Monday, 22 June 2015
22 June 2015. Animal Funnies… What If Aliens Listened to Fox News?
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Junta Officers Who Rallied to the DNR Want to Help Build a Peaceful Life in Novorossiya
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Today, at a news conference in Donetsk, junta officers who rallied to the DNR spoke of their aspirations to help build a peaceful future in the Republic. Major General A V Kolomiets said, “I lived in Donetsk 19 years. I know that this is a beautiful country, with beautiful people… I hope to find myself a job here to further the good of the DNR”. Colonel Yevgeny Kudinov said, “We’ll help to protect your families, your land… the entire DNR. We’ll carry out all of our orders; we’ll see to it that they have positive intent”. Sergei Chekalov, a VV MVDU* officer noted, “Now, we’re helping to defend the Republic, but we’d like to direct our future efforts to peaceful purposes”. Colonel Sergei Dobrenko observed, “Our main task is to protect our Republic, to be on guard for peace. In future, we’d like to work for the reconstruction and prosperity of our land”. For his part, Lieutenant Colonel Yedko added, “I was able to talk with Ukrainian officers APU who hadn’t dishonoured themselves. They call the Banderovtsy battalions ‘our fascists’. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t turn around and march on Kiev, why they continue to carry out criminal orders. After our victory, I intend to retire from the army, I’ll babysit my grandchildren”. Colonel Chekalov put in, “After the end of hostilities, we’d find plenty to do… we have a great city. Our industry will rise again. They’ll need us, and we’re ready to work”. Lieutenant Colonel Turbinev shared, “The primary task is to defend the interests of the Republic, our families, our fellow citizens. I’ll work both for myself and for the common good”. General Kolomiets pointed up at the news conference, “Many Ukrainian officers are willing to side with the Republic, but they hesitate to do so because of fears for themselves and their families. Besides, it’s not so easy for some to let go of the idea of the ‘Ukraine'”.
- VV MVDU: Internal Troops of the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs… military units under the MVDU used for internal security, counter-insurgency, and site defence
22 June 2015
DAN Donetsk News Agency
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Interesting Lacunae in RT Reporting…
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Firstly, read this. Interesting, no? Well, it doesn’t mention earlier rallies of Ukrainian higher officers and units. Now, read this. Note well that the RT article doesn’t mention Admiral Berezovsky at all! I’d say that the commander of the “Ukrainian” Navy rallying to Russia wasn’t small beer! Now, read this… ask yourself, “What happened to all the troops that rallied to Russia and refused repatriation to the Ukraine and what happened to all the matériel stockpiled there?” Here’s something from Krasnaya Zvezda, the Russian military journal. This is for internal consumption… it isn’t propaganda. Note well that the RT report said nothing of this battalion coming over almost completely en bloc to Russia!
This present RT report smells like bullshit to me. No… not false… simply not giving the whole story. WHY? I’d say that one reason is that RT is trying to reinforce the “stupid factor” amongst the Anglos. That is… they’re trying to pretend that their attention spans are as short as those of the Anglo political class (which is about the same as a sex-crazed gnat in heat during the height of the mating season). People like McCain, Biden, Nuland, Clinton, Rubio, and Cruz are grasping idiots… their actions show that. RT is playing up to their stupidity and ignorance. It doesn’t matter if any of us tell the truth… these arrogant bastards are so hubristical that they only attend to voices that tell them what they want to hear. Besides that, Biden and Clinton have pre-existing (and rancidly deep) Russophobia… they showed that in 1999 when they contemptuously spat on the late Patriarch Aleksei Ridiger when he asked the Americans not to bomb Belgrade on Orthodox Easter.
McCain’s recent statement that the USA could supply all of Europe and the Ukraine with natural gas in two years was vacuity on parade. Firstly, American natural gas production has topped off… secondly, many jurisdictions are banning fracking… thirdly, the drop in oil prices means that the energy multinationals have much less to invest in exploration, exploitation, and infrastructure. The only way to ship natural gas from the USA to Europe is via LNG tanker… there are only so many such vessels and none of the present tonnage is available for such traffic as they already have full employment shipping LNG. Remember, the drop in oil prices means that energy conglomerates will have difficulty properly maintaining their present fleets, let alone adding to them. That’s to say, the infrastructure doesn’t exist… there’s no funds to develop it until oil prices recover. In short, McCain’s boast is GIGO.
Lastly, read this… it’s a howler! WOW! 40,000 troops… that’s 3 division-equivalents, which works out to 9 brigade-equivalents, which comes out to 27 line battalions. The peacetime Russian Army has 41 brigades and 2 divisions… not counting the stockpiled equipment for reserve formations (which mostly don’t exist in Western armies). NATO is going to deter 47 Russian brigades with 9 NATO brigades! In fact, it’s less than that, for it includes an inordinate amount of special ops bubbas. These troops can raid and reconnoitre, but they can’t hold ground. They simply lack the heavy equipment and manpower. What’s more, this notional force comes from all the NATO members… with varying TO&Es… varying equipment… varying operational doctrine… varying logistics and provisions pipelines. In short, it’s a clusterfuck waiting to happen. The largest single national contingent would be the two manoeuvre brigades of US Army Europe (6 of the 27 battalions of this notional force). The USA has no more troops in Europe at present and has plans to have stockpiles for only two more brigades as reinforcements (I discussed the difficulties of such a movement here).
