Obama Approves Minsk Agreement, Great for Putin

Posted on February 15, 2015February 15, 2015 by Denise Simon

The new Minsk ceasefire agreement empowers Russia-backed separatists with a number of leverages over Ukraine. If implemented, the agreement could provide a functioning framework for a mutually acceptable political settlement. In the event of non-implementation, a re-eruption of hostilities is highly likely.

In Minsk on 12th February, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President François Hollande managed to reach an agreement on the ceasefire in Eastern Ukraine, and the outlines of a conflict settlement.

Formally, the document was signed not by the heads of state, but by the Trilateral Contact Group (composed of representatives of Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE) as well as the leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk separatists. This indirect scheme allowed Kyiv to reach an agreement with the separatists without formally recognizing them as legitimate partners.

The document, composed of thirteen points, refers to the separatist entities as “particular districts of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts”, using the same wording as the September 2014 Minsk agreement. Hence, neither their self-proclaimed names, Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics, nor the Russian term Novorossiya are used, which is a strong signal that none of the parties questions that these regions belong to Ukraine.

*** So what else needs to be known? Who is still supporting Putin and why….

The segments of the Russian population that, arguably, have the best chance to dissuade President Vladimir Putin from his actions in Ukraine are business leaders and the rich. But despite having lost millions of dollars because of sanctions against Russia , the falling ruble and low oil prices, they still rally behind their leader-both privately and publicly.

‎

Despite a cease-fire announced Thursday , Western sanctions on Russia over its support of insurgents in neighboring Ukraine have already pushed Russia’s borrowing costs higher and crushed its currency (Exchange: RUBUSD=). The problems have been made worse by the price of oil, whose fall since September has further undercut the petro-state’s ability to fund itself. Yet Putin still enjoys broad domestic support, and experts tell CNBC that the country’s monied class is no exception. Timothy Ash, who heads emerging markets research at Standard Bank (Johannesburg Stock Exchange: SBK-ZA), summarizes the phenomenon in a few words: “Nationalism plays very well with many people,” he told CNBC

Alexander Kliment, director of Russia research at Eurasia Group, said the sanctions have actually strengthened elite support for Putin because they have bolstered the government’s position as a last-resort lender for them. “Also, sanctions have inflamed patriotic sentiment and been a convenient scapegoat for economic woes,” Kilment told CNBC.

“If you are an oligarch, it’s bad to suffer sanctions from the West,” he said, “but you’re still pretty well-off as part of the Russian system. It’s an awfully big leap to turn your back on that, which would risk literally everything you have.” Read More Total CEO: US will not become energy independent Edward Mermelstein, a New York-based attorney who works with Russian business clients, told CNBC that Putin’s popularity is no longer dependent on finance as much as the might of Russia.

“As long as the country is perceived as strong, he will continue to dominate domestically. The Russian citizen can withstand famine, but they cannot withstand the appearance of weakness,” he said.

While some companies are getting hit hard by what Russian Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has acknowledged is an economy in “dire straits,” others are finding ways to benefit.

*** Now comes the alternate banking system. Almost 91 domestic credit institutions have been incorporated into the new Russian financial system, the analogous of SWIFT, an international banking network.The new service, will allow Russian banks to communicate seamlessly through the Central Bank of Russia. It should be noted that Russia’s Central Bank initiated the development of the country’s own messaging system in response to repeated threats voiced by Moscow’s Western partners to disconnect Russia from SWIFT.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev meeting with miniters

SWIFT (The Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) is a Belgium-based international organization that provides services and a standardized environment for global banking communicating that allows financial institutions to send and receive messages about their transactions. Earlier this month Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov expressed confidence that Russia would not be disconnected from SWIFT. In her turn, Russian Central Bank First Deputy Chair Ksenia Yudaeva called upon Russian civilians and financial institutions not to dramatize the current situation.Russian experts point to the fact that Western businesses would face severe losses if they expelled Russia from the international SWIFT system. On the other hand, the alternative system launched by Russia might reduce the negative impacts caused by measures imposed by the West, including possible disconnection from SWIFT, and diminish Western financial dominance over Russia.

Ukraine has a Deadly History

Posted on February 14, 2015February 14, 2015 by Denise Simon

A cease fire was signed this week known as the Minsk Agreement. The ink was not dry and the hostilities continued. So looking back on Ukraine’s history is a look at today and tomorrow.

