Ukraine
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muir
Banned
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Lol
Is that before or after the dollar collapses whilst the BRICS (brazil, russia, india, china and s.africa) bank creates the new global reserve currency?
Do you think the department of homeland people fuckary is militarising the police to fight the russians or its own people?
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always with the negative waves...
[video=youtube;Xyh-JpWdGmQ]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyh-JpWdGmQ[/video]
Artisan
Dares, Dreams, Does
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I believe that if I post here, I'm gonna unleash a flame war. So I will keep it simple.
Don't be so quick to assume Russia is the boogieman.
And don't call separatists Pro-Russian. We have not called any separatist group by its backer before, there no positive value in doing so now.
Don't be so quick to assume Russia is the boogieman.
And don't call separatists Pro-Russian. We have not called any separatist group by its backer before, there no positive value in doing so now.
Lark
Rothchildian Agent
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Jesus!
I'm beginning to think you and Skarecrow are part of some sort of deny reality conspiracy!
In the threat about the mistreatment of christians SK tries to focus attention on western liberal propaganda about the plight of muslims and oil companies.
In this one when the Russian aggression is set to threaten world peace you're trying to refocus on domestic policing in the western world!
If I'd not seen it I'd not have believed it.
muir
Banned
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Why you struggle to understand all these things is because you fail to see how they are all connected
The russians are not threatening world peace; the russians are responding to NATO aggression in their back yard
The same thing happened in the 'cuban missile crisis'. The US moved missiles in to turkey right on russias doorstep so the russians responded by moving missiles to cuba on the doorstep of the US.
This created a tense stand off that was eased when the US pulled its missiles back from turkey which then led to the russians pulling their missiles back
The same thing is happening here. NATO put its oligarchs in power in Kiev and wants to put its missiles right on the doorstep of russia; this is an immensly aggressive move which along with various invasions and occupations and drone attacks in the middle east is threatening world peace
The eastern Ukrainians have historic ties to russia and they don't want to be ruled by the zionist oligarchs and frankly why would they want to?
Just look at how other EU countries are doing eg Spain, greece, portugal, their economies are ruined!
I mean who would want to be under the thumb of the zionists when they destroy economies? that's financial suicide
If i were the eastern ukrainians i would make the very rational and sensible option of going over to the oil and gas rich russians who are able to provide cheap energy...it just makes sense
It's a no brainer!
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http://www.vox.com/2014/9/5/6110037/estonia-russia-officer-kidnapped
Russia 'abducts' Estonian officer after Obama says US will defend Estonia
"Estonia says the officer was kidnapped (or "abducted") on Estonian soil and taken across by force. Moscow says the Estonian officer was on Russian soil and detained with a gun, 5,000 euros and "materials that have the character of an intelligence mission." Nearby Estonian police radios were reportedly jammed during the incident.
The incident comes at a moment when Europe and the US are extremely concerned that Russia might attempt military action against Estonia as it has against Ukraine. Just on Wednesday, the United States publicly committed to Estonia's military defense, meaning that a Russian invasion of Estonia would trigger war between Russia and the US, a prospect so dangerous that the world managed to avoid it throughout even the Cold War.
(...)Fears are extremely high across Europe that Russian President Vladimir Putin might attempt some sort of aggression against Estonia or Latvia, two Baltic states on the Russia border that are formerly part of the Soviet Union.
One quarter of Estonia's population is ethnic Russian – even larger than in Ukraine – and much of it concentrated on the border with Russia. Estonia's third-largest city, Narva, is about 90 percent Russian; just the sort of majority Russian enclave the Putin has asserted control over in Ukraine, and to a lesser degree in Georgia and Moldova. And Estonia, even more so than Ukraine, since breaking away from the Soviet Union has aligned itself with the West against Russia.
This incident, happening when it has, at the very least highlights the extreme level of concern in eastern Europe that Russia (which is also sending military planes into Finland's airspace) will target Estonia next. Hopefully, though, the incident will come to nothing."
Dude, I wish I could say the same.
Another interesting read: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/04/putins_nuclear_option_russia_weapons
Russia 'abducts' Estonian officer after Obama says US will defend Estonia
"Estonia says the officer was kidnapped (or "abducted") on Estonian soil and taken across by force. Moscow says the Estonian officer was on Russian soil and detained with a gun, 5,000 euros and "materials that have the character of an intelligence mission." Nearby Estonian police radios were reportedly jammed during the incident.
The incident comes at a moment when Europe and the US are extremely concerned that Russia might attempt military action against Estonia as it has against Ukraine. Just on Wednesday, the United States publicly committed to Estonia's military defense, meaning that a Russian invasion of Estonia would trigger war between Russia and the US, a prospect so dangerous that the world managed to avoid it throughout even the Cold War.
(...)Fears are extremely high across Europe that Russian President Vladimir Putin might attempt some sort of aggression against Estonia or Latvia, two Baltic states on the Russia border that are formerly part of the Soviet Union.
One quarter of Estonia's population is ethnic Russian – even larger than in Ukraine – and much of it concentrated on the border with Russia. Estonia's third-largest city, Narva, is about 90 percent Russian; just the sort of majority Russian enclave the Putin has asserted control over in Ukraine, and to a lesser degree in Georgia and Moldova. And Estonia, even more so than Ukraine, since breaking away from the Soviet Union has aligned itself with the West against Russia.
This incident, happening when it has, at the very least highlights the extreme level of concern in eastern Europe that Russia (which is also sending military planes into Finland's airspace) will target Estonia next. Hopefully, though, the incident will come to nothing."
Dude, I wish I could say the same.
Another interesting read: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2014/09/04/putins_nuclear_option_russia_weapons
Last edited:
muir
Banned
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Ex US intelligence vets write an open letter to Merkel
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-01/ex-nsa-director-us-intelligence-veterans-write-open-letter-merkel-avoid-all-out-ukra
[h=1]Ex-NSA Director, US Intelligence Veterans Write Open Letter To Merkel To Avoid All-Out Ukraine War[/h]
Alarmed at the anti-Russian hysteria sweeping Washington, and the specter of a new Cold War, U.S. intelligence veterans one of whom is none other than William Binney, the former senior NSA crypto-mathematician who back in March 2012 blew the whistle on the NSA's spying programs more than a year before Edward Snowden, took the unusual step of sending the following memo dated August 30 to German Chancellor Merkel challenging the reliability of Ukrainian and U.S. media claims about a Russian "invasion."
Via AntiWar and ConsortiumNews, highlights ours
MEMORANDUM FOR: Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Ukraine and NATO
We the undersigned are longtime veterans of U.S. intelligence. We take the unusual step of writing this open letter to you to ensure that you have an opportunity to be briefed on our views prior to the NATO summit on September 4-5.
You need to know, for example, that accusations of a major Russian "invasion" of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence. Rather, the "intelligence" seems to be of the same dubious, politically "fixed" kind used 12 years ago to "justify" the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. We saw no credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq then; we see no credible evidence of a Russian invasion now. Twelve years ago, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, mindful of the flimsiness of the evidence on Iraqi WMD, refused to join in the attack on Iraq. In our view, you should be appropriately suspicions of charges made by the US State Department and NATO officials alleging a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
President Barack Obama tried yesterday to cool the rhetoric of his own senior diplomats and the corporate media, when he publicly described recent activity in the Ukraine, as "a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now … it’s not really a shift."
Obama, however, has only tenuous control over the policymakers in his administration – who, sadly, lack much sense of history, know little of war, and substitute anti-Russian invective for a policy. One year ago, hawkish State Department officials and their friends in the media very nearly got Mr. Obama to launch a major attack on Syria based, once again, on "intelligence" that was dubious, at best.
Largely because of the growing prominence of, and apparent reliance on, intelligence we believe to be spurious, we think the possibility of hostilities escalating beyond the borders of Ukraine has increased significantly over the past several days. More important, we believe that this likelihood can be avoided, depending on the degree of judicious skepticism you and other European leaders bring to the NATO summit next week.
Experience With Untruth
Hopefully, your advisers have reminded you of NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s checkered record for credibility. It appears to us that Rasmussen’s speeches continue to be drafted by Washington. This was abundantly clear on the day before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq when, as Danish Prime Minister, he told his Parliament: "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is not something we just believe. We know."
Photos can be worth a thousand words; they can also deceive. We have considerable experience collecting, analyzing, and reporting on all kinds of satellite and other imagery, as well as other kinds of intelligence. Suffice it to say that the images released by NATO on August 28 provide a very flimsy basis on which to charge Russia with invading Ukraine. Sadly, they bear a strong resemblance to the images shown by Colin Powell at the UN on February 5, 2003 that, likewise, proved nothing.
That same day, we warned President Bush that our former colleague analysts were "increasingly distressed at the politicization of intelligence" and told him flatly, "Powell’s presentation does not come close" to justifying war. We urged Mr. Bush to "widen the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."
Consider Iraq today. Worse than catastrophic. Although President Vladimir Putin has until now showed considerable reserve on the conflict in the Ukraine, it behooves us to remember that Russia, too, can "shock and awe." In our view, if there is the slightest chance of that kind of thing eventually happening to Europe because of Ukraine, sober-minded leaders need to think this through very carefully.
If the photos that NATO and the US have released represent the best available "proof" of an invasion from Russia, our suspicions increase that a major effort is under way to fortify arguments for the NATO summit to approve actions that Russia is sure to regard as provocative. Caveat emptor is an expression with which you are no doubt familiar. Suffice it to add that one should be very cautious regarding what Mr. Rasmussen, or even Secretary of State John Kerry, are peddling.
We trust that your advisers have kept you informed regarding the crisis in Ukraine from the beginning of 2014, and how the possibility that Ukraine would become a member of NATO is anathema to the Kremlin. According to a February 1, 2008 cable (published by WikiLeaks) from the US embassy in Moscow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, US Ambassador William Burns was called in by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who explained Russia’s strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine.
Lavrov warned pointedly of "fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene." Burns gave his cable the unusual title, "NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA’S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES," and sent it off to Washington with IMMEDIATE precedence. Two months later, at their summit in Bucharest NATO leaders issued a formal declaration that "Georgia and Ukraine will be in NATO."
Just yesterday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk used his Facebook page to claim that, with the approval of Parliament that he has requested, the path to NATO membership is open. Yatsenyuk, of course, was Washington’s favorite pick to become prime minister after the February 22 coup d’etat in Kiev. "Yats is the guy," said Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland a few weeks before the coup, in an intercepted telephone conversation with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. You may recall that this is the same conversation in which Nuland said, "Fuck the EU."
Timing of the Russian "Invasion"
The conventional wisdom promoted by Kiev just a few weeks ago was that Ukrainian forces had the upper hand in fighting the anti-coup federalists in southeastern Ukraine, in what was largely portrayed as a mop-up operation. But that picture of the offensive originated almost solely from official government sources in Kiev. There were very few reports coming from the ground in southeastern Ukraine. There was one, however, quoting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, that raised doubt about the reliability of the government’s portrayal.
According to the "press service of the President of Ukraine" on August 18, Poroshenko called for a "regrouping of Ukrainian military units involved in the operation of power in the East of the country. … Today we need to do the rearrangement of forces that will defend our territory and continued army offensives," said Poroshenko, adding, "we need to consider a new military operation in the new circumstances."
If the "new circumstances" meant successful advances by Ukrainian government forces, why would it be necessary to "regroup," to "rearrange" the forces? At about this time, sources on the ground began to report a string of successful attacks by the anti-coup federalists against government forces. According to these sources, it was the government army that was starting to take heavy casualties and lose ground, largely because of ineptitude and poor leadership.
Ten days later, as they became encircled and/or retreated, a ready-made excuse for this was to be found in the "Russian invasion." That is precisely when the fuzzy photos were released by NATO and reporters like the New York Times’ Michael Gordon were set loose to spread the word that "the Russians are coming." (Michael Gordon was one of the most egregious propagandists promoting the war on Iraq.)
No Invasion – But Plenty Other Russian Support
The anti-coup federalists in southeastern Ukraine enjoy considerable local support, partly as a result of government artillery strikes on major population centers. And we believe that Russian support probably has been pouring across the border and includes, significantly, excellent battlefield intelligence. But it is far from clear that this support includes tanks and artillery at this point – mostly because the federalists have been better led and surprisingly successful in pinning down government forces.
At the same time, we have little doubt that, if and when the federalists need them, the Russian tanks will come.
This is precisely why the situation demands a concerted effort for a ceasefire, which you know Kiev has so far been delaying. What is to be done at this point? In our view, Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk need to be told flat-out that membership in NATO is not in the cards – and that NATO has no intention of waging a proxy war with Russia – and especially not in support of the ragtag army of Ukraine. Other members of NATO need to be told the same thing.
For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-09-01/ex-nsa-director-us-intelligence-veterans-write-open-letter-merkel-avoid-all-out-ukra
[h=1]Ex-NSA Director, US Intelligence Veterans Write Open Letter To Merkel To Avoid All-Out Ukraine War[/h]
Alarmed at the anti-Russian hysteria sweeping Washington, and the specter of a new Cold War, U.S. intelligence veterans one of whom is none other than William Binney, the former senior NSA crypto-mathematician who back in March 2012 blew the whistle on the NSA's spying programs more than a year before Edward Snowden, took the unusual step of sending the following memo dated August 30 to German Chancellor Merkel challenging the reliability of Ukrainian and U.S. media claims about a Russian "invasion."
Via AntiWar and ConsortiumNews, highlights ours
MEMORANDUM FOR: Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS)
SUBJECT: Ukraine and NATO
We the undersigned are longtime veterans of U.S. intelligence. We take the unusual step of writing this open letter to you to ensure that you have an opportunity to be briefed on our views prior to the NATO summit on September 4-5.
You need to know, for example, that accusations of a major Russian "invasion" of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence. Rather, the "intelligence" seems to be of the same dubious, politically "fixed" kind used 12 years ago to "justify" the U.S.-led attack on Iraq. We saw no credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq then; we see no credible evidence of a Russian invasion now. Twelve years ago, former Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, mindful of the flimsiness of the evidence on Iraqi WMD, refused to join in the attack on Iraq. In our view, you should be appropriately suspicions of charges made by the US State Department and NATO officials alleging a Russian invasion of Ukraine.
President Barack Obama tried yesterday to cool the rhetoric of his own senior diplomats and the corporate media, when he publicly described recent activity in the Ukraine, as "a continuation of what’s been taking place for months now … it’s not really a shift."
Obama, however, has only tenuous control over the policymakers in his administration – who, sadly, lack much sense of history, know little of war, and substitute anti-Russian invective for a policy. One year ago, hawkish State Department officials and their friends in the media very nearly got Mr. Obama to launch a major attack on Syria based, once again, on "intelligence" that was dubious, at best.
