BRAZIL 'LEGALIZES' MINING ON NATIVE TRIBES' LAND AMID ONGOING MURDERS OF NATIVES THERE

ABOVE: In the Amazon, indigenous debate how to save their lands

By Associated Press (AP), September 06, 2019

ANOTHER DAY, ANOTHER DEATH.

Brazil To Grab Indigenous Lands

The country’s native tribes have a constitutional right to reject any development on their territory, but President Bolsonaro recently said he will allow mining on indigenous land without their consent.

EXTERMINATED 
In one of the largest and most gruesome attacks in Brazil last year, members of a group of Gamela indigenous people were attacked with machetes and rifles after occupying what they said was their traditional territory in Maranhao state in Brazil’s northeast.

Ranchers were using the land, which was seized from the Gamela during Brazil’s military dictatorship, as a pasture for cattle.

The assailants attacked 400 Gamela families at night, firing numerous shots and even hacking off some people’s hands.

The survivors accused police officers of standing by while the violence took place, and indigenous rights activists released audio of what they claimed were the voices of military police promising not to interfere in the attack.

Global Witness said it has recorded an average of 42 killings a year since 2012." 

IT'S WORLDWIDE, THE TAKING OF LAND AND RIGHTS FROM INDIGENOUS TRIBES.
FEW SEEM TO CARE WHEN THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE LOSE ANYTHING; LAND, SACRED PLACES, NATURAL RESOURCES (INCLUDING WATER), ACCESS TO TRADITIONAL FOODS, THEIR NATURAL ENVIRONMENT (ESPECIALLY TREES), OR EVEN THEIR LIVES AND ANY HOPE FOR A FUTURE TO CONTINUE THEIR TRADITIONS AND WAYS OF LIFE.

BRAZIL'S NEW PRESIDENT, JAIR BOLSONARO, APPEARS TOO BE MUCH LIKE AMERICA'S MOST NOTORIOUS INDIAN-HATER, THE ACCURSED ANDREW JACKSON.

HE HAS EXPRESSED DISDAIN AND OPEN HOSTILITY FOR THE BRAZILIAN INDIGENOUS POPULATION FOR YEARS, AND NOW, WITH HIS NEW PRESIDENTIAL POWERS, HE'S MAKING GOOD ON HIS THREATS TO END THE SOVEREIGN RIGHTS OF ALL INDIGENOUS PEOPLE IN BRAZIL.

IF THEY STRONGLY OPPOSE THIS EFFORT TO ROB THEM OF THEIR RIGHTS AND SOVEREIGNTY, ONE MUST WONDER, WILL SEE ANOTHER "AMERICAN GENOCIDE", THIS TIME IN SOUTH AMERICA'S BRAZIL?

WE CAN ALSO WONDER, WHO GIVES A DAMN.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL HAS CERTAINLY NOT BEEN MUCH HELP TO ANY  INDIGENOUS PEOPLE, HAS IT?

THE DISGUSTING UNITED NATIONS HAS ALWAYS BEEN ON THE SIDE OF "PROGRESS" AGAINST THE ORIGINAL INHABITANTS OF LANDS ALL ACROSS THE GLOBE, NEVER ON THE SIDE OF THOSE WHO HAVE INDIGENOUS RIGHTS TO THE LANDS INVADED TIME AFTER TIME BY FOREIGN "SETTLERS".

THE U.N. HAS HELPED INVADERS AGAINST INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND HELPED THEM STEAL TERRITORY AND RESOURCES FAR MORE OFTEN THAN THEY HAVE EVER "PROTESTED" OR "SANCTIONED" SUCH THINGS.

THEIR OWN 'BLUE HELMETS  HAVE BEEN NAMED AS MURDERERS, RAPISTS AND THIEVES IN MANY NATIONS. 

[SEE ALSO THIS]  

AFTER ALL, THE U.N. IS A NATURAL RESOURCES-GRABBING ENTITY ON ITS OWN.
IT AND THE INTERNATIONAL MONETARY FUND/WORLD BANK HAVE FOR DECADES MOVED IN AND TAKEN CONTROL OF HELPLESS MINORITIES' PROPERTY.

IF, BY DOING SO, LIVES ARE LOST, ENTIRE TRIBES AND CULTURES OBLITERATED, THE U.N. SIMPLY DOESN'T CARE.


HOW CAN ANYONE "LEGALIZE MINING LAND THAT DOESN'T BELONG TO THEM?
JUST BECOME PRESIDENT OF BRAZIL. 

Sao Paulo (AFP) - December 19, 2019- 
"Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro said on Thursday his government was preparing to legalize mining on indigenous land and defended plans to expand farming in the same areas.

Opening up protected native territory was a key campaign pledge for the right wing leader but activists blame economic activity for an uptick in violence and increased pressure from miners and loggers.

"Why can you, being white, mine on your land when the Indians can't?" Bolsonaro said as he left his official residence in Brasilia, without revealing when the reform would be presented to parliament.

Bolsonaro also defended moves to expand livestock farming and soya and corn plantations on indigenous land, much of which is in the Amazon rainforest.

"The price of meat is rising. We need to raise more livestock here," he said.

Bolsonaro has long railed against the protected indigenous areas in the Amazon that he says are a threat to the country's sovereignty.

He claims other countries are encouraging the expansion of protected areas in a bid to take over Brazilian land.

Deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon surged by 104 percent in November compared to the same period in 2018, according to official data published last week.

Since Bolsonaro came to power in January, there has been almost twice as much deforestation as last year in the Amazon, according to Brazil's National Institute for Space Research (INPE.)

Last month, Amnesty International called on Bolsonaro to curb illegal cattle farms in the Amazon, claiming they pose "a very real threat, not only to the human rights of indigenous and traditional peoples who live there, but also to the entire planet's ecosystem."


THOSE INTERESTED IN PROFITS, IN GATHERING WEALTH NEVER HAVE EVEN A FLICKER OF A THOUGHT ABOUT HUMAN WELFARE, ABOUT HUMAN RIGHTS, ABOUT THE ENVIRONMENT. 
THEY WANT MONEY SO AS TO INCREASE THEIR POWER, ONLY THAT.  


LOOKS LIKE OTHERS (ALL?) IN HIS CABINET HAVE THE SAME DISDAIN FOR THE ORIGINAL PEOPLE THAT BOLSONARO HAS.


Brazil’s environment minister ridicules climate talks with image of steak dinner.

Environment minister, Ricardo Salles, posted a photo on Twitter of steak with the caption: "To compensate for our carbon emissions at COP, a vegetarian lunch!":

STEAK IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN LIVES ONLY TO THE SELFISH AND ELITE. 

Brazil is one of several countries that want to count emissions cuts achieved by offsetting carbon credits to another country as a boost for their own climate targets.

Carbon offsetting allows a country to fund emission reductions in another country to help reach its own reduction targets. 
NO, CARBON OFFSETTING IS SIMPLY LYING AND MANIPULATING FACTS, A MONEY-MAKING SCHEME THAT ONLY THE RICHEST NATIONS CAN AFFORD, WHICH BUY  THEIR "FIX" FROM POORER NATIONS. 

The practice, known as ‘double counting’, was countered by other countries who say it would undermine the entire market.

A staunch climate change skeptic, Mr Bolsonaro has been criticized for dismantling regulation and environmental and Amazon protections since his first day in office.


Brazil is the world’s top beef exporter, an industry that drives illegal deforestation caused by cattle farmers who want to convert the Amazon rainforest into pasture to feed their herds.

This year, the Amazon rainforest has seen a record number of fires fuelled by cattle ranchers, resulting in irreparable damage of a natural resource and the deaths of indigenous forest activists.     

Mr.  Bolsonaro dismissed concerns about the destruction of the rainforests and said: “I used to be called Captain Chainsaw. Now I am Nero, setting the Amazon aflame.”


NERO, WE'RE TOLD, FLED ROME IN TERROR, BUT TURNED BACK, ALSO IN FEAR. THE ROMAN SENATE DECLARED HIM A PUBLIC ENEMY, INTENDED TO EXECUTE HIM BY BEATING HIM TO DEATH.

NERO CALLED FOR A GLADIATOR TO QUICKLY KILL HIM BY SWORD.
ALL GLADIATORS REFUSED.

WITH HIS ARMY TURNED AGAINST HIM, NERO FLED ROME IN DISGUISE, AIDED BY FOUR FREED SLAVES AND HID AT THE VILLA OF ONE OF THOSE.

WHEN THE FREEDMEN ALSO REFUSED TO KILL HIM, NERO DECIDED TO DIE BY SUICIDE, BUT HE JUST DIDN'T HAVE THE FORTITUDE TO DO SO AND, INSTEAD, COMPELLED HIS PERSONAL SECRETARY TO DO IT FOR HIM, STABBING HIM IN THE THROAT.

NERO DIED A SLOW, AGONIZING DEATH. 

THUS TO TYRANTS, YES?  


THE SLAUGHTER HAS ALREADY BEGUN, AND, UNDER BOLSONARO HAS BEEN INCREASING SINCE 2018. 


DECEMBER 7, 2019
FROM 'GUARDIAN', UK 
Amazon indigenous leaders killed in Brazil drive-by shooting

"Gunmen opened fire on a group from the Guajajara tribe on a highway in Maranhão state, killing two and wounding others.
Two indigenous leaders have been shot dead and two others wounded in Brazil’s Maranhão state, in an attack not far from where a prominent tribesman who defended the Amazon rainforest was killed last month, authorities said.

