Foreign Relations

Chronology of the Ukrainian Coup

March 6, 2014 Renee Parsons www.commondreams.org Educate! Foreign Relations, Government, Ukraine

Listening to the US media, even the most diligent news junkie would find it difficult to know that the U.S. State Department played not only a vital role in the violence and chaosunderway in Ukraine but was also complicit in creating the coup that ousted democratically elected President Viktor Yanuyovch. Given the Russian Parliament’s approval of Putin’s request for military troops to be moved into Crimea, Americans uninformed about the historyof that region might also be persuaded that Russia is the aggressor and the sole perpetrator of the violence. Let’s be clear about what is at stake here: NATO missiles on the adjacent Ukraine border aimed directly at Russia would make that country extremely vulnerable to Western goals and destabilization efforts while threatening Russia’s only water access to its naval fleet in Crimean peninsula, the Balkans, the Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East – and not the least of which would allow world economic dominance by the US, the European Union, the IMF, World Bank and international financiers all of whom had already brought staggering suffering to millions around the globe.

Netanyahu Freaks Out About BDS Movement At AIPAC

March 6, 2014 Ali Abunimah, electronicintifada.net Resist! AIPAC, Foreign Relations, Government, Palestine

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today launched a frontal assault on the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement. “One movement that’s definitely on the wrong side of the moral divide is the movement to boycott Israel, the so-called BDS,” Netanyahu told the cheering delegates, in his keynote speech to the annual gathering of the powerful Israel lobby group AIPAC in Washington, DC. “That movement will fail,” Netanyahu predicted. While claiming that people were “flocking to Israel” for its technology from all over the world, Netanyahu warned, “I don’t want you to get complacent – because the fact that they’re going to fail doesn’t mean that the BDS movement shouldn’t be vigorously opposed.”

VIDEO: Manifest Destiny’s Child Strikes In Ukraine

February 19, 2014 Dennis Trainor Jr, www.PopularResistance.org Resistance Report Foreign Relations, Ukraine, Video, Wars and Militarism

As Paul Craig Roberts writes in an article published on his website and PopularResistance.org: “There is a lack of awareness on the part of the protesters that by permitting themselves to be manipulated by Washington, they are pushing the world toward a dangerous war. A number of confirmations have come in from readers that Washington is fueling the violent protests in Ukraine with our taxpayer dollars. Washington has no money for food stamps or to prevent home foreclosures, but it has plenty of money with which to subvert Ukraine.” The fact that we are meddling in the affairs of the Ukraine, spending money and influence that are resulting in violence and death should not read as tin foil hat conspiracy theory. These actions, and financial priorities have been US foreign policy dating back to at least the end of World War 2. Whether it is the 1953 CIA lead coup in Iran, or Ollie North funneling funny money to train freedom fighters in Afghanistan that would yield a young leader named Osama Bin Laden, the United States has been attempting to shape the geopolitical landscape and global economy loosing military conflicts ad wars for sixty years.

Former Congressional Chief Of Staff Hopeful for Prospects of Peace

February 18, 2014 Charles F. Dambach www.fpif.org Create! Foreign Relations, Peace

Preference for diplomacy over military action should be self-evident, but not for everyone. Some still pine for the days of old when the Dulles brothers waged clandestine wars across the globe to impose the U.S. will on sovereign nations — often installing brutal dictators who would protect our interests at the expense of democratic values and local needs. In hisWeekly Standard magazine, veteran neoconservative activist William Kristol describesleading through diplomacy rather than military might as “feeble execution of our foreign policy.” But we are paying a severe price for Kristol’s prescriptions in Iraq and Afghanistan, and we are not trusted in Iran, much of Africa, and Latin America because of the Dulles folly. More military muscle will not help. Others fear a reduction in military action will collapse the economy. After all, every American was raised knowing, without question, that war is good for the economy. Several years ago, I introduced several members of Congress to the concept of peacebuilding. One of them, an old friend, rejected the idea of building a more peaceful world out of hand. “You can’t do that,” he exclaimed. “It will ruin the economy.” He meant it.

Leaked Phone Call Lays Bare Washington’s Gangsterism

February 11, 2014 Bill Van Auken, www.wsws.org Educate! Foreign Relations

What coverage has been provided has mainly focused on Ms. Nuland’s use of the decidedly undiplomatic phrase “Fuck the EU” in spelling out Washington’s attitude to the role being played by its European partners in the crisis that has gripped Ukraine for nearly three months. The media’s other slant on the story has dutifully echoed the State Department’s own attempt to deflect the controversy by denouncing the public airing of a private conversation as “a new low in Russian trade-craft.” The Russian government has vigorously denied the US charge that Moscow is responsible for the leak. The accusation is, in any case, rather rich coming from a government that has been exposed as spying on the phone conversations of hundreds of millions of people in the US and around the world.

Obama Continues To Appoint Big Donors To Key Positions

September 28, 2013 Michael Beckel, wwwpublicintegrity.org Educate! Corruption, Foreign Relations, Government

A veteran Goldman Sachs & Co. executive and major fundraiser for President Barack Obama has been nominated as the next ambassador to Canada — the latest in a parade of big-dollar campaign backers slated to represent U.S. interests abroad. Heyman’s nomination is a sort of milestone for the White House: During his second term, Obama has now tapped 20 campaign bundlers for ambassadorships. Together, these moneymen and women raised at least $13.8 million — and likely much more — for Obama’s political committees since 2007, according to the Center for Public Integrity’s research. This has prompted criticism from many career diplomats and good-government groups, even as Obama’s overall rate of appointing non-career ambassadors has remained in-line with those of previous administrations — about one in three, according to the American Foreign Service Association, the labor union and trade association for career diplomats. So far in Obama’s second term, it’s about one in two. When he was running for president in 2008, Obama pledged to be a different kind of politician and stressed his “commitment to changing the way business is done in Washington.”

“Yes We Scan” Obama Protest in Berlin

June 18, 2013 Jean-Baptiste Piggin, www.en.europeonline-magazine.eu Resist! Foreign Relations, Surveillance

"The partnership with America is indispensable to us Germans and Europeans to preserve shared peace, security and prosperity in these times of globalization," German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle told the Neue Osnabruecker Zeitung newspaper. Both sides have played down the revelation last week of the NSA‘s surveillance under the code-name PRISM. Merkel has been urged by many politicians to demand that Obama explain the spying. "The PRISM affair will undoubtedly overshadow Obama‘s visit," said Heike MacKerron, director of the Berlin office of the German Marshall Fund, in a briefing note. "The real danger, though, is that the PRISM revelation may lead to greater distrust during the negotiations for a Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)," she said. That deal would ease trade barriers in public procurement and norms and standards.

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