Friday, April 18, 2014

False Flag: Registry Fake Says Ukraine Jewish Advocacy Group

The CIA, in collusion with the State Department, is no longer able to pull off credible false flag operations.

Hours after the Israeli media, dutifully echoed by USA Today, reported on leaflets demanding the registration of Jews in Ukraine – harking back to similar moves during the Nazi era – deputy director of the National Conference Supporting Jews (NCSJ), responsible for efforts in Russia, Ukraine, and the Baltic States, pronounced the leaflet bogus.
“It’s a fake flyer,” the deputy director, Lesley Weiss, told The Daily Dot. “It’s not true that they have to register or be deported,” he said after talking with Denis Pushilin, chairman of the pro-Russian Donetsk People’s Government.
The corporate media in the United States had insinuated the leaflets were distributed by pro-Russians in Donetsk, this feeding into hysterical propaganda warning of an imminent invasion by Russia of eastern Ukraine. The specter of anti-Semitism conjured the appropriate Nazi imagery ofKristallnacht and gas chambers at Auschwitz. It would have dovetailed nicely with the media campaign portraying Russian leader Vladimir Putin as Adolf Hitler.
Weiss said the flyers were designed to create anxiety among the city’s Jewish population that would be subsequently exploited in the West to portray pro-Russians as anti-Semitic. The Jewish community has dismissed the operation as a provocation, although it is uncertain who is responsible.

“You can image the anxiety it’s causing,” she said, noting that the tactic is reminiscent of the Nazis.
Secretary of State John Kerry and the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine – a fellow pro-coup collaborator, along with Victoria Nuland of the State Department – Geoffrey Pyatt wasted no time denouncing the leaflets, which fed into the propaganda campaign waged by the establishment media.
Before the incident fades away entirely as new events arise in Ukraine, we should ask cui bono – who benefits from such a brazen stunt. It certainly is not Ukrainians mistrustful of the junta in Kyiv, dominated as it is by fascists and others who celebrate the Banderivtsi, supporters of ultra-nationalist Stepan Bandera who declared war in Jewry in Ukraine following the Second World War. Following the coup instigated by the State Department, there were widespread fears when anti-Semites from the Right Sector and Svoboda commanded high posts in the junta government.
The russophobe junta in Kyiv and the United States, both interested in exacerbating the conflict with Russia, are the only two parties that would have benefited from the ruse, had it been successful. The false flag would have portrayed Russian-speaking Ukrainians as anti-Semitic, a characteristic that carries plenty of sensationalistic weight in a politically correct media – unless, of course, the anti-Semites are working for the United States and attempting to overthrow yet another democratically elected leader targeted for elimination.
This article was posted: Thursday, April 17, 2014 at 9:19 pm

