There are 8 enormous sunspot clusters on the Sun today; however, after the solar pole shift there are have been very few if any high latitude sunpots. Occupying an expanse of solar terrain more than 280,000 km wide, sunspot complex AR1981-AR1982 is crossing the center of the solar disk, almost-directly facing Earth. NOAA forecasters estimate a 50% chance of minor geomagnetic storms on Sunday, Feb. 23rd, in response to glancing blows from one or two incoming CMEs. Arctic sky watchers should remain alert for auroras.

The First Amendment says "Congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…" But under the Obama administration, the Federal Communications Commission is planning to send government contractors into the nation's newsrooms to determine whether journalists are producing articles, television reports, Internet content, and commentary that meets the public's "critical information needs." Those "needs" will be defined by the administration, and news outlets that do not comply with the government's standards could face an uncertain future. It's hard to imagine a project more at odds with the First Amendment.

The initiative, known around the agency as "the CIN Study" (pronounced "sin"), is a bit of a mystery even to insiders. "This has never been put to an FCC vote, it was just announced," says Ajit Pai, one of the FCC's five commissioners (and one of its two Republicans). "I've never had any input into the process," adds Pai, who brought the story to the public's attention in a Wall Street Journal column last week.

The Obama Administration’s Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is poised to place government monitors in newsrooms across the country in an absurdly draconian attempt to intimidate and control the media.

Before you dismiss this assertion as utterly preposterous (we all know how that turned out when the Tea Party complained that it was being targeted by the IRS), this bombshell of an accusation comes from an actual FCC Commissioner.

FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai reveals a brand new Obama Administration program that he fears could be used in “pressuring media organizations into covering certain stories.”

As Commissioner Pai explains in the Wall Street Journal:

Last May the FCC proposed an initiative to thrust the federal government into newsrooms across the country. With its "Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs," or CIN, the agency plans to send researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia, S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out information from television and radio broadcasters about "the process by which stories are selected" and

how often stations cover "critical information needs," along with "perceived station bias" and "perceived responsiveness to underserved populations."

In fact, the FCC is now expanding the bounds of regulatory powers to include newspapers, which it has absolutely no authority over, in its new government monitoring program.

The FCC has apparently already selected eight categories of “critical information” “that it believes local newscasters should cover.”

That’s right, the Obama Administration has developed a formula of what it believes the free press should cover, and it is going to send government monitors into newsrooms across America to stand over the shoulders of the press as they make editorial decisions.

This poses a monumental danger to constitutionally protected free speech and freedom of the press.

Every major repressive regime of the modern era has begun with an attempt to control and intimidate the press.

As Thomas Jefferson so eloquently said, "our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost."

The federal government has absolutely no business determining what stories should and should not be run, what is critical for the American public and what is not, whether it perceives a bias, and whose interests are and are not being served by the free press.

It’s an unconscionable assault on our free society.

Imagine a government monitor telling Fox News it needed to cover stories in the same way as MSNBC or Al Jazeera.  Imagine an Obama Administration official walking in to the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal and telling it that the American public would be better served if it is stopped reporting on the IRS scandal or maybe that reporting on ObamaCare “glitches” is driving down enrollment.

It’s hard to imagine anything more brazenly Orwellian than government monitors in newsrooms.

Is it any wonder that the U.S. now ranks 46th in the world for freedom of the press?  Reporters Without Boarders called America’s precipitous drop of 13 places in its recent global rankings “one of the most significant declines” in freedom of the press in the world.

Freedom of the press is proudly extolled in the First Amendment, yet our nation now barely makes the top fifty for media freedom.

We cannot allow the unfathomable encroachment on our free speech and freedom of the press to continue.

We’ve seen, and defeated, this kind of attempt to squelch free speech before in the likes of the Fairness Doctrine and the Grassroots Lobbying Bill (incidentally one of my first projects at the ACLJ).  Each one of these euphemistically named government programs is nothing more than an underhanded attempt to circumvent the Constitution and limit free speech – speech that the government finds inconvenient.  They’re equally unconstitutional, and they each must be defeated.

Advocates promote the project with Obama-esque rhetoric. "This study begins the charting of a course to a more effective delivery of necessary information to all citizens," said FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn in 2012. Clyburn, daughter of powerful House Democratic Rep. James Clyburn, was appointed to the FCC by President Obama and served as acting chair for part of last year. The FCC, Clyburn said, "must emphatically insist that we leave no American behind when it comes to meeting the needs of those in varied and vibrant communities of our nation -- be they native born, immigrant, disabled, non-English speaking, low-income, or other." (The FCC decided to test the program with a trial run in Ms. Clyburn's home state, South Carolina.)

The FCC commissioned the University of Southern California Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism and the University of Wisconsin-Madison Center for Communication and Democracy to do a study defining what information is "critical" for citizens to have. The scholars decided that "critical information" is information that people need to "live safe and healthy lives" and to "have full access to educational, employment, and business opportunities," among other things.

The study identified eight "critical needs": information about emergencies and risks; health and welfare; education; transportation; economic opportunities; the environment; civic information; and political information.

It's not difficult to see those topics quickly becoming vehicles for political intimidation. In fact, it's difficult to imagine that they wouldn't. For example, might the FCC standards that journalists must meet on the environment look something like the Obama administration's environmental agenda? Might standards on economic opportunity resemble the president's inequality agenda? The same could hold true for the categories of health and welfare and "civic information" -- and pretty much everything else.

"An enterprising regulator could run wild with a lot of these topics," says Pai. "The implicit message to the newsroom is they need to start covering these eight categories in a certain way or otherwise the FCC will go after them."

The FCC awarded a contract for the study to a Maryland-based company called Social Solutions International. In April 2013, Social Solutions presented a proposal outlining a

process by which contractors hired by the FCC would interview news editors, reporters, executives and other journalists.

"The purpose of these interviews is to ascertain the process by which stories are selected," the Social Solutions report said, adding that news organizations would be evaluated for "station priorities (for content, production quality, and populations served), perceived station bias, perceived percent of news dedicated to each of the eight CINs, and perceived responsiveness to underserved populations."

There are a lot of scary words for journalists in that paragraph. And not just for broadcasters; the FCC also proposes to regulate newspapers, which it has no authority to do. (Its mission statement says the FCC "regulates interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable…")

Questioning about the CIN Study began last December, when the four top Republicans on the House Energy and Commerce Committee asked the FCC to justify the project. "The Commission has no business probing the news media's editorial judgment and expertise," the GOP lawmakers wrote, "nor does it have any business in prescribing a set diet of 'critical information.'"

If the FCC goes forward, it's not clear what will happen to news organizations that fall short of the new government standards. Perhaps they will be disciplined. Or perhaps the very threat of investigating their methods will nudge them into compliance with the administration's journalistic agenda. What is sure is that it will be a gross violation of constitutional rights.

UPDATE

The Justice Department announced Friday it is revising its rules for obtaining records from the news media in leak investigations, promising that in most instances the government will notify news organizations beforehand of its intention to do so.

