[Ibon]

We grasp and kling to narratives that are familiar frightened of unknown teritorry.

[dissident]

Yair . .

. Even a peaceful country /s like the US couldn't sit on it's hand if one of it's hundreds of foreign bases was . . . . . . . .

The US a peaceful country . . . . ? You live in an alternative reality mate.

Cheers

So did they find the WMD in Iraq yet? How about Saddam's alleged responsibility for 9/11? Someone is sure living in an alternative reality and that would be you.

WTF is going on here? The guy's agreeing with you and you diss him go drink some coffee or something and wake up.

This whole thing is nuts. Bloody 6 harping on his CNN MSM propaganda line, Dorlormin with his 'we're all doomed from AGW- but America is god Russia is bad and our reactions to 9_11 were rational and justified at the time' as with 6. Bunch of blind crazy people armed with nuclear weapons. Russia is defending one of it's most important bases from a very suspicious new government and has ,not even drawn blood doing so, while you idiots call for war.

Calm the fuck down and get real. The US government is in the hands of a bunch of stooges. The rest of the world hopes you choose better next time.

You are right, I need more coffee and read the original post correctly

[AndyA]

Crimea Parliament "Accelerates Crisis", Votes To Join Russia
While the world is convinced that Putin's Tuesday press conference was an admission of blinking to the west, the reality is anything but that, and hours ago Crimea's parliament voted to join Russia on Thursday and its Moscow-backed government set a referendum within 10 days on the decision in what Reuters said is a "a dramatic escalation of the crisis over the Ukrainian Black Sea peninsula." To be sure, the Crimea - which has an ethnic Russian majority - affiliation to Moscow as opposed to Kiev is well-known, yet still the sudden acceleration of moves to bring Crimea formally under Moscow's rule came as European Union leaders gathered for an emergency summit to seek ways to pressure Russia to back down and accept mediation. And now all Putin has to do is sit back and say the people have spoken and without spilling a drop of blood has effectively split the country in two parts, with the entire east of Ukraine, where pro-Russian sentiment also runs high - sure to follow Crimea.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-03-0 ... oin-russia

[dissident]

Funny how the illegal coup regime in Kiev is not a crisis but the elected government of Crimea is some epic world problem. NATO and its media mouthpieces are so worried about Crimean illegality but could give a rat's ass about Kiev's illegality.

http://itar-tass.com/mezhdunarodnaya-panorama/1026262

Yatsenyuk is firing Ukrainian generals who oppose making the Right Sector into a legal military organization. I bet this aspect will not get any coverage in the precious "free" western media. BTW, this proves that the Right Sector is the core of this coup and not some fringe group of no consequence. Yatsenyuk was Nuland's choice for regime leader as per the intercepted conversation from several weeks ago. So this is all pre-approved by the USA.

[Keith_McClary]

Ukraine crisis is about Great Power oil, gas pipeline rivalry

Russia's armed intervention in the Crimea undoubtedly illustrates President Putin's ruthless determination to get his way in Ukraine. But less attention has been paid to the role of the United States in interfering in Ukrainian politics and civil society. Both powers are motivated by the desire to ensure that a geostrategically pivotal country with respect to control of critical energy pipeline routes remains in their own sphere of influence.

Much has been made of the reported leak of the recording of an alleged private telephone conversation between US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland and US ambassador to Kiev Geoffrey Pyatt. While the focus has been on Nuland's rude language, which has already elicited US apologies, the more important context of this language concerns the US role in liaising with Ukrainian opposition parties with a view, it seems, to manipulate the orientation of the Ukrainian government in accordance with US interests.

Rather than leaving the future of Ukrainian politics "up to the Ukrainian people" as claimed in official announcements, the conversation suggests active US government interference to favour certain opposition leaders:
...
Indeed, at her 2013 speech, Nuland added:

"Today, there are senior officials in the Ukrainian government, in the business community, as well as in the opposition, civil society, and religious community, who believe in this democratic and European future for their country. And they've been working hard to move their country and their president in the right direction."

What direction might that be? A glimpse of an answer was provided over a decade ago by Professor R. Craig Nation, Director of Russian and Eurasian Studies at the US Army War College's Strategic Studies Institute, in a NATO publication:

"Ukraine is increasingly perceived to be critically situated in the emerging battle to dominate energy transport corridors linking the oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian basin to European markets... Considerable competition has already emerged over the construction of pipelines. Whether Ukraine will provide alternative routes helping to diversify access, as the West would prefer, or 'find itself forced to play the role of a Russian subsidiary,' remains to be seen."

A more recent US State Department-sponsored report notes that "Ukraine's strategic location between the main energy producers (Russia and the Caspian Sea area) and consumers in the Eurasian region, its large transit network, and its available underground gas storage capacities", make the country "a potentially crucial player in European energy transit" - a position that will "grow as Western European demands for Russian and Caspian gas and oil continue to increase."

Ukraine's overwhelming dependence on Russian energy imports, however, has had "negative implications for US strategy in the region," in particular the strategy of:
...

[Sixstrings]

Hillary is so naive that she flew to Moscow and curtsied and handed Putin a reset button and thought she had just made Russia into a friend of the US. She's not exactly a deep thinker.

'16 is still two years off. I do want to vote D, but, I've got to see foreign policy competence. I'll make my mind up during the campaign. The worse things get, with us doing nothing at all, the further right I'll go, on up to voting R.

Here's an interesting thought: O may actually wind up surprising us. He can be tough sometimes, like with the drone war and special ops and getting OBL. Just takes him a while to get there, but once there, he's methodical about it.

There's certainly a lot of pressure on him to start showing some strength.

Just my feeling on it, he may surprise us yet. Depends on what Putin does once O starts pushing back, if Russians keep up the tit for tat and freaking out (even on minor sanctions) then that's not going to help matters for them.

(reading between the lines on the latest news, I *think* O has staked out a red line that Russia must pull out from Crimea and then there will be talks and a compromise. So that's showing some strength. He's putting his credibility on the line there, he can't waffle again and even this administration knows it.)

[Graeme]

World War III? Cyber, Economic Battles Take Over

Tens of millions of people died in World War I and World War II as nations fought over resources, territory and ideology. But in the 21st century, economic and cyber-warfare between warring countries have largely replaced tanks, bombers and troops.

As tensions continue to ratchet up between Russia and Ukraine over the province of Crimea, could this sort of bloodless conflict be one possible outcome? Experts say it's possible.

"Nowadays it's hard to separate warfare from cyberwarfare, or even economic warfare," said Jacques Gansler, a former Pentagon undersecretary for technology and security, now professor of public policy and private enterprise at the University of Maryland. "The three are interrelated."

Gansler says that Ukraine is important to Russia for economic, rather than security reasons. It represents an important economic buffer between Russia's zone of influence and Europe. While observers say that Russia has already dispatched unmarked troops into Crimea, it's not clear whether a shooting war will break out.

Moscow has already engaged in cyber-warfare, launching denial of service attacks against Estonian government websites in 2007, and Georgia in 2008 before attacking that nation. Both nations were satellites of the former Soviet Union, along with Ukraine.

Cyber-attacks are "bound to be part of any future engagements," Gansler said. "We also have economic concerns about cyber having impact on industry or messing up power grids or communications systems. These are the things we are worrying about for the 21st century."

discovery