Largely because of the growing prominence of, and apparent reliance on, intelligence we believe to be spurious, we think the possibility of hostilities escalating beyond the borders of Ukraine has increased significantly over the past several days. More important, we believe that this likelihood can be avoided, depending on the degree of judicious skepticism you and other European leaders bring to the NATO summit next week.
Experience With Untruth
Hopefully, your advisers have reminded you of NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen’s checkered record for credibility. It appears to us that Rasmussen’s speeches continue to be drafted by Washington. This was abundantly clear on the day before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq when, as Danish Prime Minister, he told his Parliament: "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction. This is not something we just believe. We know."
Photos can be worth a thousand words; they can also deceive. We have considerable experience collecting, analyzing, and reporting on all kinds of satellite and other imagery, as well as other kinds of intelligence. Suffice it to say that the images released by NATO on August 28 provide a very flimsy basis on which to charge Russia with invading Ukraine. Sadly, they bear a strong resemblance to the images shown by Colin Powell at the UN on February 5, 2003 that, likewise, proved nothing.
That same day, we warned President Bush that our former colleague analysts were "increasingly distressed at the politicization of intelligence" and told him flatly, "Powell’s presentation does not come close" to justifying war. We urged Mr. Bush to "widen the discussion … beyond the circle of those advisers clearly bent on a war for which we see no compelling reason and from which we believe the unintended consequences are likely to be catastrophic."
Consider Iraq today. Worse than catastrophic. Although President Vladimir Putin has until now showed considerable reserve on the conflict in the Ukraine, it behooves us to remember that Russia, too, can "shock and awe." In our view, if there is the slightest chance of that kind of thing eventually happening to Europe because of Ukraine, sober-minded leaders need to think this through very carefully.
If the photos that NATO and the US have released represent the best available "proof" of an invasion from Russia, our suspicions increase that a major effort is under way to fortify arguments for the NATO summit to approve actions that Russia is sure to regard as provocative. Caveat emptor is an expression with which you are no doubt familiar. Suffice it to add that one should be very cautious regarding what Mr. Rasmussen, or even Secretary of State John Kerry, are peddling.
We trust that your advisers have kept you informed regarding the crisis in Ukraine from the beginning of 2014, and how the possibility that Ukraine would become a member of NATO is anathema to the Kremlin. According to a February 1, 2008 cable (published by WikiLeaks) from the US embassy in Moscow to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, US Ambassador William Burns was called in by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who explained Russia’s strong opposition to NATO membership for Ukraine.
Lavrov warned pointedly of "fears that the issue could potentially split the country in two, leading to violence or even, some claim, civil war, which would force Russia to decide whether to intervene." Burns gave his cable the unusual title, "NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA’S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES," and sent it off to Washington with IMMEDIATE precedence. Two months later, at their summit in Bucharest NATO leaders issued a formal declaration that "Georgia and Ukraine will be in NATO."
Just yesterday, Ukrainian Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk used his Facebook page to claim that, with the approval of Parliament that he has requested, the path to NATO membership is open. Yatsenyuk, of course, was Washington’s favorite pick to become prime minister after the February 22 coup d’etat in Kiev. "Yats is the guy," said Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland a few weeks before the coup, in an intercepted telephone conversation with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt. You may recall that this is the same conversation in which Nuland said, "Fuck the EU."
Timing of the Russian "Invasion"
The conventional wisdom promoted by Kiev just a few weeks ago was that Ukrainian forces had the upper hand in fighting the anti-coup federalists in southeastern Ukraine, in what was largely portrayed as a mop-up operation. But that picture of the offensive originated almost solely from official government sources in Kiev. There were very few reports coming from the ground in southeastern Ukraine. There was one, however, quoting Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, that raised doubt about the reliability of the government’s portrayal.
According to the "press service of the President of Ukraine" on August 18, Poroshenko called for a "regrouping of Ukrainian military units involved in the operation of power in the East of the country. … Today we need to do the rearrangement of forces that will defend our territory and continued army offensives," said Poroshenko, adding, "we need to consider a new military operation in the new circumstances."
If the "new circumstances" meant successful advances by Ukrainian government forces, why would it be necessary to "regroup," to "rearrange" the forces? At about this time, sources on the ground began to report a string of successful attacks by the anti-coup federalists against government forces. According to these sources, it was the government army that was starting to take heavy casualties and lose ground, largely because of ineptitude and poor leadership.
Ten days later, as they became encircled and/or retreated, a ready-made excuse for this was to be found in the "Russian invasion." That is precisely when the fuzzy photos were released by NATO and reporters like the New York Times’ Michael Gordon were set loose to spread the word that "the Russians are coming." (Michael Gordon was one of the most egregious propagandists promoting the war on Iraq.)
No Invasion – But Plenty Other Russian Support
The anti-coup federalists in southeastern Ukraine enjoy considerable local support, partly as a result of government artillery strikes on major population centers. And we believe that Russian support probably has been pouring across the border and includes, significantly, excellent battlefield intelligence. But it is far from clear that this support includes tanks and artillery at this point – mostly because the federalists have been better led and surprisingly successful in pinning down government forces.
At the same time, we have little doubt that, if and when the federalists need them, the Russian tanks will come.
This is precisely why the situation demands a concerted effort for a ceasefire, which you know Kiev has so far been delaying. What is to be done at this point? In our view, Poroshenko and Yatsenyuk need to be told flat-out that membership in NATO is not in the cards – and that NATO has no intention of waging a proxy war with Russia – and especially not in support of the ragtag army of Ukraine. Other members of NATO need to be told the same thing.
For the Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
- William Binney, former Technical Director, World Geopolitical & Military Analysis, NSA; co-founder, SIGINT Automation Research Center (ret.)
- David MacMichael, National Intelligence Council (ret.)
- Ray McGovern, former US Army infantry/intelligence officer & CIA analyst (ret.)
- Elizabeth Murray, Deputy National Intelligence Officer for Middle East (ret.)
- Todd E. Pierce, MAJ, US Army Judge Advocate (Ret.)
- Coleen Rowley, Division Counsel & Special Agent, FBI (ret.)
- Ann Wright, Col., US Army (ret.); Foreign Service Officer (resigned)
http://www.amnesty.org/en/news/ukra...war-crimes-and-russian-involvement-2014-09-05
Amnesty International: Mounting evidence of war crimes and Russian involvement
"Ukrainian militia and separatist forces are responsible for war crimes, Amnesty International said today. The organisation accused Russia of fuelling separatist crimes as it revealed satellite images indicating a build-up of Russian armour and artillery in eastern Ukraine.
Despite a fragile cease-fire, the situation on the ground remains fraught with danger and Amnesty International calls on all parties, including Russia, to stop violations of the laws of war.
“All sides in this conflict have shown disregard for civilian lives and are blatantly violating their international obligations,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, who travels to Kyiv and Moscow in the coming days. “Our evidence shows that Russia is fuelling the conflict, both through direct interference and by supporting the separatists in the East. Russia must stop the steady flow of weapons and other support to an insurgent force heavily implicated in gross human rights violations.”
Amnesty International researchers on the ground in eastern Ukraine have documented incidents of indiscriminate shelling, abductions, torture, and killings.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement in the fighting in Ukraine, but satellite imagery and testimony gathered by the organization provide compelling evidence that the fighting has burgeoned into what Amnesty International now considers an international armed conflict.
(...)
Amnesty International researchers on the ground in eastern Ukraine interviewed eyewitnesses fleeing from fighting near Alechevsk, Donetsk, Kramatorsk, Krasny Luch, Lisichansk, Lugansk, Rubeznoe, Pervomaisk and Slovyansk. Researchers also interviewed Ukrainian refugees in the Rostov region of Russia.
Civilians from these areas told Amnesty International that the Ukrainian government forces subjected their neighbourhoods to heavy shelling. Their testimonies suggest that the attacks were indiscriminate and may amount to war crimes. Witnesses also said that separatist fighters abducted, tortured, and killed their neighbours.
In an illustrative incident, residents of Slovyansk told Amnesty International that separatist fighters kidnapped a local pastor, two of his sons and two churchgoers, and requested a US$50,000 ransom for their release. By the time the local community managed to collect the requested ransom, the witnesses said, the captors had killed all of the men.
Amnesty International has also received credible reports of abductions and beatings carried out by volunteer battalions operating alongside regular Ukrainian armed forces.
For example, on 23 August a security guard in Oleksandrivka, Luhansk region was seized by several dozen armed men who arrived in vehicles flying Ukrainian flags. At least one was marked “Battalion Aidar” (a militia group operating in the Luhansk region). Witnesses said his captors accused him of collaborating with separatists, beat him with rifle butts and held him incommunicado until 27 August, when his family were informed he was being held in another town, in the local office of Ukraine’s state security service.
Amnesty International is calling on the Ukrainian authorities to conduct an effective investigation into allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law and bring to justice individuals responsible for war crimes. Commanders and civilian leaders may also be prosecuted for war crimes as a matter of command responsibility if they knew or should have known about the crimes and failed to prevent them or punish those responsible."
Maybe saying these satellite images prove an "invasion" is an exaggeration, but then, even the separatists themselves admitted they got a lot of help from Russia (and not only "battlefield intelligence", but equipment and a thousand "soldiers on vacations"). Denying active Russian involvement is just plain naive, even if the scale of this involvement is hard to estimate.
Amnesty International: Mounting evidence of war crimes and Russian involvement
"Ukrainian militia and separatist forces are responsible for war crimes, Amnesty International said today. The organisation accused Russia of fuelling separatist crimes as it revealed satellite images indicating a build-up of Russian armour and artillery in eastern Ukraine.
Despite a fragile cease-fire, the situation on the ground remains fraught with danger and Amnesty International calls on all parties, including Russia, to stop violations of the laws of war.
“All sides in this conflict have shown disregard for civilian lives and are blatantly violating their international obligations,” said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International’s Secretary General, who travels to Kyiv and Moscow in the coming days. “Our evidence shows that Russia is fuelling the conflict, both through direct interference and by supporting the separatists in the East. Russia must stop the steady flow of weapons and other support to an insurgent force heavily implicated in gross human rights violations.”
Amnesty International researchers on the ground in eastern Ukraine have documented incidents of indiscriminate shelling, abductions, torture, and killings.
The Kremlin has repeatedly denied any involvement in the fighting in Ukraine, but satellite imagery and testimony gathered by the organization provide compelling evidence that the fighting has burgeoned into what Amnesty International now considers an international armed conflict.
(...)
Amnesty International researchers on the ground in eastern Ukraine interviewed eyewitnesses fleeing from fighting near Alechevsk, Donetsk, Kramatorsk, Krasny Luch, Lisichansk, Lugansk, Rubeznoe, Pervomaisk and Slovyansk. Researchers also interviewed Ukrainian refugees in the Rostov region of Russia.
Civilians from these areas told Amnesty International that the Ukrainian government forces subjected their neighbourhoods to heavy shelling. Their testimonies suggest that the attacks were indiscriminate and may amount to war crimes. Witnesses also said that separatist fighters abducted, tortured, and killed their neighbours.
In an illustrative incident, residents of Slovyansk told Amnesty International that separatist fighters kidnapped a local pastor, two of his sons and two churchgoers, and requested a US$50,000 ransom for their release. By the time the local community managed to collect the requested ransom, the witnesses said, the captors had killed all of the men.
Amnesty International has also received credible reports of abductions and beatings carried out by volunteer battalions operating alongside regular Ukrainian armed forces.
For example, on 23 August a security guard in Oleksandrivka, Luhansk region was seized by several dozen armed men who arrived in vehicles flying Ukrainian flags. At least one was marked “Battalion Aidar” (a militia group operating in the Luhansk region). Witnesses said his captors accused him of collaborating with separatists, beat him with rifle butts and held him incommunicado until 27 August, when his family were informed he was being held in another town, in the local office of Ukraine’s state security service.
Amnesty International is calling on the Ukrainian authorities to conduct an effective investigation into allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law and bring to justice individuals responsible for war crimes. Commanders and civilian leaders may also be prosecuted for war crimes as a matter of command responsibility if they knew or should have known about the crimes and failed to prevent them or punish those responsible."
Maybe saying these satellite images prove an "invasion" is an exaggeration, but then, even the separatists themselves admitted they got a lot of help from Russia (and not only "battlefield intelligence", but equipment and a thousand "soldiers on vacations"). Denying active Russian involvement is just plain naive, even if the scale of this involvement is hard to estimate.
Last edited:
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
Amnesty International is controlled by zionists
http://syriathemediawar.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/syria-amnesty-international-zionist.html
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Syria. Amnesty International - U.S. Zionist Backed Organization ?
Posted by SteelMagnolia at 12:06 AM
The truth is that the Kiev controlled Ukrainian forces have been shelling civilians
This is shown on this documentary that has been banned on TV. Be advised it contains graphic images from a war zone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ozdz7fMdXI
http://syriathemediawar.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/syria-amnesty-international-zionist.html
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Syria. Amnesty International - U.S. Zionist Backed Organization ?
[FONT=&]At Amnesty International (ai), there is a growing rumbling. Also in Germany, more and more members do ask, whether they are even still part of the right club. Backgrounds are the completely one-sided reports on individual countries and the silence on human rights violations in other countries.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]Originally, Amnesty International (ai) has once begun, as a human rights organization, to be at the side of world’s political prisoners. For this, Amnesty International had earned a great deal of praise. But this is long ago.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]The relative block-overlap policy of Amnesty International was quickly a thorn in the eyes of some Western powers and they began to infiltrate the organization systematically. From then on, it went downhill with neutrality. The infiltration of the organization with people, with have really nothing to do with the idea of Amnesty, is continued at a rapid pace since then.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]The current high point of infiltration was the appointment of Suzanne Nossel as the Executive Director of Amnesty International in the United States. She is now the highest official of the organization.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]In January 2012, Suzanne Nossel has directly joined Amnesty International, as she has left the U.S. State Department. So she comes directly from the government which is responsible for the maintenance of the detention center at Guantanamo. From a government that maintains killers – without any conscious process of law – for unwanted citizens of the U.S. president anywhere in the world....read more[/FONT]
http://www.syrianews.cc/amnesty-international-ai-increasingly-doubts-about-credibility-808.html
[FONT=&]Originally, Amnesty International (ai) has once begun, as a human rights organization, to be at the side of world’s political prisoners. For this, Amnesty International had earned a great deal of praise. But this is long ago.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]The relative block-overlap policy of Amnesty International was quickly a thorn in the eyes of some Western powers and they began to infiltrate the organization systematically. From then on, it went downhill with neutrality. The infiltration of the organization with people, with have really nothing to do with the idea of Amnesty, is continued at a rapid pace since then.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]The current high point of infiltration was the appointment of Suzanne Nossel as the Executive Director of Amnesty International in the United States. She is now the highest official of the organization.[/FONT]
[FONT=&]In January 2012, Suzanne Nossel has directly joined Amnesty International, as she has left the U.S. State Department. So she comes directly from the government which is responsible for the maintenance of the detention center at Guantanamo. From a government that maintains killers – without any conscious process of law – for unwanted citizens of the U.S. president anywhere in the world....read more[/FONT]
http://www.syrianews.cc/amnesty-international-ai-increasingly-doubts-about-credibility-808.html
Posted by SteelMagnolia at 12:06 AM
The truth is that the Kiev controlled Ukrainian forces have been shelling civilians
This is shown on this documentary that has been banned on TV. Be advised it contains graphic images from a war zone:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ozdz7fMdXI
Putting aside the issue about whether Suzanne Nossel is a "zionist servant" or not, she left Amnesty International in January 2013.
