Important questions to be answered as we observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day and The day of lifting of the Siege of Leningrad in 1944.

Important questions to be answered as we observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day and The day of lifting of the Siege of Leningrad in 1944.

By Greg Krasovsky

For The Ukrainian-Russian-American Observer

January 27, 2023

Today, on January 27, 2023, we observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day [1] and The day of lifting of the Siege of Leningrad in 1944 [2].

Never again, we say!!!
 
I hope so, but human history (which tends to repeat itself) suggests a more pessimistic prognosis, especially if it becomes convenient to forget about the Holocaust [3] and use, permit or just turn a blind eye on genocide & ethnic cleansing for political purposes.

As a Ukrainian Jew, I have some questions:

1. Why didn't the Allies, first and foremost the U.S., bomb Nazi Concentration camps, especially after they found out about the extermination / genocide of Jews there as part of the German Nazis' "Final Solution" to their "Jewish Problem?"
 
Were firebombing Dresden (between February 13 and 15, 1945, just three (3) days before Soviet troops entered the city), Hamburg and Tokyo, as well as dropping Atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki more important from a political & military point of view?

BTW, the bombing of each city listed above constitutes a war crime & a crime against humanity, but who judges the victors?
 
2. Why were so few Nazi leaders tried and executed before and after the Nuremberg Trials 1945-1946?

3. Why the U.S., UK and Canadian government agencies permit, facilitate, organize and fund Nazi war criminals' and collaborators surreptitious escape from Germany after the end of WWII and allow them to settle in their countries via "rat lines?"
 
This includes not just Nazi Scientists, like Werner Von Braun of NASA fame, who were brought into the U.S. in Operation Paperclip but also

-  Erich Traub, a Nazi "scientist" (a bioweapons expert) who has been suspected to be founder or "godfather" of a U.S. Government laboratory, The Plumb Island Animal Disease Center (also known as "Lab 257") on Plum Island, NY, where he may have continued to conduct experiments started in Nazi Germany on using ticks as bioweapons who could be dropped from airplanes on enemy troops to infect them with lethal varieties of tick-born diseases (sound like nasty dual-use "gain-of function research"). 

Allegedly, during the WWII, Traub ran a Nazi secret biological warfare laboratory in the Baltic on an island called Riems, with a mission to poison cattle in the Soviet Union. 

This facility is now called The Friedrich Loeffler Institute with laboratories rated at Biosafety Level 4 for handling dangerous & exotic agents, i.e. life-threatening pathogens transmittable by aerosol or unknown means.

BTW, Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler also considered research on insect-borne diseases so important that he ordered the creation of a biolab in the infamous Dachau concentration camp, the "Dachau Entomological Institute."

  It happens to be a coincidence that Plum Island is only ten miles away from Old Lyme Connecticut, the place where Lyme Disease was first diagnosed in 1975 and officially discovered by Willy Burgdorfer, another scientist who did some work for the U.S. Army on biological weapons. 

No wonder U.S. journalists, foreign doctors and and foreign biowarfare specialists have suspected that Lyme Disease, a debilitating tick-borne bacterial infection, may have originated as a bioweapon and then escaped via a lab leak on Plumb Island; 

- senior military and intelligence personnel, including those who served in the Nazi SS (Hitler's and the Nazi Party's paramilitary wing), Nazi Germany's Army Intelligence (Abwehr) and were tasked with helping the U.S. and its allies fight the Soviets during the Cold War, such as Reinhard Gehlen;

- Ukrainian members (veterans!) of the Waffen SS Galicia Division, Ukrainians who served in local Nazi Ukrainian Police Units (like the 118th and 201st Battalions)  and Nachtigall and Roland Battalions) and Ukrainian Nazi Collaborators, including Nazi propagandists, like Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland's maternal grandfather Mykhailo Khomiak (Michael Chomiak).

FYI, Grandpa Mykhailo was the chief editor of the Ukrainian daily newspaper Krakivs'ki Visti (News of Krakow) for the Nazi regime during WWII in Nazi-occupied Poland and later in Nazi-occupied Austria.

4. Why did the CIA violate U.S. law and actively hide Ukrainian Nazi War criminals & Nazi collaborators (who should have never been admitted into the U.S. and should have been deported) from the U.S. Department of Justice Nazi Hunters that searched for, prosecuted and deported Nazi War Criminals from America?
 
5. Why did the CIA and U.S. Department of Defense allow, encourage and even actively recruit Ukrainian Nazi War Criminals and collaborators, including those who participated in the Jewish Holocaust, to work for and serve in the U.S. military and and intelligence communities?
 