After hours of beatings, the men in black took Lutsenko into the woods, put a bag over his head, made him kneel in the snow and told him to say his prayers. Then they walked away.

Not long after Lutsenko emerged, Verbytsky was found in the same woods, bound in duct tape, his ribs broken, internal organs smashed. An autopsy showed he froze to death. What is a cause of Putin’s military aggression over Ukraine?

Oil.

Ukraine’s state gas and oil company Naftohaz has reported discovering a sizeable oil field on the country’s territory.

Nafothaz said late July 11 that the discovery was one of the largest oil fields found in Ukraine in some 15 years.

Naftohaz believes the Budishchansko-Chutovskoyefield in eastern Ukraine’s Poltava region, contains some 12.8 million tons of oil.

Naftohaz has been working the site since 2011 and the company’s public relations department said it was the first oil field owned solely by the Ukrainian company.

Ukraine’s government is attempting to wean the country off its dependence on Russian energy supplies. Kyiv has placed a priority on developing the country’s own energy resources and diversifying sources for importing energy supplies.

*** Yet Ukraine’s history is a look back at what is underway today.

Ukraine was formally incorporated into the USSR as the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (UkSSR) in 1922.
The Communists were aware that resistance to their regime was deep and widespread. To pacify the Ukrainian people and to gain control, Moscow initially permitted a great deal of local autonomy to exist in the UkSSR. The
newly established Ukrainian Autocephalous (self-ruling) Orthodox Church and the new All-Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, non-Communist national institutions of great importance, were both permitted to continue their work
until the end of the 1920’s.

All of this changed once Joseph Stalin came to power. Stalin wanted to consolidate the new Communist empire and to strengthen its industrial base. Ukrainian national aspirations were a barrier to those ends because even
Ukrainian Communists opposed exploitation by Moscow. In Stalin’s eyes, Ukraine, the largest of the non-Russian republics, would have to be subdued. Thus, the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church was
placed under the jurisdiction of the Communist-controlled Russian Orthodox Church. Ukrainian bishops, priests and thousands of Christian lay leaders were sent to Siberian labor camps, the so-called “Gulag.” Hundreds of
thousands, possibly over a million, of Ukraine’s intellectual leaders – writers, university professors, scientists, and journalists – were liquidated in purges ordered by Stalin. Not even loyal Ukrainian Communists were exempt
from Stalin’s terror. By 1939, practically the entire (98%) of Ukraine’s Communist leadership had been liquidated.

Hardest hit by Stalin’s policies were Ukraine’s independent landowners, the so-called “kulaks” (kurkuly in Ukrainian). Never precisely defined, a kulak was a member of the alleged “upper stratum” of landowners but in
reality anyone who owned a little land, even as little as 25 acres, came to be labeled as a kulak. Stalin ordered that all private farms would have to be collectivized. During the process, according to Soviet sources, which are
no doubt on the conservative side, some 200,000 Ukrainian families were “de-kulakized” or dispossessed of all land. By the summer of 1932, 69.5% of all Ukrainian farm families and 80% of all farm land had been forcibly
collectivized.

Stalin decided to eliminate Ukraine’s independent farmers for three reasons:
(1) they represented the last bulwark of resistance to totalitarian Russian control;
(2) the USSR was in desperate need of foreign capital to build more factories and the best way to obtain
that capital was to increase agricultural exports from Ukraine once known as “the breadbasket of
Europe”;
(3) the fastest way to increase agricultural exports was to expropriate land through a process of farm
collectivization and to assign procurement quotas to each Soviet republic.
During the collectivization process, Ukrainian farmers resisted vigorously, often violently, especially when the GPU (Soviet secret police) and militia forced them to turn their land over to the government. Thousands of
farmers were killed and millions more were deported to Siberia to be replaced by more trustworthy workers.

*** Fast forward to the 1980’s, were marked by increasing political impotence of Soviet leadership. The Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant accident of April 26,1986, brings back painful memories for all Ukrainians. This disaster caused tens of thousands of deaths and health related problems, and inflicted enormous ecological and economic damage. Chernobyl served to rock the Communist Party establishment with political fallout as the facts behind bureaucratic ineptitude, negligence, disregard for the ordinary citizens, and cover-up emerged and began to stir the minds of the people.

