Thank you Graham for this accurate presentation.

This should be a reminder for those of us in Australia who believe that America will come to rescue us if necessary. They won't, so we should rather have our own nuclear and biological weapons in order to prevent us from being in a similar situation as Ukraine and (later) the Baltic states.

Oh dear. What nonsense.
To re-cap: The "West" did overthrow an elected government in Kiev about six months ago. The neo-cons in the US admitted as much when they boasted of spending 5 billion dollars destabilising that country over the previous few years.
Then it acquiesced in the formation of neo-nazi battalions who promptly burned some separatists alive in the city of Odessa before moving on to the Donbas whose Russian-speaking residents had been targeted for removal since the coup that overthrew the government in Kiev.
Next, in a black flag operation gone horribly wrong, a Malaysian airliner was brought down, and that was blamed on Russia. Not one shred of evidence backing this spurious claim has ever been presented.
Meanwhile, the citizens of Crimea voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia rather than become part of a Nazified Ukraine. No doubt they were encouraged to do this by Russia who had historical claims on the area going back to the 1700's when they took it from the Ottoman Empire. And let's not forget Russia's one warm-water port and access to the Mediterranean is in Sevastopol. Did we really think they would allow NATO to supplant them there?
And now the blow-back from ill-considered sanctions are beginning to bite hard European farmers and fishermen. And where will the gas needed to heat their homes this coming winter be coming from?
And Australia? We are only in it because Abbott and his Bishop have decided to play the Yankee bitch. Foolish doesn't even begin to describe that call.
This entire exercise remains an attempt to block the emergence of a Beijing-Moscow-Berlin trading block that - surprise/surprise - would not answer to Washington nor the IMF nor the World Bank. No wonder they're packing it inside the Beltway. The world is calling time on the Empire of Chaos.

No he's not!
There is no way the west can back down from or appease a virtual dictator!
What we need to do, is call the bluff and roll out the now seriously overdue, missile shield, and with as much urgency alacrity as possible!
All while changing our energy options over, where possible, to endlessly sustainable, and quite massively cheaper ones.
Putin's grip on power is only as strong as his energy market, and he knows it, and indeed, that the west has recently discovered huge new reserves, and even larger endlessly sustainable, vastly cheaper alternatives; and he could quite stupidly, force them to change over to them!
Putin may well be strong, but he's not stupid, and knows a doomsday scenario/economic death rattle, even as he puts one.
This is a time for fearless resolve, and for ignoring sabre rattling ultimatums.
Rather than giving Putin more time to build up his war machine/border hugging military forces, we have no other choice than to call his bluff.
We made this not calling a bluff mistake, the last time we confronted a power hungry land grabbing dictator, who also claimed he was just righting past wrongs!
Lets just not go there again!
Rhrosty.

@Halduell. We'll said. I am afraid that Mr Cooke has learnt very little in his 40 years of journalism. The pap served up here is all too reminiscent of the nonsense currently appearing in the msm. He seems to be swallowing wholesale the propaganda pouring out of Washington.

Putin as dictator wanting to swallow up what used to be the Soviet Empire is such a tired and discredited meme that I am profoundly disappointed OLO trots it out.

I doubt that Mr Cooke is even interested in the truth but he might one day actually look at the evidence rather than the hyperbole. One has to ask the question: why have the Australian media gone quiet on MH17? Is it because the facts are emerging that don't fit the Abbott narrative? Why did Australia sign a secret deal not to release the results of the investigation, and why was that fact not even reported in the Oz media?

The US is again running amok in Europe for their own geopolitical aims, discussion of which is again conspicuously absent from our media, in all it's forms. This time there is a very real danger of escalation to nuclear war, and it won't be Mr Putin's fault.

Graham Cook is part of the Corporate establishment and will not tell the truth.
The reason why the West wants war is that their Central bankster masters are losing their power. The BRICS nations now have their development bank free of the debt creation money system of the West. China and Russia don't need war as they can win the peace with real productivity.

The only way out for our criminal oligarchs is war. They need war to escape their own people and to keep their ponzy scams going.

‘He is winning this game of bluff and counter-bluff because right from the start European leaders and United States President Barak Obama ruled out direct military intervention in support of the beleaguered Government in Kiev.’

