other State Department officials absurdly called the “Revolution of Dignity,” was part of this conflict. “That’s why they launched the Revolution of Dignity in 2014, demanding to be a part of Europe,” she declared.
Diplomat George Kent invoked the same theme in his testimony last Wednesday, saying:
Ukraine’s popular Revolution of Dignity in 2014 forced a corrupt pro-Russian leadership to flee to Moscow. After that, Russia invaded Ukraine, occupying seven percent of its territory, roughly equivalent to the size of Texas for the United States…
Since then, more than 13,000 Ukrainians have died on Ukrainian soil defending their territorial integrity and sovereignty from Russian aggression. American support in Ukraine’s own de facto war of independence has been critical in this regard.Kent subsequently compared the role of the United States in the Ukrainian civil war to that of Spain and France in the American War of Independence. In that conflict, Spain and France were officially at war with Great Britain, including formal declarations of war in 1778 and 1779.
If Kent’s analogy is true, then the United States is in an undeclared war with Russia.
But when has this war ever been discussed with the American people? Was there ever a congressional vote to authorize it? Does anyone believe that if the question, “Do you want to spend billions of dollars to help Ukraine fight a war with Russia,” were posed to the American public, the percentage answering yes would be anything more than minuscule? Of course, that question was never asked.” [snip]“But in the congressional hearings this week, government officials declared that any questioning of this aid is virtually treasonous. In her testimony on Thursday, former National Security Council officer Fiona Hill accused anyone who questions that “Ukraine is a valued partner” of the United States of advancing “Russian interests.”
“When we are consumed by partisan rancor, we cannot combat these external forces,” she said, threatening the “president, or anyone else, [who] impedes or subverts the national security of the United States.”
In 2017, Hill penned a blog post for the Brookings Institution calling Trump a “Bolshevik,” echoing statements made more than 60 years ago by John Birch Society leader Robert W. Welch, who declared that President Eisenhower was a “communist.”
Underlying the mad allegations of the Democrats that Trump is functioning as a “Russian asset” is a very real content: The extremely dangerous drive by factions within the state for a military confrontation between the United States and Russia, whose combined nuclear weapons arsenals are capable of destroying all of humanity many times over.
There is no “peace” faction within the American political establishment. No credence can be given to either one of the parties of US imperialism, which have, over the course of decades, presided over the toppling of dozens of governments, the launching of countless wars and the deaths of millions of people."
Patrick Martin from his Oct. 16, 2019 ‘The Trump impeachment and US policy in Ukraine’
“This utterly reactionary, pro-imperialist role was demonstrated Friday in the tribute that Yovanovitch paid, in the course of her testimony, to Arsen Avakov, the Ukrainian interior minister (head of the domestic police) under both the current president, Volodymyr Zelensky, and his predecessor Petro Poroshenko. Avakov is a principal sponsor of fascist militias such as the Azov Battalion, which glorify the Ukrainians who collaborated with the Nazis during World War II against the Soviet Union. In other words, the State Department officials being celebrated in the media for defending American democracy are actually working with the fascists in Ukraine.
While Yovanovitch hailed Avakov, Kent cited as his heroes among immigrants who have rallied to the defense of the United States Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, two of the biggest war criminals of the second half of the twentieth century.” [snip]
““The connection between the impeachment drive and differences on foreign policy was spelled out Friday on the front page of the New York Times, in an analysis by the newspaper’s senior foreign policy specialist, David Sanger, a frequent mouthpiece for the concerns of the CIA, State Department and Pentagon, under the headline, “For President, Case of Policy vs. Obsession.” [snip]But Sanger goes on to spell out, in remarkably blunt terms, the real foreign policy issues at stake in the Trump impeachment. He writes,
“In an otherwise divided Washington, one of the few issues of bipartisan agreement for the past six years has been countering Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s broad plan of disruption. That effort starts in Ukraine, where there has been a hot war underway in the east for five years …”
Trump, according to Sanger, has betrayed the anti-Russia policy outlined by his own administration in a Pentagon strategic assessment which declared that the “war on terror” had been superseded as the top US priority by “great-power competition,” particularly directed at China and Russia. He sacrificed this policy to his own personal, electoral interests, as expressed in the comment by the US ambassador to the European Union, Gordon Sondland: “President Trump cares more about the investigation of Biden” than about the military conflict between Ukraine and Russia."