The revised procedures are designed to give news organizations an opportunity to challenge any subpoenas or search warrants in federal court.

News organizations are to be informed of an impending document demand unless the attorney general determines that notice would pose "a clear and substantial threat to the integrity of the investigation, risk grave harm to national security or present an imminent risk of death or serious bodily harm," the new rule says.

The rule emphasizes that members of the Justice Department may apply for a search warrant to obtain a journalist's materials only when that person is a focus of a criminal probe for conduct outside the scope of ordinary newsgathering.

The regulation follows disclosures that the Justice Department secretly subpoenaed almost two months' worth of telephone records for 21 phone lines used by reporters and

editors for The Associated Press. Separately, the department secretly used a search warrant to obtain some emails of a Fox News journalist, Mr. Rosen.

The episodes, which involved leaks of classified material, prompted widespread criticism from lawmakers, the news media and civil liberties groups. President Barack Obama ordered Attorney General Eric Holder to review the Justice Department's policy for obtaining such material.

The department said its changes are designed to safeguard the essential role of the free press in fostering government accountability and an open society, while protecting national security and law enforcement.

The revisions also ensure more robust oversight of the process by senior department officials and extend policies to cover the use of subpoenas, court orders and search warrants, it added.

AP President and CEO Gary Pruitt said that the news organization is still reviewing the new regulations but that the Justice Department appears to be following through on what Holder promised in July.

"These new regulations should provide significantly greater protection for journalists," Pruitt said. "This is important as the regulations, more so than the courts, traditionally have provided the bulwark of protection for journalists from the reach of federal prosecutors. We are hopeful that these regulations will be enforced as intended and that Congress will pass a federal shield law to further protect journalists."

Jane Kirtley, a University of Minnesota professor of media ethics and the law who speaks often on First Amendment issues, said she was troubled that there remain instances under the new rules in which the government might not notify news organizations of plans to obtain records, such as when the government believes notice would threaten national security.

"It seems that in times of crisis, there's a tendency to see everything as a major national security breach," she said. "Obviously the intelligence community is always going to represent security breaches as a big deal. My question is, are they all created equal? Do they all rise to the level of severity to justify what I see as an intrusion into press independence?"

The rule says that the attorney general may authorize subpoenas to members of the news media when the director of national intelligence certifies the significance of harm from a leak of classified information.

THE CRIME FAMILY GROWS IN POWER

In 2009, when she was still just a nominee for the Federal Communications Commission, Mignon Clyburn, the daughter of Rep. Jim Clyburn, told the Senate Commerce Committee, “The FCC is not in the content business.”

But just over a year since she was confirmed, the FCC is marching forward with a questionnaire for newsrooms that critics have ripped as invasive – and possibly a shot across the bow in a push to reinstate the Reagan-era fairness doctrine.

Titled the "Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs," or CIN, the FCC will send researchers to question reporters, editors, and broadcast station owners about their editorial decision-making, among other issues.

Outcry about the questionnaire has already prompted the FCC to backpeddle. In a Feb. 14 letter to Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said the questionnaire is being amended and that the FCC “has no intention of regulating political or other speech of journalists."

However, the move has spooked freedom of speech advocates.

“News outlets have the freedom to decide what information Americans need to know. It is not the government’s place to decide what information is ‘critical’ and what is not. That’s why it is inappropriate for a government agency to ask news organizations why they are covering certain stories but not others,” FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai said in a statement to Breitbart News.

“And that’s why there has been a groundswell of public opposition to the CIN study. The government has no place in the newsroom, and I will oppose any study that involves the FCC entering it," he added.

Clyburn, whose father is a vocal proponent of the fairness doctrine, will be running the CIN study. Interestingly, a field test of the CIN will be happening in Jim Clyburn’s own home state of South Carolina within the city limits of Columbia.

Jim Clyburn called for the fairness doctrine in the wake of the 2011 Tuscon, Arizona shooting, which resulted in six dead and 14 seriously injured, including former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ).

“The shooting is cause for the country to rethink parameters on free speech, Clyburn said from his office, just blocks from the South Carolina Statehouse. He wants standards put in place to guarantee balanced media coverage with a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine, in addition to calling on elected officials and media pundits to use "better judgment,” reported The Post and Courier in January of 2011.

“Free speech is as free speech does,” he said. “You cannot yell ‘fire' in a crowded theater and call it free speech and some of what I hear, and is being called free speech, is worse than that,” Clyburn reportedly said, referencing a remark made by 2010 U.S. senatorial candidate Sharron Angle of Nevada, who commented on political disputes and “Second Amendment remedies.” Clyburn blamed such political discourse for Tuscon shooter Jared Loughner's 2011 rampage.

“He saw a Second Amendment remedy and that's what occurred here and there is no way not to make that connection,” Clyburn said.

Former FCC Commissioner, Robert McDowell, who left the agency in May as Clyburn was appointed by Obama to become the agency’s interim chair, told Breitbart News he believes there is an “explicit link” of a political agenda between Clyburn and her Congressman father, “but the link is that the FCC is trying to determine whether broadcast content is valuable to consumers.”

McDowell added, “There’s no proposal on the table to explicitly regulate content. I think that’s important to note, but at the same time, the FCC does determine whether or not a broadcaster gets to stay in business through the licensing renewal process that happens every eight years."

President Obama nominated Ms.Clyburn, a former South Carolina utility commissioner and former newspaper publisher, to the FCC in 2009. She told members of the Senate Commerce Committee, during her confirmation hearing, that she opposed the fairness doctrine.

The younger Clyburn previously served as interim FCC Chair until Commissioner Tom Wheeler was confirmed as Chairman. Wheeler, who inherited the study from Clyburn, ordered the removal of questions about news philosophy and editorial judgment after the outcry on Thursday, reports the Washington Post.

The offices of both Jim and Mignon did not respond to a request for comment.

Planned food safety rules rile organic farmers.Jim Crawford was rushing to load crates of freshly picked organic tomatoes onto trucks heading for an urban farmers market when he noticed the federal agent.

A tense conversation followed as the visitor to his farm — an inspector from the Food and Drug Administration — warned him that some organic-growing techniques he had honed over four decades could soon be outlawed.

"This is my badge. These are the fines. This is what is hanging over your head, and we want you to know that," Crawford says the official told him.

Crawford's popular farm may seem a curious place for the FDA to move ahead with a long-planned federal assault on deadly food poisoning. To Crawford's knowledge, none of the kohlrabi, fennel, sugar snap peas or other crops from his New Morning Farm have ever sickened anyone. But he is not the only organic grower to suddenly discover federal inspectors on his land.

In 2010, after a years-long campaign, food-safety activists persuaded Congress to give the FDA authority to regulate farm practices. The next year, an outbreak of food poisoning that killed 33 people who ate tainted cantaloupes put pressure on the FDA to be aggressive.

Now, farmers are discovering that the FDA's proposed rules would curtail many techniques that are common among organic growers, including spreading house-made fertilizers, tilling cropland with grazing animals, and irrigating from open creeks.