CORRECTION: Platinum producers increase wage offer, negotiations resume

Posted: Thursday , 17 Apr 2014 
JOHANNESBURG (MINEWEB) - 
Editor's note: A previous version of this article titled "Platinum producers capitulate on union pay demand" updated by Mineweb's Kip Keen incorrectly stated Impala Platinum and Anglo American had met Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union (AMCU) demands. Mineweb apologises for any confusion it created.
While the platinum producers new offer is significant and guarantees more years of higher wage increases, it does not fully meet AMCU demands.
The AMCU has asked for an increase in basic pay to R12,500 over a 4-year period for entry-level workers.
Impala and Anglo American are now offering R12,150 in cash remuneration - which includes basic pay but also a living allowance and holiday pay - over a five year period for entry-level workers. The new offer would be reached by 2017 and, as previous offers, would be back dated to mid 2013.
It is not clear how much of that figure is accounted for by basic pay, though it would be the vast majority.
It was also not clear at press time if Lonmin was to make a similar offer.
The new Implala and Anglo American offers come after renewed meetings between the South African government and the union and platinum producers this week and new plans were made to continue talks early next week.
The story below was reported by Mineweb's correspondent in South Africa, Ayandi Mdluli, who was not responsible for the above error, before Anglo American and Impala made their new offer: 
Since Tuesday, AMCU leaders engaged in closed meetings with the Minister of Labour Mildred Oliphant, Anglo American Platinum, Impala Platinum and Lonmin CEOs.
According to Jimmy Gama, AMCU treasurer, the minister called for new wage negotiations to resume this week and asked for opportunity to deal with the crippling strike. The meeting took place after the trade union launched a R1 million fund to assist workers affected by the strike.
“From the meeting we had with minister on Tuesday they have shown some commitment and willingness to engage with employers and employees in order to get solution,” he said.
On Wednesday, a meeting was held with the platinum producers. They were also present at meeting that took place on Thursday morning, which was confirmed by a spokeswoman from one of the mining houses who did not wish to go on record.
When asked if this was a sign that a certain degree of cooperation and progression has been achieved, Gama said the AMCU has done everything possible to show that it wants this chaotic strike to be resolved as a matter of urgency.
“We have done everything possible to ensure that things are resolved. The ball is in their court,” he said.
The AMCU and the companies have been involved in the biggest strike to ever hit South Africa, lasting more than three months and costing more than R17 billion in production and wage losses.
The strike has also had a profound socio-economic impact as children and employees have gone hungry and resorted to selling their personal possessions in order to feed their families. The union is demanding a R12,500 minimum wage structural change while the companies have offered increases of 7% 8.5% and 9%.
Both parties have locked horns and refused to budge resulting in a breakdown of the talks at the Commission for Conciliation Mediation and Arbitration.
The union reiterated calls that it would not back down, referring to the strike as a mining revolution that commenced in August 2012 when 34 miners were killed by police leaving scores of others injured during unprecedented violence in the mining towns of Marikana just outside Rustenburg.
AMCU has since launched a fund which aims to cater for workers needs during the strike and has promised to march on the British Embassy in Pretoria and Parliament in Cape Town if their demands are not met.
(With a report by Kip Keen.)

