13 July 2013 — Strategic Culture Foundation
The Pursuit of Edward Snowden
13.07.2013 | 00:00 | Wayne MADSEN
Latin America responded to the Morales plane incident by rallying to Snowden’s side. Offers of asylum came from Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia and Brazilian legislators called for Brazil to reverse its original denial of asylum and grant it to Snowden… Meanwhile, the Pussy Riot- and FEMEN-supporting U.S. to Moscow, Michael McFaul looked more and more foolish as he pressed Moscow to return Snowden to American soil. Instead, Snowden was permitted to meet human rights officials at Moscow’s airport… America was once again being treated as the renegade country it was during the Bush administration. The only difference was that Obama was putting more resources into capturing Snowden than Bush did in apprehending Bin Laden…
Edward Snowden Has Not Yet Had the Last Word
13.07.2013 | 00:00 | Nil NIKANDROV
…What else could Snowden, who deliberately gathered information for future revelations before his flight from the NSA, have found out? Take, for instance, the suspicious illness and subsequent death of Hugo Chavez, about which much has been said and written. Could Snowden have used the opportunities he had while he was working at the NSA to learn the truth about the murder of the president of Venezuela? Maybe that is the explanation for the heightened nervousness in the upper circles of U.S. leadership? One gets the impression that Snowden’s acts and movements concern Washington much more than, say, events in Egypt or in Syria. Well, we’ll wait and wish Snowden a successful flight to the Western Hemisphere. He hasn’t yet had the last word…
Syria Will not See Peace during Ramadan
12.07.2013 | 08:56 | Dmitry MININ
There have been shifts in the leadership of Syria’s armed opposition. Following defeats in recent weeks and the broad offensive carried out by government forces, the leaders of the opposition have, by a small majority, elected Saudi Arabia’s protege Ahmad Assi al-Jarba to replace the man from Qatar and become the new leader of the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces (NCSROF)… From now on, it will be probably the most undemocratic government in the world that is going to be wholly in charge of Syria’s «democratic» opposition – the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia…
On the Possibility of a Change in Turkey’s Policy on the «Syrian Issue»
12.07.2013 | 00:00 | Andrey ARESHEV
…The removal from power of the Egyptian president Mursi could not have been good news for Turkish Prime Minister Erdo?an. On the «Syrian issue» both the former Egyptian leader and the current Turkish leader were guided by similar principles, placing their bets on a union with the West and support from the international terrorist rabble. A week before the decisive events in Egypt, Mohammed Mursi tried to direct civic activism toward religious war, announcing a break in diplomatic relations with Damascus and support of plans to establish a no-fly zone over Syria. Everyone knows how that ended. Ankara must take this experience into account…
Obama’s All-out Global War against an American Asylum Seeker
11.07.2013 | 00:01 | Wayne MADSEN
The air piracy committed by the United States against Morales resulted in a firestorm in Latin America. Asylum requests by Snowden were granted by Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Bolivia. Uruguay’s First Lady, Senator Lucia Topolansky, also said Uruguay would grant asylum and several Brazilian lawmakers pressed President Dilma Rousseff to grant Snowden asylum. Latin American countries roundly condemned Morales’s forced landing in Vienna as the five European countries involved offered up nonsensical explanations for their actions. Regional Latin American organizations condemned the Obama administration and the five European countries, all of which are NSA «Third Party» signal intelligence-gathering collaborators, offered up excuses for their actions but no valid reasons…
The Volynia Massacre in the Light of the Politics of Memory (II)
11.07.2013 | 00:01 | Nikolai MALISHEVSKI
On the 65th anniversary of the Volynia massacre, Polish authorities rejected a draft resolution in the Sejm which accused the OUN/UPA of the genocide of Poles. Something similar is planned for the 70th anniversary on July 11… «It is difficult to justify the shameful acquiescence with which some in Poland are renouncing the truth, and the part of the elite which shapes public opinion reacts hysterically to any reminder of the OUN or the use of the most appropriate word in this case, ‘genocide’», writes the central Polish publication Rzeczpospolita… By agreeing to the falsification of history and consigning the Volynia tragedy to oblivion, the Poles are committing an act which is doubly worthy of the harshest censure. It is a disgrace, because a crime demands truthful illumination, and reconciliation is worthless if it is based on falsehood»…
The Volynia Tragedy: Why It Is <i>«Hard to Believe the Poles..» </i> (I)
10.07.2013 | 00:00 | Nikolai MALISHEVSKI
On June 20, after two months of discussion, the Polish Senate passed a resolution accusing the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) of «ethnic cleansings with signs of genocide» which took place in 1943 in Volynia… However, the ruling Civil Platform party intends to strike this definition from the text. To put it simply, Warsaw is trying to cover things up and twist historical truth out of political expediency… The truth is, as the «Rzeczpospolita» acknowledges, that «out of the numerous crimes committed against Poles in the 20th century, which was a century of genocide, this one is special in that it is perhaps the only one which the Poles are voluntarily erasing from their memories… It is hard to believe the Poles when they state that on the issue of Katynia they are interested in the truth and not politics when at the same time in their relations with Ukraine they renounce the truth in the name of politics».