Oh, please. This is the macho equivalent of a Cinderella story.

Putin is winning this game of ‘so-called bluff and counter-bluff’ because European leaders and the US president are clearly the aggressors here, and most of the NON-Western-MSM-brainwashed world population can see it.

Putin is winning because he knows full-well that the EU and US regimes haven’t an ounce of concrete evidence to back up the fight they’re aggressively spoiling for. Also, he knows full-well that, among other things, the longer the EU and US regimes refuse to release the MH17 black box evidence they are sitting on, the deeper the hole they dig for themselves.

And about that Cuban missile crisis. What we never hear to this day is that there were two parts to the deal – the USSR would remove its missiles from Cuba AND NATO would remove its missiles from Turkey (you know … the ones pointed directly at Moscow). Funny that it’s never referred to as the Cuban-Turkish Missile Crisis.

This article is a very one-sided and biased view of events that led to a dangerous situation.

It only started as a popular (West-)Ukrainian uprising against the democratically elected, turned unpopular, president Yanukovych. It led to Putin’s direct interference only AFTER this revolt was kidnapped by outside interests (unlike the Orange Revolution of 2004) that Putin saw - rightly or wrongly - as threatening Russia’s very security, notably by cutting it off the Black Sea (hence the annexation of Crimea containing Russia’s only warm water naval base), see e.g. George Freedman’s analysis of America’s probable intentions in "Ukraine, Iraq and a Black Sea Strategy" (http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/ukraine-iraq-and-black-sea-strategy#axzz3C9e6GDGs).

The separatists in Eastern Ukraine did not have much support until Poroshenko decided to bomb them. (Whatever could be said about Yanukovych, he did not use the army against his own population). Russia started to visibly support the Donbas separatists only AFTER Poroshenko, already clearly on the NATO side of the conflict, proclaimed that after victory they will go to reseize Crimea with its Sevastopol naval base.

As I quoted elsewhere re Yatsenyuk and Porosheko NATO aspirations encouraged by the NATO GS Rasmussen, “Imagine the American outrage if China built an impressive military alliance and tried to include Canada and Mexico.” (http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/141769/john-j-mearsheimer/why-the-ukraine-crisis-is-the-wests-fault).

Whatever the outcome, I think this kidnapping of the Ukrainian popular upheaval has finally succeeded in driving a wedge between EU - notably Western Europe - and Russia, culturally representing the East of Europe and - not less importantly - economically the owner of vast natural resources that could well complement Europe’s, notably Germany’s, technological know-how lacking such resources. Sadly the carriers of this “wedge” are former Soviet satellites, Poland, the Baltics and if we are to believe Friedman, also Romania.

The US is firmly - militarily as well as economically - embracing Europe even more than before by driving Russia into the arms of China. Cui prodest?

It is a mathematical certainty that the next collapse will be of biblical proportions. Since 2007 USA Corps have borrowed $4.1 trillion from our counterfeiting banks to buy their own shares. The Derivative gambling bubble is $285,000 for every person on the planet and your savings and super is tied up with this. As Gerald Celente says, when all else fails, they take you to war.

http://usawatchdog.com/financial-system-upside-down-blame-game-on-coming-crash-bill-holter/

They will print the US $ to oblivion and then try to use the "Special Drawing rights " of the IMF to bring in an international currency,thus a new ponzy scheme. By money printing as debt,they no longer have to pay them off and steal from us via inflation to do it.

The real enemy is not Russia and China but our own Oligarchy who will screw us to the grave if we let them."Bail in" ie a Cyprus Style confiscation of bank deposits is on the cards.http://cecaust.com.au/

They will also get your super when the share market crashes since they bet against their own shares going down on the derivative market while we lose everything.

If you thought Australia's foreign policy couldn't get any worse, well, this morning it did. Abbott, incredibly, has announced military support for Ukraine (the Kiev version). This must be the first time we have declared open support for a Nazi based regime.

Unfortunately for Abbott's grandstanding, Poroshenko and Putin announced they had reached agreement in the terms if a ceasefire. Is Abbott now going to declare war on Russia?

The wholesale stupidity of the media was compounded further this morning when the SMH through its alleged foreign editor Peter Hartcher announced yet again in the Donetsk region "where MH17 was shot down on July 17 by pro-Russian rebels". It is simply unbelievable that the country's major newspaper, whose masthead proudly proclaims "independent always" should lend itself to this nonsense.

