Give That Fascist A Nobel Peace Prize

SOURCE http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-pressures-nobel-committee-to-declare-ukraines-president-a-peace-prize-nominee-leaked-letter/5452448 U.S. Pressures Nobel Committee to Declare Ukraine’s President a Peace Prize Nominee, Leaked Letter By Eric Zuesse Global Research, May 29, 2015 Region: Russia and FSU, USA Theme: Politics and Religion, US NATO War Agenda In-depth Report: UKRAINE REPORT A leaked letter dated May 19th and sent by the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, Vladimir Groysman, to the chargé d’affaires of the U.S. Embassy in Oslo Norway, thanks her for “the efforts you have made to have Petro Oleksiyovych Poroshenko nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize,” but continues: “Still we consider your assurances of support by the two members of the Nobel Committee as insufficient,” because there are five members of the Committee, and the support of 3 of them is necessary.  Thus,     “We expect further efforts aimed at shifting the position of Berit Reiss-Andersen, Inger-Marie Ytterhorn and especially that of the Chair of the Nobel Committee Kaci Kullman Five. Regarding the latter, we recommend that you take advantage of the information you are going to receive from Germany. Your colleagues in Berlin have assured us that the dossier will soon be delivered to the U.S. Embassy in Oslo. It is of utmost importance for Mr. Poroshenko to have firm guarantees that he will be awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize, since it could highlight the unanimous support of Ukrainian integrity by the democratic community of the world. Assistant Secretary of State Viktoria Nuland has highly estimated your job during her visit to Kyiv.” The three mentioned Nobel Peace Prize Committee members are a politically varied group. Ms. Reiss-Andersen is from the social democratic or “Labour” party; Ms. Ytterhorn is from the libertarian or “Progress” party; and Ms. Five is from the Conservative Party. The two unidentified members are Thorbjørn Jagland from the Labour Party, and Henrik Syse from the Conservative Party. If this letter is correct, those are the two who are referred to by the letter’s phrase, “your assurances of support by the two members.” The letter also makes a vague reference to the poor reputation that the Committee has engendered on account of the Committee’s having granted the Prize to Barack Obama in 2009 (a decision that the Committee’s Chairperson, Ms. Five, concurred with and has been criticized for):     “We understand the difficulties you face when promoting the candidacy of the President of Ukraine, therefore we ask you to exert additional leverages by engaging those U.S. Senators who effectively cooperated with the Committee in 2009.” Presumably, this means that whomever “those U.S. Senators” were, the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament thinks that they were “effective.” President Poroshenko entered office on 25 May 2014 after a U.S.-sponsored coup in Kiev that installed Arseniy Yatsenyuk as Ukraine’s Prime Minister on 26 February 2014, after the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Asian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, had instructed the U.S. Ambassador in Kiev on 4 February 2014 to get “Yats” appointed as the junta’s leader; she issued that instruction to him by phone on February 4th and the coup occurred on February 22nd; Yatsenyuk was then appointed on February 26th, and he remains in power today. One pro-Russian part of Ukraine, Crimea, then seceded and joined Russia, and another, Donbass, seceded and was not accepted by Russia; it thus was bombed by the Ukrainian Government during May through December 2014, since Donbass’s repeated requests to be allowed to join Russia were spurned by Vladimir Putin. (Yet, Ukraine accuses Russia of providing the fighters who are actually the men of Donbass, who refuse to be ruled by the U.S.-coup regime. Russia sends them guns, and volunteers have come from Russia and many other countries to help the Donbass defenders.) German intelligence estimates that “up to 50,000” people were killed in that bombing campaign, but U.S. and other official estimates are only around 5,000. Even before Poroshenko took office, the new Ukrainian government of “Yats” Yatsenyuk invaded Donbass, using bombers, tanks, rocket-launchers, and everything it had; and, when Poroshenko gave his victory speech in the ceremonial Presidential election on May 25th, he promised, and it was very clear from him, that: “The anti-terrorist operation [he called the residents there ’terrorists’] cannot and should not last two or three months. It should and will last hours.” (Another translation of it was “Antiterrorist operation can not and will not continue for 2-3 months. It must and will last hours.”) But it did last months — Poroshenko’s prediction was certainly false; and, moreover, he lost first one round of the war, and then another — his prediction of its outcome was likewise false. And recently, he said that the war must be resumed for yet a third round, in order that Ukraine win back both Crimea and Donbass. However, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry warned him on May 12th that he must not do that, and that if he did he’d be violating the Minsk II ceasefire accords which had been arranged by France’s Francois Hollande and Germany’s Angela Merkel. Then, three days later, his Assistant Secretary Victoria Nuland, who had arranged the February 2014 coup, told both Yatsenyuk