And Amnesty International doesn't deny it.
[QUOTE="Amnesty International]Civilians from these areas told Amnesty International that the Ukrainian government forces subjected their neighbourhoods to heavy shelling. Their testimonies suggest that the attacks were indiscriminate and may amount to war crimes.
Amnesty International has also received credible reports of abductions and beatings carried out by volunteer battalions operating alongside regular Ukrainian armed forces.
Amnesty International is calling on the Ukrainian authorities to conduct an effective investigation into allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law and bring to justice individuals responsible for war crimes. Commanders and civilian leaders may also be prosecuted for war crimes as a matter of command responsibility if they knew or should have known about the crimes and failed to prevent them or punish those responsible."
[/QUOTE]
This war is horrible and both sides are to blame.
And Amnesty International doesn't deny it.
[QUOTE="Amnesty International]Civilians from these areas told Amnesty International that the Ukrainian government forces subjected their neighbourhoods to heavy shelling. Their testimonies suggest that the attacks were indiscriminate and may amount to war crimes.
Amnesty International has also received credible reports of abductions and beatings carried out by volunteer battalions operating alongside regular Ukrainian armed forces.
Amnesty International is calling on the Ukrainian authorities to conduct an effective investigation into allegations of serious violations of international humanitarian law and bring to justice individuals responsible for war crimes. Commanders and civilian leaders may also be prosecuted for war crimes as a matter of command responsibility if they knew or should have known about the crimes and failed to prevent them or punish those responsible."
[/QUOTE]
This war is horrible and both sides are to blame.
muir
Banned
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Horrific
Hmmm...not really
Look i live in a NATO country....i'd love to feel good about my country but i can't because i know too much
That doesn't mean i am disloyal to my country....quite the opposite. I want my country to behave better than it does
I talk about the zionists and jewish power but i don't hate the jews i just want them to see zionism for what it is so that peace can be made with the palestineans
All these things are related
Its all GEO-POLITICAL
These conflicts are all part of a much larger picture. The situation in ukriane is linked to the situation in syria and both are linked to the banking system in the west and so on and so on
If you listen to Putin he has said publically that he does not agree with the central bankers vision for a one world government. he calls their vision a 'unipolar world'
Putin has said that instead he would like to see a 'multi-polar world' where power is spread around
My fundamental belief is that centralised power ALWAYS leads to corruption and exploitation. Everything i say in these discussions/debates is built on that foundation; so of course i am against the vision for a unipolar world
A unipolar world would require a police state to impose its central control (see other centralised power systems through history....all had oppressive secret police). As the globalists move us closer to their vision we can see their future police state being constructed around us...that's what all the surveillance stuff like PRISM is about for example
These forces at work trying to shape our world ARE MASSIVE...hugely powerful forces
The barrier standing in the way of the new world order is the non aligned countries like Russia, China, Iran, north Korea, Cuba, Ecuador, venezuala, Syria and so on (and increasingly the 'BRICS' countires: Brazil, Russia, India, China, S.Africa which are the worlds emerging economies...they have recently formed their own bank to challenge dollar hegemony)
As you can see these are all the countries that are regularly demonised in the western (zionist dominated) media
The zionists control the banking system. This is a 'central banking' system with a network of central banks in each of the aligned countries.
The zionists want desperately to expand their banking control into the economies of the non-aligned countries
These non-aligned countries are looking at our western banker countrolled countries and are seeing how the central banking system destroys economies and enslaves people with debt and they understandably want no part in it (and neither do many people in the west such as myself hence the ongoing protests)
In order to infiltrate Iran the aligned NWO countries have imposed sanctions to try and destroy Iran through pressure within. They also have sought to destroy Irans allies such as Syria in order to isolate Iran (please look at maps online of US military bases surrounding Iran to get a picture of the reality of the situation)
Libya was destroyed by the NWO because it was energy self sufficient and gaddafi was going to create a pan-african bank with its own non dollar currency which would allow african countries to borrow money to develop themselves without having to take crippling loans from the zionist IMF (that always had strings attached)
Saddam Hussein was taken out when he decided to start trading Iraqs oil for euros instead of dollars thereby threatening the zionists federal reserve controlled dollars status as the world reserve currency
The other countries the NWO are trying to tackle are Russia and China and NATO is followign a policy of encirclement which means they are trying to surround them with nuclear missiles
This is of course making russia and china very nervous. These countries do not want missiles on their doorstep because if your enemies missiles are near you it lessens the time you have to respond to a pre-emptive attack. For example you could strike at your enemies missile silos as well as other targets thereby reducing their response
Voices in the Washington have even been saying that they think they could win a nuclear war against russia! This is crazy talk! That they are even contemplating launching an attack is crazy as the implications for the world would be catastrophic
So this orchestrated coup in Ukraine is really a NATO move to try and put missiles on russians doorstep. Russia cannot allow itself to be enslaved like that if it wants to remain non-aligned with the NWO so it must hold its ground. Further to that the people in the disputed territories WANT to be part of russia
Russia could have invaded these areas and just taken them but moscow is not as aggressive as NATO
NATO however is making constant aggressive and insane moves. For example it backed the etreme right wing groups to use violnce to bring about the coup in Kiev and then put unelected billionaires in control of the Kiev government and then began shelling civilains in the seperatists areas! It shot down a malyasian airliner and tried to blame it on the russians! It is moving NATO troops and hardware into Poland as if preparing for a ground invasion of russia!
NATO is out of control
So why is that happening?
You just have to look at this figure to understand: $18,000,000,000,000
Do you know what that figure is?
It's the US national debt; this is a figure that can never be paid off
Debt is actually built into the US monetary system...more in next post
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muir
Banned
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continued....
If you ask the average US american on the street where their money comes from they will probably say 'the government' but that is not accurate
Their paper money is actually printed by a cartel of private banks who have gone into a partnership with the US government.
This partnership has basically allowed creative accountancy that has allowed the bankers to get wealthier and for successive governments to borrow lots of money. Every now and again there is a little bit of political theatre on TV where the news makes a big song and dance about whether or not the government will 'raise the debt ceiling' but the government HAS TO RAISE THE DEBT CEILING AND WILL ALWAYS DO SO to keep the system going
This is because when the government get the bankers to print the money there is interest attached. Every time a dollar is created a little bit of debt is created and that debt cannot be paid of without removing those dollars from the system so the debt just keeps growing. here look at this debt clock: http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Their only solution to the problem is to print more money! ('quantitative easing' in the Uk or 'tapering' in the US) which deepens the problem and destroys the purchasing power of peoples money
This system is whats known as a 'ponzi scheme' which is like those pyramid letter scams that sometiems get posted around where you send off some money to 5 other people with letters and they then do the same and with each wave some money is paid back to the last people until the scheme collpases leaving a bunch of people out of pocket
The fiat (paper) dollar is a ponzi scheme that is going to collapse under its own weight soon
The NWO want to use this event as an excuse to create their NWO. When the dollar collapses the people will panic and demand that the government do something and at that point the bankers will offer up their solution of a global government with a new global currency
So the NWO is trying to enslave all other contries ready for this event, but many countries are not complying and the NWO's plans are being disrupted
For example they tried to throw out Assad and that failed, they tried to throw the palestineans out of gaza and that failed and they tried to takeover ukraine and that is in the process of failing
Meanwhile the public within the NWO countries are getting angry at the globalists as more and more poeple tire of their endless wars and lies hence the occupy protest of the 99% against the 1%
So the NWO is trying to move forward on every front but it is hitting problems
if you do not want to live in a world where you have no democratic say and every area of your life is totally controlled by the state then you too should be resisting the new world order
Once you realise this you realise that the russians are not the bad guys here. In fact has a russian person ever done you any harm? Is it the russians who have created your debt based money system? Is it the russians who are causing the unemployment in your country? Is it the russians who have swindled many people out of their businesses and homes?
The answer is NO; it is the zionists who have done all of this and they are within your country....the enemy is within NOT without but the zionist media will try and tell you that all the people resisting the NWO are enemies and 'terrorists'
Now you know that's bullshit
If you ask the average US american on the street where their money comes from they will probably say 'the government' but that is not accurate
Their paper money is actually printed by a cartel of private banks who have gone into a partnership with the US government.
This partnership has basically allowed creative accountancy that has allowed the bankers to get wealthier and for successive governments to borrow lots of money. Every now and again there is a little bit of political theatre on TV where the news makes a big song and dance about whether or not the government will 'raise the debt ceiling' but the government HAS TO RAISE THE DEBT CEILING AND WILL ALWAYS DO SO to keep the system going
This is because when the government get the bankers to print the money there is interest attached. Every time a dollar is created a little bit of debt is created and that debt cannot be paid of without removing those dollars from the system so the debt just keeps growing. here look at this debt clock: http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Their only solution to the problem is to print more money! ('quantitative easing' in the Uk or 'tapering' in the US) which deepens the problem and destroys the purchasing power of peoples money
This system is whats known as a 'ponzi scheme' which is like those pyramid letter scams that sometiems get posted around where you send off some money to 5 other people with letters and they then do the same and with each wave some money is paid back to the last people until the scheme collpases leaving a bunch of people out of pocket
The fiat (paper) dollar is a ponzi scheme that is going to collapse under its own weight soon
The NWO want to use this event as an excuse to create their NWO. When the dollar collapses the people will panic and demand that the government do something and at that point the bankers will offer up their solution of a global government with a new global currency
So the NWO is trying to enslave all other contries ready for this event, but many countries are not complying and the NWO's plans are being disrupted
For example they tried to throw out Assad and that failed, they tried to throw the palestineans out of gaza and that failed and they tried to takeover ukraine and that is in the process of failing
Meanwhile the public within the NWO countries are getting angry at the globalists as more and more poeple tire of their endless wars and lies hence the occupy protest of the 99% against the 1%
So the NWO is trying to move forward on every front but it is hitting problems
if you do not want to live in a world where you have no democratic say and every area of your life is totally controlled by the state then you too should be resisting the new world order
Once you realise this you realise that the russians are not the bad guys here. In fact has a russian person ever done you any harm? Is it the russians who have created your debt based money system? Is it the russians who are causing the unemployment in your country? Is it the russians who have swindled many people out of their businesses and homes?
The answer is NO; it is the zionists who have done all of this and they are within your country....the enemy is within NOT without but the zionist media will try and tell you that all the people resisting the NWO are enemies and 'terrorists'
Now you know that's bullshit
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SlowUpTake
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Home > U.S. Currency > The Production Process
The Production Process
How Money Is Made Today
The BEP is one of the largest currency printing operations in the world with facilities in Washington, D.C. and Fort Worth, Texas. Current BEP currency production is quite different from its beginnings in 1862, which consisted of a handful of people separating notes with a hand-cranked machine in the basement of the Treasury building. Technology has brought the BEP a long way to a state-of-the-art manufacturing operation producing U.S. paper currency. The production of this currency is not an easy or simple task, but one that involves highly trained and skilled craftspeople, specialized equipment, and a combination of traditional old world printing techniques merged with sophisticated, cutting edge technology. Overall, there are numerous, distinctive steps required in the production process.
With the introduction of redesigned currency, subtle background colors were added to the redesigned notes to make them more secure and difficult to counterfeit. The new design was applied to the $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 notes. Circulation of the new series began during the fall of 2003, with the introduction of the redesigned $20 note. It continued with the $50 note in 2004, the $10 note in 2006, and the $5 note in 2008. The new $100 note is currently in production with a release date to be announced as soon as possible. Redesign of the $1 and $2 notes is not planned.
The redesigned notes retain the same size as previous notes and use similar portraits and historical images to maintain an American look and feel. Security features maintained in the enhanced Federal Reserve Notes include a portrait watermark visible when held up to a light, two numeric watermarks on the $5s, an enhanced security thread that glows under an ultraviolet light, micro printing, improved color shifting ink that changes color when the note is tilted, and on the newly redesigned $100 notes, a 3-D security ribbon and enhanced, raised printing. While the percentage of counterfeit notes in circulation remains small, advances in technology have brought forth an increase in computer generated counterfeit notes. United States paper currency is redesigned as a way to protect your hard earned money by staying ahead of advancing technologies and tech-savvy counterfeiters.
Paper and Ink
The paper and ink used in the production of U.S. paper currency is as distinct as its design. The paper comes to the BEP in brown paper-wrapped loads of 20,000 sheets (2 pallets of 10,000 sheets). Each of these sheets is tracked by the BEP as it passes through the production process. And, the total inventory of 20,000 sheets is continually reconciled to make sure each sheet is accounted for. Currency paper is specifically made for the BEP by Crane Paper Company. The ordinary paper that consumers use throughout their everyday life such as newspapers, books, cereal boxes, etc, is primarily made of wood pulp; however, United States currency paper is composed of 75% cotton and 25% linen. This is what gives United States currency its distinct look and feel. For denominations of $5 and above, the security thread, and watermark are already built into the paper when it is received.
All bills, regardless of denomination, utilize green ink on the backs. Faces, on the other hand, use black ink, color-shifting ink in the lower right hand corner for the $10 denominations and higher, and metallic ink for the freedom icons on redesigned $10, $20, and $50 bills. The $100 note's "bell in the inkwell" freedom icon uses color-shifting ink. These and the other inks appearing on U.S. currency are specially formulated and blended by the BEP. Inks headed for BEP presses also undergo continual quality testing.
Designing
Bank note designers at the BEP develop the overall look, layout, and artistic details of U.S. paper currency. The design of money starts with ideas and rough sketches. Many concepts are drawn and considered before the Secretary of the Treasury approves the final design.
