19 Minutes and 20 seconds in. pl
http://www.johnbatchelorshow.com/podcasts/2014/04/07/fourth-hour
RSS- Supreme Court oral arguments to be heard on April 25 about presidential immunity for official acts
- Nasa’s Voyager-1 sends usable data from deep space
- The Wondrous Oak
- Three Seas Summit: Vilnius 2024
- Tit for tat until it all goes boom
- Deadly H5N1 avian influenza strain detected on mainland Antarctica
- “BYD is launching its next-gen Blade EV battery soon with more range and even lower cost”
- Iran launches air attacks on Israel
- ISW on the developing Ukrainian defense industrial base and Russias strikes on the Ukrainian energy infrastructure
- Britain? Kaput! By Walrus.
Interesting interview! Thanks PL!
Not on point on this, but perhaps related. There are reports of employees of a renamed Blackwater subsidiary landing in Ukraine. This might be Russian ‘disinformatsia’ or something else. The Russian Foreign Ministry has also alleged that Greystone employees are being deployed to Eastern Ukraine.
Website politikus.ru reported, on the night of 2-3, the flight landed at the airport Borispol and Zhuliany , Ukraine carrying many men in civilian clothes but carrying large bags (similar to type bag that the U.S. military used to store equipment).
All these people were identified as employees of private security companies Greystone Limited. It is a subsidiary of Vehicle Services Company LLC (which is a private security company Blackwater USA’s notorious was renamed in 2009). Currently, the number of employees of this company in Ukraine is said to be up to 300 people.
The presence of the security personnel are specially trained in Ukraine this will enhance protection for the new administration in the area east and southeast, where the anti-government protests erupted powerful new .
The only question now is how many private security personnel of foreign countries in Ukraine real and who is paying them (the cost to hire a private company like that is very expensive and government Ukraine’s new budget clearly not sufficient to cover these costs).
.
oofda,
The new government in Kiev have turned to the oligarchs in an attempt to consolidate control over eastern Ukraine. It’s the oligarchs who hire private security forces and pay local Ukrainian forces to keep a lid on their new privatized acquisitions. Nuland and the rest of her cabal should be very proud of the mess they wrought.
Here is a very balanced blogpost on the backlash against Hersh:
http://interventionswatch.wordpress.com/2014/04/08/seymour-hersh-the-backlash/
I’d be interested in hearing peoples’ responses to it.
TTG,
It takes a great deal to make me feel twinges of nostalgia for the student radicalism of the Sixties.
However, when I read Michael McFaul, describing himself as ‘a specialist in democracy, anti-dictatorial movements, and revolutions’, I did think that he might have been a little less stupid, if for once in his life he had been besieged in his office in Stanford by a mob of students.
Indeed, he might have acquired some contact with what ‘revolutions’ commonly mean, in the real world, if he had such a mob break the windows in when he was dining at a posh restaurant with some of his Russian and East European ‘democratic’ friends.
Nice interview, but left me hanging. What is next. Are we to become amnesiacs to every manufactured event and keep taking up you know what without doing something with the existing 5th column!…..
An analysis of Maidan footage shows at least one clear-cut instance where unarmed protesters were being filmed being shot down by a sniper from behind & above the skirmish line, the same angle used for filming. A missing bullet hits a tree from right rear flank; a man takes cover behind the tree, exposing himself to the front. Ghouls who shoot people for news footage to start a war deserve to be…
Youtube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=J5qXS8Xc274#t=86
original page: https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Ukraine_coup_2014#A_more_disturbing_.27reality.27_possibility
David,
The students of the Obama Hope and Change generation are busy rioting elsewhere:
http://www.universityherald.com/articles/8644/20140407/deltopia-spring-break-riot-ucsb-and-other-students-spiral-out-of-control-as-police-struggle-to-stop-madness.htm
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2014/03/30/university-arizona-students-riot-after-ncaa-tournament-loss/
Washington thinks Putin is going to blink.
I don’t think so.
Anon,
The second objection to Hersh’s argument listed in the ‘Interventions Watch’ piece is ‘that the Sarin sample allegedly tested at Porton Down, and which didn’t match any known Sarin from the Assad regime’s arsenal, came from Russian Intelligence, and is therefore of questionable reliability.’
As Hersh portrays the evidence from Porton Down – a British facility with a great deal of expertise in chemical weapons – as critical, the question as to whether the objection stands up is of central importance.
The author of the ‘Interventions Watch’ piece comments:
‘This to me is a reasonable criticism, because Russian Intelligence do have a vested interest in exonerating the Assad regime. But as Hersh tells it, the scientists at Porton Down – who you wouldn’t expect to easily fall for the ruses of Russian Intelligence – appear to have accepted the sample as genuine.’
It has frequently been asserted that the Syrian chemical weapons arsenal was essentially a Soviet creation, and it would seem extremely likely the claim is accurate. Concluding an account of the history in an article last September, the Russia/CIS bureau chief for Voice of America wrote:
‘Thirty years ago, Soviet scientists created Syria’s Frankenstein. Now that the chemical monster has escaped the lab, the Kremlin may be best positioned to lure it back under control.’
(See http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/russia-helped-build-syrias-chemical-weapons/485870.html )
The logic of this argument would suggest that, to do their job, the Porton Down scientists would need to have developed close working relationships with Russian experts on Syrian chemical weapons.
If this was so, it would be eminently possible that they would have been able to make an informed judgement of the reliability alike of the source of the sample and the account he gave of how it had been obtained.
The Russian source, moreover, would have been aware that other samples would be taken from the site, and that if his was cast under suspicion, not only his good faith, but the whole notion that his country was in earnest in trying to bring the Syrian chemical ‘Frankenstein’ back ‘under control’ would be called into question.
That said, it is not obvious to me why Porton Down should have had to rely on a Russian sample. Perhaps some member of this ‘Committee of Correspondence’ can clarify the issue.
FWIW: Another international Civil servant who wants to keep her job or, at least get the backing of the P3, to benefit from a UN job in the future.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/syria-regime-atrocities-far-outweigh-rebels-crimes-un-says-1.2603277
“France had asked Pillay to brief the council on Syria, but Russia objected to putting the spotlight on its Middle East ally. As a compromise, Russia allowed Pillay to be invited to speak on an array of crises, including Syria, Central African Republic, Mali, Libya and South Sudan, thus taking the focus off Damascus — in theory. But most of the questions put to her when she emerged from the four-hour meeting were about Syria.”
Yep, Araud and Fabius are doing a great job . No beep about CAR where the Muslims are being harassed or killed.
You were the former head of mid east intel at the dia, then you went to work for a hizbullah operative in lebanon. I must conclude that you are a hizbulla spy.
walt O’brien
Now that is one of the more entertaining comments we have had for a while. Is there something in the Florida water that brings these kinds of thoughts? The fellow I worked for was a very wealthy SUNNI Lebanese. He detested the Shia and Hizbullah in particular. The thought of him as a Hizbullah “operative” is truly comic. I wish Rubin were as zany. pl
Col.: You interview well. It is good see that you haven’t in fact been blacklisted by shows like John Batchelor.
MM
Jes’ a talkin’ dawg. pl