and Poroshenko to ignore what Kerry had just said, and that, “We continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the people of Ukraine and reiterate our deep commitment to a single Ukrainian nation, including Crimea, and all the other regions of Ukraine.” Perhaps a reason why the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament is boldly demanding the U.S. State Department to arrange for Poroshenko to get at least a nomination for the Peace Prize (and even goes so far as to assert that, “It is of utmost importance for Mr. Poroshenko to have firm guarantees that he will be awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize”) is that otherwise they will follow through on Nuland’s statement of U.S. commitment, and re-invade Donbass. However, any invasion by Ukraine of Crimea would be exceedingly unlikely, because that would give Russia a virtual carte blanche to attack Ukraine, and neither the U.S. nor any other power will go to war against Russia in such an instance; Ukraine isn’'t yet a NATO member, and NATO would be exceedingly reluctant to go so far as a third world war, this time against Russia, in order to defend the Ukrainian Government from the consequences of that Government’s own then-blatant ceasefire violation — especially in the wake of what virtually everyone now recognizes to have been a U.S. coup that had installed the present Ukrainian regime (and even EU officials were shocked to find out that it had been a coup). And it was a very violent coup, which was followed shortly thereafter by the extremely violent ethnic-cleansing campaign to get rid of the residents in Donbass. SOURCE http://www.globalresearch.ca/u-s-pressures-nobel-committee-to-declare-ukraines-president-a-peace-prize-nominee-leaked-letter/5452448 --------------------- COMMENT Surely this is a joke.   Yeah, it's a joke that Obama got the Peace Prize.  But now Poroshenko, as well? Is Ukraine Pressuring US to Secure Nobel Peace Prize for Poroshenko? EXTRACT The letter is addressed to Julie Furuta-Toy, chargé d'affaires (head of the diplomatic mission) at the Embassy of the United States in Oslo and acting US Ambassador to Norway. It is apparently signed by the Chairman of Ukraine’s parliament, Volodymyr Groysman and is dated May 19, 2015, with a registered number 01-5/126(90542). SOURCE http://sputniknews.com/world/20150530/1022745342.html No nominees listed for 2015 - here. But keep your eye on the nominees.  Might be a few laughs in this. United States to nominate Ukrainian President Poroshenko for a Nobel Peace Prize

Ukraine Historical & Cultural Revision

Ukraine Pays a Terrible Price for Banderaism As the Ukrainian government that seized power in the coup rewrites Ukraine’s history, it commits an ever-widening circle of atrocities in conformity with the ideology of Stepan Bandera that it has adopted. “Two Ukraines but what seem like two different worlds. …And if you want, you can call me a Pro-Russian Communist, but, personally, I much prefer the red star of the partisans of Odessa than the reversed swastika of the Banderites. Although, I repeat, I am a Jew and a Zionist from Israel.” – Arkady Molev (after visiting Lvov and Odessa, Fort Russ) Life in Ukraine these days is full of fads and fancies, some of them criminal and deleterious, some – just outright stupid. For example, the latest craze is to get rid of all the names of cities, streets and squares associated with Russia. The effort to erase their own history — after all Ukraine in its present borders was created by the Soviets — leads to some funny or maladroit results. Vladimir Kornilov, head of the Ukrainian Center for Eurasian Studies, in an interview with the newspaper Vzglyad, suggested that the names that are assigned to the cities and streets by the Ukrainian authorities will not hold for too long. This is a passing fad, he thinks. After all, “The history of, say, the lion’s share of Ukraine is Russian history, and partly Polish, Romanian, and Austro-Hungarian history. In this sense, the Ukrainians have got used to distort the historical names and rename them back and forth. For example, with rare exceptions, there are no historical names in Lvov [western Ukraine, former Poland].” The absurdity of this situation is that the Ukrainian nationalists, declaring their fight with the Soviet past, demonstrate the very methods of the Bolsheviks after October Revolution of 1917 – they bring down the monuments and rename all and sundry. Beside the Bolshevik methods, “they have adopted tactics and ideology of the Nazis and try to completely clean all the historical memory in Ukraine,” says Kornilov. “Everything is done systematically and gradually: on the Maidan in 2004, it was impossible to imagine that someone would glorify Bandera. But after a few years, Bandera is the hero.” Kornilov said that he won’t be surprised if, in a couple of years, they make Hitler’s birthday a national holiday. “Right now, it seems absurd and preposterous, but 10 years ago it seemed absurd and ridiculous that Ukraine will glorify Bandera and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army). As far as Bandera’s political cult in Ukraine is concerned, there is a fascinating book by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Stepan Bandera: The Life and Afterlife of a Ukrainian Nationalist. Fascism, Genocide, and Cult (published in 2014). It sheds light on the history of this violent nationalist movement, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and its Ukrainian Insurgent Army. In it, the author says: “Bandera