When redesigning a note, designers do not start with a blank slate. They know, for example, that a $10 note will feature Alexander Hamilton on the face and the Treasury building on the back. But which portrait of Hamilton, and which view of the Treasury building — that is for the designers to propose, in collaboration with the engravers.
Currency is designed with a purpose. When redesigning a note, designers strive to convey a dignified image that reflects the strength of the American economy; retain familiar characteristics that identify a note as American currency; incorporate the latest anti-counterfeiting features; and consider how details such as outlines, tone, and shading will "translate" when engraved and printed on an intaglio press.
Traditionally, bank note designers utilized classical tools like the pencil, pen and ink, or paint brush to take their visions from concept to the final model ready for the engravers. Today, the modern designer has the command of a wide array of tools including cutting edge digital technology. While the processes have evolved over time, one important tradition remains in the steadfast production of America's paper currency — a designer's and engraver's exquisite attention to craft and detail.
Offset Printing Operations
With the introduction of the redesigned $20s in 2003, subtle background colors were added to the currency to enhance the security. For these denominations, offset printing is the first printing that occurs on the "blank" paper.
Offset Plates
Before the subtle background colors of today's redesigned currency can be printed, the imagery must be transferred onto offset printing plates. That is the job of photoengravers. The photoengraver receives the master design from the bank note designer and "steps" (duplicates) the images over a plate layout. Then using a high-resolution film recorder, each color separation is imaged onto a sheet of sensitive film in negative form. A thin sheet of steel, coated with a light-sensitive polymer, is exposed to ultraviolet light while covered by the film negative which contains the imagery. The areas on the film that allow light to pass onto the plate are transferred or exposed. The unexposed areas around the images are washed away with water and soft scrubbing brushes. This process is called "burning a plate."
To achieve the offset color scheme on a redesigned $20 face, for example, the photoengraver burns two plates. One plate contains the background pattern that will be printed in green and peach. The second plate contains the images that will be printed in blue — an eagle and the words TWENTY USA. The photoengraver takes great care to make sure the images are perfectly aligned on both plates, or else the images will not line up properly when printed on the bills. In addition to the alignment check, each individual note on a plate is thoroughly inspected. The slightest blemish from a dust particle or piece of lint may affect the print quality. If it does, then a new plate is manufactured.
Offset Printing
The background colors are printed by the BEP's Simultan presses, which are state-of-the-art, high-speed, sheet-fed rotary offset presses. These presses are over 50 feet long and weigh over 70 tons. They are specifically designed to print security offset designs on currency paper. Using dry offset plates, ink from the plate is transferred to an offset blanket. The blank sheet of paper passes in-between the face and back blankets and simultaneously prints the complete image on the paper. The press has eight print units, four on the face and four on the back, with two comprehensive computer control consoles. Many of the press settings can be controlled from these consoles and their status displayed on the computer screens. The press is capable of printing 10,000 sheets per hour; approximately every 500 impressions, the pressmen will pull a sheet and carefully examine it to ensure that all the colors are remaining consistent.
These sheets are stored for 72 hours to dry before going on to the next section, Intaglio printing. Drying occurs in Work-In-Process security cages, otherwise known as WIP cages. On average, the BEP inventories 2,000,000 sheets (or 100 loads) between Offset Printing Operations and the Back Intaglio printing operation.
Intaglio Printing Operations
Intaglio, pronounced in-tal-ee-oh, comes from an Italian word which means to cut, carve, or engrave, indicating that intaglio images are engraved into the surface of a plate. In the intaglio printing process, ink is applied to a plate so that it remains only in the engraved areas. Paper is then laid atop the plate, and the two are pressed together under great pressure. As a result, the ink from the recessed areas is pulled onto paper, creating a finished image. Intaglio printing is used for the portraits, vignettes, scrollwork, numerals, and lettering that are unique to each denomination.
Engraving
Engravers engrave a web of fine lines and grooves into steel dies, transforming designer's models into three-dimensional engravings. Sharp tools (commonly called gravers) and acids are used to cut the fine lines, dots and dashes that uniquely describe the subject the engraver is creating. Additionally, the engraver must cut the image in reverse to how it will actually print on a highly polished steel die.
Engravers do not work on a whole note design at once. They engrave separate parts of the design on separate dies. Some engravers specialize in portraits and vignettes, others in letters and script.
Siderography
In simplest terms, siderography is the means by which multiple images of the hand-engraved die are transferred to a printing plate.
In siderography, individually engraved elements such as the portrait, border, counters and text are first combined like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to form one complete face (or back) of a note using a transfer press. Siderographers use this machine to exert as much as 4 tons per square inch to transfer the original work to a master die. Later, individual plastic molds are made from the master die and are assembled into one plate containing 32 exact duplicates of the master die. Plate makers will then process this plate to create the metal printing plates that go on the presses.
After the dies are assembled and reproduced on plates, engravers cut in additional items, such as series, quadrant numbers, and signatures into the plates using a pantograph machine. A pantograph copies the die engraving onto the plate. As one part of the machine traces the original engraving another part engraves the image onto the new plate.
The original engraved dies are stored and can be used again and again as needed. For example, the Lincoln portrait on the Series 1928 $5 note was originally engraved in 1869, but can still be used to make new dies today.
Intaglio Plate Making
The plastic master plates are transferred from siderography and used by plate makers to create hundreds of identical printing plates — identical because they are all based on the same master.
Electroplating is how this is done. The plastic master, which is called the "basso", is sprayed with silver nitrate to act as an electrical conductor. The plate is then placed into a tank filled with a nickel salt solution, and an electric current is generated. Nickel ions leave the solution and deposit themselves on the electrically charged surface of the master. After about 22 hours, a nickel plate, called an "alto" has literally grown. The alto is separated from the plastic master, trimmed, and inspected by the engravers. The plate contains the mirror image of the master in all its intricate detail and is an exact replica of the original engraved die.
Even this plate is not the one destined for the printing press. The actual printing plate comes from a later generation of plates grown from the alto plates in the electroplating baths. That final printing plate is coated with a thin layer of chrome to make it hard and slick. It contains the Intaglio image in recessed grooves only 2/1000 (0.002) of an inch deep — but that is deep enough to hold ink for intaglio printing.
From engraver to plate maker, every BEP employee involved in the steps leading to the Intaglio press checks and re-checks his or her work for any sort of flaw, no matter how small. Dents, seams, or scratches in the die or plate will hold ink and create a printed mark, so defects during these preparatory stages would leave a blemish on every note printed from that die or plate.
Even the thickness of the printing plate is scrutinized; the margin of error is only +/- 0.0003 (three ten-thousandths) of an inch. That's 1/10th the thickness of a human hair.
Back Intaglio Printing
High-speed, sheet-fed rotary I-10 Intaglio printing presses are used to print the green engraving on the back of U.S. currency. Blank currency sheets for the $1s and $2s or the offset printed sheets for redesigned currency are fed into these presses and printed at a rate of 10,000 sheets per hour. Four 32-subject engraved plates are mounted on the press then covered with ink. A wiper removes the excess ink from the surface of the plate, leaving ink in the recessed image area of the plate. Paper is applied directly to the plate and under tremendous pressure (approximately 20,000 lbs. per sq. inch), the paper is forced into the engraved plate, thereby removing the ink and printing the image.
Currently, the BEP is implementing the latest Intaglio printing technology called the Super Orlof Intaglio (SOI) press which could help the BEP move from a 32-subject production process to a 50-subject environment. Like the I-10 presses in Back Intaglio, the two SOI presses print 10,000 sheets per hour and are currently printing 32-subject sheets but have only three printing plates instead of four. The presses are 40 feet long, 11.5 feet wide and 13.75 feet high, weighing in at just a mere 50 tons. Most astounding is that these mammoth presses have 185,634 total parts! In the future, because of their 50-subject printing capability, they could increase productivity by 56% by increasing the notes printed per hour from 320,000 to 500,000! These presses also have a better integrated inspection system with ten times the resolution of the older presses, have the capability of printing one additional color, and have a more precise ink control which helps save costs by reducing ink usage. The SOIs also feature a four-pile delivery system versus a two-pile on the older I-10's which reduces spoilage by having less weight (pressure) on the bottom sheets of each pile.
Jogger
Sheets that were printed from the Back Intaglio process require 72 hours to dry and cure. During this drying process, the sheets bond and stick together. Therefore the sheets must be separated and neatly jogged before they can be printed on the Face Intaglio press. To do this the BEP employs automated joggers shaped much like the letter "C." Support personnel retrieve the load and place it into the jogger. The load is turned on its side and, through the combination of vibration and forced air, the sheets are separated. The process takes approximately 10 minutes. Once jogged, the load is moved to the designated Face Intaglio press.
To recap, the subtle background colors are printed first using Offset print technology, then the green engraving on the back is printed second using the Intaglio printing process. The third printing operation is the Face Intaglio printing process.
Face Intaglio Printing
Once again, Intaglio presses like those used to print the Back Intaglio engraving are used to print the faces of the bills. While the same printing process applies, one difference is how the ink is applied to the engraving. Special cut-out ink rollers transfer the different inks to a specific portion of the engraving, thus allowing three distinct colors to be printed on the face of the note; the black for the border, portrait engraving, and signatures of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Treasurer of the United States; the color-shifting ink in the lower right hand corner for the $10 denominations and higher; and the metallic ink for the freedom icons on redesigned $10, $20, and $50 bills or color shifting ink on the redesigned $100 notes' freedom icons. Bills printed in Fort Worth, Texas, will also have a small "FW" printed in black ink. The loads of these freshly printed sheets will still require 72 hours to dry and cure before they can continue to the next operation.
Mechanical Examination
Throughout the printing processes, minor printing imperfections may have occurred, either through printing or the handling process. In order to ensure only the highest quality sheets proceed to the numbering operation, the face and back of the sheets are thoroughly examined using state-of-the-art computer technology.
UOCIS
The Upgraded Offline Currency Inspection System, otherwise known as UOCIS, integrates computers, cameras, and sophisticated software to completely analyze an untrimmed printed sheet. By examining untrimmed sheets, the BEP is better able to monitor color registration and ink density.
As the sheets pass through the system at the rate of about 8,000 sheets per hour, a transmissive camera is used to inspect the paper by looking through the sheets to ensure the thread and portrait watermark are in the correct position. In addition, two separate cameras take a digital picture of both the front and back of the sheets, breaking the images down into four million tiny pixels. After the sheets are trimmed, a trim camera takes measurements of the sheets. All data is gathered from the sheets and compared to what is considered a perfect "golden image," and within three tenths of a second, the computer decides if the sheet is acceptable or a reject, looking for defects such as ink spots, ink deficiencies, or smears.
Nota-Sav
Nota-Sav is the BEP's examining equipment utilized to examine the $1 product line. Since those bills have neither a security thread nor a watermark, Nota-Sav does not need the technical sophistication of UOCIS. Using electronic examination "eyes" to inspect the sheets, these inspection systems provide the automated means to process the $1 bills as they move forward on a transport.
With either the UOCIS or Nota-Sav inspection equipment, the 32-subject sheets are trimmed and split in half to create two 16-subject sheets. The sheets are stacked into two piles of 10,000 good sheets while the rejected sheets are reconciled and later scheduled for destruction.
COPE
COPE-Pak presses in this section utilize the letter press printing process which is the third and final type of printing utilized by the BEP for paper currency. The acronym COPE-Pak stands for Currency Overprinting Processing Equipment and Packaging. These presses were custom designed specifically for the BEP and are the most automated equipment of their kind in the world. This press takes a 16-subject printed and examined sheet of currency and adds the two serial numbers, the black universal Federal Reserve seal, the green Department of the Treasury seal, and the corresponding Federal Reserve identification numbers.
Serial numbers on the redesigned currency differ slightly from those on the old currency. The new serial numbers consist of two prefix letters, eight numerals, and a one-letter suffix. The first letter of the prefix designates the series (for example, Series 1996 is designated by the letter A, and Series 1999 is designated by the letter B). The second letter of the prefix designates the Federal Reserve Bank to which the note was issued. The serial numbers are overprinted in sequential order and remain in order until the 16-subject sheets are cut.
In addition, a universal Federal Reserve seal replaces individual seals for each Federal Reserve Bank. On the other hand, $1 and $2 dollar notes have not been redesigned. Those notes still maintain the specific black Federal Reserve Bank seal. Finally, the green Department of the Treasury seal is printed on all denominations.
The Treasury seal, the universal Federal Reserve seal, and the 12 Federal Bank seals are manufactured by a team of sculpture engravers, siderographers, and plate makers. Traditionally, the Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank seals were hand engraved and duplicated in a similar fashion as the currency master die. The siderographer used the transfer press to make many copies from one master die. Today, technologies are emerging in this process and seals are now being manufactured using an Electronic Discharge Machine (EDM). In this process, the engraver has prepared a digital file and sends it to a plate maker where the images are "burned" into the individual surface pieces using an electric current. When each piece is completed, the engraver inspects it prior to releasing it for print production.
As sheets pass through the COPE process, they are inspected by the COPE Vision Inspection System (CVIS). Prior to this new technology, an examiner would hand-inspect approximately 6% of the finished work whereas today we are inspecting 100%. CVIS alerts the COPE pressmen to sheets whose COPE attributes are potentially not up to standardized specifications, checking them using grayscale technology for position of the COPE features and correctness of the serial numbers, prefixes, suffixes, and bank numbers. CVIS uses red lighting, providing optimal lighting for inspection by minimizing the Intaglio printing so that the equipment can key in on only the sheets' COPE attributes. The computer compares the scan of the sheets against a database containing captured images and numeric qualities and, in 200 milliseconds, decides whether or not to accept or reject the sheet. That's faster than the blink of a human eye (300-400 milliseconds)! If a sheet is identified as being defective by the system, the pressmen will then pull the sheet in order to make a final determination as to whether or not it should continue through the process. If they agree that in fact the sheet is defective, they will replace it with a star sheet. In design, the star sheets containing 16 star notes are exactly like the sheets they replace; however, a "star" appears after the serial number in place of the suffix letter on each of the notes.
The currency sheets are then gathered into piles of 100. The pile continues down the transport where it passes through two sharp guillotine cutters. The first cut is made horizontally, leaving the notes in pairs. The second cut is made vertically, and for the first time you see individual notes. A denomination paper band is wrapped around each group of 100 notes to form a strap. Ten straps of 100 notes (totaling 1,000 notes) are then banded together and machine counted before they are shrink-wrapped, forming a bundle. Four shrink-wrapped bundles are collated together, identified with a bar code label then shrink-wrapped again to create a brick of 4,000 notes.