Guest Post: Liberty Movement Rising

Submitted by Brandon Smith of Alt-Market.com,
"Freedom had been hunted round the globe; reason was considered as rebellion; and the slavery of fear had made men afraid to think. But such is the irresistible nature of truth, that all it asks, and all it wants, is the liberty of appearing."  - Thomas Paine
The label of “fringe” is a common one used by statists, bureaucrats and paid shills in order to marginalize those who would stand against government corruption. The primary assertion being sold is that the “majority” joyously supports the establishment; and the majority, of course, is always right.
The liberty movement, which is a collection of numerous freedom organizations and political activists brought together by a shared philosophical bond, has been accused of “fringe” status for quite some time. With corporatist dominance over the mainstream media for decades backing an elitist machine in Washington and a global banking cartel footing the bill with money created from thin air, any such accusation can be made to seem “real” to those who are unaware.
The problem has always been a matter of physical action giving rise to an acknowledgment of numbers.
We have all heard the old story of the debate within the ancient Roman government over the idea of forcing the slave population to wear distinct armbands so that they could be more easily identified among the regular population. The concept was rejected on the realization that if the slaves were given a visual confirmation of their considerable numbers and strength, they would be encouraged to revolt against the Roman tyrants. That is to say, as long as the slaves felt isolated, they would remain apathetic and powerless. Of course, that was not always the case. Sometimes, a small group would stand up despite their supposed isolation, and the rest of the world, wide-eyed and astonished, would take notice.
The liberty movement has just experienced one of its first great moments of realization and empowerment in Clark County, Nev., and millions of past naysayers have been shell-shocked.
I covered my views in detail on the Bundy Ranch saga in Nevada in my article “Real Americans Are Ready To Snap,” amid the usual choir of disinformation agents and nihilists desperate to convince Web audiences that the liberty movement would do nothing to stop the Bureau of Land Management’s militant assault on Cliven Bundy’s cattle farm. This assault included hundreds of Federal agents, helicopters, contractors hired essentially as cattle rustlers and even teams of snipers.
The statists and socialists were certainly out in force to misrepresent the Bundy issue and frighten anyone who might consider taking a stand for the family. The Southern Poverty Law Center, not surprisingly, was hard at work spreading lies and disinformation about the confrontation in Nevada, painting a picture of fractured patriot groups and militiamen with “little training” going to face unstoppable Federal BLM agents and likely “ending up dead.” The SPLC insinuated that the movement was ineffective and in over its head.
The reality was much the opposite. Liberty groups arrived in droves and were staunchly unified — not by a centralized leadership, but in defense of the basic moral principles outlined in the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights. Sources on the ground at the Bundy ranching operation relayed to me that at least 1,000 activists and militia members arrived over the weekend, with many more on the way. This one event proved certain points:
  1. The liberty movement is not afraid to put itself in harm’s way for the right cause — even if this means facing off against highly armed government thugs.
  2. The liberty movement has the ability to field a response team or even an army anywhere in the country at any time within a couple of days.
  3. The liberty movement has the ability to change the course of events, even to the point of removing Federal agents from a region who are acting in an unConstitutional manner.
  4. The Federal government is not invincible, nor is it unfazed by liberty movement opposition. They worry about our strength and ability.
Over the past weekend, we witnessed the true influence of the liberty movement. As thousands of activists and militia arrived in the area, the BLM finally began to understand what it was facing. The government agency that has been terrorized farming communities throughout the West for years, the agency armed with military-grade weaponry and hundreds of agents, ran away, as freedom fightersdescended on the region.
Nevada Governor Brian Sandoval and Clark County Sheriff Doug Gillespie, two politicians who were deathly silent during the beginning of the Federal incursion on the Bundy ranch, have now suddenly become vocal in defense of Nevada ranchers against the BLM. It’s amazing how “inspired” politicians can become to do the right thing when they see an army of liberty activists marching against tyranny in their own backyard.
Not only was the BLM forced to remove itself from the area, but it was also forced to relinquish all the cattle it had stolen from Bundy over the course of the past week. Here, liberty groups close in on the cattle holding pens of the BLM and take back Bundy’s property.
