Build up to WW3 - OBAMA Speaks About UKRAINE CRISIS & RUSSIA

Russia, Turkey and Cuba reported the beating of Alexander Panteleymonov, the director of Ukraine's state-run NTU television company, but the story is apparently not important enough to air on American corporate news networks.

Panteleymonov, as the video shows, was beaten by Svoboda party fascists and forced to resign his office for daring to air the signing ceremony of Crimea joining the Russian Federation after a popular referendum held last weekend voted to secede from the country.

Igor Miroshnichenko, a Verkhovna Rada MP infamous for an antisemitic slur leveled against Ukrainian Jewish actress Mila Kunis, shoved and punched Panteleymonov.

"Write your resignation! Sit down! I told you, sit down!" the gang of ultra-nationalists yelled at the TV network boss. "You are feasting in my Ukraine!... Here is a paper, pen, write the resignation now quickly, you animal... You Muscovite (a derogatory word for Russian) garbage!"

Coup leaders in Kyiv have rejected the Crimea referendum, refuse to pull troops off the peninsula following a March 17 vote to secede, and are preparing for war.

"Crimea was, is, and will be our territory," Defense Minister Ihor Tenyukh declared in a statement delivered at the Ukrainian Crisis Media Center. "Ukrainian forces will stay [in Crimea] until all their tasks have been completed."

U.S. State Department favorite Vitali Klitschko, who was passed over for central banker Arseniy Yatsenyuk to lead the coup government, said Ukrainian troops will stay in Crimea.

Klitscho cited a March 16 peace treaty agreement allowing Ukrainian soldiers to move freely in Crimea. According to Tenyukh, the Russians thus far have respected the agreement. Ukraine has used it to resupply troops on the peninsula.

One of Ukraine's top politicians has told Sky News his country is ready to fight if Russian soldiers cross the border from Crimea into mainland Ukraine.

Serhiy Taruta, governor of the eastern city of Donetsk, warned: "We're going to have a war. Our people will take up arms and they will protect our country."

The tense stand-off came as Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a draft bill for Crimea's annexation and defended his government's actions in a speech to both houses of parliament in Moscow.

A United States surveillance drone has been intercepted above the Ukranian region of Crimea, a Russian state arms and technology group said Friday.

"The drone was flying at about 4,000 metres (12,000 feet) and was virtually invisible from the ground. It was possible to break the link with US operators with complex radio-electronic" technology, said Rostec in a statement.

So, let's get this straight. The United States is all for democracy and democracy is about voting and making sure the majority rules. If a majority in Crimea votes to align itself with Russia because most Crimeans have an affinity for Russia, the United States and the United Nations, the latter sitting on the lap of the former, will decide democracy is illegal.


Earlier today Estonian Defense Minister Urmas Reinsalu said he's sure Russia plans to invade Ukraine. This was carried uncritically and sans any objective examination by the corporatist establishment media in the United States:

Incidentally, the fathers of the founding fathers of the EU were Nazis. Maybe that's why the EU is using Hitler's Big Lie to its fullest potential now.

Despite the obvious bias of Reinsalu's comment -- and the ignored fact Ukraine has admitted there are no Russian troops on the border poised to strike -- the media in the United States is now running around like Chicken Little screaming that the sky is falling, Russia will invade Ukraine, and the world demands we do something.

We, of course, means the establishment because, as polls show, the American people want nothing to do with the whole sordid affair.