Major kudos to John Fund of NRO who actually went to the heart of what took place this past weekend.    Inside this article you find the substance of when the actual Ukrainian straw was placed on the camels’ back.

Following on the heels of the “brokered” Friday 2/21 agreement one brave journalist went on *LIVE* ( <– important ) TV and did two distinct things.   First she destroyed the claims of the government.  But, more importantly, she showed the Ukrainian people how the media was complicit in telling a false story thereby destroying the construct of the ruse.   There are major lessons for all of us in the USA within her strategy.

EXCELLENT ARTICLE at NRO –  Every revolution has moments where the hinge of history seems to swing wide and everything is different and the old regime is delegitimized.

In Ukraine’s revolution, the moment that’s likely to be immortalized is when protestors charged police barricades in Kiev’s Independence Square (“Maidan”) last Thursday, reportedly capturing a number of police troops, only to have dozens of protesters then gunned down by snipers. Even a face-saving compromise brokered the next day by Western diplomats couldn’t save President Viktor Yanukovych.

His security forces withdrew their support, leaving him unguarded. At 2 a.m. last Saturday, helicopters ferried him and his stooges away from his Michael Jackson–style presidential palace to the Russophone eastern sector of Ukraine. He remains in hiding.

But for many Ukrainians, there was another moment when they realized the ground was shifting beneath them. (more…)

(New York)  It’s a made-for-TV face-off with a possible chance of thunder and lightning.

Mayor de Blasio and Al Roker are scheduled to go mano-a-mano on the “Today” show Monday.  Hizzonor has been invited to cut the ribbon on the NBC breakfast program’s new and enhanced plaza outside its Rockefeller Center studios.

But show officials announced Sunday that a de Blasio-Roker showdown is in store. (more…)

(Politico) – CNN President Jeff Zucker has decided to bring an end to Piers Morgan’s low-rated primetime show, network sources told POLITICO on Sunday. “Piers Morgan Live” could end as early as next month, though Morgan may stay with the network in another role.

Morgan, a former British tabloid editor, replaced Larry King in the 9 p.m. hour three years ago, prior to Zucker’s tenure as president. His show earned consistently low ratings, registering as few as 50,000 viewers in the 25-to-54 year-old demographic earlier this week.

“CNN confirms that Piers Morgan Live is ending,” Allison Gollust, head of CNN communications, told POLITICO on Sunday after an earlier version of this post was published. (more…)

The sunlight is within the self admission…

(Via Newsbusters)  In an interview with the black website TheRoot, incoming MSNBC host Joy Reid repeated the usual network mantra that “Everyone at MSNBC has a different, unique perspective,” and she hopes her new 2pm Eastern show will be a “table-setter for prime time.” Translation: whatever “War on Women” or Bridgegate segment I’m doing at 2 will be repeated at 5, 6, 7, 8, 9…..by one “unique perspective” after another.

Reid claimed to lament a political climate that she says has “just become really nasty” and made civilized disagreements few and far between. It’s thanks in part to what she calls a “very virulent strain that is sort of in the underbelly of society.” It’s racism, or the right wing’s horrid tendency to counter-accuse MSNBC of racism, like the accusation is a weapon: (more…)

Just when you think the Trayvon Martin story has apex’d away from insufferable you read something blood boiling LIKE THIS MIT media research study, replete with Ryan Julison interview smarm, and the blood pressure cuff needs another replacement.

Martin’s family was able to enlist the legal services of civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump on a pro bono basis. Crump had taken on a previous civil rights case and failed to convict, which he attributed to an inadequate media strategy prior to the trial itself (Caputo, 2012). Crump brought on local lawyer Natalie Jackson, who enlisted the pro bono services of publicist Ryan Julison.

Julison’s pitch did not emphasize the racial element to the story, but underscored agreed upon facts: a neighborhood watch vigilante, who was carrying a gun, shot an unarmed teenager, and was not arrested. Julison was particularly struck by the fact that a neighborhood watch captain would be carrying a firearm with no training of any kind other than a concealed weapons permit (Julison, 2012). Our manual analysis of stories confirmed that this detail had not appeared in most of the local coverage following Martin’s death. Later, Crump, when interviewed about the case, introduced racial framing around the story as the national media began to pay attention (Boedeker and Comas, 2012).  (link)

(more…)

In Austin Texas a woman was jogging.  Police claim she J-walked while jogging so they forcibly stopped her, handcuffed her and demanded id.

She did not have id in her skimpy jogging outfit, so they arrested her for “failure to identify”.