In 2008, an ergonomic piece of equipment called a palletizer was added to each one of the COPE-Pak presses to eliminate the repetitive, rotating motion performed by an employee as they placed the bricks onto skids. As the bricks enter the palletizer, they are flipped over and the barcodes are scanned for information. An air-powered arm picks up the bricks from the transport using vacuum suction in addition to forks and grippers. The palletizer will stack 160 bricks to complete two skids and then place a lid over them. It will then advance the full skids forward, where they will be secured and stored for the next operation. As full skids are advanced and removed, the palletizer will continue grabbing empty skids, placing them into position to start receiving more bricks.
COPE Total Number of Bills
100 bills equal 1 strap 100 bills
10 straps equal 1 bundle 1,000 bills
4 bundles equal 1 brick 4,000 bills
Packaging Operations and Federal Reserve Vault
Packaging Operations is the fifth and final stage of the currency production process before the currency is shipped to our customers, the Federal Reserve Banks. Bricks of currency are printed with a unique numbering sequence. Packaging operations aligns the completed skids from COPE operations and collates four bricks of currency into the proper numbering sequence for the final packaging.
Scanners read the COPE-Pak bar code on the first bundle of the first of four bricks that will become a "Cash-Pack." The four bricks are then shrink-wrapped using a heavy, color-coded shrink film, which is then heated to about 450°F, to create a Cash-Pack, consisting of four 4,000 note bricks or 16,000 notes. The machine then verifies proper sequencing, applies a new label, and then stacks 40 of them on a skid. Like COPE operations, Packaging operations also utilizes an ergonomic palletizer. This palletizer is also powered by air and uses vacuum suction in addition to forks and grippers to pick up each Cash-Pack. It can store up to two full skids (80 Cash-Packs) at a time before they must be removed from the machine by a forklift.
This equipment eliminates the physical labor and rotating motion previously performed by an employee who would stack the completed Cash-Packs onto the pallets. Prior to ergonomic improvements such as the palletizer, the employee was required to stack approximately 7,400 pounds (or 3.7 tons) per day. This tool greatly helps to prevent injuries and employee fatigue and has proven to be another successful ergonomic improvement at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
The completed loads will be transferred and securely stored in the Federal Reserve Vault for future pickup and distribution by the Federal Reserve Bank.
Federal Reserve Vault and Packaging Total Number of Bills
4 bricks (from COPE) equal 1 cash-pack 16,000 bills
40 cash-packs equal 1 skid 640,000 bills*
*The value of the skid is 640,000 multiplied by the denomination contained, (e.g. 640,000 bills x $10 = $6,400,000.
The Production Process
How Money Is Made Today
The BEP is one of the largest currency printing operations in the world with facilities in Washington, D.C. and Fort Worth, Texas. Current BEP currency production is quite different from its beginnings in 1862, which consisted of a handful of people separating notes with a hand-cranked machine in the basement of the Treasury building. Technology has brought the BEP a long way to a state-of-the-art manufacturing operation producing U.S. paper currency. The production of this currency is not an easy or simple task, but one that involves highly trained and skilled craftspeople, specialized equipment, and a combination of traditional old world printing techniques merged with sophisticated, cutting edge technology. Overall, there are numerous, distinctive steps required in the production process.
With the introduction of redesigned currency, subtle background colors were added to the redesigned notes to make them more secure and difficult to counterfeit. The new design was applied to the $5, $10, $20, $50, and $100 notes. Circulation of the new series began during the fall of 2003, with the introduction of the redesigned $20 note. It continued with the $50 note in 2004, the $10 note in 2006, and the $5 note in 2008. The new $100 note is currently in production with a release date to be announced as soon as possible. Redesign of the $1 and $2 notes is not planned.
The redesigned notes retain the same size as previous notes and use similar portraits and historical images to maintain an American look and feel. Security features maintained in the enhanced Federal Reserve Notes include a portrait watermark visible when held up to a light, two numeric watermarks on the $5s, an enhanced security thread that glows under an ultraviolet light, micro printing, improved color shifting ink that changes color when the note is tilted, and on the newly redesigned $100 notes, a 3-D security ribbon and enhanced, raised printing. While the percentage of counterfeit notes in circulation remains small, advances in technology have brought forth an increase in computer generated counterfeit notes. United States paper currency is redesigned as a way to protect your hard earned money by staying ahead of advancing technologies and tech-savvy counterfeiters.
Paper and Ink
The paper and ink used in the production of U.S. paper currency is as distinct as its design. The paper comes to the BEP in brown paper-wrapped loads of 20,000 sheets (2 pallets of 10,000 sheets). Each of these sheets is tracked by the BEP as it passes through the production process. And, the total inventory of 20,000 sheets is continually reconciled to make sure each sheet is accounted for. Currency paper is specifically made for the BEP by Crane Paper Company. The ordinary paper that consumers use throughout their everyday life such as newspapers, books, cereal boxes, etc, is primarily made of wood pulp; however, United States currency paper is composed of 75% cotton and 25% linen. This is what gives United States currency its distinct look and feel. For denominations of $5 and above, the security thread, and watermark are already built into the paper when it is received.
All bills, regardless of denomination, utilize green ink on the backs. Faces, on the other hand, use black ink, color-shifting ink in the lower right hand corner for the $10 denominations and higher, and metallic ink for the freedom icons on redesigned $10, $20, and $50 bills. The $100 note's "bell in the inkwell" freedom icon uses color-shifting ink. These and the other inks appearing on U.S. currency are specially formulated and blended by the BEP. Inks headed for BEP presses also undergo continual quality testing.
Designing
Bank note designers at the BEP develop the overall look, layout, and artistic details of U.S. paper currency. The design of money starts with ideas and rough sketches. Many concepts are drawn and considered before the Secretary of the Treasury approves the final design.
When redesigning a note, designers do not start with a blank slate. They know, for example, that a $10 note will feature Alexander Hamilton on the face and the Treasury building on the back. But which portrait of Hamilton, and which view of the Treasury building — that is for the designers to propose, in collaboration with the engravers.
Currency is designed with a purpose. When redesigning a note, designers strive to convey a dignified image that reflects the strength of the American economy; retain familiar characteristics that identify a note as American currency; incorporate the latest anti-counterfeiting features; and consider how details such as outlines, tone, and shading will "translate" when engraved and printed on an intaglio press.
Traditionally, bank note designers utilized classical tools like the pencil, pen and ink, or paint brush to take their visions from concept to the final model ready for the engravers. Today, the modern designer has the command of a wide array of tools including cutting edge digital technology. While the processes have evolved over time, one important tradition remains in the steadfast production of America's paper currency — a designer's and engraver's exquisite attention to craft and detail.
Offset Printing Operations
With the introduction of the redesigned $20s in 2003, subtle background colors were added to the currency to enhance the security. For these denominations, offset printing is the first printing that occurs on the "blank" paper.
Offset Plates
Before the subtle background colors of today's redesigned currency can be printed, the imagery must be transferred onto offset printing plates. That is the job of photoengravers. The photoengraver receives the master design from the bank note designer and "steps" (duplicates) the images over a plate layout. Then using a high-resolution film recorder, each color separation is imaged onto a sheet of sensitive film in negative form. A thin sheet of steel, coated with a light-sensitive polymer, is exposed to ultraviolet light while covered by the film negative which contains the imagery. The areas on the film that allow light to pass onto the plate are transferred or exposed. The unexposed areas around the images are washed away with water and soft scrubbing brushes. This process is called "burning a plate."
To achieve the offset color scheme on a redesigned $20 face, for example, the photoengraver burns two plates. One plate contains the background pattern that will be printed in green and peach. The second plate contains the images that will be printed in blue — an eagle and the words TWENTY USA. The photoengraver takes great care to make sure the images are perfectly aligned on both plates, or else the images will not line up properly when printed on the bills. In addition to the alignment check, each individual note on a plate is thoroughly inspected. The slightest blemish from a dust particle or piece of lint may affect the print quality. If it does, then a new plate is manufactured.
Offset Printing
The background colors are printed by the BEP's Simultan presses, which are state-of-the-art, high-speed, sheet-fed rotary offset presses. These presses are over 50 feet long and weigh over 70 tons. They are specifically designed to print security offset designs on currency paper. Using dry offset plates, ink from the plate is transferred to an offset blanket. The blank sheet of paper passes in-between the face and back blankets and simultaneously prints the complete image on the paper. The press has eight print units, four on the face and four on the back, with two comprehensive computer control consoles. Many of the press settings can be controlled from these consoles and their status displayed on the computer screens. The press is capable of printing 10,000 sheets per hour; approximately every 500 impressions, the pressmen will pull a sheet and carefully examine it to ensure that all the colors are remaining consistent.
These sheets are stored for 72 hours to dry before going on to the next section, Intaglio printing. Drying occurs in Work-In-Process security cages, otherwise known as WIP cages. On average, the BEP inventories 2,000,000 sheets (or 100 loads) between Offset Printing Operations and the Back Intaglio printing operation.
Intaglio Printing Operations
Intaglio, pronounced in-tal-ee-oh, comes from an Italian word which means to cut, carve, or engrave, indicating that intaglio images are engraved into the surface of a plate. In the intaglio printing process, ink is applied to a plate so that it remains only in the engraved areas. Paper is then laid atop the plate, and the two are pressed together under great pressure. As a result, the ink from the recessed areas is pulled onto paper, creating a finished image. Intaglio printing is used for the portraits, vignettes, scrollwork, numerals, and lettering that are unique to each denomination.
Engraving
Engravers engrave a web of fine lines and grooves into steel dies, transforming designer's models into three-dimensional engravings. Sharp tools (commonly called gravers) and acids are used to cut the fine lines, dots and dashes that uniquely describe the subject the engraver is creating. Additionally, the engraver must cut the image in reverse to how it will actually print on a highly polished steel die.
Engravers do not work on a whole note design at once. They engrave separate parts of the design on separate dies. Some engravers specialize in portraits and vignettes, others in letters and script.
Siderography
In simplest terms, siderography is the means by which multiple images of the hand-engraved die are transferred to a printing plate.
In siderography, individually engraved elements such as the portrait, border, counters and text are first combined like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to form one complete face (or back) of a note using a transfer press. Siderographers use this machine to exert as much as 4 tons per square inch to transfer the original work to a master die. Later, individual plastic molds are made from the master die and are assembled into one plate containing 32 exact duplicates of the master die. Plate makers will then process this plate to create the metal printing plates that go on the presses.
After the dies are assembled and reproduced on plates, engravers cut in additional items, such as series, quadrant numbers, and signatures into the plates using a pantograph machine. A pantograph copies the die engraving onto the plate. As one part of the machine traces the original engraving another part engraves the image onto the new plate.
The original engraved dies are stored and can be used again and again as needed. For example, the Lincoln portrait on the Series 1928 $5 note was originally engraved in 1869, but can still be used to make new dies today.
Intaglio Plate Making
The plastic master plates are transferred from siderography and used by plate makers to create hundreds of identical printing plates — identical because they are all based on the same master.
Electroplating is how this is done. The plastic master, which is called the "basso", is sprayed with silver nitrate to act as an electrical conductor. The plate is then placed into a tank filled with a nickel salt solution, and an electric current is generated. Nickel ions leave the solution and deposit themselves on the electrically charged surface of the master. After about 22 hours, a nickel plate, called an "alto" has literally grown. The alto is separated from the plastic master, trimmed, and inspected by the engravers. The plate contains the mirror image of the master in all its intricate detail and is an exact replica of the original engraved die.
Even this plate is not the one destined for the printing press. The actual printing plate comes from a later generation of plates grown from the alto plates in the electroplating baths. That final printing plate is coated with a thin layer of chrome to make it hard and slick. It contains the Intaglio image in recessed grooves only 2/1000 (0.002) of an inch deep — but that is deep enough to hold ink for intaglio printing.
From engraver to plate maker, every BEP employee involved in the steps leading to the Intaglio press checks and re-checks his or her work for any sort of flaw, no matter how small. Dents, seams, or scratches in the die or plate will hold ink and create a printed mark, so defects during these preparatory stages would leave a blemish on every note printed from that die or plate.
Even the thickness of the printing plate is scrutinized; the margin of error is only +/- 0.0003 (three ten-thousandths) of an inch. That's 1/10th the thickness of a human hair.
Back Intaglio Printing
High-speed, sheet-fed rotary I-10 Intaglio printing presses are used to print the green engraving on the back of U.S. currency. Blank currency sheets for the $1s and $2s or the offset printed sheets for redesigned currency are fed into these presses and printed at a rate of 10,000 sheets per hour. Four 32-subject engraved plates are mounted on the press then covered with ink. A wiper removes the excess ink from the surface of the plate, leaving ink in the recessed image area of the plate. Paper is applied directly to the plate and under tremendous pressure (approximately 20,000 lbs. per sq. inch), the paper is forced into the engraved plate, thereby removing the ink and printing the image.
Currently, the BEP is implementing the latest Intaglio printing technology called the Super Orlof Intaglio (SOI) press which could help the BEP move from a 32-subject production process to a 50-subject environment. Like the I-10 presses in Back Intaglio, the two SOI presses print 10,000 sheets per hour and are currently printing 32-subject sheets but have only three printing plates instead of four. The presses are 40 feet long, 11.5 feet wide and 13.75 feet high, weighing in at just a mere 50 tons. Most astounding is that these mammoth presses have 185,634 total parts! In the future, because of their 50-subject printing capability, they could increase productivity by 56% by increasing the notes printed per hour from 320,000 to 500,000! These presses also have a better integrated inspection system with ten times the resolution of the older presses, have the capability of printing one additional color, and have a more precise ink control which helps save costs by reducing ink usage. The SOIs also feature a four-pile delivery system versus a two-pile on the older I-10's which reduces spoilage by having less weight (pressure) on the bottom sheets of each pile.
Jogger
Sheets that were printed from the Back Intaglio process require 72 hours to dry and cure. During this drying process, the sheets bond and stick together. Therefore the sheets must be separated and neatly jogged before they can be printed on the Face Intaglio press. To do this the BEP employs automated joggers shaped much like the letter "C." Support personnel retrieve the load and place it into the jogger. The load is turned on its side and, through the combination of vibration and forced air, the sheets are separated. The process takes approximately 10 minutes. Once jogged, the load is moved to the designated Face Intaglio press.
To recap, the subtle background colors are printed first using Offset print technology, then the green engraving on the back is printed second using the Intaglio printing process. The third printing operation is the Face Intaglio printing process.
