Category: Russia
Kiev court judges refuse to take part in Communist Party banning case
| February 18, 2015 | 9:05 pm | Analysis, International, political struggle, Russia, Ukraine | Comments closed

 

Judges at an administrative court in Kiev have refused to try a case banning the activities of the Communist Party of Ukraine, after police conducted a search and seizure operation in the office of one their colleagues.

Judge Valery Kuzmenko, who was presiding over the Justice Ministry’s suit against the Communist Party, withdrew from the case on Wednesday, the Interfax news agency reports.

All the other judges in the Kiev District Administrative Court have also filed applications to be excused from hearing the case, Kuzmenko said.

The judge explained the move by saying that the prosecutors and police searched his office and seized his computer, with working materials on the Communist Party case and others.

He said he views the law enforcement officials’ actions as an attempt to put pressure on the court.

According to the prosecutors, Monday’s search and seizure was performed as part of the criminal case, launched over the “abuse of power or position” and “forgery” by the judges, RIA-Novosti reports.

READ MORE: Ukraine communist leader: Kiev labeled 7 mn people ‘terrorists,’ slaughtered civilians

The Communist Party has been speaking against Ukraine’s new authorities since the coup in February 2014, which saw President Viktor Yanukovich ousted.

However, the persecution of the Communists Party began in April, shortly after Kiev launched a military operation against the country’s south-eastern regions.

Communist leader, Pyotr Simonenko, said the military campaign is Kiev’s war against its own people, stressing that if he was the head of state, he “would immediately recall all the troops.”

He openly accused the Ukrainian authorities of the “slaughter of civilians and mass murder,” saying they had labeled the 7 million people in Donetsk and Lugansk as “terrorists.”

In June, Ukraine’s justice minister, Pavel Petrenko, announced a lawsuit to ban the Communist Party in Ukraine.

In mid-summer, the Communist faction was dissolved by the Ukrainian parliament,with the official explanation for the move being an insufficient number of MPs in the party.

Ukraine’s security service, the SBU, said that 308 criminal cases had been launched against members of the Communist Party, with its leaders accused of supporting Crimea’s accession to the Russian Federation and backing the creation of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, as well as financing the rebels.

In November, a group of MPs introduced a draft law to the parliament, making any dissemination of Communist ideology in Ukraine illegal and proposing punishment of up to 10 years in prison for the perpetrators.

READ MORE: Ukraine authorities in massive ‘Rename Soviet Places’ drive

The Communist Party banning trial was rescheduled several times and eventually postponed by the Kiev District Administrative Court. The decision was reversed by an appeal court on December 24.

The Communists aren’t the only party facing persecution in Ukraine over their opposition stance. MPs from six parties have also come under scrutiny.

On February 2, Radical Party leader, Oleg Lyashko, demanded the dissolving of the opposition block after it became the only faction in the parliament to vote against recognizing Russia as “an aggressor state” in the Ukrainian conflict.

Ukraine Woman from Zaporozhia region Brilliantly Takes down the War and the Draft
| February 17, 2015 | 7:40 pm | Analysis, Economy, International, political struggle, Russia, Ukraine | Comments closed

Sanctions Imposed on the U.S.?
| February 16, 2015 | 9:13 pm | Analysis, International, National, political struggle, Russia, Ukraine, Venezuela | Comments closed

February 16, 2015

Any Coup Attempts Should be Punished
by ANDRE VLTCHEK

Another year, another set of coups that we can expect to be administered by the West.

This year, it is all beginning in February. First the onslaught against Argentina and following that comes yet another coup against Venezuela, and its democratically elected, progressive government.

The coup has been thwarted. Venezuela prevailed!

As Telesur reported:

“Nicolas Maduro announced Thursday that the government had thwarted a coup attempt which was being coordinated by Venezuela’s right-wing opposition with the support of the U.S. government.

Just the day before the revelations, opposition leaders Leopoldo Lopez, Maria Corina Machado and Antonio Ledezma released a “transition plan” which involved privatization of the country’s oil, deregulation of the economy and accords with “international financial institutions” including the International Monetary Fund.”

The army stood firmly by the government of President Maduro. Most of Latin America, including UNASUR, expressed both their solidarity and support.

But all over the world, life goes on, as if nothing significant really took place!

How much longer can such banditry by the Empire be tolerated?

***

I don’t feel like writing my usual long philosophical essays, today.

I am simply pissed off; outraged. This time I really am! Not by what those sadistic imperialist control-junkies in Washington have managed to do again. I have no positive expectations when it comes to them, as they are clearly a bunch of mass murderers of the greatest caliber, not unlike their European colonialist and crusader predecessors.

What shocks me, suddenly, is this silence, this calm, all over the world! As if nothing really taken place. As if nothing is going on!

Are we going to eat the lowest grade of shit from the Empire forever? Is the monstrous fascist and market-fundamentalist system going to get away with absolutely everything? It has already murdered some 60 million people since the end of the WWII, as I explained in my recent book with Noam Chomsky.

The Empire overthrew every decent government in Africa, in the Middle East, Asia and until recently, in Latin America. It liquidated peaceful and secular Muslim governments and replaced them with thugs or extremists.

Many of us know about it. It is no secret! But then, when the same banditry takes place again and again, everybody stays seated on his or her bum, silent like a buffalo!

Where at least are there any substantial protests in Western capitals and major cities? Where is that multi-million crowd yelling “Je suis Chavez”?