On July 6, 1990, the legislature proclaimed Ukraine’s sovereignty. In August 1991, a failed three-day military coup of the Kremlin’s would-be dictators led to the Declaration of Independence by the Verhovna Rada (Parliament) on August 24. On December 1, in a nationwide referendum, 93% of Ukraine’s citizens voted for an independent Ukraine and chose Leonid Krawchuk, former communist ideologist, as their first democratically elected President. On July 10, 1994, Leonid Kuchma, former director of the world’s biggest rocket plant, defeated Leonid Krawchuk to become the second President of independent Ukraine.

Following the Orange Revolution, on December 26, 2004, after two rounds of falsified elections, Viktor Yushchenko beat the Kremlin-backed candidate in the third round. Under Yushchenko, Ukraine finally became free from Moscow’s 300-year domination. *** Can Ukraine survive the current Soviet loyalists aggression? Not without assistance from the West, but will that assistance come?

White House Invited Muslim Brotherhood Policy

Posted on February 12, 2015February 13, 2015 by Denise Simon

A ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION WITH “THE STOP QATAR NOW COALITION”

Who Are the Muslim Brotherhood-Linked Leaders Obama Met?

US President Barack Obama, privately met with 14 Muslim leaders, including several leaders of Muslim Brotherhood front groups with ties to Hamas.

Imam Mohamed Magid, President of the Islamic Society of North America and the All Dulles Area Muslim Society (ADAMS) Center.

The White House has released the names of senior American Muslim leaders that President Obama met with personally last week. The list of names was included on the transcript of the White House daily press briefing on Thursday, despite journalists having requested the information much sooner. Prior to that, the White House had refused to name the leaders.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with the President meeting with representatives from any faith community and with the Muslim community in particular. Yet some of the individuals who met with the President have alarming links to the Muslim Brotherhood

and organizations that have funded terrorism.

Azhar Azeez represented the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) in the talks with Obama. Declassified FBI documents show that ISNA was identified as a Muslim Brotherhood front group as early as 1987 and its past leaders include Abdurrahman Alamoudi, who was convicted on terrorism related charges in 2004.

In 2007, ISNA was designated as an unindicted co-conspirator in the trial of the Holy Land Foundation, a charity shut down by the U.S. government for financing Hamas. The U.S. Department of Justice listed ISNA as one of the “individuals/entities who are and/or were members of the U.S. Muslim Brotherhood.”

Mr. Azeez is also the senior National Director of Islamic Relief USA, the American branch of Islamic Relief worldwide. The United Arab Emirates lists Islamic Relief Worldwide as a terrorist organization. Israel also banned Islamic Relief from operating in the disputed territories it administers, accusing it of funding Hamas.

According to the Israeli Ministry for Foreign Affairs “The IRW provides support and assistance to Hamas’s infrastructure. The IRW’s activities in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip are carried out by social welfare organizations controlled and staffed by Hamas operatives. The intensive activities of these associations are designed to further Hamas’s ideology among the Palestinian population.”

Five senior members of Islamic Relief USA were named in a list of 30 Muslim Brotherhood operatives in America by the leading Egyptian newspaper El-Watan. Azeez’s bio also says he is a founder and past president of the Dallas/Fort Worth chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), another U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity and unindicted co-conspirator. CAIR is also listed as a terrorist organization by the United Arab Emirates.

Imam

Mohamed Magid is the President of the Islamic Society of North America and head of the All Dulles Area Muslim Society ( ADAMS) Center, in which capacity he met with the President. The ADAMS Center was investigated by the FBI for connections to terrorism funding and was raided in 2004 by federal agents.

Mohamed Magid signed a letter in September 2014 alongside other Islamist leaders which condemned the Islamic State while asserting the need for an Islamic Caliphate

and supporting the hudud

punishments of sharia

law, which include amputation, flogging and the execution of apostates. The letter said that a person could only be regarded as an apostate if the person “openly declares disbelief.”

Azhar Azeez also signed the aforementioned letter. Among the other signatories to that letter was terrorist supporting Sheikh

Abdullah bin Bayyah, who in the past endorsed a fatwa

that authorized the killing of US soldiers. He also said that giving donations to jihadists who fight Israel count as zakat

and said as recently as 2013 that Muslim leaders should give Hamas financial and military assistance to fight Israel. Bin Bayyah was cited by Obama in an address to the UN in September 2014 as a Muslim leader who supports peace.

Hoda Hawa is National Policy Advisor of the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC). MPAC was founded by members of the Muslim Brotherhood, one of which, Mather Hathout, served jail time in Egypt for his membership in the group.