6. Why did the CIA

    - recruit,
    - organize,
    - fund,
    - arm,
    - provide logistical, material, political and legal support,
    - manage & coordinate

the activities of Ukrainian Nazi War Criminals and Collaborators, including members of OUN-B  (Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, Stepan Bandera's faction) and UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) in Soviet Ukraine after the end of WWII -- activities including terrorism against

- Soviet police, security military and other government personnel,
 
- Local civilians who supported or didn't oppose the Soviet Union (like teachers, nurses, doctors, women & children),

including harassment, extortion, beatings, kidnappings, rape, torture, mutilation and extrajudicial killings (murder)?
 
7. Why did the U.S. government (including the White House, State Department, Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community) after

( a) Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union in August of 1991 and the USSR's dissolution in December of 1991

(b) the U.S. obtained political, economic and military control over in Ukraine in February of 2014 after the "Revolution of Dignity" (i.e. violent unconstitutional overthrow of a lawfully elected, albeit corrupt, Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovich) following the Euromaidan protests,

not just tolerate, but provide material support (with the assistance of its NATO allies) to Ukrainian political parties, politicians, NGOs, government officials and agencies, and paramilitary organizations that

   - Glorify and worship WWII-era Ukrainian Nazi war criminals, collaborators, their organizations and leaders,
 
   - espouse & practice radical versions of ethnic nationalism, religious nationalism, language nationalism, extreme/ultra-nationalism, Neo-Nazism, extremism, xenophobia, racism, and antisemitism (both anti-Judaism and religious antisemitism),
 
   - display, wear and use on military equipment and weapons Nazi symbols, quotes and insignia, including those use by the Nazi SS, an organization that was adjudicated (legal finding) by the Nuremberg Military Tribunals and Trials as a criminal organization guilty of war crimes during WWII,
 
   - committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Kyiv (February 2014), Odessa (May 2014) and the Donetsk Coal Basin (Donbass) of Eastern Ukraine (from April of 2014 until present),  including

     -- aggravated assault,
     -- kidnapping,
     -- rape,
     -- torture,
     -- mutilation, and/or
     -- murder

of individuals from target socioeconomic groups, the vast majority of who were Ukrainian citizens?
 

8. Considering the evil experimentation on concentration camp inmates by German scientists, like Dr. Josef Mengele, resulting in torture, maiming and murder, as well as modern bans on the use of chemical weapons & biological agents (bioweapons) and on dangerous gain-of-function-research, why did our American government organize, fund and manage extremely dangerous dual-use research in numerous bio-laboratories in Ukraine, as admitted to under oath by Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, including working on very lethal and contagious bio-pathogens that can be born and transmitted by animal vectors like birds, mammals and insects?

If true, as alleged by the Russian military, why did the U.S. government tolerate, if not participate (via private contractors) in "medical / scientific research" on institutionalized mentally ill Ukrainian patients in Kharkiv Region -- obviously without their ability to provide legally valid fully-informed consent? 

At least I hope that they didn't end up killing these psychiatric patients like the Nazis during WWII.

 
Why do I pose these questions?

Because, as an American citizen of Ukrainian, Jewish, Nigerian and Russian descent, I don't want to see our (American) government or population supporting groups, individuals, policies and actions that tolerate and/or encourage conduct which is based on political ideology arising out of or related to Nazism & Fascism, whose core components include racial, ethnic, national & cultural superiority (supremacism), exceptionalism, giving the right to punish and rule / subjugate other "lesser" (inferior) peoples (subhumans) and nations.  

Because if we allow this to happen, then it's just a matter of time until another armed conflict will start with genocide and/or ethnic cleansing that may exceed the horrors of the Holocaust and the Blockade of Leningrad, especially with modern weapons of mass destruction (nuclear, radiological, chemical and biological).
 
What do you think?
 
***

[1] The International Holocaust Remembrance Day 

 

Photo: German Nazi death camp Auschwitz in Poland, 

arrival of Hungarian Jews, Summer 1944

The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, is an international memorial day on 27 January that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of one third of the Jewish people, along with countless members of other minorities between 1933 and 1945 by Nazi Germany, an attempt to implement their "final solution" to the Jewish question.

27 January was chosen to commemorate the date when the Auschwitz concentration camp was liberated by the Red Army in 1945.

The day remembers the killing of six million Jews, two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population, and millions of others by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.[1][2]

It was designated by United Nations General Assembly resolution 60/7 on 1 November 2005.[3]

The resolution came after a special session was held earlier that year on 24 January to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camps and the end of the Holocaust.[4][5][6][7]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Holocaust_Remembrance_Day

***

Liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp

Photo: Soviet Army soldiers chatting to the children just liberated 

from the Auschwitz concentration camp

On 27 January 1945, Auschwitz concentration camp—a Nazi concentration camp and extermination camp in occupied Poland where more than a million people were murdered as part of the Nazis' "Final Solution" to the Jewish question—was liberated by the Red Army during the Vistula–Oder Offensive.