Did those morons in Europe and the United States enter a complete, final, terminal state of amnesia and indoctrination? Don’t they see and care what their governments and corporations are doing all over the world?

It seems that all that can still lift them up from the couch is either that bloody football or regime-sponsored events like “Je suis Charlie”.

So this is their famous “democracy” – the one that the West wants to ‘export’ and sticks down the throat of the Chinese people, of Russians, of Latin Americans: the establishment can butcher millions of people in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Somalia, in Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine, Papua, Kashmir, Syria and Ukraine, it can attempt to overthrow any democratically elected government in Latin America, but the citizens of the Empire are so ‘pacified’, so fucked, really, that they don’t even recognize what is happening in front of their eyes, or what is done in their name. And if they recognize it, they don’t care.

It must remind one of those Germans who were living next to concentration camps, during the war, looking at the smoke coming up from the chimneys, and then claiming that ‘they did not know’.

***

Have they – Europeans and North Americans – lost their marbles? Their Christian fundamentalist/corporatist states are imposing sanctions on Russia – for nothing. Actually, Russia is being punished for the successful Western act of overthrowing the Ukrainian government! It is all totally bizarre, grotesque, comical. It makes a person with at least a few intact pieces of brain want to puke.

They first create ISIS in those NATO sponsored ‘refugee camps’ in Southern Turkey and Jordan, in order to overthrow the legitimate government in Damascus. Then when ISIS goes gaga, they use it as justification to redeploy troops in Iraq, and to bomb Syria! And European and North Americans still immobilized on their asses and still getting stoned and pissed, instead of at least building a few good, old-fashioned barricades!

And now Venezuela!

I believe that Latin America should, immediately, impose sanctions on the United States.

This is not a joke; it can and should be done. This is the only way to deal with the Empire! Merely exposing its acts only, does not obviously help. It just laughs back and continues murdering people and destroying countries that do not want to lick its boots and to sacrifice its people. It does it all in broad daylight.

Venezuela should approach the UN Security Council, and then the ICC (although states like the US or Israel do not recognize it, as they are ‘above the law’).

Then sanctions should be imposed against the U.S., first by Venezuela, then by most of other Latin American countries. China and Russia should offer their mighty shoulders, and protect Latin America against further attacks, militarily.

Enough of fear; enough of this horror! The world cannot count on the Europeans and North Americans. They cannot and are unwilling to control their governments and corporate bandits. Their countries are forming, in fact, a bunch of failed states, processing materials that are plundered abroad.

What happened in Venezuela on Feb 12th should never be accepted as the norm. Not anymore.

The world is not a chessboard, Mr. Obama. But what you are playing is not even chess. It is dirty; an extremely dirty game, which should be stopped by all means.

Andre Vltchek is a novelist, filmmaker and investigative journalist. He covered wars and conflicts in dozens of countries. His critically acclaimed political revolutionary novel Point of No Return is now re-edited and available. Oceania is his book on Western imperialism in South Pacific. His provocative book about post-Suharto Indonesia and market-fundamentalist model is called “Indonesia – The Archipelago of Fear” (Pluto). He just completed feature documentary “Rwanda Gambit” about Rwandan history and the plunder of DR Congo. After living for many years in Latin America and Oceania, Vltchek presently resides and works in East Asia and Africa. He can be reached through his website.

Can UN peace keeping provide the answer which Rozoff can’t ?
| February 13, 2015 | 8:00 pm | Analysis, International, political struggle, Russia, Ukraine | Comments closed

https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1000-rick-rozoff-warns-ukraine-war-is-inevitable/

Rozoff is incisive and categorical.
It’s not a matter of proving that Rozoff is right or wrong.  He’s very well focused.  He is even critical of Putin’s participation in Minsk but he
doesn’t say how much pressure Putin and Russia  are under. Lavrov I am convinced works incessantly to set a course through uncharted
waters with ever present dangers.
Though not widely diseminated the peace researcher and activist Jan Oeberg has said that OSCE observation and surveillance won’t be
enough to prevent violations of the agreement.  He advocates a UN peace keeping force. A DMZ ( demilitarized zone ) and OSCE
surveillance are not adequate to enforce a ceasefire and allow time for negotiations on the status of Eastern Ukraine/Donbass.
What would happen if the issue was raised in the UN Security Council ? I fear a veto but with enough diplomatic pressure with
 a massive endorsement of UN peace keeping by the UN General Assembly  as well as other organizations’ and persons’ endorsements  a
resolution calling for UN peace keeping in Eastern Ukraine/Donbass could be implemented.
Nothing else is credible or realistic.  Spread Oeberg’s anaysis . There are lives in the balance.
André Brochu
No to war with Russia!
| February 9, 2015 | 8:01 pm | Action, International, National, political struggle, Russia, Ukraine | Comments closed

Hi,

President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Secretary of State John Kerry and Senator John McCain have dishonored the people of the United States by their support of the fascist government in the Ukraine. Any military assistance to the anti-Semitic, anti-worker government in the Ukraine would be an act of provocation towards Russia. Working people do not need a war with Russia which without doubt would be catastrophic to Europe and the United States at the very least. We must not forget that we can all be cremated equally!

That’s why I created a petition to The United States House of Representatives, The United States Senate, and President Barack Obama, which says:

“We oppose sending military support of any kind to the fascist government in the Ukraine!”

Will you sign this petition? Click here:

http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/no-to-war-with-russia?source=c.em.mt&r_by=8638452

 

Thanks!