Comments
sorry it's all messed up,
and i've tried to cross-post it three times now, and i'm out of time for this morning. i'll try in the afternoon to rebuild it inside the c995 blogging soft-ware.
on edit: i kinda/sorta fixed it...
Don't mess with the Deep State.
They'll bust both your kneecaps and then fit you with cement overshoes and toss you into the ocean. Trump is finding out the hard way that entrenched interests in the US government wield vast veto power over anything a president wants to do.
do you think DT even gets it?
(no matter which version of the Deep State is at play?) last i'd heard, the Huge Deal last week came from the constantly shape-shifting Sonlandia...not so much it seems.
how baldly Imperial all those quotes are! all this has been on simmer since pre-Maidan after yanukovitch failed to sign on to the EU association memo? them later: 'Rats! Sez Yats' We can't control or Nazis!' Now? Oy...and Veh.
I wonder if Trump gets anything.
He's his own worst enemy with his self-sabotaging Twitter rants, endless character assassinations, hastily burnt bridges, and conflicting statements that change based upon the last person he talked to. Trump doesn't inspire loyalty in those who work for him and around him. OTOH, that doesn't excuse the Deep State, an unelected cabal secretly running our government and risking our lives with endless wars and Russia baiting. If impeachment has shown nothing else, it's that the Deep State is real and usually gets its way.
he's his own enemy, yes,
perhaps not his own worst enemy, i reckon. sorry i missed this earlier. it takes me so long to read some offered links, etc., that leaving the tb open too long...causes comments not to be marked as New.
but what an ignorant muslim-latino/a-hating summbitch braggart he is. i can't watch him speak, to say the truth. he uses his lips like six-guns. ack.
Here to help
"If impeachment has shown nothing else, it's that the Deep State is real and usually gets its way."
Yes, and now the MSM and mainstream Dems have shifted from denying the DS even exists to not only acknowledging its existence but to assuring us it's benign and we should be grateful for it...
They forget to mention
almost all the casualties are Russian speakers in the East. Back in the early coup days there were 37 claims that Russian troops invaded Ukraine. Which turned out to be none. I still remember when Pravda in New York had a blurred photo they claimed to be a Russ officer (and how do you get blurring in the digital age) which turned out to be a Ukranian officer facebook photo. They never explained how that happened.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
'failed to mention'...
great context. kent's number 13,000, and yes, they were likely all Novoroosians, if he hadn't pulled that figure out of his ass, anyway. photos of 'little green men' in ancient soviet uniforms, old tanks left over from the days of yore.
was kent counting the dead inside the trade unions massacre in odessa petrol-bombed by the neo-nazis?
David Stockman probes recent events in the Ukraine,
putting them in the context of the region’s deeper past. The first two parts of a series.
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-stockman-exposes-ukrainian-...
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/david-stockman-exposes-ukrainian-...
Links are also given for the same articles at Antiwar.com (though for me at the moment that website times out without responding):
https://original.antiwar.com/david_stockman/2019/11/12/the-ukrainian-inf...
https://original.antiwar.com/david_stockman/2019/11/21/democrats-empower...
they look like fascinating
in depth reads for later, and thank you, miz lizard. funny that the Atlantic council (at least one version) had chosen Zelenskiy based on promises to end corruption (read: so ukraine could have the lucre to enter Nato). and yet, he'd kept 9as per the photo caption) Mykola Zlochevsky, former employer of Hunter Biden and current partner of the Atlantic Council in hi cabinet, isn't it?
odd-bodkins, though: until coming to c99%, i'd rarely even looked at zero hedge.
You're going to read David Stockman???
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
yes, as i have the time.
esp. as it was recommended by the brilliant lot lizard, and published by anti-war.com as well. odd as it seems, every once in awhile, a tiger can change its stripes, as with robert macNamera having apologized for his part in thee Viet Nam war.
Henry Kissinger, unrepentant, sneered at McNamara for doing so
https://www.salon.com/2002/12/05/kissinger_3/
Hillary's hero
My high school classmates died there.
In 2002, the whole Vietnam Communist Domino Theory does not matter?
