William Engdahl analyses conflict in Ukraine

http://www.corbettreport.com/interview-830-william-engdahl-exposes-the-western-agenda-in-ukraine/

Both sides to this situation are nuclear-armed.  It is a phenomenally dangerous situation.  Ukraine is on the cusp of a potential civil war.  Putin and Lavrov have shown remarkable restraint.  They offered a financial bail-out to Ukraine before the government fell.  That's now withdrawn.  With no bail-out available from Russia, and no bail-out likely from the EU, which is already in a financial crisis, or the US, Ukraine has no choice but the IMF.  They will be offering almost nothing compared to what's required in the Ukraine.

Trident 2.  Russia has equivalent weapons.

The rift between the US and Saudi Arabia is long term.  The George Bush plan is to transform the Middle East.  Obama is using the Moslem Brotherhood to push forward this longterm agenda.  Sunnis are vast majority of ME Moslems.  Aloite are much smaller branch of the religion, Iran and elsewhere.

Excellent piece on 911, and Saudi involvement, so-called.

In Syria the Moslem Brotherhood is the chosen agency to bring about regime change, as in Egypt.  Saudi Arabia warned the US not to use the Moslem Brotherhood to  topple Mubarak, and they warned the US not to topple Saddam Hussein.  The Saudi royalty feel threatened by the Moslem Brotherhood.  The ME went to Qatar.  Syria refused to take the pipeline from Qatar, and said they will stay loyal to Russia.  Assad became the new Adolf Hitler, as Saddam Hussein had been made.

Obama has painted himself into a corner over chemical weapon attacks in Syria being wrongly blamed on Assad.  The weapons were supplied by the Saudis without proper training.  Putin and Assad agreed to get chemical weapons out of Syria, saving Obama's face from an imminent war.  There are deep factions inside Washington trying to avoid further military adventures.

Regime change was forced inside Qatar.  The Rockefellers are no longer in control of Saudi oil and power. Many other issues covered in this podcast.  The entire Middle East is up for grabs.  A military government in Egypt financed by the Saudis are seeking alliances with Russia and China, after the Moslem Brotherhood left the country in ruins when they left.

China is the world's largest importer of oil.  Late 2020s they will be 70% of the oil market.  China has enormous geopolitical weight, but will be very vulnerable from the oil supply line.  Chinese food culture is years ahead of the West.  The Chinese don't shoot from the hip, while Abe in Japan has been shooting from the hip trying to get China to make a mistake.

China is trying to build new markets in the Eurasian continent to move away from the USA.  Russia and China combined with the Stans - the Eurasian landspace - is the basis of world power.  Britain controlled the world island since 1904.  Then the US.  Now control of the world island is coming up for grabs, and securing energy pipelines across Eurasia is the key strategic element, for securing China's energy needs.

www.williamengdahl.com has many good books on geopolitical topics such as these.   

The Rape of Ukraine: Phase Two Begins

FEBRUARY 28, 2014 BY 21WIRE 

F. William Engdahl
21st Century Wire

The events in Ukraine since November 2013 are so astonishing as almost to defy belief.An legitimately-elected (said by all international monitors) Ukrainian President, Viktor Yanukovich, has been driven from office, forced to flee as a war criminal after more than three months of violent protest and terrorist killings by so-called opposition.

His “crime” according to protest leaders was that he rejected an EU offer of a vaguely-defined associate EU membership that offered little to Ukraine in favor of a concrete deal with Russia that gave immediate €15 billion debt relief and a huge reduction in Russian gas import prices. Washington at that point went into high gear and the result today is catastrophe.

A secretive neo-nazi military organization reported linked to NATO played a decisive role in targeted sniper attacks and violence that led to the collapse of the elected government.

But the West is not finished with destroying Ukraine. Now comes the IMF with severe conditionalities as prerequisite to any Western financial help.

After the famous leaked phone call of US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland (photo, left) with the US Ambassador in Kiev, where she discussed the details of who she wanted in a new coalition government in Kiev, and where she rejected the EU solutions with her “Fuck the EU” comment,[1] the EU went it alone. Germany’s Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier proposed that he and his French counterpart, Laurent Fabius, fly to Kiev and try to reach a resolution of the violence before escalation. Polish Foreign Minister, Radoslaw Sikorski was asked to join. The talks in Kiev included the EU delegation, Yanukovich, the three opposition leaders and a Russian representative. The USA was not invited.[2]

The EU intervention without Washington was extraordinary and reveals the deeping division between the two in recent months. In effect it was the EU saying to the US State Department, “F*** the US,” we will end this ourselves.

After hard talks, all major parties including the majority of protesters, agreed to new presidential elections in December, return to the 2004 Constitution and release of Julia Tymoshenko from prison. The compromise appeared to end the months long chaos and give a way out for all major players.