Although most of the prisoners had been forced onto a death march, about 7,000 had been left behind.

The Soviet soldiers attempted to help the survivors and were shocked at the scale of Nazi crimes.

The date is recognized as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_of_Auschwitz_concentration_camp

***

Auschwitz concentration camp

Photo: German concentration camp, Auschwitz I (the main camp), Poland (1940-1945). 

Visible old Austrian and later Polish Army barracks dated before 1939.

Auschwitz concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager Auschwitz (pronounced [kɔntsɛntʁaˈtsi̯oːnsˌlaːɡɐ ˈʔaʊʃvɪts] (listen)); also KL Auschwitz or KZ Auschwitz) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939)[3] during World War II and the Holocaust.

It consisted of

- Auschwitz I, the main camp (Stammlager) in Oświęcim;
- Auschwitz II-Birkenau, a concentration and extermination camp with gas chambers;
- Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a labor camp for the chemical conglomerate IG Farben;
and dozens of subcamps.[4]

The camps became a major site of the Nazis' final solution to the Jewish question.  
...
Of the 1.3 million people sent to Auschwitz, 1.1 million were murdered.
 
The number of victims includes 960,000 Jews (865,000 of whom were gassed on arrival), 74,000 ethnic Poles, 21,000 Roma, 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war, and up to 15,000 other Europeans.[7]
 
Those not gassed were murdered via starvation, exhaustion, disease, individual executions, or beatings.

Others were killed during medical experiments.

At least 802 prisoners tried to escape, 144 successfully, and on 7 October 1944, two Sonderkommando units, consisting of prisoners who operated the gas chambers, launched an unsuccessful uprising.

Only 789 Schutzstaffel personnel (no more than 15 percent) ever stood trial after the Holocaust ended;[8] several were executed, including camp commandant Rudolf Höss.

The Allies' failure to act on early reports of atrocities by bombing the camp or its railways remains controversial.

As the Soviet Red Army approached Auschwitz in January 1945, toward the end of the war, the SS sent most of the camp's population west on a death march to camps inside Germany and Austria.

Soviet troops entered the camp on 27 January 1945, a day commemorated since 2005 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

In the decades after the war, survivors such as Primo Levi, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel wrote memoirs of their experiences, and the camp became a dominant symbol of the Holocaust.

In 1947, Poland founded the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum on the site of Auschwitz I and II, and in 1979 it was named a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp

***

The Holocaust

Photo: "Selection" of Hungarian Jews on the ramp at Auschwitz II-Birkenau in German-occupied

 Poland, around May 1944. Jews were sent either to work or to the gas chamber.

The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah,[a] was the genocide of European Jews during World War II.[b]

Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe;[c] around two-thirds of Europe's Jewish population.[d]

The murders were carried out in pogroms and mass shootings; by a policy of extermination through labor in concentration camps;

and in gas chambers and gas vans in German extermination camps, chiefly Auschwitz-Birkenau, Bełżec, Chełmno, Majdanek, Sobibór, and Treblinka in occupied Poland.[4]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Holocaust

***

The Siege of Leningrad

 

Photo: Three men burying victims of Leningrad's siege in 1942

The siege of Leningrad (Russian: Блокада Ленинграда, romanized: Blokada Leningrada; German: Leningrader Blockade; Finnish: Leningradin piiritys) was a prolonged military blockade undertaken by the Axis powers against the Soviet city of Leningrad (present-day Saint Petersburg) on the Eastern Front of World War II.

Germany's Army Group North advanced from the south, while the German-allied Finnish army invaded from the north and completed the ring around the city.

The siege began on 8 September 1941, when the Wehrmacht severed the last road to the city.

Although Soviet forces managed to open a narrow land corridor to the city on 18 January 1943, the Red Army did not lift the siege until 27 January 1944, 872 days after it began.

The blockade became one of the longest and most destructive sieges in history, and it was possibly the costliest siege in history due to the number of casualties which were suffered throughout its duration.

While not classed as a war crime at the time,[10] in the 21st century, some historians have classified it as a genocide due to the systematic starvation and intentional destruction of the city's civilian population.[11][12][13][14][15] 

The 872 days of the siege caused extreme famine in the Leningrad region through disruption of utilities, water, energy and food supplies. 