Statists are indignant and furious over the surrender of the BLM. The same people who boasted that liberty activists would be slaughtered by Fed agents are now frothing at the mouth because they did not get their massacre. Not only that, but the bureaucracy they worship has shown itself to be impotent in the face of Constitutional champions. All I can say is nothing puts a bigger grin on my face than to see statists cry like babies when their delusions of grandeur are trampled on.
This was a major victory for the liberty movement. But let’s be clear; the fight is just beginning.
I suspect that the Bundy event will be spun by news agencies and the government until it is unrecognizable. They will claim that the BLM left not because they were wrong, but because they were trying to keep people safe. They will claim that liberty movement protesters were the aggressors and the poor BLM agents were just trying to do their jobs. They will play the race card as they always do, much like this pathetically lazy and unprofessional article from Slate, which asserts that if the Bundy's had been black, the Liberty Movement would have never supported them. They will argue the so-called Federal legality of the raid itself, and paint Bundy as a “freeloader” who refuses to pay taxes and who is living off the American people. They will do everything in their power to destroy the image of the victory and soil the name of the Bundy family.
What they don’t seem to understand, though, is that the liberty movement does not care what the Federal government deems “legal” or “illegal.” Our only interest is what is Constitutional and what is moral. The dispute was never about the “legality” of Bundy’s use of the land, which his family used for grazing without interference for generations — until 1993, when the BLM used the absurd endangered species protection racket to put all of his neighbors out of business and threaten his ranch with invasion.  Add to this the recently discovered fact that Senator Harry Reid's former assistant and friend Neil Kornze is now head of the BLM due to Reid's influence, and the fact that Harry Reid and his family are reaping financial rewards by driving farmers from all over the region where Cliven Bundy's ranch sits while arranging land deals with Chinese solar companies, and one has to ask, why should Bundy pay any of his hard earned money to the federal government when they are just going to use it to bulldoze his cattle and make Harry Reid more rich?
Disinformation websites like Snopes contend that Reid's "projects" are not being established anywhere near the Bundy Ranch, yet, one such project has already been launched only 35 miles south of Bundy, and, the BLM has erased a page from its website specifically mentioning the Bundy Ranch and it's"interference" with Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone Projects, the same projects Harry Reid and his son are heavily involved in.
What is amazing to me is that in light of this information hardcore socialists are still willing to defend Reid and the BLM.  My question is, if the BLM is so innocent, then why are they erasing such data from their website at all?  What were they trying to hide?
Harry Reid has not responded to the facts behind his financial involvement in the BLM's attacks on Nevada farmers, except to say that they are "conspiracy theories".  He added when asked about the status of the confrontation:
“Well, it’s not over. We can’t have an American people that violate the law and then just walk away from it. So it’s not over...”
Yes, Harry, it won't be over until men like you are thrown behind bars.
Note that he says "an American people"; as if he is separate, as if he is referring to all of us as a subservient organism, or servant class.  What Reid is saying is, the elites can't have "an American people" openly exposing their criminality and defying their tyranny, and then just walking away.  I'm sorry to break it to Reid, but that is exactly how all of this is going to end.
Statists and bureaucrats like Reid continually attempt to argue this issue from the standpoint of Federal legality, obviously because the Federal government has the legislative and bureaucratic power to make any despicable action legal (at least on paper) if it wishes. However, the liberty movement has no interest whatsoever in Federal interpretations of legal precedence. We are only concerned with what is right. As the old saying goes, when injustice becomes law, rebellion becomes duty.
The liberty movement also fully understands that the Bundy victory was only one battle at the beginning of a long war.
The BLM may very well be waiting for activists to leave the area before attacking again. And even if that is not the case, tyrannical systems have a way of attempting to make up for signs of weakness by escalating violence during the next siege. That is to say, we should expect the next event involving the BLM or other government agencies to be even more vicious than the Bundy incident. It is simply the natural inclination of totalitarian systems to exaggerate their power when their failings have been exposed.