The attack on the members of the Guajajara tribe, which is known for the forest guardians who protect their territory against illegal deforestation, occurred on the margins of a federal highway near El-Betel village in the country’s north-east on Saturday.

The group was returning from a meeting when they were attacked by gunmen in a moving car. Indigenous tribes in Brazil are facing escalating violence during the presidency of Jair Bolsonaro, who has promised to reduce tribal rights and encouraged the commercial exploitation of their protected lands. Tribes have faced violence from illegal loggers and miners.

The incident comes during the UN’s two-week international climate change conference in Madrid, where Brazilian indigenous leaders are present and attempting to draw attention to the importance of protecting their forest territories.

“How long will this go on? Who will be next?” Sonia Guajajara, coordinator of a network to connect Brazilian indigenous peoples, said in a phone interview from Madrid. “The authorities need to look at our indigenous people. They’re taking away our lives.”

The program director of Amazon Watch, Christian Poirier, said:
“An institutionalized genocide of indigenous peoples is taking place in Brazil. They are being left alone, vulnerable to all kinds of threats and violence.

“The international community must not accept that any more indigenous blood be shed. It is the constitutional duty of the Brazilian government to protect indigenous territories and ensure the safety of their peoples.”


HAVING THREE 'NATIVE AMERICAN' GRANDPARENTS, I CAN ONLY ASSURE THOSE NATIVES OF BRAZIL THAT THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY WON'T BE COMING TO YOUR AID. 
THE WORLD WANTS YOUR RESOURCES, YOUR LAND, AND IF THAT MEANS YOU ALL MUST DIE, THAT IS WHAT THEY WILL DO TO GET WHAT THEY WANT. 

OUR "INDIAN WARS" ARE STILL ONGOING IN THE U.S.

IT NEVER ENDS.


LOS ANGELES TIMES, AUGUST 2018 -

"When villagers refused to let a timber exporter log on their land in a remote Amazon rainforest area of Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, the hit men were sent in.
When police finally arrived 24 hours later, slowed by poor communication in the region, they said they found the bodies of nine men, all shot or stabbed to death, many bearing signs of torture.

The slaughter of Brazilian environmental activists and land defenders has been unrelenting for years, with new research from the watchdog group Global Witness showing that 57 people in the country were killed last year in confrontations with ranchers, loggers, miners and poachers.

That total marks a steep increase from the 39 killed in 2005, the year that the plight of Brazilian land defenders first caught the world’s attention with the fatal shooting of Dorothy Stang, an American nun who became an environmental activist and human rights defender in the Amazon.

Stang was shot six times by a pair of gunmen. A rancher was ultimately convicted of ordering her death.

[FOURTEEN YEARS OF MURDERS AND LAND THEFT, AND LOOK WHAT THAT "INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY" HAS DONE FOR THE TRIBES!
NOTHING!] 

According to Global Witness, a nongovernmental organization that tracks the exploitation of indigenous people and their resources, 2017 was not only the most lethal year on record for environmental activists in Brazil, but one of the deadliest in any country.

Global Witness said its tally in Brazil is probably an undercount because its methodology requires that it identify each victim by name, which can be a challenge because some potential victims live in highly isolated areas.

“On paper, Brazil has many of the policies and institutions that could solve this problem and protect the rights and well-being of ordinary Brazilians, but this government is weakening those institutions in favor of facilitating big business,” said Ben Leather, senior campaigner for Global Witness.

The Global Witness report also noted that the powerful agribusiness lobbying group known as the ruralistas initiated a special congressional commission investigation into irregularities in land demarcations as a way to damage the reputations of FUNAI and INCRA.

The commission’s final report accused the two agencies of backing fraudulent land claims and requested that 67 people be indicted. No indictments were issued, however.

More than half the members of Brazil’s Congress also belong to the ruralistas group, which also has close ties to Temer.
The lobbying organization is known for vehemently opposing land demarcations that allocate property to indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants and small-scale farmers who already live on the land.

While the three groups make up the majority of the 57 activists killed in Brazil last year, Global Witness said it is the indigenous peoples who suffer the most when struggling to defend their land, much of it in the Amazon, where 80% of 2017’s killings occurred." 

MURDER ON A BUSY STREET

The union which represents staff at Brazil's indigenous protection agency, Funai, said Maxciel Pereira dos Santos was reportedly shot twice in the head in the city of Tabatinga, near Brazil's borders with Colombia and Peru.

Union officials said Mr Santos was shot in front of members of his family as he drove his motorcycle down a busy street.

INA officials said he was killed in retaliation for his work at the Vale do Javari reserve, where for years he helped prevent hunters, farmers and loggers illegally entering the area.

The reserve is said to be home to the world's highest concentration of uncontacted indigenous tribes.


BUT NO CHARGES OF CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY FROM THE U.N., NO SANCTIONS BY THE U.S., NOTHING FOR THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE BUT A SLIGHT SHAKING OF THE HEAD, PERHAPS.

PROGRESS...MUST HAVE PROGRESS AND THE MONEY AND THE POWER THAT COMES WITH IT. 




WHAT ABOUT THE CHILDREN? 

ARE THEY NEXT ON THE 'HIT LISTS'? 

DOES ANYONE CARE? 


I DO! 









//WW

FUKUSHIMA: LETHAL RADIATION LEVELS FOUND AGAIN INSIDE REACTOR 2, DEC. 15, 2019

A VIDEO FROM 2014 TO HELP 'DOUBTERS' COMPREHEND THE IMPOSSIBILITY OF A REAL, OR LASTING "CLEANUP". 
(IT IS CLOSED-CAPTIONED WITH A TRANSCRIPT.)
"In Fukushima, massive amounts of radioactive soil and debris are still piled up in residential areas. The government has asked the head of local authorities to accept intermediate storage facilities." 

TO HELP US UNDERSTAND THE MAGNITUDE OF THE ONGOING RADIOACTIVITY'S EFFECT ON HUMAN BEINGS, MEASUREMENTS BELOW ARE IN MILLISIEVERTS (mSv). 

1000 msV = 1 SIEVERT. 

THIS ONE REACTOR AT FUKUSHIMA IS EMITTING 11,000 mSv PER HOUR, IF WE DARE BELIEVE TEPCO WHO HAS BEEN BUSTED NUMEROUS TIMES FOR LYING ABOUT AND/OR HIDING HIGH READINGS. 
11,000 mSv PER HOUR IS ALMOST DOUBLE WHAT CHERNOBYL EMITTED THAT KILLED WORKERS THERE WITHIN ONE MONTH. 

COMPARE THE ABOVE TO THE DATA BELOW, WHAT EPA ALLOWS, SEE THE DIFFERENCES?
IT'S ALL IN HOW DATA IS MANIPULATED AND THE NIUCLEAR INDUSTRY IS EXPERT AT MANIPULATION AND DOWN-PLAYING THE HAZARDS OF GOOD OLD NUCLEAR ENERGY.

Below are different levels of massive radiation exposure in a single dose — all measured in millisieverts — and their likely effects on humans, as published by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency:
- 50-100: changes in blood chemistry

- 500: nausea, within hours

- 700: vomiting

- 750: hair loss, within 2-3 weeks

- 900: diarrhea

- 1,000: hemorrhage

- 4,000: possible death within 2 months, if no treatment

- 10,000: destruction of intestinal lining, internal bleeding and death within 1-2 weeks


11 SIEVERTS PER HOUR, NOT MILLISIEVERTS, BUT SIEVERTS, AND THIS IS AFTER 8 LONG YEARS AND ABE SWEARING TO THE OLYMPIC COMMITTEE THAT EVERYTHING IS UNDER CONTROL.

THE HELL IT IS!  

CANCEL THE RADIOACTIVE TOKYO OLYMPICS! 


December 15, 2019 
"Lethal radiation levels but no melted fuel found in Fukushima reactor water Tainted water inside a reactor containment vessel at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant has shown a radiation level enough to kill a person within 40 minutes, according to TEPCO, the power plant‘s owner.

The level of radiation was measured by a special robot on Sunday at a point about 30cm (one foot) from the bottom of the containment vessel of Reactor 1, the Japan Times reported on Tuesday.

The current radiation level is 11 sieverts per hour, the highest detected in water inside the containment vessel. A person exposed to this amount of radiation would likely die in about 40 minutes, the Japan Times reports.

Sunday’s probe also revealed sandy substances building up at the bottom of the vessel. Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings (TEPCO) officials, however, dismissed the idea that it might be melted nuclear fuel.

Experts have been looking for the melted fuel, which they believe has been accumulating in tainted water.

In March 2011, a 9.1 earthquake and the 15-meter tsunami that followed disabled the cooling system of Fukushima’s three reactors, causing the worst nuclear incident since the 1986 Chernobyl incident in Ukraine.

In February, a robot sent to explore Reactor 2 broke down because of the “unimaginable” levels of radiation, close to 650 sieverts per hour. This was the first time a robot entered this reactor since the plant’s meltdown in 2011.

Previously, the highest radiation level was recorded one year after the disaster and went up to 73 sieverts per hour.

TEPCO has promised to extract the hazardous material stuck in the plant’s second reactor, its president Naohiro Masuda said, according to the Japan Times.

In December, TEPCO nearly doubled the estimated cost for the Fukushima clean-up to $188 billion.

A zone of more than 300 square miles around the plant is currently uninhabitable due to the continuing radiation."

JUST A WEEK AGO, ANOTHER ROBOT MISSION HAD FAILED. 