Suddenly, from small family operations nestled in the foothills of Appalachia to the sophisticated organic-grower networks that serve Los Angeles and San Francisco, the farms that celebrity chefs and food-conscious consumers jostle to buy from are facing an unexpected adversary.

They're fighting back. Even though full enforcement of the rules is still years away, they are warning customers that some farms would have to close.

"They are going to drive farms out of business," said Dave Runsten, policy director for Community Alliance with Family Farmers in Davis, Calif.

"The consumer groups behind this don't understand farming," Runsten says. "They talk out of both sides of their mouth. They demand these one-size-fits-all regulations, then say, 'I don't want to hurt those cute little farmers at the farmers market. I shop at the farmers market.' It is frustrating."

Many farmers who take part in the locally grown food movement argue that contamination is a problem of industrial-sized farms and that some of the practices the FDA might ban actually make consumers safer.

Food safety advocates have urged regulators to hang tough. "We don't believe large facilities are the only place where outbreaks are happening," said Caroline Smith DeWaal, food safety director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington. Farm-to-fork growers, she said, need to accept that emerging strains of E. coli and other bacteria can just as easily seep into the produce sold at a farmers market as into the batches of salad bagged at giant processing plants, and they need to tweak their methods to protect against it.

"At the end of the day, consumers will be paying a little bit more for this. But a few cents here may help avoid a severe illness," Smith DeWaal says.

Congress passed the landmark Food Safety Modernization Act amid alarming reports from public health agencies about widespread food contamination. Tens of millions of consumers are sickened by tainted food each year, and some 3,000 die annually as a result, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention .

Parents of children who died from drinking contaminated juice or eating unsafe spinach rallied lawmakers with horrifying stories. Concerns about bioterrorism also played a role. The new rules are meant, in part, to make the nation's food supply less susceptible to tampering.

The century-old FDA has ample experience breaking up unsafe pharmaceutical factories and food processors but is still finding its way around family farms. At a recent congressional hearing, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) seized on one draft set of rules in which the FDA declared kale is "never consumed raw."

"I was going to offer to make a kale salad for you," she said to Michael Taylor, a deputy commissioner. "It causes you to wonder if those who are writing these rules have ever set foot on a farm."

Over the summer, the owner of the last working farm in Akron, Ohio, which had been supplying produce to locals for 117 years, said he was throwing in the towel and blamed the FDA's new rules. Don Bessemer told the Akron Beacon Journal that he was up for fighting pests and even drought, but not bureaucrats. Thirty workers lost jobs.

Federal regulators have been scrambling to find the right balance ever since the draft rules set off controversy. The FDA has backed away from some of its positions, and Taylor points out that thousands of the smallest farms would be exempt from new inspections under an agreement negotiated in Congress.

"This is the first time that the FDA will have regulated produce safety on the farm," he said in an interview.

U.S. Air Force reveals ‘neighborhood watch' spy satellite program.CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida (Reuters) - The United States plans to launch a pair of satellites to keep tabs on spacecraft from other countries orbiting 22,300 miles above the planet, as well as to track space debris, the head of Air Force Space Command said.

The previously classified Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) will supplement ground-based radars and optical telescopes in tracking thousands of pieces of debris so orbital collisions can be avoided, General William Shelton said at the Air Force Association meeting in Orlando on Friday.

He called it a "neighborhood watch program" that will provide a more detailed perspective on space activities. He said the satellites, scheduled to be launched this year, also will be used to ferret out potential threats from other spacecraft.

The program "will bolster our ability to discern when adversaries attempt to avoid detection and to discover capabilities they may have which might be harmful to our critical assets at these higher altitudes," Shelton said in the speech, which also was posted on the Air Force Association's website.

The two-satellite network, built by Orbital Sciences Corp will drift around the orbital corridor housing much of the world's communications satellites and other spacecraft.

The Air Force currently tracks about 23,000 pieces of orbiting debris bigger than about 4 inches. These range from old rocket bodies to the remains of an exploded Chinese satellite.

The Air Force released a fact sheet emphasizing the program's debris-monitoring abilities. Brian Weeden, technical advisor with the Washington-based Secure World Foundation, said the U.S. military already has a satellite in a better position to do that job.

"I think the (Obama) Administration is being more honest when it says that it declassified this program to try and deter attacks on U.S. satellites," in geostationary, or GEO, orbits located about 23,000 miles above Earth, Weeden wrote in an email to Reuters.

"The U.S. has a lot of very specialized and important national security satellites in the GEO region and it is very concerned about protecting those satellites ... so by telling other countries that it has some ability to closely monitor objects near GEO and their behavior, the U.S. hopes that will deter other countries from attacking its important satellites," Weeden said.

The new satellites also will give the U.S. military greater insight into what other countries have in orbit.

"There's nothing wrong with that, but it is exactly the sort of thing the U.S. is worried other countries will do to it," Weeden added.

Costs and technical details of the program were not released.

The satellites are scheduled for launch aboard an unmanned Delta 4 rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida during the last quarter of 2014.

Shelton said two replacement satellites are targeted for launch in 2016.

THE SILENT SCREAM CONTINUES

On Friday, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Office of Vital Statistics released a report titled "Summary of Vital Statistics 2012 The City of New York, Pregnancy Outcomes." As expected, the report showed an exceedingly high number of abortions and an exceedingly low number of births. 

But the report also showed something more disturbing: a vast majority of the abortions came from the black and Hispanic communities – and in the black community, births were outnumbered by abortion by 6,570. Overall, 42.4% of abortions in the city were of black children; another 31% came from the Hispanic community.

According to the Alan Guttmacher Institute, some 30% of all abortions in the United States are performed on black women, and another 25% are performed on Hispanic women. Rev. John J. Raphael of Howard University has calculated that approximately 13 million black children have been killed before birth since Roe v. Wade, representing a population decrease in the black community of nearly one quarter. Almost 40% of all black pregnancies currently end in abortion.

This was the dream of the population control eugenicists’ whose heirs would eventually force abortion into the American mainstream. The early proponents of population control in the United States were eugenicists like Margaret Sanger, founder of Planned Parenthood, who stated, “[We should] apply a stern and rigid policy of sterilization and segregation to that grade of population whose progeny is tainted, or whose inheritance is such that objectionable traits may be transmitted to offspring.” 

In 1922, she expanded on this perverse idea: “We should hire three or four colored ministers, preferably with social-service backgrounds, and with engaging personalities. The most successful educational approach to the Negro is through a religious appeal. We don’t want the word to go out that we want to exterminate the Negro population, and the minister is the man who can straighten out that idea if it ever occurs to any of their more rebellious members.” 

Sanger may not have targeted blacks alone for population control, but if targeting poverty meant targeting blacks and other racial minorities, she was certainly for it. And while Sanger was anti-abortion – she saw birth control as a preventive measure against abortion – she believed that population control in the black community was a necessity. Her heirs would broaden her concern with birth control into a program for full-scale abortion legalization.