The Texas cops put her in a police car, took her to jail, booked her, mug shot, finger-prints etc., for J-walking and jogging without identification.

A guy across the street saw the whole thing and thought it was ridiculous.  He recorded the incident and took pictures.

Then the general public began using social media to express their outrage.

Unfazed by the action of his police officers, and profoundly unapologetic, the Austin Police Chief, Art Acevedo, told the media the jogger should be grateful the Austin Police Dept didn’t rape her.

(more…)

A growing national database containing school students names, addresses, test scores, learning disabilities, attendance records, disciplinary actions, extracurricular activities, vocational and technical training…. [household income, parental political affiliations, voting records, gun registrations, criminal histories, regulatory and compliance activity, IRS tax records, Obamacare medical records, known affiliations, religious beliefs, car registration, purchasing habits, energy consumption, carbon footprint compliance, etc.] ….for contractual and/or employment review, dontchaknow… Gee, what could possibly go wrong ?

RFID Tracking chips on school ID’s.   Take home laptops with GPS and spy-cam functions.  And…  Oh yeah, and those pesky ALPR (automatic license plate readers) are for what use again?

NEW YORK – In an unprecedented move, education officials will hand over personal student data to a new private company to create a national database for businesses that contract with public schools.

Working with the city, state education officials are already uploading private information about students — their names, addresses, test scores, learning disabilities, attendance and disciplinary records — into a $100 million database called inBloom. (more…)

As with all of the political turmoil present within nations, including our own, there are alignments of self-interest which need to be identified.    For a close to home reference you might think about the differences between the “establishment class” of Republicans and the “grassroots conservatives” who also situate under the same tent.

We who value “freedom” and cherish “liberty” would no more consider Mitch McConnell a champion of our cause than Barack Obama.  Nor would we align with “establishment” principles – yet, from the outside looking in, it would be easy to define us with ideological attachment to Republicans simply by our association. 

It would be easy, yet it would be vastly inaccurate.   Such is the larger dynamic as we look toward Ukraine and what is taking place.

“Freedom” and “Liberty” are tenuous propositions under the best of circumstances because they ultimately are defined by people.   People with a vested interest in controlling the expressions thereof.    

With that in mind a thoughtful contributor, with direct attachment to Ukrainian heritage, has provided us with a larger perspective to consider:

Things are being presented in the Western media a particular way, I don’t quite understand why.

People are not hearing anything about the normal ethnic Ukrainians across the country that are being stopped if their cars are too nice by groups of protesters in the roads with baseball bats.

The people get searched, cars searched, and told “it’s the law of the revolution” when asked what give the protesters the right to do take people’s property.  We’re not hearing how the protesters and low information supporters have burned out police stations and told the police “we no longer need you”.

They have burned all records in some of the police stations so you can’t tell why people are locked up.  The useful idiots are destroying the country’s civilized infrastructure.

It is exactly what occupy wall street wanted/wants to do here. (more…)

If The Feb 21 agreement is not upheld….  Prepare for our war Kharkiv comrades….  the girly man in America will do nothing…

#BREAKING Ukraine's Yanukovych blocked from taking plane to Russia: parliament speaker

— AFP News Agency (@AFP) February 22, 2014

(Via XX Committee)  Things are moving very fast in Ukraine today. President Yanukovych, after the bloodbath this week on the streets of Kyiv, has been thrown out of office by the parliament. The country is in turmoil, and in the east, centered on Kharkiv, the Moscow-backed Ukrainian Front, that I informed you of three weeks ago, is arming the population and preparing for civil war.

And now the Russian Foreign Ministry has made its position clear in a new press release on its website – the new government in Kyiv is illegitimate and it’s the West’s fault.

This is a remarkably rough diplomatic message.

It cannot be construed as anything less than a threat to an independent Ukraine.

The full text follows …  (more…)

Bumped and Updated @2:00pm (USA/EST) Massive protests today in Caracus, Merida and all around Venezuela.

Protesta indescriptible en Caracas. pic.twitter.com/qHyBV8Dcwm

— CastoOcando.com (@cocando) February 22, 2014

Protesters fill the streets of Merida, #Venezuela. pic.twitter.com/SSuJgNjR6W via @machixblue

— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) February 22, 2014

RT @mrgarciafrank #BreakingNews More than 1 million people manifest in Caracas Venezuela against dictatorship Maduro http://t.co/pAwEGlljzi

— SaloumehZ (@SaloumehZ) February 22, 2014

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