“Eva Bartlett describes Ukraine’s unspeakable genocide of Donbass FULL INTERVIEW (Graphic Content Warning)”
nterview I did on Redacted on September 22.
**Warning: This video contains graphic images of civilians killed by Ukrainian shelling of completely civilian areas of Donetsk.**
EU parliamentarian calls to sanction Vanessa Beeley and all observers of Donbass referendums
(The Western) narrative would have reigned supreme if not for the hundred or so international observers who physically traveled to the regions in question to observe the referendum process.
Observers like Vanessa Beeley now face the threat of returning home to the West as wanted outlaws.
“Imposing sanctions on global citizens for bearing witness to a legal process that reflects the self-determination of the people of Donbass is fascism. Should the EU proceed with this campaign, I believe there will be serious consequences because the essence of freedom of speech and thought is under attack.“
In London, meanwhile, the UK government has imposed individual sanctions on Graham Philips, a British citizen and independent journalist, for his reporting from Donetsk.
MAX BLUMENTHAL AND ANYA PARAMPIL·SEPTEMBER 29, 2022,
MEP Nathalie Loiseau of France is lobbying for individual sanctions on all observers of the Russian-organized referendums in the Donbass region. She has singled out journalist Vanessa Beeley not only for her coverage of the vote, but for her reporting on the foreign-back war against Syria’s government.
A French Member of European Parliament (MEP), Natalie Loiseau, has delivered a letter to EU High Representative of Foreign Affairs, Joseph Borrell, demanding the European Union place personal sanctions on all international observers of the recent votes in the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and certain Russian-controlled territories in eastern Ukraine.
Obtained by The Grayzone from an EU source, the letter is currently being circulated among European parliamentarians in hopes of securing a docket of supportive signatures.
“We, as elected members of the European Parliament, demand that all those who voluntarily assisted in any way the organization of these illegitimate referendums be individually targeted and sanctioned,” Loiseau declared.
The French MEP’s letter came after a group of formally Ukrainian territories held a vote on whether or not to officially incorporate themselves into the Russian Federation in late September. Through the popular referendum, the independent Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, which announced their respective successions from Ukraine in 2014 following a foreign-backed coup against the government Kiev, as well as the regions of Kherson and Zaporozhia, voted overwhelmingly in favor of joining the Russian Federation.
Loiseau singled out Vanessa Beeley, a British journalist who traveled to the region to monitor the vote. Extending her complaint well beyond the referendum, the French MEP accused Beeley of “continuously spreading fake news about Syria and acting as a mouthpiece for Vladimir Putin and Bashar el [sic] Assad for years.”
Loiseau, a close ally of French President Emanuel Macron, specifically demanded Beeley be “included in the list of those sanctioned.”
Beeley responded to Loiseau’s letter in a statement to The Grayzone: “Imposing sanctions on global citizens for bearing witness to a legal process that reflects the self-determination of the people of Donbass is fascism. Should the EU proceed with this campaign, I believe there will be serious consequences because the essence of freedom of speech and thought is under attack.
Russia’s referendums: drawing a line with NATO
In mid-September 2022, Beeley and around 100 other international delegates traveled to eastern Europe in order to observe a vote to join the Russian Federation in the regions of Kherson, Zaporozhia, and the independent republics of Lugansk and Donetsk.
Why did their presence trigger such an outraged response from Western governments? The answer lies in the recent history of these heavily contested areas.
The formally Ukrainian territories of Kherson and Zaporozhia fell under Russian control earlier this year as a result of the military campaign launched by Moscow in February, while the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics declared their independence from the government in Kiev in 2014.
Russia began its special military campaign in Ukrainian territory on February 24. The operation followed Moscow’s decision that same week to formally recognize the independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic and Lugansk People’s Republic (the Donbass Republics) in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region. Pro-Russian separatists in the Donbass have been embroiled in a bloody trench battle with the US-backed government in Kiev since 2014.
Ukraine’s civil conflict broke out in March 2014, after US and European forces sponsored a coup in the country that installed a decidedly pro-NATO nationalist regime in Kiev which proceeded to declare war on its minority, ethnically Russian population.
Following the 2014 putsch, Ukraine’s government officially marginalized the Russian language while extremist thugs backed by Kiev massacred and intimidated ethnic Russian citizens of Ukraine. In response, separatist protests swept Ukraine’s majority-Russian eastern regions.