was the ultranationalist or fascist alternative to Stalin and Khrushchev. Though the OUN-B frequently claimed after the Second World War that the UPA was fighting against the totalitarian Soviet Union for a nationalist democratic Ukraine, the reference to democracy was nothing more than a pretence, intended to persuade the United Kingdom and the United States to provide support for the insurgent movement.” The refrain of fighting for democracy is way too familiar these days – in fact, it is used frequently by the current puppet regime in Kiev. As it was with Bandera’s UPA in the past, this reference brings the same result, that is, a lot of violence toward anyone with dissenting views, as well as the unconditional support of the U.S.A. However, the cruel irony is that it is exactly most blood-thirsty politicians who typically sing this refrain, thus rendering the word “democracy” utterly meaningless. As sad as it sounds, this refrain leaves a bitter taste. Rossoliński-Liebe doesn’t embellish the darkest moments of the Soviet regime in Ukraine.  He skilfully demonstrates the complexity of the entanglement between Ukrainian and Soviet histories. “The only enemies of the OUN and UPA remaining after the Second World War II in western Ukraine were the Soviet authorities, who, ironically enough, implemented some of the main goals of the Ukrainian nationalists. By the incorporation of western Ukraine into the Ukrainian SSR, the Soviet rulers had achieved the sobornist, or unification of Ukrainian territories in one state, and, by resettling the Poles and other nationalities, they had made Ukraine more homogenous than it had ever been before.” In the end, the historical amnesia of the current Ukrainian government and of some of the brainwashed population leads to the outright ingratitude toward their own past. A past that is intrinsically connected with Russia, whether they want it or not. In the last year alone, these proverbial “Ivans without roots” have vandalized many memorials and statues that remind them of Soviet times. Just recently, overzealous nationalists demolished a monument to the legendary Soviet intelligence officer Nikolai Kuznetsov in the village of Povcha in Rivne region of Ukraine. Nikolai Kuznetsov, subsequently recognized as “scout number one” during the Great Patriotic War, personally eliminated 11 generals and high-ranking officials of the occupation administration of Nazi Germany. It was precisely Kuznetsov who managed to obtain information about the preparation of the German offensive at Kursk. According to TASS, he died on March 9, 1944, during a shootout with soldiers of UPA – yes, that same notorious Nazi-collaborating organization whose members have been proclaimed as national heroes of Ukraine on April 9 this year. In Velikiy Lyuben (Lviv region), the followers of UPA demolished a monument to the 5-year-old Roma Taravsky, a Polish boy who was killed by the Bandera gang. Their perverted pangs of conscience may be the reason why these contemporary ultra-nationalists cannot cope with the truth. Nonetheless, the decision of the Verkhovna Rada to recognize the Ukrainian Insurgent Army fighters as freedom fighters will have numerous repercussions, especially among those who suffered from UPA atrocities the most. Just a few days ago, former Deputy Defense Minister of Poland, Ret. General Waldemar Skrzypczak, publicly expressed his outrage about this egregious law. He said that he is opposing the policies of the current Ukrainian government, as well as withdrawing his support of Ukraine, expressed earlier when he advocated the supply of offensive weapons for the war in the Donbass. “UPA murdered my uncle. They nailed him with a pitchfork to a barn door. From what I know, he died three days later. Their savagery was beyond imagination. Even the Nazis did not invent the things the Ukrainians did. They hacked people with axes. And they began to kill the Poles in 1939, not in 1943,” he said (as reported by Vzglyad). “Many people do not know, and those who know are mostly silent, about the fact, that when our soldiers retreated to Hungary and Romania, they were attacked by armed Ukrainian gangs. I would like to know on what foundation is President Poroshenko building the future of Ukraine? Blood-thirsty nationalism? It’s terrible! I have long been telling that Ukrainians must get rid of nationalism, because otherwise cooperation with Poland would be very difficult, if possible at all,” the retired general said. The ominous shadows cast by “Eurocentric” Ukrainian maniacs are many and various. Among the most prominent are cruelty, Russophobia, servility before their western masters, and a lack of compassion toward their own citizens. Also, a callous indifference. Ukrainian politicians don’t want to set Donbass free.  