Face Intaglio Printing
Once again, Intaglio presses like those used to print the Back Intaglio engraving are used to print the faces of the bills. While the same printing process applies, one difference is how the ink is applied to the engraving. Special cut-out ink rollers transfer the different inks to a specific portion of the engraving, thus allowing three distinct colors to be printed on the face of the note; the black for the border, portrait engraving, and signatures of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the Treasurer of the United States; the color-shifting ink in the lower right hand corner for the $10 denominations and higher; and the metallic ink for the freedom icons on redesigned $10, $20, and $50 bills or color shifting ink on the redesigned $100 notes' freedom icons. Bills printed in Fort Worth, Texas, will also have a small "FW" printed in black ink. The loads of these freshly printed sheets will still require 72 hours to dry and cure before they can continue to the next operation.
Mechanical Examination
Throughout the printing processes, minor printing imperfections may have occurred, either through printing or the handling process. In order to ensure only the highest quality sheets proceed to the numbering operation, the face and back of the sheets are thoroughly examined using state-of-the-art computer technology.
UOCIS
The Upgraded Offline Currency Inspection System, otherwise known as UOCIS, integrates computers, cameras, and sophisticated software to completely analyze an untrimmed printed sheet. By examining untrimmed sheets, the BEP is better able to monitor color registration and ink density.
As the sheets pass through the system at the rate of about 8,000 sheets per hour, a transmissive camera is used to inspect the paper by looking through the sheets to ensure the thread and portrait watermark are in the correct position. In addition, two separate cameras take a digital picture of both the front and back of the sheets, breaking the images down into four million tiny pixels. After the sheets are trimmed, a trim camera takes measurements of the sheets. All data is gathered from the sheets and compared to what is considered a perfect "golden image," and within three tenths of a second, the computer decides if the sheet is acceptable or a reject, looking for defects such as ink spots, ink deficiencies, or smears.
Nota-Sav
Nota-Sav is the BEP's examining equipment utilized to examine the $1 product line. Since those bills have neither a security thread nor a watermark, Nota-Sav does not need the technical sophistication of UOCIS. Using electronic examination "eyes" to inspect the sheets, these inspection systems provide the automated means to process the $1 bills as they move forward on a transport.
With either the UOCIS or Nota-Sav inspection equipment, the 32-subject sheets are trimmed and split in half to create two 16-subject sheets. The sheets are stacked into two piles of 10,000 good sheets while the rejected sheets are reconciled and later scheduled for destruction.
COPE
COPE-Pak presses in this section utilize the letter press printing process which is the third and final type of printing utilized by the BEP for paper currency. The acronym COPE-Pak stands for Currency Overprinting Processing Equipment and Packaging. These presses were custom designed specifically for the BEP and are the most automated equipment of their kind in the world. This press takes a 16-subject printed and examined sheet of currency and adds the two serial numbers, the black universal Federal Reserve seal, the green Department of the Treasury seal, and the corresponding Federal Reserve identification numbers.
Serial numbers on the redesigned currency differ slightly from those on the old currency. The new serial numbers consist of two prefix letters, eight numerals, and a one-letter suffix. The first letter of the prefix designates the series (for example, Series 1996 is designated by the letter A, and Series 1999 is designated by the letter B). The second letter of the prefix designates the Federal Reserve Bank to which the note was issued. The serial numbers are overprinted in sequential order and remain in order until the 16-subject sheets are cut.
In addition, a universal Federal Reserve seal replaces individual seals for each Federal Reserve Bank. On the other hand, $1 and $2 dollar notes have not been redesigned. Those notes still maintain the specific black Federal Reserve Bank seal. Finally, the green Department of the Treasury seal is printed on all denominations.
The Treasury seal, the universal Federal Reserve seal, and the 12 Federal Bank seals are manufactured by a team of sculpture engravers, siderographers, and plate makers. Traditionally, the Treasury and Federal Reserve Bank seals were hand engraved and duplicated in a similar fashion as the currency master die. The siderographer used the transfer press to make many copies from one master die. Today, technologies are emerging in this process and seals are now being manufactured using an Electronic Discharge Machine (EDM). In this process, the engraver has prepared a digital file and sends it to a plate maker where the images are "burned" into the individual surface pieces using an electric current. When each piece is completed, the engraver inspects it prior to releasing it for print production.
As sheets pass through the COPE process, they are inspected by the COPE Vision Inspection System (CVIS). Prior to this new technology, an examiner would hand-inspect approximately 6% of the finished work whereas today we are inspecting 100%. CVIS alerts the COPE pressmen to sheets whose COPE attributes are potentially not up to standardized specifications, checking them using grayscale technology for position of the COPE features and correctness of the serial numbers, prefixes, suffixes, and bank numbers. CVIS uses red lighting, providing optimal lighting for inspection by minimizing the Intaglio printing so that the equipment can key in on only the sheets' COPE attributes. The computer compares the scan of the sheets against a database containing captured images and numeric qualities and, in 200 milliseconds, decides whether or not to accept or reject the sheet. That's faster than the blink of a human eye (300-400 milliseconds)! If a sheet is identified as being defective by the system, the pressmen will then pull the sheet in order to make a final determination as to whether or not it should continue through the process. If they agree that in fact the sheet is defective, they will replace it with a star sheet. In design, the star sheets containing 16 star notes are exactly like the sheets they replace; however, a "star" appears after the serial number in place of the suffix letter on each of the notes.
The currency sheets are then gathered into piles of 100. The pile continues down the transport where it passes through two sharp guillotine cutters. The first cut is made horizontally, leaving the notes in pairs. The second cut is made vertically, and for the first time you see individual notes. A denomination paper band is wrapped around each group of 100 notes to form a strap. Ten straps of 100 notes (totaling 1,000 notes) are then banded together and machine counted before they are shrink-wrapped, forming a bundle. Four shrink-wrapped bundles are collated together, identified with a bar code label then shrink-wrapped again to create a brick of 4,000 notes.
In 2008, an ergonomic piece of equipment called a palletizer was added to each one of the COPE-Pak presses to eliminate the repetitive, rotating motion performed by an employee as they placed the bricks onto skids. As the bricks enter the palletizer, they are flipped over and the barcodes are scanned for information. An air-powered arm picks up the bricks from the transport using vacuum suction in addition to forks and grippers. The palletizer will stack 160 bricks to complete two skids and then place a lid over them. It will then advance the full skids forward, where they will be secured and stored for the next operation. As full skids are advanced and removed, the palletizer will continue grabbing empty skids, placing them into position to start receiving more bricks.
COPE Total Number of Bills
100 bills equal 1 strap 100 bills
10 straps equal 1 bundle 1,000 bills
4 bundles equal 1 brick 4,000 bills
Packaging Operations and Federal Reserve Vault
Packaging Operations is the fifth and final stage of the currency production process before the currency is shipped to our customers, the Federal Reserve Banks. Bricks of currency are printed with a unique numbering sequence. Packaging operations aligns the completed skids from COPE operations and collates four bricks of currency into the proper numbering sequence for the final packaging.
Scanners read the COPE-Pak bar code on the first bundle of the first of four bricks that will become a "Cash-Pack." The four bricks are then shrink-wrapped using a heavy, color-coded shrink film, which is then heated to about 450°F, to create a Cash-Pack, consisting of four 4,000 note bricks or 16,000 notes. The machine then verifies proper sequencing, applies a new label, and then stacks 40 of them on a skid. Like COPE operations, Packaging operations also utilizes an ergonomic palletizer. This palletizer is also powered by air and uses vacuum suction in addition to forks and grippers to pick up each Cash-Pack. It can store up to two full skids (80 Cash-Packs) at a time before they must be removed from the machine by a forklift.
This equipment eliminates the physical labor and rotating motion previously performed by an employee who would stack the completed Cash-Packs onto the pallets. Prior to ergonomic improvements such as the palletizer, the employee was required to stack approximately 7,400 pounds (or 3.7 tons) per day. This tool greatly helps to prevent injuries and employee fatigue and has proven to be another successful ergonomic improvement at the Bureau of Engraving and Printing.
The completed loads will be transferred and securely stored in the Federal Reserve Vault for future pickup and distribution by the Federal Reserve Bank.
Federal Reserve Vault and Packaging Total Number of Bills
4 bricks (from COPE) equal 1 cash-pack 16,000 bills
40 cash-packs equal 1 skid 640,000 bills*
*The value of the skid is 640,000 multiplied by the denomination contained, (e.g. 640,000 bills x $10 = $6,400,000.
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
How the US banking system works:
[video=youtube;iFDe5kUUyT0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0[/video]
Dutch investigators who made a transcript of the flight recordings from the downed malaysia flight have stated that the plane was downed by being hit by a load of high energy objects
Yup....cannon fire...coming from the two kiev controlled fighters that were seen flying in the area
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...rts-to-contact-disappeared-plane-9720715.html
[video=youtube;iFDe5kUUyT0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFDe5kUUyT0[/video]
Dutch investigators who made a transcript of the flight recordings from the downed malaysia flight have stated that the plane was downed by being hit by a load of high energy objects
Yup....cannon fire...coming from the two kiev controlled fighters that were seen flying in the area
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...rts-to-contact-disappeared-plane-9720715.html
http://www.neweasterneurope.eu/articles-and-commentary/1305-five-fallacies-of-professor-cohen
Five Fallacies of Professor Cohen
"Professor Stephen Cohen is one of the most vocal voices in the West who tries to show the Russian position and argumentation in the current crisis in Ukraine. By doing so, however, he does not end up showing a balanced picture; instead, his analysis serves to justify Russian actions and puts the blame on the West. In his latest article “The New Cold War and the Necessity of Patriotic Heresy: US fallacies may be leading to war with Russia” he lists five commonly accepted opinions in the West and, by dismissing them, directs the blame away from Moscow towards Washington. In this short essay, I refute his opinions (or what he calls “facts”) to critically assess Cohen’s own assessment of the topic.
1. The first step in Cohen’s ladder of argumentation regards the West’s mistreating of Russia. Here Cohen argues that since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation was not treated as an equal partner but was rather neglected as a defeated power. In Cohen’s words, the West did exactly that when it “spearheaded the expansion of NATO into Russia’s traditional zones of national security”. In this drive, as Cohen believes, “Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Georgia, were the ultimate goals.”
The biggest mistake in this argument is that Ukraine and Georgia are viewed not as sovereign states, but merely as “Russia’s traditional zones of national security”. What about Ukraine’s and Georgia’s traditional zones of national security — their own sovereign territories? The idea of Ukraine and Georgia being nothing more than “Russia’s traditional zones of national security” is a remnant of the Cold War and the bipolar perception of world affairs. Therefore, Stephen Cohen makes a mistake when, on the one hand he accuses Washington of resuming the Cold War and on the other, justifies Russian interests with a Cold War era argument.
Another interesting point is that Cohen distinguishes only Georgia and Ukraine as NATO’s preferred “prizes” in undermining Russia’s security, while leaving out other former Soviet states in the Russian neighbourhood: Belarus, Moldova, Armenia or Azerbaijan. He fails to explain why Ukraine and Georgia were desired objects for NATO, and not, say, Azerbaijan, which has an additional perk of owning huge amounts of oil. What Cohen did here is what Paul Goble calls disinformation: first, he disregarded the fact that since 2010 Ukraine withdrew its desire for NATO integration and left Georgia as the only country in the neighbourhood aspiring for the membership in the alliance. Second, he somehow managed to interpret Georgia’s wish for NATO membership as NATO’s aggressive expansion not just in Georgia, but in Ukraine too. In the end, the readers get the impression that NATO forced two countries in Russia’s neighbourhood into its alliance against their will, while in reality, only one country had been trying in vain for the last decade or so to become a full member of NATO and did not even manage to receive a Membership Action Plan, not to say anything about membership itself, thanks to the reluctance within NATO.
2. According to Cohen’s second statement, Ukraine is not even a single nation. And the country’s many divisions on ethnic, cultural, linguistic, economic and political lines, he argues, do not allow a united Ukraine to “escape Russians and join the West."
The first mistake here is seeing eastern Ukraine as dominated by ethnic Russians, thus politically automatically pro-Russian. According to the 2001 census, only in Crimea were the Russians in the majority. In the east of Ukraine, the Russians represent only a minor share of the population. For instance, in Donetsk and Luhansk, the regions that are supposedly keen on joining Russia or at least separating from Ukraine, 57 and 58 per cent of the population identify themselves as Ukrainian and only 38 and 39 per cent as Russian respectively.
This however does not mean that we should perceive peoples from the western and eastern regions of Ukraine as having similar economic, political or even cultural attributes and foreign policy preferences. But is it correct to assume based on these differences that there is no single Ukrainian nation? There is barely a country in the world as big and as populous as Ukraine that does not have similar divisions among its different regions.
The other important attempt of disinformation from Stephen Cohen is portraying Ukraine’s choice for the EU as incompatible with the presence of a large ethnic Russian minority mostly in the east and south of the country. First of all, the joining with the EU (which is not even part of a short or medium-term agenda) does not imply ending Ukraine’s economic, political or cultural relations with Russia, unless Moscow decides so. Lithuania is a good example of this: despite being a full member of the EU, her biggest trade partner is still Russia with 16 per cent of export going to and 30 per cent of import coming from Russia. Second, Estonia and Latvia, a quarter of whose population is ethnically Russian, represent a very strong precedent of ethnic Russians enjoying their respective countries’ membership in the EU.
3. Cohen next argues that it was aggression from the side of West, not Russia, which led to the current crisis. Specifically, “the EU proposal [on Ukraine’s Association Agreement] was a reckless provocation compelling the democratically elected president [Yanukovych] of a deeply divided country to choose between Russia and the West. So too was the EU’s rejection of Putin’s counter-proposal of a Russian-European-American plan to save Ukraine from financial collapse.”
First, despite Cohen’s attempt to portray the Association Agreement with the EU as a zero-sum decision, it is everything but. Nowhere in the text of the agreement, nor in the speeches of the EU representatives, can we find wording, nor a slight implication, that Ukraine must stop or reduce the level of relations, be it economic, political or any other kind, with Russia. The only limit that is introduced is Ukraine’s possibility to become part of the Eurasian Union, because the trade deal with the EU will not, in practical terms, work otherwise. If this is “a recklessprovocation compelling to choose between Russia and the West”, then so was the Moscow’s multiple threats to stop trade with Ukraine if Kyiv had signed the EU deal. According to RT, Russia’s state-financed media outlet, “Ukraine sees more economic opportunity in Europe and hopes to act as a ‘bridge’ between Russia and the EU, [but] Russia has made it clear there will be no ‘bridge’ if Ukraine steps West” From the rhetoric we have been hearing for the past years regarding the EU-Ukraine deal and import bans from Russia against Ukraine and other neighbours, one could observe that the only actor who used a zero-sum approach as a method of coercion was Russia and certainly not the EU.