This resulted in the deaths of up to 1,500,000^[75] soldiers and civilians and the evacuation of 1,400,000 more (mainly women and children), many of whom died during evacuation due to starvation and bombardment.^[1][2] 

Piskaryovskoye Memorial Cemetery in Leningrad holds half a million civilian victims of the siege alone. 

Economic destruction and human losses in Leningrad on both sides exceeded those of the Battle of Stalingrad, the Battle of Moscow, or the bombing of Tokyo. 

The siege of Leningrad ranks as the most lethal siege in world history, and some historians speak of the siege operations in terms of genocide, as a "racially motivated starvation policy" that became an integral part of the unprecedented German war of extermination against populations of the Soviet Union generally.^[76][77]
 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siege_of_Leningrad
 
***

CIA Interventions in Syria - any parallels with Ukraine?

CIA Interventions in Syria - any parallels with Ukraine?

Greg Krasovsky: When the U.S. government uses the CIA, the State Department and/or the Pentagon to support radicals (including nationalists, neo-Nazis and heirs of Nazi collaborators and war criminals like the Ukrainian SS Division Galitsiya) - by providing them with money, training, weapons, safe passage, political support and media support - in order to topple a foreign regime that's not friendly (subservient?) to US interests, civil war is often around the corner.

After the end of WWII, the US Government actively hid from justice and relocated to the U.S. (against U.S. laws!) Ukrainian Nazi war criminals in order to use them in the cold war against the Soviet Union. 

We're talking about war criminals who either killed themselves or aided the Nazi SS troops in killing hundreds of thousands (perhaps over  a million) of Poles and Jews in Ukraine, Poland and Byelorussia.
   
What was the justification? In case WWIII broke out with the Soviet Union, the U.S. would have loyal Ukrainian and Russian speaking troops to help wage war against the Soviets.

Actually, OSS, CIA and its European partners provided Ukrainian Nazi collaborators and war criminals with weapons, communications logistics and training bases as they waged an insurgency and terrorism in Ukraine and the Baltics up to the early 1950s. Most of their victims were local civilians, including many women and children, who dared support new Soviet rule.
  
So when Ukraine became an independent country in 1991, is it surprising that the CIA began to fund and develop Ukrainian nationalists, including radical xenophobes and neo-Nazis, to bring about a Ukrainian government that would be anti-Russia and controlled (politically, economically and eventually militarily when it joined NATO or had enough NATO bases & troops on its soil) by the USA?

Unfortunately, the history of CIA work against the anti-US Assad government in Syria since 2010 is a pertinent example of how the CIA has operated since its inception to force regime change and install pro-US regimes (even authoritarian and totalitarian ones!) when necessary by covert action, false flag operations, assassinations and military support to radical insurgents.
   
When the US government and its agencies - CIA, NSA, Department of Defense, Department of State - exploit and/or inflame political, ethnic and religious tensions (conflicts) to enact regime change, the consequences can be utterly devastating for any country.
  
What's the worse case scenario for a country? Let's look at Syria, Libya, Iraq and Afghanistan. 
  
As I've written before many times, as an American of Ukrainian and Russian heritage, I don't want Ukraine to join this club of failed states. 

I have always been for a truly for truly independent and democratic Ukraine - but not for a country where radical nationalists and ant-Russian xenophobes beat, detain, torture, kidnap and even kill their opponents (normal Ukrainian people who don't share the radicals' hate of everything Russian) with impunity, de facto and de jure legal immunity from prosecution.

So let's look at Syria and try to do everything in our power to prevent the US and its NATO allies from doing the same thing in Ukraine - namely, supporting pr-US hate-spewing radical extremists who will eventually create either a totalitarian state or a failed state embroiled in civil war with an endless outflow of refugees seeking peace in neighboring countries. 

BTW, these failed states always become breeding grounds, staging areas and refuge for radical terrorists bent on committing terrorist acts in neighboring countries. 

Who do you think the militarization of Ukrainian society will produce, especially when there are no jobs available for these newly trained radicals who've already tasted blood and overcome any hesitation at killing civilians (pro-Russian separatist-supporting scum, as they call them)? These people have been taught to hate Russian and  trained to kill any Pro-Russian who does not agree with their vision of a pure Ukraine for Ukrainians.

So guess what? The natural target for anti-Russian radical Ukrainian nationalists will be Russia. If you think that Israel was ruthless in stomping out Palestinian bases in neighboring countries (like Lebanon in 1985), then I've got some bad news for you - Russia will be just as ruthless as Israel with all ensuing consequences for Ukraine and its innocent civilian population that's been taken hostage in the very dangerous geopolitical game. 