This program was ineffective for decades, thanks to the rise of the black middle class and the stability of the black family structure. By the mid-1960s, half of black Americans had moved into the middle class, according to Kay Hymowitz; in 1965, just 24 percent of black children were born to single mothers. Those numbers still lagged behind the statistics for white Americans, which prompted the left to propose an entire system of government intervention to rectify the imbalance.

The result, however, was precisely the opposite of what was intended: thanks to the rise of the welfare state, which incentivized single motherhood, as well as a cultural shift discarding traditional family structure as a standard to be emulated, the black single motherhood rate skyrocketed. Black entry into the middle class stalled. Today, 73 percent of all children born in the black community are born out of wedlock. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 35 percent of black Americans live in poverty. In 1966, the black poverty rate was 41 percent.

There is no doubt that single motherhood has statistically crippled economic development in the black community. But instead of recognizing that single motherhood is an effect of both declining standards of morality and government benefits programs designed to excuse that decline, the left has blamed children themselves.  President Barack Obama infamously characterized the notion of one of his daughters experiencing an unplanned pregnancy as being “punished with a baby.” On the 41st anniversary of Roe v. Wade, Obama declared abortion a vital element in allowing “everyone… the freedom and opportunities to fulfill their dreams.” And on the economic front, economist Steven Levitt has justified abortion as a way of fighting crime.

The result has been success far beyond the dreams of the social Darwinian eugenicists whose ideological heirs would eventually make abortion in America a booming industry. It just took an undermining of the social order by government intervention to accomplish that horrifying feat.

The Blades of Summerby brooks agnew

The blades of summer Once ore beneath the grass,Bore centuries refiner's hammer,Then whetted sharp as glass.

Iron, sweat and father's love,For god's gift of liberty,Once flashed for freedom, aboveThe shoulders of tyranny.

The honored blades of summer

Sheath and scabbard lay,Until called forth anotherFreedom's dawning day.

Bolder hearts fein fear together,Pushing back the shields of power,'Til come the blades of summer,Marching honor to the tower.

Fodder brothers face the canons,A distant fallen for few to see,Horizon hoping last breath for Eagle's talons,Soaring skyward for to be free.

Time's come to toss the scabbards,Once again to widows waiting,Lest the nation's shatteredBy leaders masquerading.

Shining blades of summer solemn;Ministers of pen and phone,  no pity;Clean the marble to the columnsFrom seventeen and sixty.

The king and court to be defeated,Three million feet that sound like thunder,Marching White House unimpeded,Come the cleansing blades of summer.

What Really Happened in the Ukraine?

It is freezing cold in Kiev, legendary city of golden domes on the banks of Dnieper River – cradle of ancient Russian civilisation and the most charming of East European capitals. It is a comfortable and rather prosperous place, with hundreds of small and cosy restaurants, neat streets, sundry parks and that magnificent river. The girls are pretty and the men are sturdy. Kiev is more relaxed than Moscow, and easier on the wallet. Though statistics say the Ukraine is broke and its people should be as poor as Africans, in reality they aren’t doing too badly, thanks to their fiscal imprudence. The government borrowed and spent freely, heavily subsidised housing and heating, and they brazenly avoided devaluation of the national currency and the austerity program prescribed by the IMF. This living on credit can go only so far: the Ukraine was doomed to default on its debts next month or sooner, and this is one of the reasons for the present commotion.

A tug-of-war between the East and the West for the future of Ukraine lasted over a month, and has ended for all practical purposes in a resounding victory for Vladimir

Putin, adding to his previous successes in Syria and Iran. The trouble began when the administration of President Yanukovich went looking for credits to reschedule its loans and avoid default. There were no offers. They turned to the EC for help; the EC, chiefly Poland and Germany, seeing that the Ukrainian administration was desperate, prepared an association agreement of unusual severity.

The EC is quite hard on its new East European members, Latvia, Romania, Bulgaria et al.: these countries had their industry and agriculture decimated, their young people working menial jobs in Western Europe, their population drop exceeded that of the WWII.

But the association agreement offered to the Ukraine was even worse. It would turn the Ukraine into an impoverished colony of the EC without giving it even the dubious advantages of membership (such as freedom of work and travel in the EC). In desperation, Yanukovich agreed to sign on the dotted line, in vain hopes of getting a large enough loan to avoid collapse. But the EC has no money to spare – it has to provide for Greece, Italy, Spain. Now Russia entered the picture. At the time, relations of the Ukraine and Russia were far from good. Russians had become snotty with their oil money, the Ukrainians blamed their troubles on Russians, but Russia was still the biggest market for Ukrainian products.

For Russia, the EC agreement meant trouble: currently the Ukraine sells its output in Russia with very little customs protection; the borders are porous; people move freely across the border, without even a passport. If the EC association agreement were signed, the EC products would flood Russia through the Ukrainian window of opportunity. So Putin spelled out the rules to Yanukovich: if you sign with the EC, Russian tariffs will rise. This would put some 400,000 Ukrainians out of work right away. Yanukovich balked and refused to sign the EC agreement at the last minute. (I predicted this in my report from Kiev full three weeks before it happened, when nobody believed it – a source of pride).

The EC, and the US standing behind it, were quite upset. Besides the loss of potential economic profit, they had another important reason: they wanted to keep Russia farther away from Europe, and they wanted to keep Russia weak. Russia is not the Soviet Union, but some of the Soviet disobedience to Western imperial designs still lingers in Moscow: be it in Syria, Egypt, Vietnam, Cuba, Angola, Venezuela or Zimbabwe, the Empire can’t have its way while the Russian bear is relatively strong. Russia without the Ukraine can’t be really powerful: it would be like the US with its Mid-western and Pacific states chopped away. The West does not want the Ukraine to prosper, or to become a stable and strong state either, so it cannot join Russia and make it stronger. A weak, poor and destabilized Ukraine in semi-colonial dependence to the West with some NATO bases is the best future for the country, as perceived by Washington or Brussels.

Angered by this last-moment-escape of Yanukovich, the West activated its supporters. For over a month, Kiev has been besieged by huge crowds bussed from all over the Ukraine, bearing a local strain of the Arab Spring in the far north. Less violent than

Tahrir, their Maidan Square became a symbol of struggle for the European strategic future of the country. The Ukraine was turned into the latest battle ground between the US-led alliance and a rising Russia. Would it be a revanche for Obama’s Syria debacle, or another heavy strike at fading American hegemony?

The simple division into “pro-East” and “pro-West” has been complicated by the heterogeneity of the Ukraine. The loosely knit country of differing regions is quite similar in its makeup to the Yugoslavia of old. It is another post-Versailles hotchpotch of a country made up after the First World War of bits and pieces, and made independent after the Soviet collapse in 1991. Some parts of this “Ukraine” were incorporated by Russia 500 years ago, the Ukraine proper (a much smaller parcel of land, bearing this name) joined Russia 350 years ago, whilst the Western Ukraine (called the “Eastern Regions”) was acquired by Stalin in 1939, and the Crimea was incorporated in the Ukrainian Soviet Republic by Khrushchev in 1954.