However the pompous government that presides in Kiev refuses to provide Donbass with elementary social and medical needs though the people who live there are Ukraine’s citizens. In the middle of November of 2014, Kiev officially stripped itself of responsibility for civilians caught up in the zone of the “Anti-Terrorist Operation” (ATO). In December, the Kiev authorities stopped budget payments for pensions and wages, canceled banking services and stopped passenger transportation by rail to those regions of Donbass that are outside their control. Moreover, they even block whatever humanitarian aid may go that way. At the end of February, the authorities of Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) confirmed the tightening of the economic blockade by Kiev. “Not a single truck with food is allowed [to enter our territory] … This is against a range of measures signed in Minsk,” said Deputy Chairman of the People’s Council of LPR Vladislav Danego. According to a recent report of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), food is the most essential commodity for the self-proclaimed republics in the Donbass. “It is urgent to provide food assistance to more than 670,000 people, 90 percent of whom are located in the areas not under control of the [Kiev] government,” the document says. The same report also says that on April 2 another convoy of humanitarian aid from Russia, consisting of 42 trucks, arrived in Donbass. On April 16 another, the 24th in a row, was sent to the Donbass. Facts like these are seldom mentioned in the western mass media. Anti-Russian paranoia results mostly in far-fetched reports of Russian tanks “invading” Ukraine – none of which are confirmed. One may wonder if humanitarian trucks are wilfully confused with tanks. In the meantime, the authorities of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics declared that they count only on the support of Russia. According to the newspaper Vzglyad, a parliament speaker of the DPR, Andrei Purgin, has also confirmed that the Ukrainian side has actually imposed a blockade of the republic, which greatly complicates the humanitarian situation there. Purgin noted that Donbass is not able to provide its citizens with food and is critically dependent on supplies from outside, because the surrounding steppes are not suitable for agriculture. “Food security on our territory cannot be achieved – here is an industrial region, a land of the cities, industry, and mechanical engineering. We make active attempts to start the food import from the Russian Federation and to find other sources as well. For the most indigent people, we have a network of soup kitchens and a distribution of humanitarian aid. There is progress in a positive way, but the situation is complicated,” Purgin said. Meanwhile, the OSCE noted on April 7 that the Donbass lacks medical supplies as well. According to a press-secretary for the special mission of the OSCE, Michael Bochurkiv, the mission recently published a report on the state of infrastructure in the observed area. “The report is based on 55 studied institutions, including hospitals, clinics and orphanages. The facts are shocking: we describe the situation as very unstable from a humanitarian point of view”. According to him, his colleagues found many people on the verge of death due to the fact that they don’t have enough medication. “The situation is similar in some child care centers, where children are on the verge of death because of the lack of medical supplies”. According to a representative of the mission, the situation is compounded by the fact that “people do not have access to money, pensions, banks, they cannot afford to buy their own medicines that are sometimes offered in hospitals.” Despite the dire conditions in Donbass, the authorities of Novorossia are full of optimism.  According to Prime Minister of the DPR, Alexander Zakharchenko, the war unleashed by the Kiev Nazis in Donbass will end with the collapse of their regime and the Bandera ideology. “The Kiev clique which seized power in Ukraine has not yet realized that the outcome of the war that was unleashed by them will be a full liberation of the country from the Bandera ideology, and that the Ukrainian people themselves will liberate the country from the fascist plague – those same people who became hostages of the mad politicians.” Zakharchenko stressed that Kiev politicians and their Western “friends” miscalculated when they started a bloodbath in the Donbass. By unleashing war, they have jeopardized the existence of Ukraine as a state, and thus have driven themselves into a trap. “The instigators of the so-called ‘ATO’ and their foreign backers have played the wrong card and didn’t take into consideration that the Donbass is an impregnable fortress that nobody has been able to win.” Amen to that! Alevtina Rea is  a freelance analyst and writer; for seven years (2005 – 2012), she worked as an assistant editor with CounterPunch. Ms. Rea is a contributing author to CounterPunch, Cyrano’s Journal Today, Uncommon Thought Journal, and the International Journal of Baudrillard Studies. She can be reached at rea.alya@gmail.com. http://russia-insider.com/en/ukraine-pays-terrible-price-banderaism/6191 COMMENT Interesting update. Thought I'd check on the difference between Ukraine and Russian language: SPOT THE DIFFERENCE UKRAINE RUSSIAN Take a good look at the Cyrillic script:  it's exactly the same. Oops.  That's because it was the same pic (which I've now removed updated with the correct corresponding pic).  LOL How embarrassing.  I'll have to blame this on someone interrupting me and talking to me while I was loading.  I can't do two things at once.  LOL Anyway, I've updated with the correct image. While there is minor differences in both the Cyrillic script and the Latin script, it appears to be merely a matter of pronunciation - kind of like the difference in the way (some) people say 'tomato', 'potato' etc  (with the exception of the word for 'morning' which is materially different). Yes, I know this is only a small sample, but I'll nonetheless argue that the language differences between Ukraine and Russia probably aren't all they're cracked up to be.  Holy #%!!$$%@ Batman! I feel like I'm driving this thing drunk.  Fixed another unexpected boo-boo.  LOL