Judging by the US response to Al Qaeda attacks on US soil in 2001 - the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq - if a major terrorist act is committed on Russian soil by anti-Russian Ukrainian radicals, then Russia's response is likely to exceed the US response, as Ukraine is literally next door unlike Afghanistan or Iraq.

Do we want the US, EU and NATO to face such a scenario? Only a madman would want to risk a potentially (likely) nuclear WWIII in the geographic center of Europe..
  
Would you?
  
Here's a compilation of articles about how those radical insurgents in Syria, like ISIS (DAESH), al-Nusra Front and the so-called "moderate opposition" got their start, funding, weapons and other logistical help that helped them gain control by the summer of 2015 of at least half of Syria. 

*******************

CIA Interventions in Syria: A Partial Timeline
Michael S. Rozeff

"This partial timeline provides evidence that the U.S. government and Obama in particular bear a significant responsibility for the Syrian war and the results of that war. Obama approved elements of CIA plans that go back over 65 years. The CIA meddling is distinct from the Pentagon’s failed plan to train moderate rebels, not covered in this timeline.
...
In my opinion, the most serious U.S. meddling is what the Wikileaks cables reveal, which is the State Department’s organization of domestic opposition to its elected government. This provoked the revolution that started in Daraa, and that provided an opening for radical and armed Muslim elements to enter the battle. Next in importance is Obama’s position that Assad must go, because this guides the entry of the CIA and Pentagon into the war while committing the U.S. to a politically untenable and impossible course of attempting to reconstitute a new government among radical and rival forces if and when Assad falls or rebel forces gain control. Undetermined but significant amounts of arms and training have ended up flowing to ISIS and other radical groups that the U.S. cannot control, and these forces can’t be dislodged without bigger military commitments by the U.S. Neither the CIA’s activities nor the Pentagon’s failed training program have resulted in control over the battlefield or those groups, which have expanded control over Syrian territory.

Why did Obama intervene in Syria? There are four main reasons and they are not mutually exclusive. One reason is “democracy promotion”. This appears again and again in his rhetoric and that of the State department, where “democracy” is taken to mean “rights” among other things. Obama viewed Assad as standing in the way of the Syrian people. Obama’s intention to bomb Syria when he accused Assad of using chemical weapons brought out a version of this position in his concern for violations of international law. Obama has an idea of world order and the U.S. role in enforcing it. Obama’s position on the Arab Spring also showed this democracy promotion concern. The second reason is to thwart Iran in order to maintain U.S. dominance in the region. Related to this is U.S. support for Saudi Arabia and Gulf states who have also supported rebel elements in Syria as well as support for Turkey. The U.S. leads a coalition. The third reason is Israel’s influence in administration circles and on Capitol Hill. The fourth reason is to thwart Russia’s influence in Syria and deny it access to the Mediterranean. This appears to have backfired.
...
Why would I or many sane Americans want to bother with who rules Syria or how they rule it? It’s not my province. It’s none of my business. How in the world can I know whether I’m doing any good if I decide to butt in?

The government doesn’t think this way. It’s composed of people who want to meddle and run for office for that very reason. They are arrogant enough to think that they know what’s good for everyone when they don’t know diddly-squat. Who are they but pompous babbling fools? The CIA attracts smart people who love to work by schemes and subterfuges behind the scenes. These are power freaks who love playing byzantine games and relish manipulations. Why should any sane American want to allow these kinds of people to have access to ungodly amounts of money and power that they waste on their futile and very dangerous schemes that kill, maim and destroy?"

Please read the rest at https://www.lewrockwell.com/lrc-blog/cia-interventions-in-syria-a-partial-timeline/


Daraa 2011: Syria’s Islamist Insurrection in Disguise.

“I have seen from the beginning armed protesters in those demonstrations … they were the first to fire on the police. Very often the violence of the security forces comes in response to the brutal violence of the armed insurgents” – Jesuit priest Father Frans Van der Lugt, January 2012, Homs Syria

“The claim that armed opposition to the government has begun only recently is a complete lie. The killings of soldiers, police and civilians, often in the most brutal circumstances, have been going on virtually since the beginning.” – Professor Jeremy Salt, October 2011, Ankara Turkey

“The protest movement in Syria was overwhelmingly peaceful until September 2011” – Human Rights Watch, March 2012, Washington

A double story began on the Syrian conflict, at the very beginning of the armed violence in 2011, in the southern border town of Daraa. The first story comes from independent witnesses in Syria, such as the late Father Frans Van der Lugt in Homs. They say that armed men infiltrated the early political reform demonstrations to shoot at both police and civilians. This violence came from sectarian Islamists. The second comes from the Islamist groups (‘rebels’) and their western backers, including the Washington-based Human Rights Watch. They claim there was ‘indiscriminate’ violence from Syrian security forces to repress political rallies and that the ‘rebels’ grew out of a secular political reform movement.