Why are the country's media, and I include OLO in this criticism, incapable of an honest and fair appraisal of the evidence. Instead we are treated like mushrooms and fed a constant diet of BS.

Just as the Russians were able to produce incontrovertible evidence on 21 July from satellite and radar data, I am sure that they will provide further evidence confirming what has already been reported widely (but not in Australia) that MH17 was brought down by Ukrainian fighter jets. I suspect that Russia copied the Black Box data during the four days between the crash and when the separatists handed them over to the Malaysian authorities. Fear that this is the case is the most likely explanation for the inexplicable delay in releasing the data, and the refusal of Ukraine to hand over the control tower recordings.

We dishonour the dead by being a party to this travesty.

Yes James.We don't need war,deception and theft like our financial masters. Our greatest weapon is the truth and the courage to speak it.

If just 20% of the pop knew the truth, they would bring down our entire Govt and the financial system which owns it.

This is just so stupid of the US. I thought Iraq was dumb but this takes the cake.
As if Russia would allow their next door neighbor to join NATO. There would be US bases in spitting distance of the Kremlin within weeks.

Did the Americans sit back when Cuba allied with the USSR? Like hell they did and Cuba has been paying for it ever since.

Just more of the same from the evil empire. And they wonder why people hate them.

Russia is a Senior member of the *Security Council* based on merit, in addition to anything else.

And, when there is a country in its shadow which has taken to lethal fighting amongst themselves, then I think that it is not unreasonable to expect that they would respond proactively.

At times such as these, and as history attests, minorities and others are often subjected to atrocity, thus, if there indeed were those who sought sanctuary in the bosom of *Mother Russia* then I for one do not see anything wrong with that.

Conversely, it would be unfortunate to see Ukraine set up to fail.

Those who cheer on the belated attempt by the U.S. to gain control of the world must be tearing their hair out.

The U.S. has managed to convince nations like Australia that it will win any confrontation that might occur. Australians who believe this are deranged.

No one will win a nuclear war. It will be a Pyrrhic victory of gigantic proportions. The only good part of it is that the U.S. will be destroyed and most of its killer-people will die leaving what's left of our world to try peace and sharing as a way of life (as opposed to endless killing and greed).

Let's have the nuclear war, get it over and done with. And let those who brought it about be severely punished for their stupidity!

I despair when looking at the state of the world that we are leaving to our children. More and more often of late I believe that Australia, with the U.S., is backing the wrong side, and in the process making the world a far more dangerous place.
In Eastern Ukraine we have a Russian speaking people, frightened of what they see as a fascist administration in Kiev, who were given to Ukraine when Ukraine was essentially still part of Russia, and who now demonstrably wish to be re-united with Russia, fighting, as I see it, for their right. Russia, understandably, wants the territory back. They have fought for a southern ocean access for centuries. One could say that this conflict has nothing to do with us, but I, for one, sympathize with the separatists.
In Syria, Abbott did not want us to get involved as it was a fight of "Baddies verses Baddies". So it was, but at least under Bashir the minorities - Christians, Jews, Alawites and other minor Muslim sects - were able to live in peace. If we had picked sides, it should not have been with the rebels.
If we are to have another major war, surely it will be with Islam. We have suffered from Islamic terrorist attacks in London, Madrid, New York City, Boston, among many others, while seemingly oblivious of the threat posed by our tolerance of Islam in the West. Russia is so obviously a potential ally in the dangerous times ahead, and, like us, is already suffering from Islam. Let's give them back their access to the Black Sea, in exchange for their help against ISIS.

For reasons that I do not fully understand there is a continuing flood of misinformation about the origins of the Ukrainian crisis. Abbott and Bishop parrot their nonsense and this is faithfully reinforced by the mainstream media. So far, so usual.

What puzzles me is that the so-called alternative media are no better other than in their comment sections where there is an attempt to discuss the issues. But they refuse, and OLO is no exception, to invite a contribution from someone who is au fait with other explanations.

Ordinarily it might not matter, but in the Ukraine we have potentially the most dangerous situation in Europe since the collapse of the Soviet Union. I went to hear Malcolm Fraser last night. He used the word "betrayal" in describing Australia's current foreign policy, elements of which are not even discussed in the mainstream media. When one is aware of even some of the facts, that is not too strong a word to use.