That said, it should be noted that corrupt leadership often crumbles in the face of steadfast resolve and courage. We have a long way to go before this Nation is once again truly free, but the liberty movement has proven its invaluable worth over the course of the past several days. We arrived at a crossroads, and we are now moving forward in the right direction — without fear and without regret. It is in these moments when history is made — when common men and women thwart the odds, defy the darkness and make good on their beliefs by risking everything in the name of freedom.

Guest Post: Why The West's Financial Warfare Against Russia May Lead To The Real Thing

Authored by Harold James, originally posted at European Voice,
The revolution in Ukraine and Russia's illegal annexation of Crimea have generated a serious security crisis in Europe. But, with Western leaders testing a new kind of financial warfare, the situation could become even more dangerous.
A democratic, stable, and prosperous Ukraine would be a constant irritant – and rebuke – to President Vladimir Putin's autocratic and economically sclerotic Russian Federation. In order to prevent such an outcome, Putin is trying to destabilise Ukraine, by seizing Crimea and fomenting ethnic conflict in the eastern part of the country.
At the same time, Putin is attempting to boost Russia's appeal by doubling Crimeans' pensions, boosting the salaries of the region's 200,000 civil servants, and constructing large, Sochi-style infrastructure, including a $3 billion (€2.2bn) bridge across the Kerch Strait. This strategy's long-term sustainability is dubious, owing to the strain that it will put on Russia's public finances. But it will nonetheless serve Putin's goal of projecting Russia's influence.
For their part, the European Union and the United States have no desire for military intervention to defend Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. But verbal protests alone would make the West look ridiculous and ineffective to the rest of the international community, ultimately giving rise to further – and increasingly far-ranging – security challenges. This leaves Western powers with one option: to launch a financial war against Russia.
As the former US Treasury official Juan Zarate revealed in his recent memoir “Treasury's war”, the US spent the decade after the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks developing a new set of financial weapons to use against the United States' enemies – first Al Qaeda, then North Korea and Iran, and now Russia. These weapons included asset freezes and blocking rogue banks' access to international finance.
When the Ukrainian revolution began, the Russian banking system was already over-extended and vulnerable. But the situation became much worse with the toppling of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych and the annexation of Crimea, which triggered a stock-market panic that weakened the Russian economy considerably and depleted the assets of Russia's powerful oligarchs.
In a crony capitalist system, threatening the governing elite's wealth rapidly erodes loyalty to the regime. For the corrupt elite, there is a tipping point beyond which the opposition provides better protection for their wealth and power – a point that was reached in Ukraine as the Maidan protests gathered momentum.
Putin's public speeches reveal his conviction that the EU and the US cannot possibly be serious about their financial war, which, in his view, would ultimately hurt their highly complex and interconnected financial markets more than Russia's relatively isolated financial system. After all, the link between financial integration and vulnerability was the main lesson of the crisis that followed the collapse of US investment bank Lehman Brothers in 2008.
In fact, Lehman was a small institution compared to the Austrian, French, and German banks that have become highly exposed to Russia's financial system through the practice of using deposits from Russian companies and individuals to lend to Russian borrowers. Given this, a Russian asset freeze could be catastrophic for European – indeed, global – financial markets.
Putin's plan for destabilising Ukraine is thus two-pronged: capitalise on linguistic or national animosities in Ukraine to foster social fragmentation, while taking advantage of Western – especially European – financial vulnerabilities. Indeed, Putin sometimes likes to frame it as a contest pitting him against the power of financial markets.
The arms race that preceded the First World War was accompanied by exactly the same mixture of military reluctance and eagerness to experiment with the power of markets. In 1911, the leading textbook on the German financial system, by the veteran banker Jacob Riesser, warned: “The enemy, however, may endeavour to aggravate a panic...by the sudden collection of outstanding claims, by an unlimited sale of our home securities, and by other attempts to deprive Germany of gold. Attempts may also be made to dislocate our capital, bill, and securities markets, and to menace the basis of our system of credit and payments”.
Politicians began to grasp the potential consequences of financial vulnerability only in 1907, when they faced a financial panic that originated in the US but that had serious consequences for continental Europe (and, in some ways, prefigured the Great Depression). That experience taught every country to make its own financial system more resilient to ward off potential attacks, and that attacks could be a devastating response to diplomatic pressure.
That is exactly what happened in 1911, when a dispute over control of Morocco spurred France to organise the withdrawal of 200 million Deutsche Marks invested in Germany. But Germany was prepared and managed to ward off the attack. Indeed, German bankers proudly noted that the crisis of confidence hit the Paris market much harder than markets in Berlin or Hamburg.
Countries' efforts to protect their financial systems often centred on increased banking supervision and, in many cases, enlarging the central bank's authority to include the provision of emergency liquidity to domestic institutions. Subsequent debates about financial reform in the US reflected this imperative, with some of the US Federal Reserve's founders pointing out the military and financial applications of the term “reserve”.
At that time, financial-reform efforts were driven by the notion that building up financial buffers would make the world safe. But this belief fuelled excessive confidence among those responsible for the reforms, preventing them from anticipating that military measures would soon be needed to protect the economy.Instead of being an alternative to war, the financial arms race made war more likely – as it may well be doing with Russia today.

Consumer Confidence Collapses In Japan

Submitted by Pater Tenebrarum of Acting-Man blog,
As a little addendum to our recent ritual lambasting of Abenomics, here are the  latest news on Japan's consumer confidence – the reading, mind, is from March – before the introduction of the higher sales tax:
“Japan’s consumer confidence fell in March to the lowest level since August 2011, a reading that may tumble further this month after a sales-tax increase on April 1 sapped the public’s spending power.


The reading of 37.5, down from 38.5 in February, was released by the Cabinet Office in Tokyo today. About 90 percent of respondents to the survey expect prices to rise over the next 12 months, the highest in comparable data back to 2004.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe risks the public souring on his campaign to sustain growth in the world’s third-biggest economy as prices start to rise while wages stay stagnant. Weaker sentiment could make it harder to drive a rebound from a contraction forecast this quarter, and raise the odds that the Bank of Japan adds to its already unprecedented easing.