December 8, 2019

A “scorpion” robot sent into a Japanese nuclear reactor to learn about the damage suffered in a tsunami-induced meltdown had its mission aborted after the probe ran into trouble, Tokyo Electric Power company said Thursday.

TEPCO, the operator of the Fukushima nuclear plant, sent the remote-controlled device into the No. 2 reactor where radiation levels have recently hit record highs.

The “scorpion” robot, so-called because it can lift up its camera-mounted tail to achieve better viewing angles, is also designed to crawl over rubble inside the damaged facility.

But it could not reach its target destination beneath a pressure vessel through which nuclear fuel is believed to have melted because the robot had difficulty moving, a company spokeswoman said.

“It‘s not immediately clear if that‘s because of radiation or obstacles,” she said, adding that TEPCO is checking what data the robot was able to obtain, including images.       

IT'S WORSE THAN 8 YEARS AGO. 

MARCH 27, 2011
Operator Tokyo Electric Power Co said radiation levels were over 1,000 millisieverts per hour at Reactor No. 2 and evacuated workers from the turbine building there. Japan’s nuclear safety agency has said that as emergency workers, they are allowed to be exposed to 250 millisieverts per year.


Maninichi Daily News
3 August 2011   "Radiation dosages of 5 sieverts per hour were detected indoors on the second floor of the No. 1 reactor."
[TEPCO states that] the level may have been higher than the measured amount of 10 sieverts per hour as it exceeds the capacity of measuring equipment."


TWO YEARS IN A ROW IN FEBRUARY, 2017 AND 2018, SKY-HIGH RADIATION LEVELS.
2 Feb, 2018  
"Lethal radiation amounts still detected at crippled Fukushima plant 7 years after disaster.

A remote-controlled inspection detected 42 Sieverts (Sv) per hour of radiation outside the foundations of the crippled Unit 2 of the plant, according to a newly-released report. And that’s a lot, as just one Sv is enough to cause acute radiation syndrome.

Sieverts are used to measure radiation in terms of its potential harm and the cancer risk begins already at doses of radiation as low as in between 50-100 mSv, the World Health Organization says. 

Since the disaster, numerous studies and reports have emerged showing the operator’s failures in handling the now-crippled plant. In January this year, a Japanese government research group revealed that nine years before the tragic incident, TEPCO had rejected the advice of the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency (NISA) to carry out a tsunami simulation. The company cited a lack of evidence regarding a tsunami threat.

According to research carried out by the University of Southern California back in 2015, the tragedy was preventable. The scientists claimed that design problems, negligence and inadequate pre-tsunami surveys all contributed to the failure that led to the catastrophe.

Back in December 2016, the Japanese government admitted that the costs related to the nuclear accident had significantly grown to $188 billion (21.5 trillion yen).

IN 2017, FORBES REPORTED...
Feb. 3, 2017   
"Exposure to only one sievert is enough to result in infertility, loss of hair and cataracts.

According to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences, exposure to a mere four sieverts of radiation would typically be lethal for one out of every two people.

The highest level of radiation detected previously at the Fukushima reactor was 73 sieverts per hour in Unit 2 in 2012. .

According to the Japan Times, the reading was taken near the entrance to the space just below the pressure vessel, which contains the reactor core. The extremely high radiation levels suggest that some of the melted fuel that escaped the pressure vessel is nearby.

TEPCO had planned to deploy a remote-controlled robot to assess conditions inside the containment vessel. But, considering the extreme radiation levels, it is unclear whether it will be able to do so.

The robot is designed to withstand exposure of up to 1,000 sieverts. Based on the calculation of 73 sieverts per hour, the robot could run for more than 10 hours, but 530 sieverts per hour means it would be rendered inoperable in less than two hours." 


FEB. 2, 2017
An analysis of the images found that the radiation was up to 530 sieverts per hour at a concrete cylinder supporting the reactor.

Radiation levels of up to 530 Sieverts per hour were detected inside an inactive Reactor 2 at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear complex damaged during the 2011 earthquake and tsunami catastrophe, Japanese media reported on Thursday citing the plant operator, Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO).

A dose of about 8 Sieverts is considered incurable and fatal.


PRIOR FAILURE TO REPORT HIGH RADIATION DOSES IN CHILDREN
FROM ASAHI SHIMBUN, JAN. 22, 2019  

"An 11-year-old girl who evacuated from the town of Futaba after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster was likely exposed to radiation levels near the government-set standard, despite assurances that no children were exposed to such high doses.

The girl is said to have been exposed to a radiation dose of about 100 millisieverts, the threshold for enhanced risk of cancer, following the triple meltdown at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.

The previously undisclosed case, which was reported to The National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS) after the disaster, contradicts the central government's statement that "there has been no confirmed cases of children exposed to radiation doses of 100 millisieverts or higher."

According to the NIRS, the case was not disclosed at the time because the institute considered that the estimate was based on information from the site using a simple monitoring instrument and that the figures were not calculated precisely.

The NIRS shared the information on the case among its staff members and left memos indicating the dose that the girl may have been exposed to a radiation dose of around 100 millisieverts.

Children are said to be particularly vulnerable to thyroid gland cancer due to radiation exposure."

BUT THE OLYMPIC COMMITTEE IS SENDING THEM IN ANYWAY?
NO! 
[REMEMBER, ABE'S REGIME DEMANDED A GAG ORDER WITH THREATS OF POSSIBLE PRISON IF SUCH THINGS WERE LEAKED TO THE PRESS BACK THEN. 

GUARDIAN, DEC. 5, 2013  
" Japan whistleblowers face crackdown under proposed state secrets law.
Officials who leak 'special state secrets' and journalists who seek to obtain them could face prison if bill is approved this week."]

RADIATION SO HIGH IT 'KILLS' ROBOTS.
FROM GUARDIAN, UK, MAR. 8, 2017: 
Dying robots and failing hope: Fukushima clean-up falters six years after tsunami

"The device, along with other robots, may also have been damaged by an unseen enemy: radiation. Before it was abandoned, its dosimeter indicated that radiation levels inside the No 2 containment vessel were at 250 sieverts an hour.

In an earlier probe using a remote-controlled camera, radiation at about the same spot was as high as 650 sieverts an hour – enough to kill a human within a minute.  

Shaun Burnie, a senior nuclear specialist at Greenpeace Germany who is based in Japan, describes the challenge confronting the utility as “unprecedented and almost beyond comprehension”, adding that the decommissioning schedule was “never realistic or credible”.

The latest aborted exploration of reactor No 2 “only reinforces that reality”, Burnie says. “Without a technical solution for dealing with unit one or three, unit two was seen as less challenging. So much of what is communicated to the public and media is speculation and wishful thinking on the part of industry and government.

“The current schedule for the removal of hundreds of tons of molten nuclear fuel, the location and condition of which they still have no real understanding, was based on the timetable of prime minister [Shinzo] Abe in Tokyo and the nuclear industry – not the reality on the ground and based on sound engineering and science.”

Even Shunichi Tanaka, the chairman of Japan’s nuclear regulation authority, does not appear to share Tepco’s optimism that it will stick to its decommissioning roadmap. “It is still early to talk in such an optimistic way,” he says. “At the moment, we are still feeling around in the dark.”

Tepco’s once-vaunted underground ice wall, built at a cost of 24.5bn yen, has so far failed .

Critics of the clean-up note that 2020 is the year Tokyo is due to host the Olympics, having been awarded the Games after Abe assured the International Olympic Committee that Fukushima was “under control”.
Mitsuhiko Tanaka, a former Babcock-Hitachi nuclear engineer, accuses Abe and other government officials of playing down the severity of the decommissioning challenge in an attempt to win public support for the restart of nuclear reactors across the country.

“Abe said Fukushima was under control when he went overseas to promote the Tokyo Olympics, but he never said anything like that in Japan,” says Tanaka. “Anyone here could see that the situation was not under control.
“If people of Abe’s stature repeat something often enough, it becomes accepted as the truth.”


ESPECIALLY TRUE WHEN MAINSTREAM MEDIA KEEPS BACKING UP ABE'S FALSE CLAIMS AND FAILS TO REPORT THE FACTS.  

ADD TO THE HIGH RADIATION FROM THE REACTORS, THE RADIATION BEING EMITTED BY MILLIONS OF FLIMSY BAGS OF RADIOACTIVE SOIL, MILLIONS OF TONS OF RADIOACTIVE WASTE WATER IN THOUSANDS OF SHODDILY-BUILT STORAGE TANKS, WATER FLOWING FROM THE HILLS BEHIND THE PLANT AND UNDERNEATH THE REACTORS, CREATING NEW RADIOACTIVE WATER THAT FLOWS ON INTO THE PACIFIC OCEAN, THE UNCOUNTABLE MILES OF MOUNTAINS, VEGETATION AND FORESTS, RIVERS AND STREAMS THAT CANNOT EVER BE "DECONTAMINATED", THE CONTINUED OPEN-AIR BURNING OF SOLID CONTAMINATED WASTE FROM THE DAILY ATTEMPTS TO CLEAN UP THE SITE AND SURROUNDING AREAS AND YOU CAN PERHAPS BEGIN TO SEE WHY SO MANY SAY WE MUST NT SEND OUR ATHLETES TO THOSE GAMES. 



JAPAN WANTS TO "RECYCLE" CONTAMINATED SOIL.
GUARDIAN, MARCH 11, 2019 "Eight years after the disaster, not a single location will take the millions of cubic metres of radioactive soil that remain in Japan.