Cohen continues to blame the EU for rejecting Putin’s trilateral plan for helping Ukraine financially. The first lie is obvious: it was not the EU, but Ukraine, which rejected the Russian plan. Only 14 per cent of the whole Ukrainian population supports federalisation, which was the main condition of this plan. In the east and south of the country the number is a little higher (26 and 22 per cent respectively), but not sufficient enough for Ukraine to embrace the plan. But what is more interesting, Cohen fails to recognise the reasons behind the rejection. Other than forcing Ukraine to federalise, which considered giving unprecedented amount of power to the regions, including over the issues of foreign affairs, the Russian plan gave unrealistic rights to Russia over domestic areas of its neighbouring country, such as conditions to Ukraine to postpone presidential elections, make changes in the Ukrainian constitution, and pledge political and military neutrality, which means Ukraine refusing to pursue NATO membership.
4. In search of roots of the current conflict, Cohen argues that “Putin’s actions have been mostly reactive” and therefore, he must not be blamed for the conflict escalation. Instead, it was the “February coup” (when Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia) and its architects (“extreme nationalist and even semi-fascist street forces” of the Maidan, Europe and Washington) who are to blame for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the rebellious war in Donbas.
First, let’s define the so-called “coup”. I side with the definition of Anders Aslund according to which “[Yanukovych] lost his parliamentary majority on February 20 after having ordered the killing of 100 citizens and he was voted out with a constitutional majority of two-thirds.” This act was well above those standards of democracy that Yanukovych himself established during his presidency. And by far more democratic than changing the constitution to allow oneself a third (and expected fourth) term of the presidency, as it happened in Russia, the country which blames Ukraine for not keeping up with the accepted norms of democracy.
However, whether we accept the notion of a “coup” or not is absolutely meaningless in the debate. It is more important to establish whether the “coup” itself can be used as an excuse for starting a conflict. I agree that Putin’s steps were largely reactive, but it was still his own decisions, whether reactive or well-planned years before, that really constituted the start of the war in Ukraine. Only the claim of “coup” cannot explain the sudden desire among the Crimean Russians to hold a referendum and split from Ukraine, or among the Donbas residents to take up arms against Kyiv.
The only possible threat to the ethnic Russians in Ukraine could have been the cancellation of the 2012 language law (allowing the regions to officially use minority languages) which was not even fulfilled in the end (because it was vetoed by the acting president Turchynov). Even in 2010, before the law was adopted to give more rights to the Russian-speakers, only nine per cent of Ukraine’s population felt that their own native language was repressed. Even if after Turchynov’s veto, some concerns continued to exist among the ethnic Russians of Ukraine, it could not have possibly justified the presence of Russian troops in Crimea and Russian intelligence officers and armament in Donbas. The mere replacement of pro-Russian Yanukovych by a more pro-Western government cannot be counted as a rational cause for armed conflict in Donbas and for the referendum in Crimea. Unless, of course, you bring in other variables to the mix: the Russian media propaganda that portrayed the new government in Kyiv as almost a reincarnation of the Third Reich and Russian military’s encouragement to instigate rebellion against the government in Ukraine. These most meaningful factors, however, come from the Kremlin and indicate that Putin’s actions, more than anything else, brought the biggest damage to Ukraine.
5. Finally, Cohen discusses the possibility to end the conflict. He does not believe that Putin is capable of ending the conflict by stopping his military support. Instead, Cohen considers the key to peaceful resolution lay within Washington, which has to convince Kyiv to stop military action in Donbas. The maximum of what Putin can do, according to Cohen, is to bring the “rebels” to the negotiating table after Kyiv stops its military operation.
Playing down Putin’s influence is a comfortable tactic to remove responsibility from Russia and attach it to the rival actor. This, however, is an incorrect assessment of the situation. The conflict in the east of Ukraine started with Russia providing arms and personnel to the Donbas locals, proclaiming the People’s Republics in Luhansk and Donetsk, and starting a military siege of the regions. Kyiv’s military action is directed at forcing the illegal warriors in the region to surrender. Therefore, Kyiv cannot stop its action unless it sees the readiness from the opposing side to peacefully end the crisis.
Raising the issue of American responsibility to end the violence in eastern Ukraine is even further from logic. Cohen believes that Putin cannot have much impact on the rebellion, even though as the professor himself admits, Putin “influences and no doubt aids the Donbas self-defenders”. Unlike Putin, Obama does not arm or support Kyiv in any meaningful way in its actions against the “rebels”. Washington’s leverage over Kyiv is incomparably lower than that of Moscow over the Donbas rebellion. Therefore, if Cohen does not consider one foreign actor to be capable of stopping one party of the conflict (over which he certainly exerts influence), it is curious then why does the professor believe that the other foreign actor (with much less tangible influence on the second party of the conflict) is able and responsible to end the violence. Moreover, if Moscow viewed an American attempt to stop Assad from annihilating opposition warriors and peaceful population alike as an illegitimate act of foreign interference in Syria’s domestic affairs, why does Putin encourage Obama to interfere in Kyiv’s attempt to restore order within its sovereign territory?
I understand that it is preferable for a journalist or a scholar to look at the issues from more than one angle. However, this is not enough for a sound judgment or objective evaluation. As Paul Goble has recently noticed: “Many western journalists confuse balance with objectivity. That means if anyone is in a position to put out a version of the story, however outrageous, journalists will often report it as one of the points of view out there, especially if the situation is confused or uncertain. Invariably, doing so is called objectivity but in fact it is anything but. Instead, it gives an opening to governments, which are prepared to lie and to spread their lies widely, confident that what they say, however untrue or outrageous, will be reported.”
Stephen Cohen’s attempt to revise mainstream western views simply by bringing Moscow’s argument cannot bring us any closer to the truth. It is just a repetition of the Kremlin’s disinformation.
Gela Merabishvili works at the Tbilisi State University as an editor of the e-library. He studied at the Tbilisi State University and Maastricht University."
Emphasis mine
Five Fallacies of Professor Cohen
"Professor Stephen Cohen is one of the most vocal voices in the West who tries to show the Russian position and argumentation in the current crisis in Ukraine. By doing so, however, he does not end up showing a balanced picture; instead, his analysis serves to justify Russian actions and puts the blame on the West. In his latest article “The New Cold War and the Necessity of Patriotic Heresy: US fallacies may be leading to war with Russia” he lists five commonly accepted opinions in the West and, by dismissing them, directs the blame away from Moscow towards Washington. In this short essay, I refute his opinions (or what he calls “facts”) to critically assess Cohen’s own assessment of the topic.
1. The first step in Cohen’s ladder of argumentation regards the West’s mistreating of Russia. Here Cohen argues that since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Russian Federation was not treated as an equal partner but was rather neglected as a defeated power. In Cohen’s words, the West did exactly that when it “spearheaded the expansion of NATO into Russia’s traditional zones of national security”. In this drive, as Cohen believes, “Ukraine, and to a lesser extent Georgia, were the ultimate goals.”
The biggest mistake in this argument is that Ukraine and Georgia are viewed not as sovereign states, but merely as “Russia’s traditional zones of national security”. What about Ukraine’s and Georgia’s traditional zones of national security — their own sovereign territories? The idea of Ukraine and Georgia being nothing more than “Russia’s traditional zones of national security” is a remnant of the Cold War and the bipolar perception of world affairs. Therefore, Stephen Cohen makes a mistake when, on the one hand he accuses Washington of resuming the Cold War and on the other, justifies Russian interests with a Cold War era argument.
Another interesting point is that Cohen distinguishes only Georgia and Ukraine as NATO’s preferred “prizes” in undermining Russia’s security, while leaving out other former Soviet states in the Russian neighbourhood: Belarus, Moldova, Armenia or Azerbaijan. He fails to explain why Ukraine and Georgia were desired objects for NATO, and not, say, Azerbaijan, which has an additional perk of owning huge amounts of oil. What Cohen did here is what Paul Goble calls disinformation: first, he disregarded the fact that since 2010 Ukraine withdrew its desire for NATO integration and left Georgia as the only country in the neighbourhood aspiring for the membership in the alliance. Second, he somehow managed to interpret Georgia’s wish for NATO membership as NATO’s aggressive expansion not just in Georgia, but in Ukraine too. In the end, the readers get the impression that NATO forced two countries in Russia’s neighbourhood into its alliance against their will, while in reality, only one country had been trying in vain for the last decade or so to become a full member of NATO and did not even manage to receive a Membership Action Plan, not to say anything about membership itself, thanks to the reluctance within NATO.
2. According to Cohen’s second statement, Ukraine is not even a single nation. And the country’s many divisions on ethnic, cultural, linguistic, economic and political lines, he argues, do not allow a united Ukraine to “escape Russians and join the West."
The first mistake here is seeing eastern Ukraine as dominated by ethnic Russians, thus politically automatically pro-Russian. According to the 2001 census, only in Crimea were the Russians in the majority. In the east of Ukraine, the Russians represent only a minor share of the population. For instance, in Donetsk and Luhansk, the regions that are supposedly keen on joining Russia or at least separating from Ukraine, 57 and 58 per cent of the population identify themselves as Ukrainian and only 38 and 39 per cent as Russian respectively.
This however does not mean that we should perceive peoples from the western and eastern regions of Ukraine as having similar economic, political or even cultural attributes and foreign policy preferences. But is it correct to assume based on these differences that there is no single Ukrainian nation? There is barely a country in the world as big and as populous as Ukraine that does not have similar divisions among its different regions.
The other important attempt of disinformation from Stephen Cohen is portraying Ukraine’s choice for the EU as incompatible with the presence of a large ethnic Russian minority mostly in the east and south of the country. First of all, the joining with the EU (which is not even part of a short or medium-term agenda) does not imply ending Ukraine’s economic, political or cultural relations with Russia, unless Moscow decides so. Lithuania is a good example of this: despite being a full member of the EU, her biggest trade partner is still Russia with 16 per cent of export going to and 30 per cent of import coming from Russia. Second, Estonia and Latvia, a quarter of whose population is ethnically Russian, represent a very strong precedent of ethnic Russians enjoying their respective countries’ membership in the EU.
3. Cohen next argues that it was aggression from the side of West, not Russia, which led to the current crisis. Specifically, “the EU proposal [on Ukraine’s Association Agreement] was a reckless provocation compelling the democratically elected president [Yanukovych] of a deeply divided country to choose between Russia and the West. So too was the EU’s rejection of Putin’s counter-proposal of a Russian-European-American plan to save Ukraine from financial collapse.”
First, despite Cohen’s attempt to portray the Association Agreement with the EU as a zero-sum decision, it is everything but. Nowhere in the text of the agreement, nor in the speeches of the EU representatives, can we find wording, nor a slight implication, that Ukraine must stop or reduce the level of relations, be it economic, political or any other kind, with Russia. The only limit that is introduced is Ukraine’s possibility to become part of the Eurasian Union, because the trade deal with the EU will not, in practical terms, work otherwise. If this is “a recklessprovocation compelling to choose between Russia and the West”, then so was the Moscow’s multiple threats to stop trade with Ukraine if Kyiv had signed the EU deal. According to RT, Russia’s state-financed media outlet, “Ukraine sees more economic opportunity in Europe and hopes to act as a ‘bridge’ between Russia and the EU, [but] Russia has made it clear there will be no ‘bridge’ if Ukraine steps West” From the rhetoric we have been hearing for the past years regarding the EU-Ukraine deal and import bans from Russia against Ukraine and other neighbours, one could observe that the only actor who used a zero-sum approach as a method of coercion was Russia and certainly not the EU.
Cohen continues to blame the EU for rejecting Putin’s trilateral plan for helping Ukraine financially. The first lie is obvious: it was not the EU, but Ukraine, which rejected the Russian plan. Only 14 per cent of the whole Ukrainian population supports federalisation, which was the main condition of this plan. In the east and south of the country the number is a little higher (26 and 22 per cent respectively), but not sufficient enough for Ukraine to embrace the plan. But what is more interesting, Cohen fails to recognise the reasons behind the rejection. Other than forcing Ukraine to federalise, which considered giving unprecedented amount of power to the regions, including over the issues of foreign affairs, the Russian plan gave unrealistic rights to Russia over domestic areas of its neighbouring country, such as conditions to Ukraine to postpone presidential elections, make changes in the Ukrainian constitution, and pledge political and military neutrality, which means Ukraine refusing to pursue NATO membership.
4. In search of roots of the current conflict, Cohen argues that “Putin’s actions have been mostly reactive” and therefore, he must not be blamed for the conflict escalation. Instead, it was the “February coup” (when Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia) and its architects (“extreme nationalist and even semi-fascist street forces” of the Maidan, Europe and Washington) who are to blame for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and the rebellious war in Donbas.
First, let’s define the so-called “coup”. I side with the definition of Anders Aslund according to which “[Yanukovych] lost his parliamentary majority on February 20 after having ordered the killing of 100 citizens and he was voted out with a constitutional majority of two-thirds.” This act was well above those standards of democracy that Yanukovych himself established during his presidency. And by far more democratic than changing the constitution to allow oneself a third (and expected fourth) term of the presidency, as it happened in Russia, the country which blames Ukraine for not keeping up with the accepted norms of democracy.
However, whether we accept the notion of a “coup” or not is absolutely meaningless in the debate. It is more important to establish whether the “coup” itself can be used as an excuse for starting a conflict. I agree that Putin’s steps were largely reactive, but it was still his own decisions, whether reactive or well-planned years before, that really constituted the start of the war in Ukraine. Only the claim of “coup” cannot explain the sudden desire among the Crimean Russians to hold a referendum and split from Ukraine, or among the Donbas residents to take up arms against Kyiv.
The only possible threat to the ethnic Russians in Ukraine could have been the cancellation of the 2012 language law (allowing the regions to officially use minority languages) which was not even fulfilled in the end (because it was vetoed by the acting president Turchynov). Even in 2010, before the law was adopted to give more rights to the Russian-speakers, only nine per cent of Ukraine’s population felt that their own native language was repressed. Even if after Turchynov’s veto, some concerns continued to exist among the ethnic Russians of Ukraine, it could not have possibly justified the presence of Russian troops in Crimea and Russian intelligence officers and armament in Donbas. The mere replacement of pro-Russian Yanukovych by a more pro-Western government cannot be counted as a rational cause for armed conflict in Donbas and for the referendum in Crimea. Unless, of course, you bring in other variables to the mix: the Russian media propaganda that portrayed the new government in Kyiv as almost a reincarnation of the Third Reich and Russian military’s encouragement to instigate rebellion against the government in Ukraine. These most meaningful factors, however, come from the Kremlin and indicate that Putin’s actions, more than anything else, brought the biggest damage to Ukraine.