There is a strong need for a rational, evidence based, discussion about our strategic imperatives. Graham, this is your chance to lead the way.

I often comment on Malcolm Faser's facebook giving words of support. He only has some 1500 followers while Abbott numbers in the 200,000.

Time to wake up Australia, or lose both freedom and wealth.

Russia and Ukraine are seamlessly - in the cultural as well as economical sense - connected, and in 1991, when Ukraine became independent, the boundary between them became the one existing between the two Soviet republics. During those years of confusion the week Yeltsin did not realise, or care, that the geopolitically important for Russia soft underbelly - access to the Black Sea, notably Crimea with Sevastopol (c.f. my previous post re George Freedman’s admission of American intentions in the Black Sea region) - became part of the, assumed to remain militarily and economically neutral, Ukraine.

I think these were the main reasons (beside economic - much of Russia’s industry, including military, depends on Donbas) why Putin got involved, after Ukraine proclaimed its abandonment of neutrality, in spite of his proclamations of ethnic, or even humanitarian, motives.

“Fascists” or “Nazis” have become standard invective names hurled at each other in the present Ukrainian-Russian propaganda war by both sides, with not much actual content. Nevertheless it is a fact that East Ukraine separatists did not have much support among the local population until Kiev decided to bomb them.

“Back in April, we asked only about federalization and the status of the Russian language. That was all. We could have negotiated. But Kiev preferred to start to kill us for our unpretentious requirements. And now, of course, we have nowhere to retreat, there can be no talk about federalization any more - only about independence” Alexander Zakharchenko, a separatist leader (who represented Donbas also at yesterday’s Minsk meeting supervised by OSCE) in an interview - http://www.mk.ru/politics/2014/08/28/plan-opolchencev-donbassa-tolko-otdelyatsya-pri-pomoshhi-amerikanskogo-oruzhiya.html - of 31. August.

Well, that is a an extremist requirement so have become Poroshenko’s. Nevertheless, yesterday’s acceptance in Minsk of Putin’s seven-point ceasefire plan (and its apparent implementation) might suggest that both Russia and USA (suddenly in immediate dire straits because of the ISIS advancements in Iraq) were successful in exerting some pressure on their respective proteges in the Ukraine conflict.

Sorry, "economic" not "economical"!

Not sure whether Putin trolls or naive posters living in an Australian bubble.... The nature of conflict in Ukraine precludes accurate reporting, let alone access, thus we need to trust both leaders' utterances and news reports.

The tsunami of paranoid conspiracy theories, stereotyping and smearing of anyone not with Putin is a classic neo con media tactic which belies the small circle of power in Russia that manipulates and controls its own nation.

By deeming all westerners to be naive lackeys says more about the lack of knowledge and understanding of democracies, than anythhing about the neo Nazi, jewish, NATO etc. controlled west.

On the other hand how does one explain the fact that well before this conflagration, middle class Russians (not just oligarchs) have been sorting out 'bolt holes' in the EU?

Unfortunately for those Russian citizens not in the Moscow western Russia orbit and with resources to leave, i.e. eastern Russia, you get stuck with a corrupt mini Putin governor, your childrens' future is heavily compromised, and then be viewed as a threat to the regime.

I am happy enough with less than perfect democracy knowing that NGOs, media, small medium enterprises etc. will not be mugged by a state corrupted by it's own monopolistic leadership and oligarchs. Further, in 'liberal' democracies, we can at least (eventually) kick out incompetent or corrupt leaders (politically, legally etc.), showing them the lack of respect that one cannot do easily in 'illiberal' democracies like Turkey, Russia etc.

Andras Smith lives in a very naïve world of the West being some beacon of democracy on this planet. It is the West and it's banking cabals that have initiated wars for the concept of their "New World Order" ever since the instigation of the US Federal Reserve in 1914.

http://www.maxkeiser.com/tag/jim-willie/
Dr Jim Willie has been saying for a while that Germany will join the BRICS nations because they know the meaning of hyper-inflation via the Wiermar Republic. This will mean the end of the EU and NATO. The US $ is almost dead and this means the end of $ trillions in gambling derivatives.