Japan’s government has pledged that the soil will moved to the interim storage facility and then, by 2045, to a permanent site outside of Fukushima prefecture as part of a deal with local residents who do not want their communities turned into a nuclear dumping ground.

But the government’s blueprint for the soil is unravelling: so far, not a single location has agreed to accommodate the toxic waste.

While workers inside the ruined nuclear plant struggle to contain the build-up of more than 1m tonnes of radioactive water, outside, work continues to remove, process and store soil that will amount to 14 MILLION cubic metres by 2021.

The task is expected to take another two years, according to Jiro Hiratsuka, an environment ministry official who is guiding a small group of foreign journalists, including the Guardian, around the interim storage facility.

“We are required by law to find a final storage place outside Fukushima, so it can’t be kept here indefinitely,” Hiratsuka said. “It’s true that we have yet to find an appropriate location, but a lot will depend on how much space we need and the level of radioactivity in the soil.”

There is opposition, too, to the idea of using soil with lower radiation levels – or less 8,000 becquerels per kilogram – as the foundation for roads, embankments and other infrastructure in Fukushima.

Minoru Ikeda, who took part in the decontamination effort, said workers cut corners to meet strict deadlines. “There were times when we were told to leave the contaminated topsoil and just remove the leaves so we could get everything done on schedule,” he said. “Sometimes we would look at each other as if to say: ‘What on earth are we doing here?’”

He was skeptical of official claims that a permanent home would be found the for soil. “I don’t believe for a minute that they will be able to move all that soil out of Fukushima,” he said.  



RADIOACTIVE WATER IN RADIOACTIVE STORAGE TANKS.
GUARDIAN, SEPT. 10, 2019 

"The operator of the ruined Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant will have to dump huge quantities of contaminated water from the site directly into the Pacific Ocean, Japan’s environment minister has said – a move that would enrage local fishermen.

More than 1 million tonnes of contaminated water has accumulated at the plant since it was struck by a tsunami in March 2011, triggering a triple meltdown that forced the evacuation of tens of thousands of residents.

Tokyo Electric Power (Tepco) has struggled to deal with the buildup of groundwater, which becomes contaminated when it mixes with water used to prevent the three damaged reactor cores from melting.One recent study by Hiroshi Miyano, who heads a committee studying the decommissioning of Fukushima Daiichi at the Atomic Energy Society of Japan, said it could take 17 years to discharge the treated water after it has been diluted to reduce radioactive substances to levels that meet the plant’s safety standards.

Japan has come under renewed pressure to address the contaminated water problem before Tokyo hosts the Olympics and Paralympics next summer.

Six years ago during the city’s bid for the games, the prime minister, Shinzo Abe, assured the international community that the situation was “under control”.

Tokyo Starts Burning Radioactive Waste from Other Areas ...

"Burning radioactive debris will only serve to further randomly spread radiation across Japan, as well as the rest of the world. Not only will this lead to more morbidity and mortality within Japan, but it will further complicate epidemiological studies of the Fukushima disaster." 

REMEMBER WHEN IT WAS ALL ABLAZE? 


OCTOBER 31, 2016
Fukushima Cover Up

"It is literally impossible for the world community to get a clear understanding of, and truth about, the Fukushima nuclear disaster.

This statement is based upon The Feature article in Columbia Journalism Review (“CJR”) d/d October 25, 2016 entitled: “Sinking a Bold Foray Into Watchdog Journalism in Japan” by Martin Fackler.

The scandalous subject matter of the article is frightening to its core. Essentially, it paints a picture of upending and abolishing a 3-year attempt by one of Japan’s oldest and most liberal/intellectual newspapers, The Asahi Shimbun (circ. 6.6 mln) in its effort of “watchdog journalism” of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. In the end, the newspaper’s special watchdog division suffered un-preannounced abrupt closure.   

According to the CJR article, “The Investigative Reporting Section [Asahi] proved an instant success, winning Japan’s top journalism award two years in a row for its exposure of official cover-ups and shoddy decontamination work around the nuclear plant.”

Furthermore, according to the CJR article: “The abrupt about-face by the Asahi, a 137-year-old newspaper with 2,400 journalists that has been postwar Japan’s liberal media flagship, was an early victory for the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, which had sought to silence critical voices as it moved to roll back Japan’s postwar pacifism, and restart its nuclear industry.”

“In Japanese journalism, scoops usually just mean learning from the ministry officials today what they intend to do tomorrow,’ says Makoto Watanabe, a former reporter in the section who quit the Asahi in March because he felt blocked from doing investigative reporting. ‘We came up with different scoops that were unwelcome in the Prime Minister’s Office.”

After all, consider this, 30 years after the fact, horribly deformed Chernobyl Children are found in over 300 asylums in the Belarus backwoods deep in the countryside. Equally as bad but maybe more odious, as of today, Chernobyl radiation (since 1986) is already affecting 2nd generation kids.

According to USA Today, Chernobyl’s Legacy: Kids With Bodies Ravaged by Disaster, April 17, 2016:

“There are 2,397,863 people registered with Ukraine’s health ministry to receive ongoing Chernobyl-related health care.

Of these, 453,391 are children — none born at the time of the accident. Their parents were children in 1986.
These children have a range of illnesses: respiratory, digestive, musculoskeletal, eye diseases, blood diseases, cancer, congenital malformations, genetic abnormalities, trauma.”
It’s taken 30 years for the world, via an article in USA Today, to begin to understand how devastating, over decades, not over a few years, radiation exposure is to people.

It is a silent killer that accumulates in the body over time and passes from generation to generation to generation, endless destruction that cannot be stopped."


THEY CENSOR EVEN WEATHER FORECASTS THAT MENTION RADIATION. 


Japan Weather Chief Censored Fukushima Nuclear Radiation ...

Jul 24, 2015 
"The Mainichi daily news is reporting the chief of the Meteorological Society of Japan, Hiroshi Niino aprofessor at the University of Tokyo, is drawing strong criticism from the academic community in Japan for issuing a gag order to censor Fukushima nuclear radiation forecasts from the public."

JAPAN IS NOT A SAFE PLACE TO SEND OUR YOUNG ATHLETES.

I WOULD NOT ALLOW A CHILD OF MINE TO ATTEND, WOULD YOU? 











//WW

UKRAINE APOLOGIZES FOR AIDING CLINTON IN 2016 ELECTION

"Ukrainian efforts to sabotage Trump backfire:
Kiev officials are scrambling to make amends with the president-elect after quietly working to boost Clinton."

FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, SEPT. 30, 2019:

Hillary Clinton and Ukraine
"A letter released Monday raises questions beyond the Bidens.

The Biden clan still needs to explain why a vice president’s son was enjoying a $50,000-per-month gig for which his principal qualification appears to have been his last name.

But Joe Biden isn’t the only pillar of the Democratic establishment who won’t enjoy the new spotlight on American relations with Ukraine.

And President Donald Trump isn’t the only one who wants a fuller accounting of that country’s role in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.

With the benefit of hindsight and the results of the Mueller investigation, it’s now clear that there was no evidence of Trump campaign collusion with Russia.

What is not clear and what demands further investigation is how this baseless claim managed to consume the first two years of an American presidency."

ALL FOLLOWING PHOTOS ARE OF UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT POROSHENKO WITH EITHER BILL OR HILLARY CLINTON, DURING HER PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDACY IN 2015 TO 2016. 

WHAT A HAPPY THREESOME, YES?  
WHAT MIGHT THEY HAVE DISCUSSED WITH HIM IN PRIVATE? 

WILL ANY DEMOCRAT IN CONGRESS ASK THAT QUESTION?

AT THE TIME THE ABOVE PHOTO WAS TAKEN, OBAMA WAS WITHHOLDING 'LETHAL AID FROM UKRAINE. HILLARY STATED SHE HAD PROMISED TO HELP  DEFEND UKRAINE AGAINST RUSSIA

"LET ME MAKE YOU AN OFFER YOU CAN'T REFUSE"?

Clinton Global Initiative 2015 Annual Meeting - Day 2

"WE'LL SCRATCH YOUR BACK, YOU SCRATCH OURS. GIVE US DIRT ON TRUMP,
WE GIVE YOU BILLIONS IN AID."
QUID PRO QUO.
 

      ABOVE:
  Hillary Clinton tells Ukraine's leader she would defend its borders if she wins.  
NEW YORK, 20 September 2016
"The Ukrainian leader and Clinton had an 'in-depth discussion of the crisis' in the country, her campaign said after their meeting.

Former U.S. secretary of state put her familiarity with foreign leaders on display Monday evening as she held talks with several visiting dignitaries.

A readout of the 75-minute meeting from Clinton's team mentioned Russia four times as it remonstrated with Republican Donald Trump's friendly attitude toward the country's foe.

'They discussed implementation of the Minsk agreement, Ukraine's programs on reforms, and ways the US can help support investment in Ukraine,' her campaign said, 'and she outlined her clear-eyed approach to Russia.'

Adding, 'If elected, she looks forward to deepening and intensifying cooperation with Ukraine.'AND THAT ISN'T AN OUTRAGE TO DEMOCRATS, TO 'INVESTIGATORS' IN CONGRESS?

WAS SHE USING THAT 'PROMISE' TO ENTICE POROSHENKO TO AID UKRAINIAN-AMERICAN ALEXANDRA CHALUPA?
AS YOU WILL SEE, THE PRESSURE HAD BEN ON UKRAINE T D JUST THAT FOR ABOUT A YEAR.
FOR A BRIEF VIDEO OF THIS MEETING, <SEE THIS>.