5. Finally, Cohen discusses the possibility to end the conflict. He does not believe that Putin is capable of ending the conflict by stopping his military support. Instead, Cohen considers the key to peaceful resolution lay within Washington, which has to convince Kyiv to stop military action in Donbas. The maximum of what Putin can do, according to Cohen, is to bring the “rebels” to the negotiating table after Kyiv stops its military operation.
Playing down Putin’s influence is a comfortable tactic to remove responsibility from Russia and attach it to the rival actor. This, however, is an incorrect assessment of the situation. The conflict in the east of Ukraine started with Russia providing arms and personnel to the Donbas locals, proclaiming the People’s Republics in Luhansk and Donetsk, and starting a military siege of the regions. Kyiv’s military action is directed at forcing the illegal warriors in the region to surrender. Therefore, Kyiv cannot stop its action unless it sees the readiness from the opposing side to peacefully end the crisis.
Raising the issue of American responsibility to end the violence in eastern Ukraine is even further from logic. Cohen believes that Putin cannot have much impact on the rebellion, even though as the professor himself admits, Putin “influences and no doubt aids the Donbas self-defenders”. Unlike Putin, Obama does not arm or support Kyiv in any meaningful way in its actions against the “rebels”. Washington’s leverage over Kyiv is incomparably lower than that of Moscow over the Donbas rebellion. Therefore, if Cohen does not consider one foreign actor to be capable of stopping one party of the conflict (over which he certainly exerts influence), it is curious then why does the professor believe that the other foreign actor (with much less tangible influence on the second party of the conflict) is able and responsible to end the violence. Moreover, if Moscow viewed an American attempt to stop Assad from annihilating opposition warriors and peaceful population alike as an illegitimate act of foreign interference in Syria’s domestic affairs, why does Putin encourage Obama to interfere in Kyiv’s attempt to restore order within its sovereign territory?
I understand that it is preferable for a journalist or a scholar to look at the issues from more than one angle. However, this is not enough for a sound judgment or objective evaluation. As Paul Goble has recently noticed: “Many western journalists confuse balance with objectivity. That means if anyone is in a position to put out a version of the story, however outrageous, journalists will often report it as one of the points of view out there, especially if the situation is confused or uncertain. Invariably, doing so is called objectivity but in fact it is anything but. Instead, it gives an opening to governments, which are prepared to lie and to spread their lies widely, confident that what they say, however untrue or outrageous, will be reported.”
Stephen Cohen’s attempt to revise mainstream western views simply by bringing Moscow’s argument cannot bring us any closer to the truth. It is just a repetition of the Kremlin’s disinformation.
Gela Merabishvili works at the Tbilisi State University as an editor of the e-library. He studied at the Tbilisi State University and Maastricht University."
Emphasis mine
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
http://www.examiner.com/article/jim...-verge-of-joining-russia-non-dollar-oil-sales
[h=1]Jim WIllie: Saudi's are on the verge of joining Russia in non-dollar oil sales[/h]
August 31, 2014
Last week, Russia announced an game changing shift for energy in which they are now allowing the sale of oil and natural gas to be done in both Roubles and Yuan, bypassing the dollar and cracking the 40 year old petro-dollar system. And on Aug. 31, Dr. Jim Willie reported during an interview with TFMetals Report that this break away from U.S. hegemony over the purchasing of oil is not being limited to just Russia, but that the foundational country of petro-dollar origin, Saudi Arabia, is in talks with the Eurasian energy giant to join them in a partnership that will also disconnect the Arab Kingdom from the dollar, and open energy sales within the OPEC nations to be done in Roubles, Yuan, and perhaps even the Euro.
While speaking with Craig 'Turd' Ferguson of the TFMetal Report, Dr. Jim Willie also pointed out that while Russia was not fully ready to use the Rouble as a primary currency for a large portion of their oil sales, the inclusion of the Yuan by Gazprom will allow multitudes of nations to bypass the dollar, and allow them to purchase oil directly from Russia without having to be enslaved to SWIFT and the financial mechanisms of the reserve currency that the U.S. has used not only for profit, but as a financial weapon.
The days of the petro-dollar being the sole currency for energy and commodity transactions is quickly coming to a close, and as such, the U.S. is not going to go down without a fight. And the more policies that come out of Washington which threaten the global financial system through economic sanctions and attempted 'red lines' that have far reaching effects for trade and sovereign economies, the faster the world will flee the old system, and more further into Russia and China's camp which is outside the dollar, and dedicated towards a new free trade foundation.
[h=4]Suggested by the author[/h] Germany has reached the end of the line for bailing out the rest of Eurozone
Petro-dollar era is officially over as Gazprom begins sales in Yuan and Rouble
U.S. Stock markets hit new high while Germany to lose 50000 jobs after sanctions
Trade organization soon to have over three billion people trading outside dollar
Putin challenges dollar by calling for the rouble to be used globally for energy
[h=1]Jim WIllie: Saudi's are on the verge of joining Russia in non-dollar oil sales[/h]
August 31, 2014
Last week, Russia announced an game changing shift for energy in which they are now allowing the sale of oil and natural gas to be done in both Roubles and Yuan, bypassing the dollar and cracking the 40 year old petro-dollar system. And on Aug. 31, Dr. Jim Willie reported during an interview with TFMetals Report that this break away from U.S. hegemony over the purchasing of oil is not being limited to just Russia, but that the foundational country of petro-dollar origin, Saudi Arabia, is in talks with the Eurasian energy giant to join them in a partnership that will also disconnect the Arab Kingdom from the dollar, and open energy sales within the OPEC nations to be done in Roubles, Yuan, and perhaps even the Euro.
While speaking with Craig 'Turd' Ferguson of the TFMetal Report, Dr. Jim Willie also pointed out that while Russia was not fully ready to use the Rouble as a primary currency for a large portion of their oil sales, the inclusion of the Yuan by Gazprom will allow multitudes of nations to bypass the dollar, and allow them to purchase oil directly from Russia without having to be enslaved to SWIFT and the financial mechanisms of the reserve currency that the U.S. has used not only for profit, but as a financial weapon.
Jim Willie: So what happened with Russia? They did in May the holy grail energy deal between themselves and China, and this is a long term, 20-30 year agreement. As well, back in May, April, and March I said watch Russia accept Yuan as a temporary device for energy sales.
Russia isn't fully ready to do just Rouble sales. In Europe I think they are going to do Euro and Rouble sales, and with China they are gong to do exclusively Yuan sales.
So watch the Saudi's... watch OPEC... watch the deals that Russia starts to integrate with the Person Gulf nations.
And kiss goodbye this petro-dollar. - TFMetals Report, Aug. 31
In validation to Jim Willie's assertion of a growing partnership being formed between Russia and Saudi Arabia over currencies and oil sales, an interesting event took place a little less than two weeks ago that according to the Guerrilla Economist, had to do with the theft of confidential documents a Saudi Royal was carrying that were tied to negotiations between Russia and the Arab Kingdom over oil sales and the future of the petro-dollar.Russia isn't fully ready to do just Rouble sales. In Europe I think they are going to do Euro and Rouble sales, and with China they are gong to do exclusively Yuan sales.
So watch the Saudi's... watch OPEC... watch the deals that Russia starts to integrate with the Person Gulf nations.
And kiss goodbye this petro-dollar. - TFMetals Report, Aug. 31
The robbers, said to number between five and eight, seized the Mercedes and its three occupants – as well as €250,000 and what Le Parisien newspaper described as sensitive documents.
Soon afterwards the robbers released the hostages and abandoned the vehicle, which was found an hour later in Saint-Mesmes, a village in the Ile-de-France region north-east of Paris, along with one of the BMWs. Both vehicles were burnt out. - The Guardian
The ability for major nations such as those in Europe, the Middle East, and in Asia to begin using the Yuan as the primary currency to purchase oil from the world's leading energy producer is already available as more than 23 countries have established swap lines which can facilitate the exchange of their sovereign currencies into Yuan. And the benefit of this over use of the dollar is that nations can disconnect themselves from the SWIFT system of transfers, and alleviate much of the inflation that is currently being exported to their countries by the U.S. as the Federal Reserve continues to devalue the dollar through massive money printing programs.Soon afterwards the robbers released the hostages and abandoned the vehicle, which was found an hour later in Saint-Mesmes, a village in the Ile-de-France region north-east of Paris, along with one of the BMWs. Both vehicles were burnt out. - The Guardian
The days of the petro-dollar being the sole currency for energy and commodity transactions is quickly coming to a close, and as such, the U.S. is not going to go down without a fight. And the more policies that come out of Washington which threaten the global financial system through economic sanctions and attempted 'red lines' that have far reaching effects for trade and sovereign economies, the faster the world will flee the old system, and more further into Russia and China's camp which is outside the dollar, and dedicated towards a new free trade foundation.
[h=4]Suggested by the author[/h] Germany has reached the end of the line for bailing out the rest of Eurozone
Petro-dollar era is officially over as Gazprom begins sales in Yuan and Rouble
U.S. Stock markets hit new high while Germany to lose 50000 jobs after sanctions
Trade organization soon to have over three billion people trading outside dollar
Putin challenges dollar by calling for the rouble to be used globally for energy
muir
Banned
- MBTI
- INFJ
http://www.secretsofthefed.com/putin-adviser-transition-new-global-economy-will-require-war/
[h=1]Putin adviser: Transition to new global economy will require war[/h]
The term revolution has multiple meanings dependent upon the perspective of the rebels seeking it, and the establishment trying to keep it from occurring. But throughout the annals of history, revolution has never come easily, and almost inevitably is achieved through violent action, or in many cases, all-out war.
For Russia, which understands the concept and history of revolution within their own peoples, the direction they see the world moving towards, especially in the economic plane, is a form of revolution against the old way. And as President Putin’s adviser Sergei Glazyev ascertained on Thursday of last week, the revolution to change the global financial system will come by war, as it has in almost every single instance in history.
“The world today is going through a year of overlapping cyclical crises. This is a period when the global economy is changing as the structure that has driven economic growth for 30 years has exhausted itself. The world needs to transition to a new system and transition has always come about through war…
The last elections to the European Parliament showed that all European citizens are not fooled by the false pro-American, anti-Russian propaganda… and by the constant stream of lies
In order to avoid the constant threat of foreign asset confiscation, we need to build our own sovereign monetary macro-economic policy.” – Sergei Glazyov
Sergei Glazyov is not someone whose words are to be taken likely, as he speaks for the President as his close economic and geo-political adviser. In fact, Glazyov was the first to suggest the use of dumping dollars and treasuries as a means to counter economic sanctions coming from Washington, and eventually sees the growing conflict between East and West escalating towards a violent confrontation.
The United States is at the same crossroads Britain experienced shortly after the end of WWII, where their empirical power was challenged and eventually eradicated by a strong presence, and new economic paradigm. The only differences today are the geographical locations in which the U.S. is fomenting war in order to keep control over the financial system, and the strength and power of the coalitions opposing them. In the 1950′s, Russia and China were bitter enemies, but now they stand in lockstep against the U.S. and against dollar hegemony. Each nation is now superior to America in regards to energy and economy, and by offering nations around the world, including those who are stated enemies of the U.S. (Iran, Syria), a chance to join the East in free trade as opposed to military occupation, the U.S. is become more isolated every day, and their responses are as a petulant child about to have their toys taken away from them.
But both Putin and Glazyov knows that a petulant child has one more violent tantrum left to unleash, and it is upon that day that Russia, Europe, and the rest of the world wait in anxious anticipation, for the revolution against the dollar has already begun, and all that is left is to see how much damage it will take to wrest final control from the hands of the tyrant.
Kenneth Schortgen Jr is a writer for Secretsofthefed.com, Examiner.com, and hosts the popular web blog, The Daily Economist. Ken can also be heard Friday evenings giving an weekly economic report on the Angel Clark radio show.
[h=1]Putin adviser: Transition to new global economy will require war[/h]
The term revolution has multiple meanings dependent upon the perspective of the rebels seeking it, and the establishment trying to keep it from occurring. But throughout the annals of history, revolution has never come easily, and almost inevitably is achieved through violent action, or in many cases, all-out war.
For Russia, which understands the concept and history of revolution within their own peoples, the direction they see the world moving towards, especially in the economic plane, is a form of revolution against the old way. And as President Putin’s adviser Sergei Glazyev ascertained on Thursday of last week, the revolution to change the global financial system will come by war, as it has in almost every single instance in history.
“The world today is going through a year of overlapping cyclical crises. This is a period when the global economy is changing as the structure that has driven economic growth for 30 years has exhausted itself. The world needs to transition to a new system and transition has always come about through war…
The last elections to the European Parliament showed that all European citizens are not fooled by the false pro-American, anti-Russian propaganda… and by the constant stream of lies
In order to avoid the constant threat of foreign asset confiscation, we need to build our own sovereign monetary macro-economic policy.” – Sergei Glazyov
Sergei Glazyov is not someone whose words are to be taken likely, as he speaks for the President as his close economic and geo-political adviser. In fact, Glazyov was the first to suggest the use of dumping dollars and treasuries as a means to counter economic sanctions coming from Washington, and eventually sees the growing conflict between East and West escalating towards a violent confrontation.
The United States is at the same crossroads Britain experienced shortly after the end of WWII, where their empirical power was challenged and eventually eradicated by a strong presence, and new economic paradigm. The only differences today are the geographical locations in which the U.S. is fomenting war in order to keep control over the financial system, and the strength and power of the coalitions opposing them. In the 1950′s, Russia and China were bitter enemies, but now they stand in lockstep against the U.S. and against dollar hegemony. Each nation is now superior to America in regards to energy and economy, and by offering nations around the world, including those who are stated enemies of the U.S. (Iran, Syria), a chance to join the East in free trade as opposed to military occupation, the U.S. is become more isolated every day, and their responses are as a petulant child about to have their toys taken away from them.
But both Putin and Glazyov knows that a petulant child has one more violent tantrum left to unleash, and it is upon that day that Russia, Europe, and the rest of the world wait in anxious anticipation, for the revolution against the dollar has already begun, and all that is left is to see how much damage it will take to wrest final control from the hands of the tyrant.
Kenneth Schortgen Jr is a writer for Secretsofthefed.com, Examiner.com, and hosts the popular web blog, The Daily Economist. Ken can also be heard Friday evenings giving an weekly economic report on the Angel Clark radio show.