In recorded comments made for a documentary of the accession of Crimea into the Russian Federation, President Vladimir Putin revealed that he had been readying Russia’s nuclear arms during the height of the Ukraine crisis.
Putin says the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was masterminded by the US, and claimed that forces involved in the “coup” were trained in Poland and Lithuania.
He went on to say that the annexation of Crimea was never even considered before the crisis began, but that given the large ethnic Russian majority, it was impossible not to return Crimea to its historical place as part of Russia.
The Crimean Peninsula had been part of Russia beginning in 1802, and was transferred to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic in 1954. As the long-standing base of Russia’s western navy, its status became a matter of considerable concern amongst Russians after Ukraine’s independence in 1991.
Russia leased the base from Ukraine from then on, though pro-Western politicians often sought to expel Russia in favor of Western alternatives. The early 2014 regime change was extremely anti-Russian in nature, and would likely have led to another row over the base, had not the referendum been held in which Crimea seceded from Ukraine and was reannexed into Russia.
Perfect class solution to terrorism — You heard it first at AntiWar.com
Terrorists are too smart to be of the laboring-class, as the repetitious drudgery of manual labor is most degrading and demeaning to them. Also, they have not the intelligence of the educated middle-class, as they do not qualify for higher paying middle-class jobs.
So, this class ends up doing manual labor jobs which they hate and for the most part has no social contact with society. For neither the laboring-class nor the educated middle-class want nothing to do with them and those of their intelligence are less then 5% of society.
Actually this terrorist class, it could rightly be called the criminal class. Not that it is any more criminal then the rest of society, just that it tries to take back some of the wealth that rightly belongs to the lower half of society. For the educated upper half is the voting majority that always votes to hoard all the wealth by allowing nothing to trickle down to the lower half but a starvation minimum wage.
And so, to cure 99% of terrorism and crime in America, simply pass a law that prevents the upper half from hoarding more then 75% of the wealth. That would give every worker in the lower half a living wage and end all crime and terrorism by ending all vengeance, the root cause of all criminal behavior.
Anyway, in the wealthiest Empire the world has ever known, does the upper half really need more then 75% of the wealth?
Nice to see RT linked in this account as well as CBS and BBC. Kudos to Jason Ditz.
It is high time that we got both sides of the story, and RT keeps the Western media a little bit more honest, but not completely.
Strikingly in both BBC and CBS accounts the atrocity in Odessa, ie., the burning alive of Russian speaking Ukrainians by neo-Nazi pro-Kiev forces, which has been air brushed out of Western accounts, is not mentioned in the CBS or BBC accounts. In the RT account Putin is quoted thus, "'Considering the ethnic composition of the Crimean population, the violence there would have been worse [than in Kiev]. We had to act to prevent negative development, not to allow tragedies like the one that happened in Odessa, where dozens of people were burned alive,' Putin said."
In the account by the very reliable John Pilger of the events in Ukraine in the last 19 paragraphs of his piece, the RT reporting on the events is validated. (See :http://johnpilger.com/articles/why-the-rise-of-fascism-is-again-the-issue).
I had trouble with your link, John. I found it here: http://johnpilger.com/articles/why-the-rise-of-fa…
God Bless Putin in his struggle against the US empire.
Never hurts to make clear to the neocon morons in DC who they are messing with.
This article contains a rather glaring error as it weren't the weapons being readied but the people making decisions, which is absolutely not the same in terms of actions.
From the CBS link in the article:
" ready to bring its nuclear weapons into a state of alert during"
which is NOT the same as
" reading nuclear weapons".
because that would equal them bringing them into a state or level of readiness. Politicians were ready, not the weapons as that involves a lot of activity which would have set off a lot of alarms.
Other papers for better context or phrasing:
NYT: "prompted him to consider putting Russia…'"
Reuters" "Moscow was ready to put its nuclear forces on alert"
Kyiv post: "Putin says … that he weighed putting Russia's nuclear arsenal on alert"
The "CBS" report is actually a reposting of an Associated Press article and as has been evident for a long time, the AP has a propensity to push USG/neocon talking points. Also noted is that the AP doesn't bother to attribute the author of the AP article.
But perhaps I wasn't clear: the CBS wasn't wrong but Jason Ditz/ Antiwar here got the headline dead wrong. Although I did notice a few other outlets doing it but not CBS. I did sent a note to the editor as it's really a blooper in my opinion and describing an event which didn't take place in that shape or form.
Sometimes the establishment press is actually entertaining. Well, maybe that is too strong a word. This morning NPR excitedly informed us how no one has seen Putin the Poopyhead in public for ten whole days. Wow. This obviously means that Putin has been deposed, or he's dead, or something.
Five minutes later I heard a report on CBC Radio informing us that the Evil One had just made a public appearance. Really, these people need to do a better job coordinating their propaganda…
It doesn't matter. Their brain dead audience will never notice.
Putin clearly realises that he's in deep trouble! By throwing nuclear threats around, he reveals just how nasty he is. That will hurt him rather than help him as it makes clear that, as with Hitler 75 years ago, there is no point in trying to negotiate with him. He is once again goading the US to attack him. That is not someone who is looking for a peaceful settlement or who is going to maintain the ceasefire indefinitely. This is a man preparing for a war he sees an inevitable. He wants it now because he thinks he is better prepared at this moment than NATO and because he believes that the sanctions are slowly but surely ruining the Russian economy. With every passing day, NATO is better armed and better prepared, and public opinion is ever more resigned to the inevitability of war. With every passing day, the Russian economy is in more and more trouble. The same palbable dismay that has already appeared in the discourse of Putin's American supporters is now starting to appear in Putin's own discourse. The problem with people like Hitler and Putin who try to reverse the consequences of earlier defeats is that they bring down upon their country and even greater defeat. After WWII, Germany was in ruins, divided, had lost a huge chunk of its territory (which it has never recovered) and had 1/4th of ist population (13 million people) expelled from places where they had lived for centuries. God help the poor Russians!
"Putin's American supporters"
Can you name any of those? I keep hearing that they exist but I've never run into one.
"as with Hitler" stopped reading there.