Careful study of the independent evidence, however, shows that the Washington-backed ‘rebel’ story, while widespread, was part of a strategy to delegitimise the Syrian Government, with the aim of fomenting ‘regime change’. To understand this it is necessary to study the outbreak of the violence in Daraa, in March 2011. Central to that insurrection were shipments of arms from Saudi Arabia to Islamists at the al Omari mosque.
...
After months of media manipulations, disguising the Islamist insurrection, Syrians such as Samer al Akhras, a young man from a Sunni family, who used to watch Al Jazeera because he preferred it to state TV, became convinced to back the Syrian government. He saw first-hand the fabrication of reports on Al Jazeera and wrote, in late June 2011:

‘I am a Syrian citizen and I am a human. After 4 months of your fake freedom … You say peaceful demonstration and you shoot our citizen. From today … I am [now] a Sergeant in the Reserve Army. If I catch anyone … in any terrorist organization working on the field in Syria I am gonna shoot you as you are shooting us. This is our land not yours, the slaves of American fake freedom’ (al Akhras 2011).

Please read the rest at http://www.globalresearch.ca/daraa-2011-syrias-islamist-insurrection-in-disguise/5460547


Logistics 101: Where Does ISIS Get Its Guns?

The current conflict consuming the Middle East, particularly in Iraq and Syria where the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS) is operating and simultaneously fighting and defeating the forces of Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran, we are told, is built upon a logistical network based on black market oil and ransom payments.
...
While many across the West play willfully ignorant as to where ISIS truly gets their supplies from in order to maintain its impressive fighting capacity, some journalists have traveled to the region and have video taped and reported on the endless convoys of trucks supplying the terrorist army.

Were these trucks traveling to and from factories in seized ISIS territory deep within Syrian and Iraqi territory? No. They were traveling from deep within Turkey, crossing the Syrian border with absolute impunity, and headed on their way with the implicit protection of nearby Turkish military forces. Attempts by Syria to attack these convoys and the terrorists flowing in with them have been met by Turkish air defenses.

Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW) published the first video report from a major Western media outlet illustrating that ISIS is supplied not by “black market oil” or “hostage ransoms” but billions of dollars worth of supplies carried into Syria across NATO member Turkey’s borders via hundreds of trucks a day.

The report titled, “‘IS’ supply channels through Turkey,” confirms what has been reported by geopolitical analysts since at least as early as 2011 – that ISIS subsides on immense, multi-national state sponsorship, including, obviously, Turkey itself.

Looking at maps of ISIS-held territory and reading action reports of its offensive maneuvers throughout the region and even beyond, one might imagine hundreds of trucks a day would be required to maintain this level of fighting capacity. One could imagine similar convoys crossing into Iraq from Jordan and Saudi Arabia. Similar convoys are likely passing into Syria from Jordan.

Please read the rest at http://journal-neo.org/2015/06/09/logistics-101-where-does-isis-get-its-guns/


How The Hell Does ISIS Get All Those Tanks, Weapons And Shiny New Toyota Trucks? 

CNBC reported that so far we’ve accidentally furnished the Islamic State with at least $219.7 million worth of weapons, vehicles and other military supplies and gear — and that’s just the stuff we know about. 

Based on various reports, CNBC came up with the following laundry list of supplies the U.S. has so kindly provided to ISIS so far. 

2,300 Humvee armored vehicles at $70,000 each: $16 million 
40 M1A1 Abram tanks at $4.3 million each: $172 million 
52 M198 Howitzer mobile gun systems at $527,337 each: $2.7 million 
74,000 Army machine guns at $4,000 each: $29 million 
TOTAL: $219.7 MILLION in military weapons, vehicles, and other supplies and gear for ISIS. 

How does the Islamic State get hold of all these U.S. weapons? We deliver them, either directly or through the tattered remnants of Iraq’s military. 

[Jeremy Salt, a political analyst in Ankara, Turkey]...reminded us of our nation’s major blunders for supplying weapons to ISIS for the past couple of years. 

- Accidental air-dropping of weapons and supplies intended for the Syrian Kurds into Islamic State territory. 
- This didn’t just happen once, it happened several times. 
- Weapons and supplies seized by ISIS during the falls of Mosul (Iraq), Ramadi (Iraq), AND Palmyra (Syria). 