May he rest in Eternal Hell.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
As I don't believe in hell
I will say in great confidence that he will never be cold with all the piss that will be drenched upon his grave and surround him.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
zounds, that was
da bomb! hard read in the morning, but thank you. i wish talbot would have had the cameras rolling when the war crimiminal's war criminal pantomimed his sorrow. dubya tapped him to investigate why no one knew 9/11 was about to happen? that's rich.
seeing his bloody pawprints in pinochet's putsch was hard, as well, and being reminded he was the architect of the secret bombing of cambodia. that discovery was the day that boulder, colorado filled with more pissed people than even imaginable! not just us war resisters and hippies, but men in suits, women in dresses walked off their jobs and marched and chanted in outrage. jaysus. time for this great dylan cover; as far as i'm concerned, he owns the song now. i offer this with a sick heart, sick stomach, as it really hasn't changed a bit since those days...when we'd thought all our activism might lead to peace.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaMz8pgua_0]
I have a growing list of sites that are timing out for me.
Even with a VPN. That puts the slowdown on the backbone.
so that others might
be encouraged to read your stockman links to his ‘The Ukrainian Influence Peddling Rings – A Microcosm of How Imperial Washington Rolls’, David Stockman, November 13, 2019, i'll offer a few excerpts. i rarely (if ever) call anything a 'must read', but even you, voice, might want to dig into this one (part I of II, if i get his drift).
i'm assumming his historical narrative is correct, as all the pieces i do know about are there are well, but what he writes i hadn't known is key, of course. his language is also colorful as all giddy-up, which i like, and good on him. he's lost me a bit in some sections, as he names names, lobbying firms, and so on, but that's on me, not stockman.
thank you, miz lizard. love this title of his on the sidebar: 'Democrats Empower a Pack of Paranoid Neocon Morons'. ; )
i'll grab part II and read it greedily when i have more time.
Azov Battallion
and U.S. support:
great info, amiga.
no more US training? dunno what to say to that. but i plugged '2018' into a bing search of azov torchlight parades and found this from 2016 instead (although there were some later, as well):
Ukrainian ultra-nationalist Azov battalion [as well as Right Sector' stages torch-lit march in Kharkov (VIDEOS)], 12 Dec, 2016, RT.com
really according to Eva Bartlett who'd committed journalism in the donbass independent republics, zelenskiy hasn't been able to control them (as promised) either.
it's a good time to remember all who'd invested in the ukraine who had interest in the Maidan putsch, isn't it?
CIA honoring the Nazis in Ukraine
Despite a Jewish President, Ukraine keeps honoring Nazi collabos (with a bit of help from America)
But we have to help the Nazis because Putin's Russia is invading and we owe it to them to.... blehh!
holy hell and christ
in a canoe!
yasha levine commits good journalism, there too! i'd never even heard of Nil Khasevych nor his Kil the Jews wood block prints. zelenskiy is not only jewish, but russian speaking, ukrainian is his second language as i understand it.
imagine now living on Khasevych; wouldn't you be proud? i'd been on yasha's account recently looking for his take (if any) on the intercept/NYT collaboration on the Iranaian leaks. i'd figured his link to the history if U S meddling at the bottom would speak at length about Pierre Omidyar's investments (centre UA, USAID, etc.) and maybe (then) monsanto/billy gates.
thank you; a whoosh-worthy exposé. do you get his newsletter, snoop?
p.s. on edit: i tried to subscribe, but it costs money. oh, well...
Followed a Twitter link
There is lots of good info on Twitter about the Ukraine system and corruption. Bibi didn't have any problems dealing with the neo Nazis there either which threw me for a loop. But then it was people in our country that made Hitler's war chest. Bush Sr., Ford and lots of others thought Hitler's system should be implemented here. Oh yeah and of course the banks..
Nunes sums it up perfectly.
I don't know how many witnesses have admitted that there is no there there, but people hear what they want to hear Schiff just keeps rolling on.
lol; great,
especially with the editing. but it' like the game of telephone, isn't it? 'he told me he overheard...', and someone told me
she heard..., yada, yada,but just think if Pelosi hadn't limited the inquiry to One Phone call? 'as trump's puppet, is zelenskiy's claiming 'no quid pro quo worth anything?'
#WhataZoo.
Ukraine tried to get Hillary elected is just CT right?
Nah not so much. Numerous websites wrote about it back when it happened just like they wrote about Hunter Biden and Burisma. But now I'm seeing the main stream media trying to tell us that it didn't happen that way. Well here's one article that hasn't been scrubbed yet.
Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire
01/11/2017 05:05 AM EST
Ahh that good ole but. Yes what people in Ukraine did was bad, but.... and here's the but.
Well there you have it. People in Ukraine were digging up dirt on people in Trump's campaign whilst Vlad only placed a few ads on FB and most of them were placed after the election was over. Badder Russia.
That Ukraine was trying to get Hillary elected was well known in the Ukraine government, but sure let's just say it never happened like that. Then of course there was Hillary hiring people in another country to dig up dirt too, but that doesn't count. Why? Reasons of course and because it was Hillary and the DNC doing it. See? Reasons.
Next paragraph starts with this.
Russia’s meddling has sparked outrage from the American body politic. Lots of words about how that outraged people here...and more blah blah blah stuff.
Next paragrap
Hmm hint of a quid pro quo there?
BTW. Lindsay Graham wants to investigate Hunter Biden and Joe says that he will regret doing that for the rest of his life. Stay tuned for the fireworks.
Okay now that we have settled the facts here...
there has to be an effort to discredit what happened back then even though it's true.
Charges of Ukrainian Meddling? A Russian Operation, U.S. Intelligence Says
Ahh yes Russia was the one that started that propaganda. Burisma and Biden was always on the up and up so don't even think that they weren't. I really don't know how people who believe everything about Russia Gate and now Ukraine Gate can keep their beliefs intact when there is so much information showing that what they believe is wrong or didn't happen the way they think it did.
Read more about this on Moon of Alabama
ha, i'd run into that
this morning intending to grab some of his quotes and links here: 'November 20, 2019, Impeachment Circus - Today's Bombshell Is Another Dud one chris cilizza link i'd given to linda wood to see if she or others might parse for me/us.
whoosh.
i'm about to turn into a pumpkin, morning comes early here, and lately at around 20 degrees chilly.
g' night, all, and pleasant dreams if you can. tonight's closing song is by the late, great talking poet and former AIM leader john trudell, who was able to turn poison into medicine like no other i've known. 'rich mans wars', and they're of course all...rich man's wars.
Some ones are crazy or
Maybe we take turns
Dreaming about some kind of life
We say it could have been different
But it wasn't because we weren't
No matter what it turns out the same
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDOZ00A1aos]
see you in the morning, lord willin' and the creeks don't rise. ; )
g'nite Wendy. I'm getting to this key essay late.
It fills the soul with dread. There is no one left to fight the poisonous empire from the inside. All have succumbed. They will be along soon enough to clean up these fragments and send them down the memory hole. I'm going to dwell in the large-target cities from now on. I intend to be vaporized in the first strike.
i'm glad i'd put it up,
as with a hella busy 3-day weekend, i hadn't intended to, but what with the smoke coming out of my ears and all...
i'd long claimed that i'd want to go out in a first strike as well, and here we are just east of the shit-head capital of bumfuck, CO (h/t ed abbey).
now there are a number of NORAD sites, but most nations as i understand it still have No First Strike Rules, but the US no longer does, iirc (meaning: don't count on it). our daughter and her family live in el paso county, CO home of one or two, one an alt-site under cheyenne mountain.
i've often been a bit glib as to: 'Who will stop the US Empire? Those who can...and must.'
but i dunno who that might end up being, nor how including with nukes. but at this point, i guess it's all philosophical to me, as we're all living on borrowed time, and Live in the Moment when possible.
i do so wish i could help you ease your fears, my friend.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7XcKUYU3QI]
Today, Eric Zuesse dropped the most important document
...I've ever read about Ukraine.
Ukraine, Trump, & Biden - The Real Story Behind "Ukrainegate"
Almost everything Americans have ever been told about US foreign policy is a lie. Almost everything we think we know is still a lie.
The Democrat's immediate goal is to install Mike Pence as President as soon as possible.
Everything depends on this. Pence is the continuation of Obama's Neocon policies in Ukraine and throughout the world. Biden is the premier Neocon on the 2020 ticket. His job is to lie himself into the nomination and pick-up a Neocon Vice President. If he loses to Pence, it doesn't matter. The CFR wins either way. And we're off to war with Russia.
This is a must read for those who want to know what is happening to them. And happening fast.
It will be hard to see the world the same way again.
Yep that is a must read
This video goes back to what was described in the article I posted above. The Nazis in Ukraine have ties to Hitler and we knew it.
