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NATO warns Russia to cease and desist in Ukraine The chorus of international voices urging caution in Ukraine, and above all urging Russia to refrain from military action, have been reinforced by NATO’s secretary general. “Russia must stop its military activities and its threats. We support Ukraine’s territorial integrity and sovereignty. We support the rights of the people of Ukraine to determine their own future without outside interference and we emphasise the need for Ukraine to continue to uphold the democratic rights of all people and ensure that minority rights are protected,” said Anders Fogh Rasmussen. An overnight phone call...

Vladimir Putin's Russia seized Ukraine's Crimean peninsula by force on the weekend and now has his sights on the rest of his Slavic neighbor. The brazen aggression brings the threat of war to the heart of Europe for the first time since the end of the Cold War. The question now is what President Obama and free Europe are going to do about it. --SNIP-- In the brutal world of global power politics, Ukraine is in particular a casualty of the Mr. Obama's failure to enforce his "red line" on Syria. When the leader of the world's only superpower issues...

Forget all the talk about CPI or as they call it in Europe HIPC (harmonized index of consumer prices) floating just under 1%. The true measure of inflation is credit expansion. And for the second month, credit contracted in the Eurozone. Reuters reports Euro zone lending contraction compounds ECB headache. Lending to households and firms in the euro zone fell again in January and money supply growth remained subdued, adding to pressure on the European Central Bank to take action next week to support the economy. The ECB has cut interest rates to a record low, pumped extra liquidity into...

ROME, February 27, 2014 (LifeSiteNews.com) – “I am a homosexual, but I’m against ‘gay marriage,’” a French pro-family activist told an Italian Catholic opinion paper earlier this month. Jean-Pier-Delaume Myard, spokesman for Manif Pour Tous, told La Nuova Bussola Quotidiana that the “sole purpose” of the homosexualist “gay rights” movement is “destroying the family.” Myard gave the interview following the first big pro-family Manif Pour Tous event in Italy on February 11. Myard noted that in a recent talk, he said “we must break the silence” about the real nature of the homosexualist movement, noting that many homosexuals “have nothing to...

Following a crescendo of terrifying violence, the Ukrainian uprising has had a surprisingly positive outcome. Contrary to all rational expectations, a group of citizens armed with not much more than sticks and shields made of cardboard boxes and metal garbage-can lids overwhelmed a police force firing live ammunition. There were many casualties, but the citizens prevailed. This was one of those historic moments that leave a lasting imprint on a society's collective memory. [...] I established the Renaissance Foundation in Ukraine in 1990 – before the country achieved independence. The foundation did not participate in the recent uprising, but it...

That’s the good news. The (potential) bad news? They want a return to the status quo ante, at least in part, before holding any more elections — and they want the West to stay out of Ukraine in any sense: Moscow pledged Tuesday it would not intervene in the crisis in neighbouring Ukraine but said the country should not be forced to choose between Russia and the West.“We confirmed our principled position of non-intervention in Ukraine’s internal affairs and expect that everyone follows similar logic,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said.“We are interested in Ukraine being part of the European family,...

SEVASTOPOL, Ukraine (AP) — Ukraine’s acting government issued an arrest warrant Monday for President Viktor Yanukovych, accusing him of mass crimes against the protesters who stood up for months against his rule. Russia sharply questioned its authority, calling it an “armed mutiny.” Yanukovych himself has reportedly fled to the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea, a pro-Russian area in Ukraine. Calls are mounting in Ukraine to put Yanukovych on trial, after a tumultuous presidency in which he amassed powers, enriched his allies and family and cracked down on protesters.

TORONTO - As Toronto’s Ukrainians woke up to news that former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych was on the run in eastern Ukraine after parliament had voted him out of office and that national elections are scheduled for May 25, they gathered to pray. At Dormition of the Mother of God Ukrainian Catholic Church all three Divine Liturgies on Feb. 23 included special, added prayers for the future of Ukraine. It caps more than a month of prayers for their homeland at the giant Mississauga parish. “We’re all Ukrainians. We do want to show our respect and solidarity with our brothers...

White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said Monday that the U.S. government is prepared to provide support to Ukraine, under certain conditions, as the country tries to emerge from a bloody power struggle that is still in flux. Carney spoke after Ukraine's acting government issued an arrest warrant for President Viktor Yanukovych, accusing him of mass crimes against the protesters who stood up for months against his rule. Carney said that at this point, Yanukovych's whereabouts have not been confirmed but he is not "actively leading the country."

Copyright European Union 2013 / European Parliament (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Madrid, Spain, Feb 17, 2014 / 05:09 pm (CNA/EWTN News).- A new bill in Spain to re-establish limits on abortion and assert the state's right to protect unborn children is a step forward in the larger pro-life movement growing across the continent, a European legal expert says. “One of the goals of the Spanish bill was to create debate” said Grégor Puppinck, director of the European Centre for Law and Justice. “The debate about abortion is all across Europe,” he told CNA on Feb. 13, adding that the Spanish bill...