Neither Coup nor Revolution: Egypt’s US-Backed Deep State Reasserts Control
10.07.2013 | 00:00 | Finian CUNNINGHAM
The numbers and claims are conflicting, but it seems that the Egyptian army has indeed committed a cold-blooded massacre – killing between 30 and 54 people and wounding hundreds more, including children, in the capital, Cairo, according to various media sources. The bloodshed pushes the North African country to the brink of civil war, already roiled by weeks of violence, with dozens dead in street clashes between opposing political factions, that culminated last week in the country’s army deposing the elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi…
Is the U.S. a Threat to Eurasian Integration?
09.07.2013 | 09:56 | Pavel DMITRIEV
For the participants in the future unification in post-Soviet Eurasia, the obvious question is: «Is the United States a threat to Eurasian integration?» The answer is «Yes!»… The success of the Eurasian project will be a practical limitation on the excessive and dangerous ambitions of the U.S… And finally (why not?), it would be a lesson for American politicians, who will be forced to accept the idea that the attitude of the U.S. toward the post-Soviet countries like that of a sovereign toward his vassals, which arose after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was a brief historical exception and will never be the rule…
Turkey and Israel: Back in the Saddle Again and Aiming at Syria
09.07.2013 | 00:00 | Wayne MADSEN
…The Sunday Times of London reported that an unnamed Israeli official told the paper that the long-term goal of Washington and Jerusalem is the creation of a Sunni bloc in the Middle East composed of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and a Sunni-controlled Islamic state in Syria that would have Israel as a de facto member. The Shi’a-led government of Iraq would be checked by its autonomous Kurdish north also joining the Sunni bloc since relations between the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq and Turkey are relatively good. The actions of the Obama administration, which has decided for the first time in American history, to take sides in a religious war between Sunnis and Shi’as, point in the direction of the creation of a new version of the old Cold War-era Central Treaty Organization (CENTO)…
US-EU Spy Scandal Challenges Transatlantic Trade Talks
08.07.2013 | 00:00 | Igor ALEXEEV
Snowden’s revelations have put a deep freeze on US-EU relations. Diplomats in Europe are searching for (and finding) bugs in their embassies. Influential politicians speak about this unprecedented betrayal of the transatlantic partnership. The popular German magazine SPIEGEL has published its bitter conclusion: «Berlin is a third-class ally». Can this super-scandal doom the trade talks with the US?..
USA-EU: Free Trade Zone Under Electronic Surveillance
08.07.2013 | 00:00 | Pyotr ISKENDEROV
The Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership presupposes tackling many more problems in comparison, for example, with NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement). Electronic surveillance against Europe is an illustration of how the United States achieves unilateral advantages. The fact this information has come into the open will hardly help overcome the obstacles on the way of creating the «economic NATO»…
Egypt: Takeover Short of Military Coup
07.07.2013 | 20:00 | Dmitry MININ
What bad luck the Syrian President Bashar Assad’s enemies have had recently! They have lost Al-Qusayr. Qatar and Turkey have to grapple with instability. The strategically important city of Homs is on the verge of falling into the hands of government troops, Egyptian President Morsi is deposed. I wonder what will happen after Aleppo is freed, will the king of Saudi Arabia resign or will someone among Western sponsors of Assad’s enemies lose face once and for all? Doom and gloom appears to be perusing those guilty of unrighteousness and wrongdoing aimed to damage the ancient land of Syria with its historic roots going to the times of the Bible…
The Hunt for the President’s Plane
07.07.2013 | 11:25 | Nil NIKANDROV
It is not that important from what source U.S. intelligence received a signal that Edward Snowden would be transported out of Russia on the airplane of Bolivian President Evo Morales; the important thing is that the information turned out to be disinformation. Through allied governments in Europe – France, Italy, Spain and Portugal – Washington tried to organize a humiliating inspection of the presidential airplane in violation of all international conventions and treaties on the immunity of state leaders…
Spying Scandal and Prospects for «Economic NATO»
07.07.2013 | 00:00 | Valentin KATASONOV
The scandal raised by the revelations confirming the fact that the US special services snooped on European allies has not made surface anything new… Germany is especially humiliated by Anglo-Saxons, it has happened to be the prime target of the National Security Agency’s snooping efforts. On the one hand, it shows that Germany is considered to be the country posing the biggest economic threat. On the other hand, it testifies to the fact that Germany is perceived by the United States not as an ally, but rather as a satellite nation… Some media outlets have dropped a hint the Snowden revelations about American snooping were part of deliberate effort on the part of «economic NATO» opponents pursuing the goal of preventing the creation of free trade economic zone, or, at least, slowing the process down…
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