The Ukraine is as Russian as the South-of-France is French and as Texas and California are American. Yes, some hundreds years ago, Provence was independent from Paris, – it had its own language and art; while Nice and Savoy became French rather recently. Yes, California and Texas joined the Union rather late too. Still, we understand that they are – by now – parts of those larger countries, ifs and buts notwithstanding. But if they were forced to secede, they would probably evolve a new historic narrative stressing the French ill treatment of the South in the Cathar Crusade, or dispossession of Spanish and Russian residents of California.

Accordingly, since the Ukraine’s independence, the authorities have been busy nation-building, enforcing a single official language and creating a new national myth for its 45 million inhabitants. The crowds milling about the Maidan were predominantly (though not exclusively) arrivals from Galicia, a mountainous county bordering with Poland and Hungary, 500 km (300 miles) away from Kiev, and natives of the capital refer to the Maidan gathering as a “Galician occupation”.

Like the fiery Bretons, the Galicians are fierce nationalists, bearers of a true Ukrainian spirit (whatever that means). Under Polish and Austrian rule for centuries, whilst the Jews were economically powerful, they are a strongly anti-Jewish and anti-Polish lot, and their modern identity centred around their support for Hitler during the WWII, accompanied by the ethnic cleansing of their Polish and Jewish neighbours. After the WWII, the remainder of pro-Hitler Galician SS fighters were adopted by US Intelligence, re-armed and turned into a guerrilla force against the Soviets. They added an anti-Russian line to their two ancient hatreds and kept fighting the “forest war” until 1956, and these ties between the Cold Warriors have survived the thaw.

After 1991, when the independent Ukraine was created, in the void of state-building traditions, the Galicians were lauded as ‘true Ukrainians’, as they were the only Ukrainians who ever wanted independence. Their language was used as the basis of a new national state language, their traditions became enshrined on the state level. Memorials of Galician Nazi collaborators and mass murderers Stepan Bandera and

Roman Shukhevych peppered the land, often provoking the indignation of other Ukrainians. The Galicians played an important part in the 2004 Orange Revolution as well, when the results of presidential elections were declared void and the pro-Western candidate Mr Yuschenko got the upper hand in the re-run.

On Feb. 21, Yanukovych agreed to hold early elections by December to halt the crisis. He bowed to demands to form a new government and restore the 2004 constitution, even as some radical protesters rejected the accord. His snub of an EU free-trade pact had sparked the street protests in November, the biggest in a decade. Police violence in the early days swelled support for the movement and the government’s push to clear the protest sites triggered battles that left more than 70 protesters and police dead. The western part of the country has been slipping out of the central government’s grasp, with protesters evicting Kiev-appointed governors in Lviv and other cities. Politicians warned that the bloodshed might escalate into the first civil war in Europe since the breakup of Yugoslavia. To the fury of those camped out on Independence Square, the president had accepted a $15 billion economic bailout and natural gas discount from Russia, which has opposed closer ties between Ukraine and the EU. As investors exited Ukrainian assets, the central bank imposed capital controls to stem a plunge in the nation’s currency. Rallying the crowds in the square is an unlikely troika of opposition leaders made up of a former world heavyweight boxing champion, an ex-central bank governor and a nationalist politician.

The Background

Source: National Gas Union of Ukraine

Ukraine and Russia trace their roots to the ninth century, when a collection of tribes founded Kievan Rus around modern-day Kiev. Ukraine struggled to carve out a national identity, falling under Moscow’s sway through most of the Russian and Soviet empires. More recently the two neighbors have been bound together by energy: Ukrainian pipelines provide transit for Russian natural gas en route to European markets and Russia supplies half of its neighbor’s own gas needs. While the Soviet legacy still looms large, Ukraine is divided. The country of 45 million is split between Russian-speaking regions in the east and the Ukrainian-speaking provinces of the west near the border with Poland, Slovakia and Hungary. The country’s trade reflects that fault line, with about a quarter of exports shipped to the EU and the same amount to Russia. President Vladimir Putin of Russia has dangled his own version of economic cooperation, a “Customs Union” modeled on the EU that would eventually comprise much of the former Soviet Union.

The Argument

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Pull Ukraine Back From the Brink West Has Blood on Its Hands in Ukraine The West Is Losing Ukraine

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The protesters consider Ukraine a European country and say aligning its future with the EU would strengthen institutions, bolster democracy and stem a slide back toward the days of Soviet rule. They distrust Yanukovych and are skeptical of his promises to pursue the EU accords later. The president has defended his decision to snub EU integration, saying it would have decimated the economy by triggering Russian trade restrictions and exposing Ukrainian industry to ruinous competition. EU officials have left the door open to a deal in the future. Yanukovych has promised to use the Russian cash to boost state salaries and pensions.

While the Maidan was boiling, the West sent its emissaries, ministers and members of parliament to cheer the Maidan crowd, to call for President Yanukovich to resign and for a revolution to install pro-Western rule. Senator McCain went there and made a few firebrand speeches. The EC declared Yanukovich “illegitimate” because so many of his citizens demonstrated against him. But when millions of French citizens demonstrated against their president, when Occupy Wall Street was violently dispersed, nobody thought the government of France or the US president had lost legitimacy…

Victoria Nuland, the Assistant Secretary of State, shared her biscuits with the demonstrators, and demanded from the oligarchs support for the “European cause” or their businesses would suffer. The Ukrainian oligarchs are very wealthy, and they prefer the Ukraine as it is, sitting on the fence between the East and the West. They are afraid that the Russian companies will strip their assets should the Ukraine join the Customs Union, and they know that they are not competitive enough to compete with the EC. Pushed now by Nuland, they were close to falling on the EC side.

Yanukovich was in big trouble. The default was rapidly approaching. He annoyed the pro-Western populace, and he irritated his own supporters, the people of the East and Southeast. The Ukraine had a real chance of collapsing into anarchy. A far-right nationalist party, Svoboda (Liberty), probably the nearest thing to the Nazi party to arise in Europe since 1945, made a bid for power. The EC politicians accused Russia of pressurising the Ukraine; Russian missiles suddenly emerged in the western-most tip of Russia, a few minutes flight from Berlin. The Russian armed forces discussed the US strategy of a “disarming first strike”. The tension was very high.

Edward Lucas, the Economist’s international editor and author of The New Cold War, is a hawk of the Churchill and Reagan variety. For him, Russia is an enemy, whether ruled by Tsar, by Stalin or by Putin. He wrote: “It is no exaggeration to say that the [Ukraine] determines the long-term future of the entire former Soviet Union. If Ukraine adopts a Euro-Atlantic orientation, then the Putin regime and its satrapies are finished… But if Ukraine falls into Russia’s grip, then the outlook is bleak and dangerous… Europe’s own security will also be endangered. NATO is already struggling to protect the Baltic states and Poland from the integrated and increasingly impressive military forces of Russia and Belarus. Add Ukraine to that alliance, and a headache turns into a nightmare.”