Salt doesn’t even bother explaining how the George W. Bush administration created ISIS by invading Iraq on false pretenses and chasing off all those heavily armed and well-trained Baathist soldiers. 

But he does ask how it’s even possible that U.S. intelligence and the military — both of which are among the most sophisticated in the world — could have possibly NOT seen what was coming. 

Please read the rest at http://reverbpress.com/news/international/isis-toyota-trucks-us-tanks-weapons/

Whose Victory Did Ukrainians Celebrate on May 9th?

Whose Victory Will Ukrainians Celebrate on May 9?

http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/05/04/whose-victory-will-ukrainians-celebrate-on-may-9/

Since WW II could have ended pretty much only in two ways in Europe --

(a) Nazi Germany's victory over the Soviet Union (the last European power that was able to defeat Hitler) and then probably over the United Kingdom (even with U.S. assistance) or

(b) The Soviet Union's victory over Nazi Germany with British, French and American (incl. Canada) assistance,

on May 8th and 9th the residents of the former Soviet Union can do several things:

Choice #1. Celebrate the defeat of Hitler's Nazi Germany by a lesser evil, Stalin's Soviet Union, and be grateful that from 1945 to 1991 they lived in the Soviet Union and not Nazi Germany's Lebensraum for Aryans and their sub-human non-Aryan servants & vassals.

Unfortunately, in human politics over the last 4 thousand years, when it comes to the goodness of political regimes, there is no black and white, just shades of grey, gradations of good and evil. So in our choices as citizens, tax-payers, voters, employees and even consumers, we are faced (and forced by lack of meaningful choice) with supporting the lesser evil.

Even when the modern self-professed cradle of democracy (the United States) was founded in 1776, the rights and privileges of democracy were denied to African-American slaves and the Native Americans.

So with all that in mind, the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany was a victory of relative good against clear evil.

Choice #2. Celebrate the defeat of Nazi Germany by the Soviet Union and all its ethnicities (Russians, Ukrainians, Byelorussians, Kazakhs, Tatars and etc.) who fought and died side-by-side to destroy the Nazi Fascist menace while acknowledging that the Soviet victory in May of 1945 deprived many nationalities & countries in central and Eastern Europe of democracy and full political & economic independence.

Yes, the celebrations must be tempered by a remembrance that Stalin's victory brought with it another 45 years of Soviet socialist communism, a system which, although it gave Soviet peasants and the working poor free education, medical care and the opportunity to rise to the very top of its political, academic, social and industrial sectors, dealt with authoritarian and totalitarian ruthlessness with its political opponents.

Here we must note that Post-Stalin Soviet Union (1952 -1991) was matched, if not surpassed, by other non-communist regimes in imprisoning, kidnapping, torturing and disappearing political opponents -- including regimes that were supported by the United States (a country which incarcerates the highest percentage of its population today than any other country in the world!) such as Shah's Iran (’41-’79), Hussein’s Iraq (’79-’91), Pinochet's Chile (’73-’90), Argentina during its Dirty War (’69-’83), Franco's Spain (’39-’75) and etc.

Choice #3. Commiserate the defeat of Nazi Germany along with those Nazi collaborators who are still alive and/or their progeny.

After all, had Nazi Germany won, those non-Aryan collaborators (especially the non-Jewish and the "western" Slavic ones), could may have enjoyed a short-lived cozy place as the local overseers of Hitler's Final Solution and local laborers in Lebensraum.

The folks opting for #3 do need to understand that Nazi Germany never intended to give Eastern European non-Aryan nations any real independence, but only dangled it fraudulently in front of them to get their assistance in fighting the Soviet Union and those pesky Bolshevik sub-human Jews.

They must also understand that collaboration with the Nazis, no matter what their intentions (desire for independence, hate for Communist-Bolsheviks, hate for Jews, Gypsies and etc.), cannot be justified morally or excused, especially the collaboration in the Holocaust, the intentional ethnic/religious extermination of the Jews.

The vast majority of Germans – and Germany as a country in its state policies --have already gone through this necessary healing and rehabilitative process of acknowledging the evil of Nazism and their responsibility in supporting it and the horrors of war and death that it inflicted upon millions of people.

The vast majority of Soviet citizens – and Russia as a country in its policies of rehabilitating the victims of Soviet communist persecutions – has also understood the evil and wrongness of Soviet Stalinist-Bolshevik terror against all perceived political opponents.

So Choice #3, no matter how glibly it’s spun or presented – such as in Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia and now in Ukraine, where local SS veterans and other Nazi collaborators are now being promoted and glorified as freedom fighters whose Nazi collaboration is excused and justified by their hate and struggle against Soviet Communism – is a long-term moral and spiritual dead end, which will do nothing but bring more xenophobia, ethnic cleansing, authoritarianism, militarism and eventually the horrors of war.