SO...WHICH NATION INTERFERED IN 2016 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION?
POLITICO answered that question in early January, 2017, days BEFORE Trump was inaugurated.

"Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election.

And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers, a Politico investigation found."

According to that investigation, officials in Ukraine clearly stated that Trump was skeptical of them. They stated they even hired a lobbying firm to help make amends for their aid to the Clinton campaign.

"The Ukrainian antipathy for Trump’s team — and alignment with Clinton’s — can be traced back to late 2013. That’s when the country’s president, Viktor Yanukovych, whom [Paul] Manafort had been advising, abruptly backed out of a European Union pact linked to anti-corruption reforms.

Instead, Yanukovych entered into a multibillion-dollar bailout agreement with Russia, sparking protests across Ukraine and prompting Yanukovych to flee the country to Russia under Putin’s protection.

In the ensuing crisis, Russian troops moved into the Ukrainian territory of Crimea [**AT UKRAINE'S PRESIDENT'S REQUEST!**], and Manafort dropped off the radar."


Andrew C. McCarthy, a former chief assistant U.S. attorney, is a contributing editor of National Review.
He recently wrote an opinion piece to the New York Post:

"According to Democrats, any investigation of possible Democratic corruption, or of Democratic collusion with foreign officials to interfere in our elections, is itself impeachable interference in our elections.

Seriously.    

Democrats apparently didn’t think the “crisis” was so dire that their Thanksgiving holiday should be postponed.

In 11 months, the American people will be able to boot President Trump from office if they believe he is unfit. So why should the political class be permitted to pre-empt voters?

Finally, Democrats have come up with an answer: Trump must be removed, because he is bent on colluding with foreign powers to interfere in our elections; he will do it “again” if he isn’t stripped of power.

“Again,” of course, hearkens back to the Democrats’ Russia “collusion” narrative. They can’t let go of that narrative, notwithstanding the fact that the Mueller probe debunked it. In their revisionist history, Trump’s quip that he hoped Russia would find the 30,000 emails Hillary Clinton destroyed somehow proves the scheme that a score of aggressive prosecutors couldn’t find.  

This isn’t to say that the Bidens were necessarily involved in any illegal conduct.

Nor is it to say that the effort by Ukrainian officials to put their thumb on the scale in favor of Clinton and against Trump was as serious or systematic as Russia’s cyber-espionage operations against Democratic email accounts.

And presidents should probably leave requests for investigative help from a foreign power to the Department of Justice.

Still, it is absurd to insist that seeking to probe Democratic misadventures that warrant probing is somehow impeachable conduct.

Yet in its push to undo the outcome of the 2016 election, the Democratic Party has learned to embrace absurdity."

In August 2016, under an article headlined “Ukraine’s leaders campaign against ‘pro-Putin’ Trump,’” the Financial Times noted, “The prospect of Mr Trump, who has praised Ukraine’s arch-enemy Vladimir Putin, becoming leader of the country’s biggest ally has spurred not just Mr Leshchenko (a member of Ukraine’s parliament) but Kiev’s wider political leadership to do something they would never have attempted before: intervene, however indirectly, in a US election.”

Continuing, it said, “Mr Leshchenko and other political actors in Kiev say they will continue their efforts to prevent (Trump) ... from reaching the summit of American political power.”
It’s simply a known fact that Ukrainian officials DID collude with Democrats in 2016.
A Ukrainian court has so concluded.

Ukrainian officials were, by their own admission 3 years ago, in consultation with a Democratic political operative and Fusion GPS, the research firm that concocted the discredited Steele dossier at the Democratic National Committee’s and Clinton’s behest.

Ukrainians were also, again by their own admission, complicit in the leaking of information that forced Manafort’s ouster from the Trump campaign.

On August 4, 2016, Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United States, His Excellency Valeriy Chaly, published an opinion /editorial column in The Hill.

"Recent comments by Republican nominee Donald Trump about the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea — occupied by Russia since March 2014 — have raised serious concerns in Kyiv and beyond Ukraine."

This is Ukraine’s Ambassador, representing the Ukrainian government.
 He was a member of the Ukrainian government, whose job, authority, and position it was to speak to the United States on behalf of Ukraine.

FROM THAT SAME AMBASSADOR FROM UKRAINE, MAY 2, 2019: 
"In its most detailed account yet, the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington says a Democratic National Committee (DNC) insider, during the 2016 election, solicited dirt on Donald Trump’s campaign chairman and even tried to enlist the country's president to help.

In written answers to questions, Ambassador Valeriy Chaly's office says DNC contractor Alexandra Chalupa sought information from the Ukrainian government on Paul Manafort’s dealings inside the country in hopes of forcing the issue before Congress.
Chalupa later tried to arrange for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to comment on Manafort’s Russian ties on a U.S. visit during the 2016 campaign, the ambassador said.

Chaly says that, at the time of the contacts in 2016, the embassy knew Chalupa primarily as a Ukrainian American activist and learned only later of her ties to the DNC.

He says the embassy considered her requests an inappropriate solicitation of interference in the U.S. election.           

“All ideas floated by Alexandra were related to approaching a Member of Congress with a purpose to initiate hearings on Paul Manafort or letting an investigative journalist ask President Poroshenko a question about Mr. Manafort during his public talk in Washington, D.C.,” the ambassador explained.

Reached by phone last week, Chalupa said she was too busy to talk.

She did not respond to email and phone messages seeking subsequent comment.
Chaly’s written answers mark the most direct acknowledgement by Ukraine’s government that an American tied to the Democratic Party sought the country’s help in the 2016 election, and they confirm the main points of a January 2017 story by Politico on Chalupa’s efforts. 
Federal Election Commission records show Chalupa’s firm, Chalupa & Associates, was paid $71,918 by the DNC during the 2016 election cycle.

BUT THERE'S MORE.    

Andrii Telizhenko, a former political officer who worked under Chaly from December 2015 through June 2016, states Chaly lied that Ukraine officials knew very well that Chalupa was working for the DNC and instructed him to assist her.

He says that he was instructed by the ambassador and his top deputy to meet with Chalupa in March 2016 and to gather whatever dirt Ukraine had in its government files about Trump and Manafort.

Telizhenko said that when he was told by the embassy to arrange the meeting, both Chaly and the ambassador’s top deputy identified Chalupa “as someone working for the DNC and trying to get Clinton elected.”

Telizhenko said he became concerned about the legality of using his country’s assets to help an American political party win a U.S. election. But he proceeded with his assignment.

Telizhenko also said that, as he began his research, he discovered that Fusion GPS was nosing around Ukraine, seeking similar information, and he believed they, too, worked for the Democrats.

As a former aide inside the general prosecutor’s office in Kiev, Telizhenko used contacts with intelligence, police and prosecutors across the country to secure information...

Chaly’s office also acknowledged that a month after his op-ed in The Hill, President Poroshenko met with then-candidate Clinton during a stop in New York.
The office said the ambassador requested a similar meeting with Trump but it didn’t get organized."


CHALUPA REALLY WORKED HARD TO "STOP TRUMP".

In April 2016, she attended an international symposium where she reported back to the DNC that she had met with 68 Ukrainian investigative journalists to talk about Manafort.

She also wrote that she invited American reporter Michael Isikoff to speak with her.

Isikoff wrote some of the seminal stories tying Manafort to Ukraine and Trump to Russia; he later wrote a book making a case for Russian collusion.

“A lot more coming down the pipe,” Chalupa wrote a top DNC official on May 3, 2016, recounting her effort to educate Ukrainian journalists and Isikoff about Manafort."


YES, THIS WAS ALL BEFORE TRUMP BECAME PRESIDENT, SOME CAME OUT JUST BEFORE MANAFORT WAS HIRED BY TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN.

AND AFTERWARD? 

Politico, again, in August 2017: “A Ukrainian member of parliament has requested a criminal investigation into possible meddling by his country’s government into last year’s U.S. presidential elections, claiming the interference has ‘seriously damaged Ukrainian-American relations.’”


The New York Times, December 2018: Under an article titled “Ukraine Court Rules Manafort Disclosure Caused ‘Meddling’ in U.S. Election,” the Times reports, “A court in Ukraine has ruled that officials in the country violated the law by revealing, during the 2016 presidential election in the United States, details of suspected illegal payments to Paul Manafort.

"Even though Western-sponsored polls in Crimea, both before and after the coup, had shown higher than 90% support by Crimeans for rejoining with Russia, right after Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia, Obama slapped sanctions against Russia.
Nuclear weapons were prepared, both on the U.S.-EU side and on the Russian side, for a possible nuclear war." 

David Stern, “Ukrainian MP seeks probe of Ukraine-Clinton ties: Parliament member demands to know whether his country’s government targeted Trump in the 2016 campaign,” The Politico, August 16, 2017.

“A Ukrainian member of parliament has requested a criminal investigation into possible meddling by his country’s government into last year’s U.S. presidential elections, claiming the interference has “seriously damaged Ukrainian-American relations.”

“In a July 24 [2017] letter to Ukraine’s prosecutor general, Andrei Derkach, an independent MP who was formerly aligned with a pro-Russian party, requested that authorities launch a pretrial investigation into “illegal interference in the election of President of the United States organized by a criminal organization.” This organization, he said, consisted of senior members of the country’s National Anti-Corruption Bureau, government officials, and other public figures.”

DID OBAMA AND BIDEN ABUSE THE POWER OF THEIR OFFICES IN WITHHLDING MONEY FROM UKRAINE?
 