John McCain knew it when he was helping get the coup started and he also knew that the people dying during the Maiden square massacre were from the government. This is another thing I will never be able to comprehend. Being involved in something where you know for a fact that people are going to be killed and those that survive will be placed under harsh austerity policies and those too will kill people.
Remember that we can thank Bill Clinton for not dissolving NATO after the USSR died and starting us down this road we are on now. Thanks go to Obama too for putting even more troops into countries that border Russia and risking nuclear war. Think Russia is just going to sit by as Ukraine and other countries are admitted to NATO? Putin has a cool head when it comes to our actions, but who is going to follow him and will they be as patient?
sigh; kill me now.
there's no way i can read anything that long, especially in the zero-hedge format. but i found it at the duran, and an easier read on my eye-brain configuration at the saker. strategic culture usually carries his columns, but not this one...yet.
even scanning at the zero hedge version, i hadn't spotted pence's name. in which part (I-IV) was it? zuesse has always needed a good editor, imo. but yeah, Pentecostal Pence gives me the shivers.
never mind;
i read the comments on the saker version, what was key was what zuesse hadn't written (i.e. any mention of the CIA), and part IV at the duran,, withut elaborating, much of which i disagreed with.
If someone wants to get vaporised right away be in DC
or New York for sure. There are a lot of other target rich areas like Langley, the Silicon Valley area and certainly that big base in San Diego in California, the possible list is long because this Country is littered with military installations.
But I'd expect that if Russia had only two nukes to fire Washington DC and NY would be the instant decision. DC is 'evil Central' to most of the world, and NY City's Wall Street is its oxygen supply and without those two cities it's like chopping off the head of the snake. (no offense to snakes intended)
@wendy davis
John Trudell = real American hero.
Never gave up, never became consumed by hate and vindictiveness, as far as I could tell, despite his wife and child being killed - in all likelihood directly or indirectly by the government for his activism in AIM.
Was fortunate to see him in person on a few occasions, once with his band...
Baby Boom Che
sorry to be so late;
last i'd looked there were no new comment. my stars, that was good to hear! you saw him several times? wooot! mr. wd saw him at the college above durango, co, and he'd grabbed the poster that's still on the wall to our cellar.
it's impossible to believe that it's been so long that his 'ride came for him', as he said was coming (February 15, 1946 – December 8, 2015). yes, i was just mentioning on another thread that thursday is also UnThankgiving/day of mourning in honor of the occupation of acaltraz (john was of course there).
his biography tab at his home website says:
...which is why i so often say that he'd turned poison into medicine like no one i've ever known... it's hard to have a fave of his, there are so many rivals, but today, this is mine:
(all the ones with images are kinda weird)..of course, time dreams, the last music he ever recorded with quiltman, and the pines), and it makes me as dizzy and out of body as this one does...
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t-pTcBoP30]
buffy and john just before he crossed to the other side... (makes me weep once again...)
thanks, blue repubic.
David Stockman's articles
are brilliant and vital to understanding the Ukraine situation. I think Part 2 is most important, even though I disagree with him on one point. He establishes how stupid and moronic the Democrats' impeachment witnesses are to suggest we have to fight Russia in Ukraine so we don't have to fight them here. He shows how minuscule Russia's conventional weapons systems are compared to ours, especially with respect to sea and air power, and then he states,
I agree with Stockman that in a conventional war with the U.S., we win. But that's just exactly the problem. Russia can't have a conventional war with us or with NATO. It's defense from us is ONLY nuclear assured destruction. So the problem is not whether or not he's nuts. The problem is that we are nuts. Our government is nuts. Our government has a first strike policy, meaning our government considers it rational to eliminate a portion of the American people, which in our Nuclear Posture Review would be catastrophic, in order to win a war with Russia.
thank you, amiga.
and i agree: it's not the defense budget that matters. in this nation, the defense industries are allowed to do 'cost over-runs', and russia's weapons of war and defensive war are clearly superior. see how many are wanting russian man-pads missile defense, for instance.
i'll take part two, but at anti-war.com to the café. commenter juliania loved part I witless! i was sad to read that justin raimondo has already crossed over, may he rest in power. one place i'd blogged for a time were outraged i tell you, Outraged, that a libertarian wrote for antiwar.com. needless to say, i didn't last long at the accursed dagblog.com.