We only advance as humanity when we acknowledge our mistakes and those of our ancestors (even the generations of our parents & grandparents who are still alive!), repent, make amends and commit to making sure that such wrongs stop and are never repeated again.

[As side note, despite living in greater Washington DC for 5+ years, I could never root for the Washington Redskins – an American Football team whose name is a living perpetual insult to all the Native Americans that were killed, displaced and disenfranchised by the seizure of their land by colonists and the U.S.]

Otherwise, the cancer of ethnic, racial, gender, religious, linguistic or cultural superiority will slowly and surreptitiously reappear, grow and spread -- leading inevitably to more conflicts, wars and human death & suffering.

Personally, as you may have guessed, I’m opting for #1 and #2 – so on May 9th I’ll be at the Victory Parade in Moscow, Russia, where I can pay respects to the memories of my maternal grandfather, who went MIA and maternal great uncle who fought since 1941, was captured by the Nazis, escaped a POW camp, rejoined the fight and eventually died only two weeks before the end of the war from shrapnel near Koenigsberg in Eastern Prussia (now Kaliningrad in Russia).

I’m not going to boycott Russia’s 70th anniversary victory celebrations because of the current Civil War in Eastern Ukraine. Why? Because I spent last May and June in Lugansk in Eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk Coal Basin.

There, I saw with my own eyes how the residents of Lugansk voted freely and overwhelmingly on May 11, 2014 in a referendum for governmental autonomy from the new U.S.-backed Turchinov-Yatsenyuk regime.

For better or for worse, despite what you hear from Western Media, the residents of Lugansk voted freely and somewhat naively without Putin Russia’s secret meddling for autonomy from a new government that they believed was headed by extreme Ukrainian Nationalists, including supporters and progeny of Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, who would discriminate against ethnic Russians, Russian-speaking Ukrainians and Eastern Orthodox Christians loyal to the Moscow Patriarchate.

The residents of Lugansk were also afraid that the new Kyiv government, which illegitimately overthrew Ukrainian President Yanukovich, a corrupt, but democratically elected president, would eventually pit Ukraine against Russia at the behest of their American and NATO backers (their words & logic).

So they voted for governmental autonomy, many naively believing that Lugansk would be absorbed (annexed) by Russia just like Crimea, another region (formally part of Ukraine since 1954) and they preferred to live in Russia that in Ukraine run by Yatsenyuk, Turchinov, Tyagnybok (head of Svoboda Party), Yarosh (head of Right Sector) and Poroshenko.

BTW, the residents of Crimea also voted overwhelmingly and freely for independence and joining Russia pretty much for the same reasons – and today do not regret their choice despite Western and Ukrainian sanctions against Crimea. It’s an inconvenient truth, but a valid example where a people’s right to self-determination trumped (with “neighborly” Russian assistance) the territorial integrity argument that every state likes to use to prevent loss of territory to separatist movements of aggrieved local populations.

Afterwards, instead of negotiating with these regions over autonomy and/or federalization, the Poroshenko government decided to restore its control over Donetsk and Lugansk just like the North over the South in the American Civil War (1861-1865) and Russia over Chechnya in 1995 by trying to take over the separatist regions with brute military force and punitive military and economic measures against the civilian population.

Here, Ukraine’s President Poroshenko did what corrupt President Yanukovich did not dare – began to use military force against civilians and local militias, including aerial bombardments, cluster bombs, incendiary white phosphor munitions and surface-to-surface missiles against military and civilian targets in civilian residential areas.

We – Americans, Ukrainians and Russians -- are lucky that Putin’s Russia has not responded to the installation of a pro-US/EU/NATO regime in Ukraine on February 22, 2014 the same way the U.S. has responded to “similar challenges” (a) over the last 70 years in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Nicaragua, Grenada, Panama, Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Lybia, and now Syria or (b) enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Instead, Russia’s support of the Donetsk Separatists (military and financial) has been minimal in comparison to the U.S. doctrine and interventions in the above conflicts.

Despite what you may hear from pro-Poroshenko Ukrainian and Western corporate media, the vast majority (>= 95%) of the separatist forces are composed of local men who took up arms to defend their region against what they perceived to be an illegitimate regime that would not respect their region’s right to self-determination and would discriminate against them. But that’s how civil wars generally start.

Based on these factors, I could not apply double-standards to Russia and boycott the 70th anniversary Victory Day celebrations because of Russia’s annexation of Crimea support for the Donetsk and Lugansk.

What do you think?