In this cliff-hanging situation, Putin made his pre-emptive strike. At a meeting in the Kremlin, he agreed to buy fifteen billion euros worth of Ukrainian Eurobonds and cut the natural gas price by a third. This meant there would be no default; no massive unemployment; no happy hunting ground for the neo-Nazi thugs of Svoboda; no cheap and plentiful Ukrainian prostitutes and menials for the Germans and Poles; and Ukrainian homes will be warm this Christmas. Better yet, the presidents agreed to reforge their industrial cooperation. When Russia and Ukraine formed a single country, they built spaceships; apart, they can hardly launch a naval ship. Though unification isn’t on the map yet, it would make sense for both partners. This artificially divided country can be united, and it would do a lot of good for both of their populaces, and for all people seeking freedom from US hegemony.

WHAT NOW?

Ukraine Q&A: what happens now?

Will Ukraine be divided? What is motivating Russia's involvement? Will Yulia Tymoshenko return to power?

What happens next?Ukraine is far from out of the woods. Talk of secession by the Crimea and the country's east is still doing the rounds and one scenario being discussed is the annexation of Crimea by Russia. This would be a repeat performance of the occupation by Russian forces of Abkhazia in 2008 and could lead to an alarming confrontation between Moscow and whatever future government emerges in Kiev. Yesterday Russian "delegates" were in Kharkiv as Crimean political figures called for "protection". It is possible the threat of a fracturing Ukraine is being deliberately stage-managed. Much will hinge on whether Russia stays on the sidelines. While the opposition is now pushing for earlier elections than had been envisaged in the EU-brokered deal to end the violence, the May elections being asked for by some might exacerbate the crisis.

What's Russia's beef in all this?One of Vladimir Putin's key regional policies is the creation of a Eurasian Union which is due to be inaugurated in 2015. Critics say this is an effort to pull back together various bits of the old Soviet Union in a new regional bloc and Putin is keen for Ukraine to be a cornerstone of his new grouping. From the Kremlin's point of view, the EU deal and last week's EU mediation – much like Nato's flirting with Georgia, which contributed to the Russian-Georgian conflict in 2008 – represents a serious incursion into Moscow's backyard. While Moscow appeared to back compromise to end the violence, perhaps because it has no desire for a civil war on its borders, a key question is how far Moscow would allow Ukraine to drift away from its sphere of influence.

Who are the protesters?The shorthand that has been used to describe the protests in Ukraine portrays the conflict as one between a largely Ukrainian-speaking Catholic west and centre keen to be closer to the EU, and a Russian-speaking east and Crimea that looks to Moscow. While containing large elements of truth, this is not the whole story. Different sectors of society have invested competing hopes in the protests that broke out in November, triggered by President Viktor Yanukovych's decision to pull out of a deal with the EU and IMF that would have led to closer integration with Europe. Yanukovych chose instead a $15bn credit line and gas subsidies from Moscow. The first protesters were largely young middle-class students and liberals. The breaking up of that protest drew in an older, more nationalistic group, some of whom had served in the old Soviet army. The most recent violence has seen hardline rightwing nationalists, some allied with Pravy Sektor, who are not interested in political compromise and have boasted of arming themselves.

What do they want?Maps that have appeared in the western media have tended to show Ukraine as a straight split between west and east, but the electoral map of the 2010 elections which Yanukovych won is actually more complicated, showing different competitions in different regions. In the western cities, a number of analysts have noted, the pro-

European argument is actually a shorthand for various political discontents, including a growing anger at the domination of the country's economy by the president's crony oligarchs, a lack of rule of law and a constitution that concentrated power in the president. Where there have been protests in the Russian-speaking east like Kharkiv, the issues have largely been the same, suggesting a wider dissatisfaction with Yanukovych's political style that saw some members of his Party of the Regions recently abandon him.

What now for Yulia Tymoshenko?On her release from prison in Kharkiv on Saturday, Tymoshenko announced she intended to run in the elections on 25 May. Despite being regarded as a flawed figure, whose own political rivalries have contributed to Ukraine's problems, Tymoshenko, who enjoys cordial relations with Putin, might be viewed in Moscow as a compromise candidate able to work with the two sides, and position Ukraine between the EU and Moscow.

Milena Kahramanova: 'We need impeachment and trial'

After the cruel events of this week when Viktor Yanukovych and his gang killed more than 75 people, even using snipers to do so, we have reached the point of no return.

For weeks, we have felt as if we are extras in a horror movie. I am ethnically Armenian but not all Armenians living here support the Euromaidan protests because Armenia recently entered a customs union with Russia. The protest movement is not so much about heading to a certain point – EU membership – as it is about running from the corrupt one we are stuck in.

Sadly, I don't see an end yet. We are not lucky with our leaders. Besides, Vladimir Putin's support of the Ukrainian authorities is more tangible than listening to the EU or US.

All they achieve with their attacks is our temporary shock and oppression, but then we become stronger and more united. Impeachment followed by trial is what we need now.

• Milena Kahramanova is a lawyer.

Anton Symkovych: 'Ukrainians have discovered the power of unity'

Unless Yanukovych resigns immediately, we will see a new wave of violence. It is not about the EU, not even about constitutional reform including a reduction in presidential powers, any longer. People will not accept anything but immediate resignation, and early elections in spring, not summer or autumn. Yanukovych as president will never guarantee fair elections. Both the opposition and the west have been lagging behind in judging the public mood. That was the reason for the violence in January, and for the second wave this week. Their failure to understand the gravity of the situation and the feelings of the protesters will trigger a full-scale war. The uprising will become a civil war.

I originally joined the protest not because I am passionate about the EU, but because I felt indignant that the government made such a dramatic U-turn [postponing the association deal with the EU] in an arrogant confidence that the people would swallow it. Many critics considered the protesters to be puppets. Some even claimed that the movement had been hijacked by neo-Nazis. But I was amazed to find that thousands, and then hundreds of thousands, felt the same way as me, pouring on to the streets and squares to make their anger clear to those in power.

I volunteered as an interpreter, as well as at the kitchen in the occupied Kiev city council and I worked with people from all over Ukraine. Despite the regional, linguistic, ideological, gender or age differences, all radiated humanity and resolution.

It is tragic that the Maidan protests turned so violent. But Ukrainians have overcome their fears and have discovered the power of unity.

• Anton Symkovych is a senior lecturer

Igor Lutsenko: 'Brutality and state terrorism is the reality'

During the January protests, I experienced 13 hours of torture at the hands of people who supported the regime and police. More than one million people have suffered police violence in Ukraine, according to Amnesty International. The traditions of sadistic brutality originate from the NKVD, the Soviet-era secret police, and are now serving corruption and political usurpation. Ukrainian society has for years turned a blind eye, pretending not to notice the pain that our ugly "law enforcement" system has caused.