From at least 2014 to the first 2 weeks of 2017, Obama had withheld U.S. loan guarantees from Ukraine (as Joe Biden bragged in that now-infamous video with the Council on Foreign Relations), money they desperately needed. Obama refused to give them money for 'lethal weapons, however, to arm themselves against Russia.

WHAT WOULD UKRAINE'S OFFICIALS DO IN ORDER TO ACQUIRE ALL THE AID THAT THE 2016 CONGRESS HAD APPROVED, TO GET THAT MUCH-NEEDED U.S. 'LETHAL AID'? 

BEFORE CONDEMNING UKRAINE, ASK YOURSELF, WHAT WOULD YOU DO IN A LIFE-OR-DEATH SITUATION (REAL OR IMAGINED) TO GET PROTECTION? 

WOULD UKRAINE MAYBE HELP "STOP TRUMP"? 
SURE LOOKS THAT WAY. 
READ ON... 


FROM RADIO FREE EUROPE 
December 15, 2014  
The U.S. Senate has unanimously passed a bill authorizing LETHAL aid for Ukraine and new sanctions against Russia, sending the measure to President Barack Obama for his signature or veto.

While the White House has declined to provide lethal aid to Ukraine, the bill authorizes -- but does not technically require -- $350 million of defense articles for Ukraine's military, including anti-tank and anti-armor weapons, ammunition and surveillance drones.
According to the administration, the U.S. government has committed over $118 million in equipment and training for Ukraine's security forces.

The bill also authorizes sanctions against Russia's defense and energy industries, including the arms exporter Rosoboronexport. The president may waive them for national security reasons.

It also allows Obama to sanction Gazprom, a state-controlled Russian energy giant, if he determines that it is withholding gas from a NATO state or Ukraine, Moldova, or Georgia.

Identical texts of the bill passed the U.S. Senate and House on December 11, but because of a loan-guarantee provision, the U.S. Senate had to vote on it again. 


FROM DEFENSE NEWS--CONGRESS
September 25, 2019   
BACK TO 2016; WHAT CONGRESS AUTHORIZED THAT WASN'T PROVIDED TO UKRAINE UNDER OBAMA.
"Congress has since expanded the categories of available military aid. Its authorization for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative for 2016 included anti-armor weapon systems, mortars, crew-served weapons and ammunition, grenade launchers and ammunition, and small arms and ammunition ― but also unspecified “cyber” and “electronic warfare” capabilities.


EVEN CNN ADMITTED THAT OBAMA WITHHELD LETHAL AID TO UKRAINE, EVEN THOUGH CONGRESS HAD APPROVED IT, JUST AS TRUMP AND TWO UKRAINIAN PRESIDENTS HAVE SAID.
"Trump appears to be echoing a critique leveled at the Obama administration by the late Republican Sen. John McCain. "The Ukrainians are being slaughtered and we're sending blankets and meals," McCain said in 2015. "Blankets don't do well against Russian tanks."

While it never provided lethal aid, many of the items that the Obama administration did provide were seen as critical to Ukraine's military."


"Fact-checking Joe Biden, Hunter Biden, and Ukraine" 
POLITIFACT

May 7th, 2019   
"Hunter Biden DID hold a directorship for a Ukrainian gas company WHILE his father was vice president. Experts agree that Hunter Biden's acceptance of the position created a conflict of interest for his father.

Vice President Joe Biden DID urge Ukraine to fire its top prosecutor, with the threat of withholding U.S. aid. But that was the position of the wider U.S. government, as well as other international institutions.

Reuters reported at the time that a statement on the company’s website said the younger Biden "would help the company with "transparency, corporate governance and responsibility, international expansion," and other issues. The company also retained the law firm where Biden had been working, Boies, Schiller, Flexner.

The position with Burisma came at a time when the younger Biden had joined with Christopher Heinz (the stepson of then-Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.) and Devon Archer (a Kerry family friend) in a string of investment and consulting firms.

Firms run by Biden and Archer "pursued business with international entities that had a stake in American foreign policy decisions, sometimes in countries where connections implied political influence and protection," the New York Times reported.

Biden’s Burisma directorship attracted attention because Burisma was owned by Mykola Zlochevsky, a minister under Russia-friendly President Viktor F. Yanukovych who subsequently went into exile after a popular revolution.

[MANY UKRAINIANS AS WELL AS MOSTLY FOREIGN MEDIA ARTICLES CALLED IT WHAT IT WAS...A U.S.-SUPPORTED COUP, NOT A REVOLUTION.] 

"After Yanukovych was ousted, Zlochevsky faced a variety of corruption-related investigations involving his business.

In 2015, Ukraine’s newly appointed prosecutor general Viktor Shokin inherited some of the investigations into Zlochevsky and his company. (Zlochevsky and the company have denied the allegations.) Shokin WAS ousted as prosecutor in 2016, exactly as Biden had asked.

In a White House press briefing on May 13, 2014, spokesman Jay Carney was asked about it, and whether it presented the appearance of a conflict of interest.

Carney said, "I would refer you to the Vice President’s office. I saw those reports. Hunter Biden and other members of the Biden family are obviously private citizens and where they work does not reflect an endorsement by the administration or by the Vice President or President. But I would refer you to the Vice President’s office."

A year and a half later, the New York Times published an article that suggested that "the credibility of the vice president’s anti-corruption message may have been undermined" by Hunter Biden’s dealings with the company. 
In that 2015 article, Kate Bedingfield, a spokeswoman for the vice president, played down any impact on the elder Biden’s policies.

"Hunter Biden is a private citizen and a lawyer," she said. "The vice president does not endorse any particular company and has no involvement with this company.

Meanwhile, accounts differ on whether Shokin was poised to prosecute Burisma at the time he was removed.

In an interview with the Ukrainian website Strana.ua this month, Shokin said the cases were indeed active.

However, Vitaliy Kasko, who had been Shokin’s deputy overseeing international cooperation before resigning in February 2016 citing corruption in the office, produced documents to Bloomberg that under Shokin, the investigation into Burisma had been DORMANT.

[DORMANT, MEANING THEY WERE 'ON THE LIST' BUT JUST WERE NOT BEING ACTIVELY PROSECUTED.]

"There was no pressure from anyone from the U.S. to close cases against Zlochevsky," Kasko told Bloomberg.

"It was shelved by Ukrainian prosecutors in 2014 and through 2015."

[THIS FAILS TO MENTION THE CHARGE OF ANOTHER TOP UKRAINIAN OFFICIAL THAT SHOKIN HAD SHELVED IT AFTER TAKING A $7 MILLION BRIBE TO DO SO.] 

"We found wide agreement among Ukraine policy experts that Hunter Biden’s decision to become a director for Burisma presented a serious conflict of interest.

"It’s not a crime, but it is a lapse. It’s troubling," said Lincoln A. Mitchell, an adjunct research scholar at Columbia University’s Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies who has written about governance in the former Soviet Union.

Pifer, who expressed reservations about the arrangement to the New York Times in 2015, said subsequent developments have only confirmed those concerns.

"It was a mistake for Hunter Biden to join the Burisma board, particularly given that the vice president was the senior U.S. official engaging Ukraine," Pifer said. "Hunter Biden should have been more mindful of his father's position."

And Yoshiko Herrera, a University of Wisconsin professor who previously headed the university’s Center for Russia, East Europe and Central Asia, said Hunter Biden’s hiring echoes the strategy common within Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union, in which powerful interests try to secure influence on foreign policy by leveraging family members and associates of key leaders.

"Calling Hunter Biden a private citizen ignores the obvious links to the vice president," Herrera said. "Conflict-of-interest rules should have applied. If Biden is working for the Obama administration on Ukraine, his son should not have been on the board of a company there that could be affected by U.S. policy spearheaded by his father."

[CORRECTION BY NYT, May 8, 2019: This version clarifies that Hunter Biden and Devon Archer were the two partners who "pursued business with international entities." Christopher Heinz was not a part of those pursuits.]

NONE OF THE MSM WHO WERE DEFENDING OBAMA/BIDEN FOR WITHHOLDING FUNDS FROM UKRAINE MENTIONED THE FOLLOWING, WHICH WAS HEADLINE NEWS IN THE BBC ON FEB. 7, 2014. 

The U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt and Obama's Asst. Sec. of State, Victoria Nuland were busted in 2014 conspiring to force Ukraine to put Arseniy Yatsenyuk in as president after deposing duly/legally elected Victor Yanukovych.

"Voice thought to be Pyatt's: I think we're in play... But I think your argument to him, which you'll need to make, I think that's the next phone call you want to set up, is exactly the one you made to Yats [Arseniy Yatseniuk, another opposition leader]. And I'm glad you sort of put him on the spot on where he fits in this scenario. And I'm very glad that he said what he said in response.

"Nuland: [Breaks in] I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience, the governing experience.

Nuland: OK. He's now gotten both Serry and [UN Secretary General] Ban Ki-moon to agree that Serry could come in Monday or Tuesday. So that would be great, I think, to help glue this thing and to have the UN help glue it and, you know, Fu*k the EU.

Nuland: So on that piece, Geoff, when I wrote the note [US vice-president's national security adviser Jake] Sullivan's come back to me VFR [direct to me], saying you need [US Vice-President Joe] Biden and I said probably tomorrow for an atta-boy and to get the deets [details] to stick. So Biden's willing.

Pyatt: OK. Great. Thanks.

Biden WAS appointed as Obama's "point man" to Ukraine.
On September 25, 2015, during a speech at Odesa Financial Forum, Pyatt criticized the Ukrainian Prosecutor's office.