In 2001 the then President of MPAC said that Israel should be included on the suspect list of those who might have perpetrated 9/11. MPAC cooperated with other Muslim-Brotherhood aligned groups to oppose the appointment of Muslim anti-Islamist activist Dr. Zudhi Jasser to the U.S. Commission on International Freedom.

MPAC co-founder Mather Hathout has also made statements in the past in support of Lebanese Shiite terrorist group Hezbollah.

They also have a very limited following. A 2011 Gallup poll found that only 6% of Muslim-American males and 1% of females chose MPAC as the organization that most represents their interests, even though MPAC has large resources and has been around since 1988.

Also present was Rahat Hussain, president of the Universal Muslim Association of America (UMAA) . The UMAA received thousands of dollars from the Alavi Foundation, an Iranian propaganda front group, from 2005 onwards. Clarion Project discovered that they received at least $138,000 from the Alavi Foundation between 2005 and 2012. The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office investigations chief, Adam Kaufmann, said “We found evidence that the government of Iran really controlled everything about the foundation.”

The British Government is set this week to launch a major clampdown on Muslim Brotherhood front groups and the funding of terrorism after lengthy investigations found multiple Muslim Brotherhood entities operating within the country.

Yet in America the State Department received a delegation from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt. The meetings were described as “fruitful” by one of the delegates. The State Department, after facing criticism for the meeting, then doubled down on their decision to do so in a later press briefing.

This is while Brotherhood representatives in Turkey are calling for violence on the streets in Egypt, saying “we are now in the retaliation phase.” At the same time, a Brotherhood TV station based in Turkey broadcast a threat to all foreigners in Egypt that they must flee the country or face being targeted by terrorist attacks, while another Muslim Brotherhood figure said “It is time to begin armed insurrection.”

Given that these American Muslim leaders have highly problematic connections to Muslim Brotherhood front groups, why are they being given access to meet the President personally, especially when one takes into account the presence of genuine anti-Islamist Muslim leaders like Dr. Zudhi Jasser who are denied such opportunities?

The Stop Qatar Now Coalition of good Patriots have spent weeks gathering evidence, documents and performed interviews to bring to publication the facts on the Muslim Brotherhood penetration into the American culture against the will and knowledge of Americans and the U.S. Constitution…

BROADTCAST LIVE WORLDWIDE: THURSDAYS – 9:00PM (eastern) / 6:00pm (pacific) on WDFP – Restoring America Radio , Red State Talk Radio, American Agenda, Nightside Radio Studios, and on Freedom In America Radio

Merkel, Obama and Putin

Posted on February 9, 2015February 9, 2015 by Denise Simon

Exactly why is Angela Merkel of German visiting the White House today? Putin is in Cairo today expanding his influence or is he? There is a real split on arming Ukraine, on a military solution or giving diplomacy more time with regard to getting Putin out of Ukraine. There have been numerous cease-fire agreements, each have collapsed, such that 5400 people in Ukraine are dead. What about Greece? There is also the question of what Putin is doing with Cyprus.

Cyprus has denied Russian media reports that it is ready to lease two military bases to Russia.

“There is no question of Russian air or naval military bases on the soil of Cyprus,” said Foreign Minister Ioannis Kasoulides.

Earlier, Russian government newspaper Rossiiskaya Gazeta said Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades would make the offer on an official visit to Moscow on 25 February.

Cyprus is in the EU but not in Nato.

The leasing deal would concern an air base near Paphos and a naval base at Limassol, according to Rossiiskaya Gazeta. Russia can already use the bases temporarily.

But Mr Kasoulides dismissed the leasing claim, saying “there has never been any request from Russia about this”, the Cyprus News Agency CNA reported.

He said President Anastasiades was referring to “the renewal of a military co-operation agreement with Russia consisting of maintenance of military equipment sold to Cyprus years ago, as well as the purchase of spare parts according to existing contracts”.

He added that “as regards the offering of facilities, these are of a purely non-military humanitarian nature, such as the evacuation of Russian civilians from the Middle East if the need arises”.

Russian warships can already use the Limassol base for refuelling and the Andreas Papandreou air base for humanitarian missions.

Commander of US Army in Europe Sees Russia Mobilizing for War ‘I believe the Russians are mobilizing right now for a war that they think is going to happen in five or six years —not that they’re going to start a war in five or six years, but I think they are anticipating that things are going to happen, and that they will be in a war of some sort, of some scale, with somebody within the next five or six years.”

So says Lt. Gen. Frederick “Ben” Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe….