“Consumer sentiment has been undermined to a large extent by rising prices,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. economists Naohiko Baba and Yuriko Tanaka wrote in an e-mailed note before the release. “We expect a major retreat in sentiment from April as the tax hike drives inflation.”

The confidence reading was 39.9 when Abe took office in December 2012, and rose to 45.7 in May last year — the highest point during his current term as prime minister. The Topix index of stocks is down more than 10 percent this year after soaring 51 percent in 2013.

Confidence dropped in all five components in the survey, with willingness to buy durable goods dropping the most, down by 2 to 30.8.”
(emphasis added)
In light of yet more damning evidence of failure coming to light, we are moved to make a prediction about the near term future of Abenomics.
It isn't going to be abandoned just because it is failing. Instead, we are hereby confidently predicting a 'flight forward'. Instead of relieving the increasingly sapped and demoralized Japanese consumer from the scourge of rising prices, the pump priming effort will be increased even further. Fresh inflationary measures may well be announced at the next BoJ meeting already.
Anyone want to bet?

Ukraine Tanks Stopped By Unarmed Woman

There days ago it was the male "separatists" that stopped Ukraine tanks armed with just their bodies. Yesterday, in the seceding Ukraine town of Kramatorsk, it is a woman's turn.

Ukraine "De-escalation" Voided As Pro-Russia Militia Refuse To Vacate Occupied Buildings

If yesterday we had questions about the half life of the effectiveness of the latest diplomatic de-escalation of Ukraine tensions 'achieved' in Geneva, following news that both Ukraine would continue its anti-terrorist operation and that fighting had broken out in various east Ukraine locations after the agreement, today any questions have been swept aside following news that the Ukraine "separatist" milita, who after all is the primary object of Ukraine "anti-terrorist activities", has announced that they will only leave the occupied east Ukraine buildings if the interim government in Kiev resigns. Denis Pushilin, a spokesman of the self-appointed Donetsk People's Republic, told reporters that the insurgents do not recognize the Ukrainian government as legitimate.
Indeed, in an amusing twist, the militia has flipped the Geneva agreement on its head, alleging that if they are to abide by a signed document, so should the "illegitimate" government, which as a reminder took power following a US-assisted coup, even though an explicit agreement was signed on February 21 between Ukraine and western powers previously retaining Yanukovich as president of the country, and ushering in presidential elections later in 2014. Needless to say, that agreement was made null and void within hours of signing. It is only logical, and perfectly expected, that so should this one.
"This is a reasonable agreement but everyone should vacate the buildings and that includes Yatsenyuk and Turchynov," he said referring to the acting Ukrainian prime minister and president.
More from AP:
Ukraine and Russia on Thursday agreed to take tentative steps toward calming tensions along their shared border after more than a month of bloodshed. But Pushilin, speaking at the insurgent-occupied regional administration's building in Donetsk, said the deal specifies that all illegally seized buildings should be vacated and in his opinion the government in Kiev is also occupying public buildings illegally.

The deal calls for disarming all paramilitary groups and the immediate return of all government buildings seized by pro-Russian insurgents in eastern Ukraine as well as pro-West right-wing protesters in Kiev. But none of the government buildings seized across eastern Ukraine has yet been vacated, according to local media.
Needless to say, neither the Ukrainian government nor as the Right Sector movement, whose activists are occupying Kiev's city hall and a cultural center in the capital, have commented on the call for buildings in Kiev to be vacated. One can assume they will hardly comply.
So what is the militia's demand?
Pushilin on Friday reiterated the insurgents' call for a referendum that he said will allow "self-determination of the people."
Or precisely what Russia wanted all along: a Crimea-style endgame, where the people are 'given the right' to determine their own future, as long as that future means becoming part of Russia in the coming weeks or months.