On May 19, 2016, Pyatt was nominated by U.S. President Barack Obama to serve as United States Ambassador to Greece and was pulled out of Ukraine.

BY THE WAY, Yovanovitch was born in Canada to Russian parents and first came to Kiev in 2001 from assignment in MOSCOW, among other stations, and had headed "the Russian Desk" for the U.S. state department, from May 1998 to May 2000.

She had studied at the Pushkin Institute in Moscow in 1980.
From August 2001 to June 2004, she was the Deputy Chief of Mission of the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, Ukraine.

Nuland remained as part of Obama's staff.
BUT, she never stopped meddling in Ukraine.

Nuland told CBS that she received a copy of the Steele dossier in July 2016 and forwarded it to the FBI. She has argued that she did right to forward the dossier to the bureau, but in doing so became one of many Obama administration officials who helped, wittingly or unwittingly, to launder Steele's allegations by adding credibility to the unverified document in acting as a highly-placed conduit.

Nuland attempting to interfere with investigation of Maidan snipers case.
20 Oct 2015
  
"The Prosecutor General's Office of Ukraine (PGO) released a statement that Russia wasn't involved in the killing of Maidan protesters, Former Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov said.

Immediately after the statement, the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland announced that she wants to get rid of the PGO and replace it with a new judicial institution, Azarov said.

Something fishy is going on in Ukraine right now: has Nuland decided to eliminate the PGO because it couldn't find evidence that Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) officers were involved in the shooting of protesters during the Maidan Revolution in Kiev?

"It seems that someone is very keen on "hiding the evidence" of the investigation of killings on Maidan square," the former Prime Minister wrote on his Facebook account.

Azarov is convinced that all killings were orchestrated by leaders of the current political regime in Ukraine. That's why a proper investigation into the case of the killing of Maidan protesters by unknown snipers will never happen. 
"It's unclear to me why investigators never questioned Turchinov, Pashinsky, Parubiy [all three closely involved with Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council]...

It's unclear why nobody examines numerous videos that recorded the moments of the killings," Azarov continued."


Who remembers this one?

May 23rd, 2016, “U.S. Tests Advanced Missile For NATO Interceptor System

"Barely a month before the CIA and State Department overthrew the previous, the pro-Russian, President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, the government of Netherlands decided, after 18 years of “dithering,” to allow the U.S. to arm our F-35 bombers there with nuclear weapons.

THAT BRILLIANT DECISION REALLY PUSHED PUTIN'S BACK TO THE WALL.
WE WERE FLIRTING WITH IGNITING WORLD WAR 3. 


FIRE THEM ALL?  

From 2014 until March of 2019, the U.S. ambassadors in Kiev & others in the Obama staff (Joe Biden, as he has admitted) demanded that each and every "special investigator" be fired, one right after the other.

Yovanovitch's speech in March, 2019, calling for the ouster of the newest one, is still posted to our Ukraine embassy page online.

On Ukrainian government web pages, for the past 5 years, their prosecutors have posted 'news' about whom they were investigating.

Burisma has been under investigation for about 7 years now, because the man who helped formed Burisma is charged with bilking Ukraine out of close to $17 Billion.
He fled to the U.S. after the U.S. BAN on his passport was lifted.

In 2016, soon after her appointment, Yovanovitch came under fire from several Ukraine members of parliament AND the special prosecutor and they expressed wishes that she be recalled.
She wasn't.

Jeff Sessions asked that she be removed from her post in 2017.
 She wasn't.

Current Ukraine president Zelensky expressed his dislike for Yovanovitch and told Trump she had been fond of Poroshenko, his predecessor.

In March, 2019 (BEFORE Trump's calls), Ukrainian Prosecutor General Yuriy Lutsenko said. "At that time, [Yovanovitch] thought that our interviews of the Ukrainian citizens of the Ukrainian civil servants who were frequent visitors in the U.S. embassy put a shadow on that anti-corruption policy."

 Lutsenko was probing a claim from a member of the Ukrainian parliament that the director of the National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine (NABU), Artem Sytnyk, attempted to influence the 2016 vote to the benefit of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

He was fired & discredited in the press.
He then produced an audio tape of Syntyk apparently admitting he had indeed tried to help Clinton.

During Yovanovitch's testimony before Congress, Rep. Stewart asked, “Do you have any information regarding any criminal activity that the president of the United States has been involved with at all?”

Yovanovitch replied, “No.”


Ukraine did indeed help the HRC campaign try to discredit and defeat Donald Trump; they've admitted it, apologized and were investigating it until forced to cease and desist.

You may have read about the famous, mysterious "black ledger" that, for a time, seemed to prove Manafort was being given a lot of money through the first deposed president, Yanukovych.

If you but search that term, you'll see the ledger was a fake.

Serhiy Leshchenko who handed the ledger over, admitted in interview that his motivation was partly to undermine Trump.

“For me, it was important to show not only the corruption aspect, but that he is [a] pro-Russian candidate who can break the geopolitical balance in the world,” Leshchenko told the Financial Times. You'll also read that in the POLITICO piece below.

"FBI, warned early and often that Manafort file might be fake, used it anyway", read one headline.

It, along with the now-disproven "Steele Dossier" are 2 of the main items the FBI took to the FISA court to get their wiretaps.

Ukraine’s top anti-corruption prosecutor, Nazar Kholodnytsky, warned the U.S. State Department’s law enforcement liaison and multiple FBI agents in late summer 2016 that Ukrainian authorities who recovered the ledger believed it likely was a fraud.

It was Kholodnytsky whom U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch, in March this year said must be ousted.

LOGICALLY, WHO INTERFERED IN 2016?


"The ultimate problem is that the United States allows the formation of hundreds of thousands of anonymous companies that have permeated this country with laundered money.

The PrivatBank case shows that dirty money is not necessarily concentrated in the big cities and in real estate but can penetrate the real economy.
The PrivatBank case provides a graphic illustration of the need to prohibit anonymous companies in the United States once and for all.

Trump wanted Burisma investigated because Joe Biden and John Kerry, via the International Money Fund, delivered an initial $1.8 Billion to the Ukraine and Ukraine officials have stated that money disappeared, but that same amount just happened to show up in an offshore bank account in the name of Ihor Kolomoisky, one of the founders of Burisma.

Kolomoisky was on a U.S. visa ban list until just after Hunter Biden joined Burisma. The ban was then lifted and Kolomoisky began buying property in Cleveland, Ohio and living both in the U.S. & Switzerland. Ukraine's PrivatBank filed suit to recover missing funds. From 2006 through December 2016, the total movement of funds (credits) into the [ultimate beneficiary owners’] laundering at PrivatBank Cyprus was $470 billion, which amounts to approximately double the Gross Domestic Product of Cyprus during the same period” (p. 77).

If this is true, this is the biggest case of money laundering in history, and it has been perpetrated by one single group. This case shows how money laundering from Ukraine to the United States allegedly takes place. See Atlantic Council's article on this from June 4, 2019 or Reuters from Jan. 24, 2018. The Kerry & Biden families are just two of many whom Ukraine wants to investigate as they try to recover all those billions. Both names appear in online government documents on Ukraine's websites, from at least 3 former prosecutors there."

A huge chunk of the $17 billion in bailout money the IMF granted to Ukraine in April 2014 has been discovered in a bank account in Cyprus controlled by exiled Ukrainian oligarch Ihor Kolomoyskyi, the German newspaper Deutsche Wirtshafts Nachrichten [DWN] reported on Thursday.

In April last year $3.2 billion was immediately disbursed to Ukraine, and over the following five months, another $4.5 billion was disbursed to the Ukrainian Central Bank in order to stabilize the country’s financial system.

JANUARY 24, 2018, REUTERS: 
"Ukraine money-go-round: how $1.7 billion in bank loans ended up offshore"


BOTTOM LINE?

SHOULD TRUMP OR ANY PRESIDENT, KNOWING WHAT PRESIDENTS KNOW THAT WE ARE NOT PRIVY TO, BUT CAN IMAGINE, PERHAPS, GIVEN ALL OF THE ABOVE, HAVE DEMANDED AN INVESTIGATION OF ALL THE SORDID AFFAIRS OF UKRAINIAN OFFICIALS, EVEN IF JOE BIDEN'S NAME WAS MENTIONED BY THOSE SAME OFFICIALS OVER A PERIOD OF 5 LONG YEARS? 

THE DEMOCRATS SPENT TWO LONG YEARS TRYING TO PROVE THAT THE RUSSIANS WERE ABLE TO KEEP HILLARY FROM WINNING. 

HILLARY DID WIN, THE POPULAR ELECTION, WHICH SURELY SHOWS RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE DID NOT CHANGE THE VOTES OF THOSE WHO CHOSE HER AS PRESIDENT. 

TWO YEARS OF CRIES OF 'RUSSIAN COLLUSION WITH TRUMP', EVEN AFTER MUELLER, OBAMA, THE DEMS IN CONGRESS, ELECTION OFFICIALS IN ALL 50 STATES ALL STATED THAT NOT ONE AMERICAN VOTE WAS CHANGED BY THE "PHISHING" RUSSIA DID.  

NOT EVEN THE LEAKED EMAILS POSTED BY WIKILEAKS ALTERED THE OUTCOME OF THE POPULAR VOTE WHICH FAVORED CLINTON. 

NOBODY HAS EVER INSINUATED THAT THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE WAS HACKED BY OR INFLUENCED IN ANY WAY BY RUSSIA. THAT IS IMPOSSIBLE TO DO. 