This is a non-starter from the git-go… and VVP knows it. That’s why he’s emulating Br’er Fox and lying low. I wonder why RT (and most other Russian English-language media) isn’t giving the full story that one gets in the Russian-language media. It’s almost like the English-language and Russian-language productions come from two different teams with two different POVs and goals. Be careful… the Western reportage is outright lies… the Russian reporting is good in Russian… inconsistent in English. The media organisations do know what’s going on, as the Russian coverage invariably has excellent reportage and op-eds. The English sometimes echoes Western bullshit, sometimes it tells the truth… I truly feel bad for those with no facility in Russian. The news in English is nasty from the West, wobbly from Russia (I don’t think that expats are the reason… all-too-many Russian English-speakers are pro-Western neoliberals). Stay tuned… it bids fair to be interesting…
BMD
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Voices from Russia 
Several Thousand Rally in Athens Against Austerity
Tags: Alexis Tsipras, Austerity, austerity measures, civil unrest, Coalition of the Radical Left, EU, European Union, Germany, Greece, Greek, Greek economic crisis, political commentary, politics, Politics of Greece
Rowdy Greek Orthodox monk rabble-rousin’ in front of the Hellenic Parliament Building… what the IMF and the neoliberal “conservatives” want is objectively evil… so, like St Antony the Great, the monks are coming forward to lend their voices to the opposition to the crapitalist bloodsuckers
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Tsipras gets on well with Church figures… here he is with HH… those who say otherwise are lying CIA dogs like Radio Liberty and the New York Times…they lie to get people to support rightwing pro-oligarch fantasies
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Mellow Greek Orthodox priest taking part in anti-austerity protest in front of the Hellenic Parliament building
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Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras speaks with Greek expatriates near the statue of Graf Ioannis Antonios Kapodistrias, the Russian-born founder of the modern Greek state, in St Petersburg
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On Sunday, thousands of people rallied in front of the Hellenic Parliament in Athens, urging Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras to resist pressure from international creditors to accept more austerity in exchange for unlocking billions of Euros in bailout funds. The demonstration by supporters of Tsipras’s ruling SYRIZA party and others opposed to the Euro was the second anti-Euro rally in a week in central Athens and came a day before a vital summit meeting in Brussels to try to break a deadlock that left Greece on the brink of default. Singing, waving Greek flags and banners with slogans such as “No to the Euro”, “The People won’t be blackmailed”, and “The country’s not for sale”, several thousand people filled the street in front of parliament. 65-year-old former teacher Yiota Kananakari said, “They want to humiliate us, why else do they insist on all these measures? We won’t tolerate it anymore”. With speculation over Greece’s future in the Euro intensifying, a counter-rally urging the country to remain in the single currency occurred last week, with another scheduled for Monday.
Like earlier anti-austerity and pro-euro rallies over the past week, Sunday’s demonstration was far smaller than the mass protests of tens of thousands that filled Syntagma Square in central Athens at other points during the crisis. Opinion polls show broad support for Greece remaining in the Euro, but there’s also been deep resentment at the cuts to pensions and wages imposed on Greece during years of recession that left an unemployment rate of more than 25 percent. 65-year-old pensioner Fotis Mavroudis said, “The people said no to the measures and the lenders must understand this, they must listen to us. How can someone get by on 400 Euros (24,370 Roubles. 2,817 Renminbi. 28,820 INR. 454 USD. 559 CAD. 587 AUD. 287 UK Pounds) a month, with all these taxes, with all the bills we have to pay?”
After a weekend spent with close aides working out Greece’s proposals to lenders, Tsipras is due to meet the heads of the European Commission, the European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund, the main creditors, before a broader meeting of Eurozone leaders on Monday. Officials say that he’s ready to make concessions in some areas but resisted cuts to pensions that lenders demanded to shore up Greece’s battered public finances. Greece needs a deal to unlock bailout funds frozen during months of wrangling before a 30 June deadline when a 1.6 billion Euro (97.48 billion Roubles. 11.27 billion Renminbi. 115.17 billion INR. 1.82 billion USD. 2.24 billion CAD. 2.35 billion AUD. 1.15 billion UK Pounds) payment to the IMF falls due. If it fails to meet that payment, it risks losing ECB support that its banking system relies on to continue operating. However, even before the 30 June deadline falls due, the stability of the banking system could face pressure unless a deal is reached with withdrawals reaching more than 1 billion Euros (61 billion Roubles. 7.05 billion Renminbi. 72 billion INR. 1.14 billion USD. 1.4 billion CAD. 1.47 billion AUD. 717 million UK Pounds) a day by the end of last week.
21 June 2015
Reuters
http://www.todayonline.com/world/several-thousand-rally-athens-against-austerity