When the Euromaidan protests started, the police responded with methods traditionally applied to opponents of the authorities. We protesters got a taste of what for decades was meted out to dissidents and it led to our enlightenment and rebellion. We realised that the "Berkut" (special police forces) don't have a human face and that they do not belong in Ukraine. This awakening is the most important outcome of Euromaidan.

Not all of us understand the essence of our rebellion. Politicians from both sides are trying to represent it as a political conflict, and are trying to solve it with the usual political methods – through secret deals and shameful compromises, hypnotising rebels with the prospects of "voting" and "negotiations". But brutality and state terrorism is the reality.

• Igor Lutsenko is a journalist and activist.

THE TRUTH IS IN THE STREETS OF UKRAINE

Even after the world community of nations watched US envoy Victoria Nuland show up in the Ukraine with the explicit purpose of fomenting a coup d’etat, the Ukrainian president was powerless to stop its momentum.

Such is the profound and pervasive power that the US Agency Government, led by the US State Department, exerts around the globe.  Be clear about this. The US president is not running this operation. He does not have a need to know anything more than what he sees on the television with all of you, concerning this subject. He will act the fool again by drawing lines in the sand, or by directing “his State department to make sure US interests are protected,” but he is a fool. Even with the countless alternative news websites on the internet exposing US-UK -EU crimes against other nations, do they proceed with starting civil wars without impediment? No.

How can this be so in an age when the people have steadily taken back their power from the aforementioned alphabet soup agencies that seemingly run their covert, black budgeted operations anytime they choose to?

ANSWER:  These US agencies and their European counterparts, when colluding to trigger a revolution for the purposes of regime change, have so finely tuned the

implementation of the HEGELIAN DIALECTIC that they are still virtually unstoppable. This continuing predicament is possible only because the people, who are victims of the relentless mind control programming which accompanies these color revolutions, are vulnerable.  They have been made vulnerable by a panoply of techniques and measures which the secret services have employed since time immemorial.  Only now their strategies are more sophisticated, more stealthy, more imperceptible by the average citizen.

The Hegelian DialecticThe Anti-Human Principle

U.S. Pavlovian Conditioning

Revolutionaries in government have created economic chaos, shortages in food and fuel, confiscatory taxation, a crisis in education, the threat of war, and other diversions to condition Americans for the “New World Order."

The technique is as old as politics itself. It is the Hegelian Dialectic of bringing about change in a three-step process: Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis.

The first step (thesis) is to create a problem. The second step (antithesis) is to generate opposition to the problem (fear, panic and hysteria). The third step (synthesis) is to offer the solution to the problem created by step one: A change which would have been impossible to impose upon the people without the proper psychological conditioning achieved in stages one and two.

Applying the Hegelian Dialectic, and irresistible financial influence, concealed change agents seek to dismantle social and political structures by which free men govern themselves — ancient landmarks erected at great cost in blood and treasure.

Their objective is to emasculate sovereign states, merge nations under universal government, centralize economic powers, and control the world's people and resources.

I ask you now, the executive orders being handed to Obama were crafted, refined, and filed in order of release by the planners themselves. What was the plan? It was to dissolve the only nation in world history that had the potential of offering humans true freedom and liberty.

How is it that a large national constituency can be so influenced that they will vote or revolt, sacrifice or rebel in a manner that is clearly against their best interest?

The answer is quite simple, as the Ukraine conflagration vividly illustrates.  The CIA et al. has for years surreptitiously built their network and cultivated their contacts throughout the western half of the Ukraine.  Knowing that the eastern half would

always lean toward Russia because of proximity and cultural ties, they knew they only had to control the eastern side of the equation.  And so they did.  And so they have up to this very day.

This state of affairs eventually permitted the CIA tet al. to utilize their “Divide and Conquer” strategy with awesome effect.  Once the two sides are fighting with each other, as they are now, it just a matter of execution.

Isn’t this exactly what we are witnessing in Kiev.  And, in the other major cites throughout the Ukraine where they CIA et al. are effectively exporting the same strategy and violent tactics.  This divide and conquer MO is absolutely essential to the whole color revolution dynamic because it allows them to invoke “plausible deniability” whenever the Russians rightfully accuse the US & Company of implementing a classic CIA-coordinated coup d’etat.

As long as enough Ukrainians step up to the plate to sacrifice life and limb for the US-UK-EU cause, there’s no blame to rub off on John Kerry, or Victoria Nuland, or Barack Obama.  In reality, all three of these characters are directly responsible for yet another crime against a nation in which innocent civilians are used as pawns and sometimes killed.  When will the American people wake up to this fact of life?  How many more large and small genocides must the community of nations watch before they collectively respond to terminate this criminal behavior by governments?  Is this really just state-sponsored terrorism?!

Poland’s Solidarity Leader Jumps On Board The Putin-Bashing Train

As Lech Walesa recently opined that it’s all about the money, one can only speculate that the EU & COMPANY desperately need Ukrainian “money” because of their ongoing, slow motion nation-by nation bankruptcy.  Here is Walesa’s quote exactly:

“But the truth is, if Ukraine were part of the European Union, it would give Russia an opportunity to make 10 times more money because Ukraine’s economy and trade would become more stable and prosperous.”[1]

What Walesa is really trying to say is that the EU stands to make that much money by controlling the Ukraine markets, natural resources, export/import channels, transportation network, oil and gas conduits, and political apparatus once they join the European Union. These are, after all, the immediate and stated goals of the EU representatives who have weighed in on the matter. And they are determined not to let Russia interfere with their plans, no matter what the level of chaos or death toll required to attain it.

The Ukrainian opposition has resorted to violence rarely seen in Kiev.

Herein lies the root cause of the current mayhem being sewn throughout the Ukrainian People’s Republic.

The catalyst for the extraordinarily violent confrontation between the opposition and the current administration is the viability of the European Union itself.  The EU has been so decimated by years of deep recession and national bankruptcies throughout the PIIGS nations that they desperately need a fresh market to exploit.  The Ukraine provides just that, and much more.

“The EU has become such an economic drain on the rest of the world, especially the US Federal Reserve, that its current and future indebtedness and unfunded liabilities are simply untenable. Hence, the Ukraine is looked to as a temporary savior because of its many large and robust markets, well established industrial base and transportation links to Asia, as well as it vast natural resources and raw materials.”[2]

Unfortunately, this excerpt spells out the formidable macroeconomic forces at work in this unfolding national cataclysm.  The EU is like a pit bull that has tasted a little blood and will simply not let go. Their outright and aggressive interference in Kiev is so bold that it graphically betrays their true intentions.  Quite frankly, rarely has anyone ever seen US gunboat diplomacy so naked and bold. Working in concert with the EU, the US (especially the FED) knows that its fortunes (and solvency) depend greatly on the future prospects of the Eurozone.   Many now wonder whether Russia can contain such a rabid dog, especially when so much is at stake for their largest neighbor and ex-Soviet trading partner.