WHY WON'T THE DEMOCRATS NOW DEMAND A SIMILAR INVESTIGATION INTO THE ADMITTED UKRAINIAN INTERFERENCE IN THAT SAME ELECTION, THAT PERHAPS COST TRUMP THE ALMOST 3 MILLION VOTES THAT HILLARY WON BY DIRTY TRICKS AGAINST BERNIE SANDERS AND A FAKE RUSSIAN DOSSIER? 

DID UKRAINE'S SELF-ADMITTED INTERFERENCE CHANGE 2016 ELECTION VOTES?

WHAT'S WRONG WITH TRUMP AND MILLIONS OF AMERICAN VOTERS WANTING ANSWERS TO THE POSSIBILITY THAT TRUMP LOST THE POPULAR VOTE DUE TO UKRAINIAN COLLUSION WITH THE DNC AND MANY WITHIN THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN?

WHAT ARE THE DEMOCRATS AFRAID OF? 





_______________________________________


END NOTES:

**The Russian occupation of Crimea was triggered when the Ukrainian parliament metaphorically kicked up its heels and pushed the former Russian-leaning Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, out of office on corruption charges.

By removing Yanukovych from office, the Ukrainian parliament “destabilized” Russia’s control over the Crimean military bases it occupies under long-term leases with the Ukrainian government which were negotiated during the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Having let that genie out of the bottle by demonstrating its independence from Russia, the Ukrainians sent a perhaps unintentional message that Russia’s former province was no longer “reliable.”

That was the Ukrainian crisis, as far as Russian President Vladimir Putin is concerned, because it threw a shadow over Russia’s long-term occupancy rights.

When the Soviet Union broke up into 12 autonomous republics, Crimea was bundled with Ukraine for an obvious reason: geography. A separate, independent Crimea would have no choice but to route all ground shipments to and from Crimea through Ukraine, putting Crimeans at Ukraine’s mercy with respect to its commerce with the rest of Europe. So, instead, Crimea was set up as an “autonomous parliamentary republic” within Ukraine, essentially becoming an independent nation inside another independent nation.

Putin has no interest in becoming embroiled in a long, bloody guerrilla war with Ukraine. That would be a crisis Putin wants no part of, because there is nothing in Ukraine that Russia wants, except for the military bases in Crimea. There are no roads between Russia and Crimea. The only ground routes between Russia and its military bases in Crimea run through Ukraine. That is the main reason Putin is interested in Ukraine at all, because a hostile regime in Kiev could effectively blockade land routes between Russia and its Crimean bases.

As an “autonomous parliamentary republic,” Crimea presumably has an absolute right to ask Ukrainian troops to leave. They also appear to have the right to seek a closer relationship with Russia, to the point of outright annexation, which could easily include inviting Russian troops to occupy the region. That appears to be happening right now."

THINK FOR A MOMENT...
AMERICA STILL RUNS 'GITMO' IN CUBA, THE CUBA THAT WE HAVE HELPED TO RUIN, ECONOMICALLY, FOR FAR FEWER REASONS THAN WE SHOULD BE SANCTIONING CHINA, SAUDI ARABIA, PAKISTAN.
WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN IF CUBA TRIED TO KICK AMERICA OFF THAT ISLAND?
WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF CUBA'S PRESIDENT TRIED TO CUT AMERICA OFF FROM GITMO?

WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF JAPAN TOLD AMERICA TO GET THE HELL OUT OF JAPAN?

OR GERMANY DID?

WOULD OUR GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS JUST PACK US UP AND EXIT?
IT'S BEEN TRIED, MANY TIMES, AND WE'RE STILL THERE IN ALL THOSE COUNTRIES.

HOW IS THAT DIFFERENT FROM RUSSIA'S INTERESTS IN CRIMEA?

SHOULDN'T THE PEOPLE, ALL THE PEOPLE, OF UKRAINE/CRIMEA HAVE A SAY-SO, ALL THE PEOPLE OF CUBA, JAPAN, GERMANY, ETC?

WHAT ABOUT US?
WHAT RIGHT DO WE AMERICANS HAVE IN DECIDING WHICH NATIONS WE INVADE, WHICH ONES WE ROB FROM, OR INTERFERE WITH?

WHAT WOULD WE, THE PEOPLE, DECIDE? 
"In his first interview since fleeing to Russia, Ukraine‘s ousted president said Wednesday that he was “wrong” to have invited Russian troops into Crimea and vowed to try to persuade Russia to return the coveted Black Sea peninsula.

Defensive and at times teary-eyed, Viktor Yanukovych told The Associated Press and Russia’s state NTV television that he still hopes to negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin to get the annexed region back."


Ultimately, the United States has no dog in this fight.

Ukraine is not an American ally. No treaty obligations require the United States to get involved in this no-win situation.
The knee-jerk reaction that the United States has to get involved in the internal affairs of other nations, or referee between neighboring countries at odds with each other, has to be challenged because, sooner or later, push is going to come to shove and the United States will have to put up or shut up–again.

Russia did not invade Ukraine.
No one did.
Russia did not even invade Crimea.
They were invited in by a group of partisans who invaded the Crimean parliament, tossed the incumbents out, declared themselves the new government and invited their Russian friends to join the party."  
TRUTH REALLY SUCKS SOMETIMES, BUT THAT DOESN'T CHANGE THE TRUTH.

THE UKRAINIAN PEOPLE CAN HANDLE THEIR OWN AFFAIRS QUITE WELL, HAVE FOR A LONG, LONG TIME BY MAKING THE CHOICES THEY MADE, OR HAVE ALLOWED TO BE MADE.

THE U.S., RUSSIA, CHINA AND THE E.U. ALL TREAT THE UKRAINE (AND OTHER NATIONS OF EARTH) LIKE A JUICY BONE AND THE U.S. AND E.U. ARE WILLING TO FIGHT FOR THAT BONE TO BEAT OUT RUSSIA FOR THE FINANCIAL GAIN THEY WILL GET IF THEY CAN WIND UP WITH THE UKRAINIAN BONE.

'SUPER POWERS' HAVE INVADED AND BUTTED INTO OTHER NATIONS' AFFAIRS FOR OVER 100 YEARS NOW.

ONCE UPON A TIME, WE DECLARED WARS TO GET AT ANOTHER NATION'S NATURAL RESOURCES, BUT TODAY, IT'S ALL DONE BY PROXY, BEHIND THE SCENES, AND ALWAYS IN THE NAME OF 'DEMOCRACY'.

WHEN ANY OF THOSE NATIONS PROTEST OR TRY TO BLOCK FOREIGN INTERFERENCE INTO THEIR AFFAIRS, THERE IS ALWAYS HELL TO PAY. 

WHAT IF TRUMP IS RIGHT ABOUT UKRAINE AND THE NEED TO FURTHER INVESTIGATE BURISMA?  


-------

FURTHER READING:


-- U.S. hand in Ukraine coup impossible to deny
19 Feb 2015   
"Washington was investing heavily in Ukraine long before the Maidan protests started in Kiev in 2013. According to Victoria Nuland, the State Department's top diplomat for Europe, since 1991 America has poured $5 billion of taxpayers' money into what she called assisting Ukrainians in building "democratic skills and institutions."

Some of the money went into sponsoring various NGOs, political parties and media outlets. For instance, Hromadske.tv, an internet-based television channel created in summer 2013, received a grant of some $50,000 from the US embassy. The channel provided full-time coverage of the Maidan protests and gave a platform to various opposition figures.

Such funding is a well-known tool of the American government. Washington describes it as promoting a positive change and denies accusations that it gives money to get leverage to pursue its own goals in targeted countries. But in Ukraine US officials played a far more prominent role than simply funding local players.

Some like film director Oliver Stone even call it a US-staged coup, while former US Congressman Ron Paul called for the US to stop meddling in Ukraine.

The US government's support for the post-coup government in Kiev never dwindled even as it went on to encroach on media freedom and the free speech and launched a military crackdown on its dissenting eastern regions. At times, critics say, it was difficult to distinguish the new Ukraine from an entity directly ruled from Washington.

One ironic episode occurred in December, when the Ukrainian Security Service building flew a US flag alongside a Ukrainian one over its entrance. Photos of the flags were quickly dismissed as a propaganda fake by Ukrainian bloggers, but the SBU later confirmed that it ran up the stars and stripes to honor visiting US Under Secretary Rose Gottemoeller, who is in charge of arms deals with the State Department.

The debate over the flag was partially fuelled by rumors in Ukraine that the SBU allocated an entire level in its HQ to US consultants, including active CIA agents.

A humorous moment came in Biden's trip when he chaired a session with Ukrainian officials, taking the seat normally reserved for the president of Ukraine. Ironically, Dozhd TV, a leading Russian opposition TV channel, erroneously called Biden the acting president of Ukraine and misquoted him as demanding that Russia "stopped meddling into US internal affairs."

For Biden, Ukraine's economic future is a matter of concern not only due to his office but also due to his family's ties with the Ukrainian energy sector. In May, Ukraine's largest private gas company, Burisma Holdings, announced the appointment of VP Biden's son, Hunter, to its board of directors. The White House insisted the appointment posed no conflict of interest for America's second-ranking public official.

These and other examples of US "power brokering" raise some doubt about Washington's claimed distance from the regime change in Ukraine. After all, the US has a long record of meddling in other countries' affairs, ousting governments Washington didn't like and imposing those it did.

Why would Ukraine be any different, skeptics ask?







//WW