The diplomatic compromise lasted less than twelve hours. Then all hell broke loose.

Snipers began shooting into the crowd on February 22 in Maidan or Independence Square. Panic ensued and riot police retreated in panic according to eyewitnesses. The opposition leader Vitali Klitschko withdrew from the deal, no reason given. Yanukovich fled Kiev.[3]  

The question unanswered until now is who deployed the snipers? According to veteran US intelligence sources, the snipers came from an ultra-right-wing military organization known as Ukrainian National Assembly – Ukrainian People’s Self-Defense (UNA-UNSO).

 
IMAGE: Members of UNA-UNSO marching in Lviv.Strange Ukraine ‘Nationalists’

The leader of UNA-UNSO, Andriy Shkil, ten years ago became an adviser to Julia Tymoshenko. UNA-UNSO, during the US-instigated 2003-2004 “Orange Revolution”, backed pro-NATO candidate Viktor Yushchenko against his pro-Russian opponent, Yanukovich. UNA-UNSO members provided security for the supporters of Yushchenko and Julia Tymoshenko on Independence Square in Kiev in 2003-4.[4]

UNA-UNSO is also reported to have close ties to the German National Democratic Party (NDP).[5]

Ever since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 the crack-para-military UNA-UNSO members have been behind every revolt against Russian influence. The one connecting thread in their violent campaigns is always anti-Russia. The organization, according to veteran US intelligence sources, is part of a secret NATO “GLADIO” organization, and not a Ukraine nationalist group as portrayed in western media. [6]

According to these sources, UNA-UNSO have been involved (confirmed officially) in the Lithuanian events in the Winter of 1991, the Soviet Coup d’etat in Summer 1991, the war for the Pridnister Republic 1992, the anti-Moscow Abkhazia War 1993, the Chechen War, the US-organized Kosovo Campaign Against the Serbs, and the August 8 2008 war in Georgia. According to these reports, UNA-UNSO para-military have been involved in every NATO dirty war in the post-cold war period, always fighting on behalf of NATO. “These people are the dangerous mercenaries used all over the world to fight NATO’s dirty war, and to frame Russia because this group pretends to be Russian special forces. THESE ARE THE BAD GUYS, forget about the window dressing nationalists, these are the men behind the sniper rifles,” these sources insist. [7]

If true that UNA-UNSO is not “Ukrainian” opposition, but rather a highly secret NATO force using Ukraine as base, it would suggest that the EU peace compromise with the moderates was likely sabotaged by the one major player excluded from the Kiev 21 February diplomatic talks—Victoria Nuland’s State Department.[8] Both Nuland and right-wing Republican US Senator John McCain have had contact with the leader of the Ukrainian opposition Svoboda Party, whose leader is openly anti-semitic and defends the deeds of a World War II Ukrainian SS-Galicia Division head.[9] The party was registered in 1995, initially calling itself the “Social National Party of Ukraine” and using a swastika style logo. Svoboda is the electoral front for neo-nazi organizations in Ukraine such as UNA-UNSO.[10]

One further indication that Nuland’s hand is shaping latest Ukraine events is the fact that the new Ukrainian Parliament is expected to nominate Nuland’s choice, Arseny Yatsenyuk, from Tymoshenko’s party, to be interim head of the new Cabinet.

Whatever the final truth, clear is that Washington has prepared a new economic rape of Ukraine using its control over the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

IMF plunder of Ukraine Crown Jewels

Now that the “opposition” has driven a duly-elected president into exile somewhere unknown, and dissolved the national riot police, Berkut, Washington has demanded that Ukraine submit to onerous IMF conditionalities.

In negotiations last October, the IMF demanded that Ukraine double prices for gas and electricity to industry and homes, that they lift a ban on private sale of Ukraine’s rich agriculture lands, make a major overhaul of their economic holdings, devalue the currency, slash state funds for school children and the elderly to “balance the budget.” In return Ukraine would get a paltry $4 billion.

Before the ouster of the Moscow-leaning Yanukovich government last week, Moscow was prepared to buy some $15 billion of Ukraine debt and to slash its gas prices by fully one-third. Now, understandably, Russia is unlikely to give that support. The economic cooperation between Ukraine and Moscow was something Washington was determined to sabotage at all costs.

This drama is far from over. The stakes involve the very future of Russia, the EU-Russian relations, and the global power of Washington, or at least that faction in Washington that sees further wars as the prime instrument of policy.

Writer F. William Engdahl is a geopolitical analyst and the author of  “Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order”.

http://21stcenturywire.com/2014/02/28/the-rape-of-ukraine-phase-two-begins/