“Problem ~ Reaction ~ Solution”

The most effective tool in the CIA et al. toolbox is this:  “Problem ~ Reaction ~ Solution”.  This dynamic of mass manipulation has become so effective at engineering color revolutions around the globe that it’s surprising more nations are not falling prey to it.  In the case of the Ukraine, it all started with the failure of their President to sign a critical trade agreement with the EU.  That was the “Problem”.  The people in the western part of the country were then riled up, whereupon they basically took over the capital.  This preplanned and unusually violent takeover was run out of the Western

capitals, as such an obviously manufactured, mass revolt would never have happened spontaneously.

The “Reaction” of course was the President’s response to the aggressors.  His Administration had every right to protect their capital city and all state buildings.  The ferocity of the opposition protest was such that the government was forced to use force. What would Obama do if such an uprising occurred in Washington, DC?  Yes, there would be much more blood in the streets.  Yet the West now threatens the Ukraine with sanctions even though the government is doing only what it is tasked to do.

Now comes the “Solution”.  The EU and Company are using every bit of leverage they can muster to get what it is that they really want.  They will accept nothing less than a Ukraine marketplace that is totally available for exploitation, without any Russian constraints on their financial intentions or economic plans. This solution is taking shape by the day, as one EU nation after another steps forward with their veiled demands and/or transparent expectations.

Conclusion:

This is how it works when predatory capitalism enters its final stages of evolution (read devolution).  The lack of real recovery throughout the global economy has created very similar tensions which are now breaking out everywhere — Venezuela and US, India and US, Japan(and US) and China, Thailand, Turkey, Argentina, Brazil, etc.  Even the entire Arab Spring phenomenon was a glowing and hard-to-watch example of this geo-political and economic dynamic.

The true state of the European Union is such that it is in tatters both economically and financially; thus, they feel they have no choice but to self preserve at any cost.  As for the hapless folks in the Ukraine, they know so very little about what is driving the US-EU juggernaut over their nation.  The MSM (Mainstream Media) has done very little to reveal what has been described in this exposé.  As usual, the MSM has portrayed this national plight as they do in every instance, and in so doing they serve as a necessary accomplice to a full-blown color revolution — Yankee-style.

Without the MSM carrying water for the Obama and previous US Administration, these color revolutions would never be so successful.  There are numerous examples of headlines below which demonstrate the MSM and US Federal Government contributions to this national catastrophe unfolding in the Ukraine. You really have to wonder if there is any conscience whatsoever, as the many media and political operatives brutally execute yet another CIA-conceived coup d’etat.

At the end of the day, it will be the American people who will bear the brunt of so much animosity being generated by these color revolutions.  They are occurring more frequently around the world, and producing death tolls and serious injuries that are completely unacceptable. Perhaps it is time for the elected officials to take back the Constitutional control with which they have been entrusted. Or are they so soaked in

the sex of their office that the only thing they can think about is when they get to do it again?

Senator Rand Paul wrote to me Saturday and asked me if I thought he should continue to fight for the repeal of Obamacare, or if it was more important for us to win in 2014. I was stunned. All these months we had talked not only of the overreaching authority of the IRS jumping into our medicine cabinets, but also of the surrender of liberty over one’s own health condition to the Agency Government. We spoke about the frontal assault on America by these Agencies under the direction of the president. But, never did we consider stopping the fight. Never did we consider stopping because it was unpopular. Here is what he actually wrote me word for word:

“Dear Brooks,

Should I keep up the fight to repeal ObamaCare? Or maybe you want me to focus on stopping President Obama's agenda of gun control and immigration reform without border security? Is winning at the ballot box in 2014 your top priority? Or Should I keep fighting on all fronts? It's vital you let me know what fight is more important to you in 2014. I need to know if you'll stand with me at the grassroots level while I lead the fight inside Congress and on the campaign trail for fellow conservatives.”

So, I felt compelled to write him back. This is what I wrote, and I share it with you now.

Honorable Senator Rand Paul:

I would like to say that winning isn't everything, but being defeated in Washington means many things.  We the People are led to believe that we have a two party system. I have spent years going to Congress to explain the disparity between the billion-dollar gravy train of global corporate welfare compared to the daily struggle to find startup capital for small businesses with belly-burning desire to hire people and go to work.

The word comes back loud and clear each time.  Grants are for large presidential campaign contributors.  Small businesses are fine for commercials, but in the world of Washington, the Agencies, Departments, Bureaus, and Administrations rule the country, and they are directed by the President through his ministers, publicly called Cabinet members.  Political dissent is punished swiftly and on multiple fronts by an Agency Government using those regulations that have the force of law.  That government fines, confiscates, taxes, and interferes with commerce, and yet we have no representation in that government.

That tyrannical body can only be temporarily managed by Congress cutting off the funding.  The President has learned to outsmart the Legislative Branch of government. He has not only been able to launder trillions in public money back to the world's richest

corporations, while providing ministerial positions for their executives inside the Agency machine, he has also bought the allegiance of over half the population with free food and legal marijuana and free US citizenship.

The result is that there are actually three parties in Washington; the two we think we are electing between and a third that is pure and simple Fascism.  The President rules the country with a popularity rating five times that of Congress.  Congress has lost control of the country.  That means that we have quite simply become a dictatorship where one man, with one pen, and one phone makes and administers the laws if the land.  His ministers of the IRS and the DOJ don't have to answer to anyone, and disregard the law like crime bosses strutting their palaces in Washington.

I support you with everything I can and add the best support with my words in print and on the radio.  I have written speeches for presidential candidates, congressmen, and governors.  Your asking me if you should give up the fight on this seizure of America by the President can only have one answer. 

There is only one difference between the citizens of Kiev who have stunned the world with their resolve to eject a corrupt president and the American people.  They are not armed and yet they push with their bare hands against metal shields and rifles to free their nation from tyranny, and we are the most well armed people in history and yet shuffle like docile sheep to the sheering by a man who will waltz into a third term as president like a heavyweight champ.

You can fight, Rand, but you cannot win.  Congress has been emasculated by Valerie Jarrett and her propaganda operatives.  The principles of Fascism are openly preached and defended by the press, the Democratic leadership, and is adhered to by the millions of bureaucrats who spend tax dollars and write thousands of regulations that Congress never intended and cannot alter in any way.  You have already seen what happens when you tried to defund Obamacare, the most blatant takeover of government by the world's largest banks and insurance companies in world history.  You were booed out of Washington and have the popularity rating of broccoli.  

There are only two choices, if we wish to peacefully save this Republic.  You must resolve to impeach him, against the will of the majority of people, or we must facilitate an Article 5 Convention and amend the Constitution to remove the President's power over the Agency Government.  

If we are truly a nation of law, and we choose to follow it when the President and his ministers do not, then look at history from ten years in the future.  Are we Kiev, or are we States united in one nation?  What will history say we did?  Will it say that we stood like the citizens of Egypt or Kiev in front of the behemoth bankers tanks and corrupt elections to save the only nation in history established on the principles of certain unalienable rights? Or will the victors place our names in ignominy with the greatest nation that ever was?

I look forward to recovery,

Brooks Agnew