“Strong Europe!” reads a sign on one of the walls. Next to it is the U.S. Army Europe insignia, a burning sword set against a blue shield. The two signs represent the strategic framework the three-star general has introduced—building on America’s decades-long role on the Continent—since taking command last year of the 30,000 or so U.S. soldiers stationed in Europe.

The U.S. military presence in Europe is more vital at this moment than it has been in many years. American engagement is essential if the West is to deter a revanchist Russia that has set out to “redraw the boundaries of Europe,” Gen. Hodges says with a native Floridian’s drawl….

The Russians have “got some forces in Transnistria,” he says of the state that broke away from Moldova in the 1990s. “They’ve got forces in Georgia. And I think they view China as their existential threat, so they’ve got a lot of capacity out there.” The Russian military is thus already somewhat stretched, and Moscow had to carve out from existing units the battalion task groups currently arrayed near eastern Ukraine. Yet “they are clearly on a path to develop, to increase, their capacity,” Gen. Hodges says. Add to this expansion that “they’ve got very good equipment, extremely good communications equipment, their [electronic-warfare] capability, T-80 tanks.” How long will it take for Russia to reach its desired military strength? “I think within another two or three years they will have that capacity,” he says….

Then there is the Kremlin’s sheer aggressiveness, not least on the nuclear front. The Pentagon last year announced that it is removing missiles from 50 of America’s underground silos, converting B-52 long-range bombers to conventional use and disabling 56 submarine-based nuclear-launch tubes—all well ahead of the 2018 New Start treaty deadline. Moscow, by contrast, has been simulating nuclear strikes on Western capitals as part of annual exercises.

Gen. Hodges won’t comment on the U.S. strategic-force posture in Europe other than to say he is “confident in that process.” But he adds that the fact that the Russians rehearse nuclear-strike scenarios “shows that they’re not worried about conveying a stark message like that. You know, frankly, you hear this often from many people in the West, ‘Oh, we don’t want to provoke the Russians.’ I think concern about provoking the Russians is probably misplaced. You can’t provoke them. They’re already on a path to do what they want to do….

“I’ve never been bashful about telling allies, ‘Hey, you have a responsibility here, too. You all agreed to spend 2% of your GDP on defense. Right now only four countries are doing it.'”

Yet the failure of many of European leaders to live up to their defense commitments “doesn’t change our interest,” Gen. Hodges says. “And the U.S. economic link to Europe, to the EU, dwarfs any other economic link in the world, anywhere in the Pacific, China, India, you name it. So if for no other reason it’s in our interest that Europe be stable, that people make money so they can buy U.S. products. . . .

We provide capability assurance here by being present here.”

Gen. Hodges says there is also a huge payoff in U.S. security from U.S.-European cooperation. The main lesson of the post-9/11 wars is that “we are not going to do anything by ourselves militarily,” he notes. The U.S. “needs the capacity that other countries can bring.” These benefits come “from a relatively small investment—I mean, U.S. Army Europe is 2% of the Army’s budget and about 5% of the Army’s manpower. . . . You can’t sit back in Virginia, Texas or Oregon and build relationships with people here.” He quotes his predecessor, Lt. Gen. Donald Campbell: “You can’t surge trust.”

Nor can the U.S. project national power world-wide, as it has since the end of World War II, with an overstretched Army. “There are 10 division headquarters in the Army,” he says. “Nine of them are committed right now. I’ve never seen that. I don’t think at the height of Iraq and Afghanistan you had nine out of 10 division headquarters committed against some requirement.” That leaves little in reserve if another conflict breaks out.

The Denise Simon Experience – Radio Show Archive – 02/05/15

Posted on February 5, 2015February 5, 2015 by Denise Simon

THE DENISE SIMON EXPERIENCE – RADIO SHOW

Hosted by DENISE SIMON, is the Senior Research / Intelligence Analyst for Foreign and Domestic Policy for Stand Up America US as well as the aide de camp for MG Paul E. Vallely, US ARMY (ret.)

THIS INTERVIEW WILL CREEP YOU OUT!

This week’s Guest: TIM McCLELLAN, a Political Strategist since 1973. He is a Writer, an Author and a Commentator (TV, Radio & Print) for the USA.

Tim works at the Federal and International level regarding Politics, Security, Intelligence, Legal, Federal and Supreme Court, Health Care and Entrepreneurship. He frequently does National and International interviews.

He is also a Journalist for the International Press.