It appears we have a spectrum of opinion on FR regarding the upheaval in Ukraine. On the one end of the spectrum there is passionate support, with a firm belief that the uprisings are purely indigenous Ukrainian groups. There is the belief that the Ukrainian people themselves have risen up against a corrupt and tryannical regime that is a puppet of Moscow. While some at the extreme end of this opinion say the protests are not really about the EU, it appears that most now concede that it is, and say that a majority of the Ukrainian people want to...

Amid the hysteria surrounding Romanian immigration at the beginning of this year, something crucial was forgotten: borders open both ways. As the English tabloids were throwing a tantrum about the impending "Romanian invasion", the would-be-intruders were preparing for an invasion of their own: 1 January 2014 marked the day when Romania's honeymoon period as a new EU member came to an end and, under EU law, the country was obliged to open up its land market to foreign investors. As a country with almost 5 million peasant farmers – a quarter of the population – this was a matter of...

It’s Wednesday. So it’s time for more bad news. If you’ve been paying attention, you will have already noticed that the United States is headed toward a cliff of imminent destruction at astonishing speeds. Our financial situation is dire, our political situation is dismal, our international situation is tenuous, and our cultural situation is pathetic. It’s sad. I didn’t think my generation would live to see this, but it looks like America is past the point of no return in its drive toward complete collapse.The most recent sign of doom in the financial sector is the alarming news that China...

Some 10,000 Demonstrators in Independence Square carried Ukrainian and EU flags late on Friday and chanted "Ukraine is Europe". Mr Yanukovych, who attended an EU summit in Lithuania on Friday cited pressure from Russia for his decision. ... "The times of limited sovereignty are over in Europe," said European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso after a summit in Lithuania, at which provisional accords were reached with Georgia and Moldova. ... "We will conduct massive protest actions in all of Ukraine. They must witness our strength," said Arseniy Yatsenyuk, an ally of Yulia Tymoshenko. ... "If we had signed, we would...

The all-out street war in Ukraine’s capital city of Kiev between anti-government protesters and security forces had its beginnings in late November, when President Viktor Yanukovych rejected a bid for closer integration of his country with the European Union. Protests began peacefully, but reports that security services used excessive force on demonstrators escalated the situation. As of Wednesday, dozens of people have been killed, including protesters and police officers, and hundreds injured. For years Yanukovych promised Ukrainians that he would sign an agreement with the EU, which would benefit Ukraine’s economy substantially. Protesters felt betrayed that he suddenly and without...

The European Union voted on Thursday to impose sanctions against those held responsible for the violence in Ukraine. The sanctions, unanimously approved by EU foreign ministers at an emergency meeting, include a travel ban to the 28-nation bloc and the freezing of assets held in EU countries. The sanctions will target “those responsible for human rights violations, violence and use of excessive force” in Ukraine, the EU said in a statement. It said the bloc will soon establish a list of those who will be affected by the sanctions. …

So it seems to me that the people of the Ukraine are being used by either pro-russian factions or pro-Europeon Union factions. But no one is talking about the one faction that doesn't want part in either arena. Soros and our own state department has dumped a whole bunch of money into NGO (non Government Organisations) directly affecting the foriegn policy of another soverign nation. No doubt Putin has his fingers in the Ukraine pie, but we aren't noticing it as much becasue the Russian media has been under his thumb after a series of "unfourtunate accidents and suicides". And...

If you've been behind on this one, basically the country was about to enter a free-trade agreement with the EU, but Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych's last-minute visit to the Kremlin in December altered his thinking dramatically on the very eve of the EU signing -reportedly through some combination of trade incentives and threats- and he made a prompt u-turn towards Putin's CIS instead. This didn't go over well at all with the populace -in particular the country's western-looking youth- and it has slowly built towards the low-boil street war we see today. And now it's getting worse in a hurry....

I think we have lost Scotland. I felt it the other day, a disturbing sensation like that moment when the tow-rope parts, the strain too great for its rotten, decayed fibres to bear. The sulky, puzzled feebleness of the London politicians’ arguments sounds desperate and defeated. Alex Salmond has already won the September referendum. [....] But this does not stop me seeing what has happened. And I am amazed that so few have noticed the real problem. The leaders of the United Kingdom cannot argue for Scotland to stay in a country they themselves are working so hard to abolish....

On the European Union front, things are getting more and more promising. For years now, a majority of Brits have favored their country’s withdrawal from the EU, compelling Prime Minister David Cameron to promise a renegotation of the terms of UK membership and a referendum on the question of withdrawal after next year’s general election. In recent days, the Telegraph has noted that the rise in voter support for the UK Independence Party – which favors a quick EU exit – may well become “the political story of 2014”; meanwhile Le Monde described the UKIP as having “the wind in...