Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com & Ricky Onsman / Sputnik – 2016-08-14 01:08:47
Biden: Ukraine Must
Avoid Escalating Tensions With Russia
Jason Ditz / AntiWar.com
(August 12, 2016) — Over the past two-and-a-half years, the Obama Administration has made supporting the pro-West Ukrainian government against Russia a matter of policy in virtually every case, even when it made little sense to do so. The most recent round of rising tensions, however, may be changing that.
Though officially the US insists it has no intelligence on Russia’s report of Ukrainian spies trying to infiltrate the Crimean Peninsula, killing a pair of Russian officers, Vice President Joe Biden today spoke with Ukraine’s president, warning him he must “do his part” in avoiding escalation of tensions with the Russians.
Interrogation of Ukranian Government Terrorist Evgeny Panov
(August 12, 2016) — Alleged officer of Ukrainian military intelligence is being interrogated by Russian Federal Security Service after being captured in Crimea together with Ukrainian insurgent group.
That’s a huge shift in US narrative, as in the past they’ve always embraced whatever Poroshenko said about Russia, including his repeated predictions of an imminent Russian invasion of Eastern Europe.
In this case, however, it seems the administration is uncomfortable with the road the Ukrainian government is going down, perhaps because, unlike in Eastern Ukraine, where Russia was merely a supporter of the rebellion, Crimea is an official member of the Russian Federation, even if not formally recognized by Ukraine as such.
Meanwhile, Ukraine is facing potential diplomatic fallout with Russia itself over the situation, with Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev warning Russia might ultimately decide to sever diplomatic ties with Ukraine in protest over the attempted infiltration.
Ukraine has denied involvement in the matter, though Russia insists that a captured member of the infiltration team confessed to being a member of Ukraine’s spy agency.
Ukraine President Hires
Ex-NATO Chief in Bid for Alliance Membership
Ricky Onsman / Sputnik
WASHINGTON (June 4, 2016) – On Friday, Poroshenko announced on his website he was appointing former NATO Secretary-General Rasmussen as his personal adviser.
“That the US puppet Poroshenko should appoint the ex-NATO chief of staff as his advisor says it all,” Helen Caldicott, founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the co-winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, said.
Caldicott said the move was a direct and logistical consequence of the US and EU-backed coup that toppled the democratically-elected government of Ukraine under President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014.
Rasmussen, a former prime minister of Denmark, was still NATO Secretary-General at the time of the coup. He only stepped down from the position in October 2014 after serving with US support for five years.
“The US coup in Ukraine is achieving its end: To include the country in NATO, a US-run organization,” Caldicott stated.
She cautioned that the appointment of Rasmussen as adviser would serve to further inflame Moscow’s concerns that the United States and NATO were using Poroshenko’s increasingly unpopular government in Kiev as a forward platform hostile to the security of Russia. Rasmussen’s appointment “will serve to further antagonize an already antagonized [Russian President Vladimir] Putin,” she warned.
Caldicott, one of the world’s leading experts on the global nuclear arms race, also noted that Rasmussen’s appointment came at a time when both Russia and the US-led NATO alliance were carrying out military exercises.
She predicted that Rasmussen’s appointment and likely hawkish advice to Poroshenko would dangerously intensify tensions in the region. “Will this lead to conflict when both the United States and Russia are busy practicing war exercises against each other?” Caldicott asked. “Only time will tell.”
Caldicott is the author of many other books, including “The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military Industrial Complex.” The Smithsonian Institution has named Caldicott one of the most influential women of the 20th century.
US Missile Shield in EU
Designed to Provoke Russia
Ricky Onsman / Sputnik
WASHINGTON (May 16, 2016) — The activation of US Aegis anti-missile bases in Europe is deliberately meant to outrage Russian leaders and is intensifying tensions and security threats in Europe, Nobel Peace Prize-winner Helen Caldicott told Sputnik.
Earlier on Thursday, the US Aegis Ashore missile defense system was officially inaugurated at a military base in Romania, and the construction of a similar complex will begin in Poland on Friday — due to be completed by 2018.
“The US so-called missile defense shield to be deployed shortly in Europe is an extremely provocative move focused of course on Russia,” Caldicott, founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility and co-winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize, told Sputnik on Thursday.
She charged that US and NATO defense planners had to have expected the inevitable responses from Moscow in advance because of all the warnings they had received from the Russian government and from Western analysts opposed to the plan.
Caldicott also warned that that the reckless decisions by Washington and NATO leaders were sending the world perilously down the path of risking a World War III. “How much more will the United States provoke [President Vladimir] Putin and Russia before they get . . . a nuclear war?”
Russia has repeatedly warned that the NATO alliance’s military build-up in Europe is provocative and can result in regional and global destabilization.
Bernie Sanders Poses Greatest Threat
To US Establishment – A Peace Campaigner
Ricky Onsman / Sputnik
(April 20, 2016) — Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders presents the greatest direct political challenge to the established interests in the United States, global peace campaigner Helen Caldicott said.
“Bernie Sanders poses the strongest challenge to the US establishment,” Caldicott, founding president of Physicians for Social Responsibility, the co-winner of the 1985 Nobel Peace Prize said. “That is why the mainstream media in the United States will not cover him until they absolutely have to.”
Caldicott expressed her agreement with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s comments in a nationally broadcast telecast on Thursday that the ruling political establishment in the United States was determined to prevent any candidate embracing serious reforms to in the presidency in this year’s contest.
“Putin is absolutely right: Hillary Clinton is married to the establishment so nothing will change under her,” she stated.
Clinton and Sanders face each other in the New York State primary election on Tuesday. Though Sanders is trailing Clinton in votes and pledged delegates, he has vowed to stay in the race until the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in the US state of Pennsylvania in July.
Sanders has continuously criticized Clinton for her ties to big financial institutions and other corporations that have donated to her and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, upwards of $150 million in speaking fees as well as in other donations, according to media reports.
Trump offered less certain, but still conceivable possibility for reforming bellicose US national security and foreign policies, Caldicott suggested.
“I am not sure about Trump, he makes some interesting statements sometimes. However the Republican establishment will do everything they can to thwart him — and they are the establishment!” she noted.
Trump has been increasingly complaining of the unfair political system in which a candidate can win delegates from a state without being voted for in a primary election, or can lose delegates even if he wins.
The Republican National Committee is determined to prevent Trump through winning the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the party’s presidential nomination on the first ballot at the party’s national convention in Cleveland, Ohio in July, Caldicott observed.
Caldicott is the author of many books, including The New Nuclear Danger: George W. Bush’s Military Industrial Complex” The Smithsonian Institution has named Caldicott one of the most influential women of the 20th century.
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