The territory of Crimea formally voted to join Russia in March of that year, while the Donetsk and Lugansk Republics in Ukraine’s eastern Donbass region declared their unofficial independence from Kiev that same month. With support from the US military and NATO, Ukraine’s coup government officially declared war on the Donbass in April 2014, launching what it characterized as an “Anti-Terrorist Operation” in the region.
Russia trained and equipped separatist militias in Donetsk and Lugansk throughout the territories’ civil campaigns against Kiev, though Moscow did not officially recognize the independence of the Donbass republics until February 2022. By then, United Nations estimates placed the casualty count for Ukraine’s civil war at roughly 13,000 dead. While Moscow offered support to Donbass separatists throughout the 2014-2022 period, US and European governments invested billions to prop up a Ukrainian military that was heavily reliant on army and intelligence factions with direct links to the country’s historic anti-Soviet, pro-Nazi deep state born as a result of World War II.
Russia’s military formally entered the Ukraine conflict in February 2022, following Moscow’s recognition of the Donbass republics. While Russian President Vladimir Putin defined the liberation of the Donbass republics as the primary objective of the military operation, he also listed the “de-nazification” and “de-militarization” of Ukraine as a goals of the campaign. As such, Russian troops have since secured control of Ukrainian territories beyond the Donbass region, including the territories of Kherson and Zaporozhia.
Facing increased Western investment in the Kiev-aligned bloc of Ukraine’s civil war, authorities in the Donbass republics announced a referendum on membership in the Russian Federation in late September 2022, with Moscow-aligned officials in Kherson and Zaporozhia announcing similar ballot initiatives. Citizens in each territory proceeded to approve Russian membership by overwhelming majorities.
The results of the referendum not only threatened the government in Kiev, but its European and US backers. Western-aligned media leapt to characterize the votes as a sham, claiming Moscow’s troops had coerced citizens into joining the Russian Federation at the barrel of a gun. Their narrative would have reigned supreme if not for the hundred or so international observers who physically traveled to the regions in question to observe the referendum process.
Observers like Vanessa Beeley now face the threat of returning home to the West as wanted outlaws. But as Loiseau’s letter made clear, the British journalist was in the crosshairs long before the escalation in Ukraine.
Beeley among European journalists targeted and prosecuted for reporting from Donetsk
Vanessa Beeley was among the first independent journalists to expose the US and UK governments’ sponsorship of the Syrian White Helmets, a so-called “volunteer organization” that played frontline role in promoting the foreign-backed dirty war against Syria’s government through its coordination with Western and Gulf-sponsored media. Beeley also played an instrumental role in revealing the White Helmets’ strong ties to Al-Qaeda’s Syrian branch, as well as its members’ involvement in atrocities committed by Western-backed insurgents.
Beeley’s work on Syria drew harsh attacks from an array of NATO and arms industry-funded think tanks. In June 2022, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), which receives funding from a variety of NATO states, corporations and billionaires, labeled Beeley “the most prolific spreader of disinformation” on Syria prior to 2020. (According to ISD, Beeley was somehow “overtaken” by The Grayzone’s Aaron Mate that year). The group did not provide a single piece of evidence to support its assertions.
Though Beeley has endured waves of smears, French MEP Natalie Loiseau’s call for the EU to sanction the journalist represents the first time a Western official has moved to formally criminalize her work. Indeed, Loiseau made no secret that she is targeting Beeley not only for her role as an observer of the referendum votes, but also on the basis of her opinions and reporting on Syria.
Loiseau’s push to issue personal sanctions against EU and US citizens comes on the heels of the German government’s prosecution of independent journalist Alina Lipp. In March 2020, Berlin launched a formal case against Lipp, who is a German citizen, claiming her reporting from the Donetsk People’s Republic violated newly authorized state speech codes.
Prior to Lipp’s prosecution, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue launched a media campaign portraying her as a disseminator of “disinformation” and “pro-Kremlin content.”
In London, meanwhile, the UK government has imposed individual sanctions on Graham Philips, a British citizen and independent journalist, for his reporting from Donetsk.
And in Brussels, Loiseau’s campaign against Beeley appears to have emerged from a deeply personal vendetta.
Who is Natalie Loiseau?
In April 2021, Beeley published a detailed profile of Loiseau at her personal blog, The Wall Will Fall, painting the French MEP as a regime change ideologue committed to “defending global insecurity and perpetual war.”…………………………………..more https://thegrayzone.com/2022/09/29/eu-parliamentarian-sanction-vanessa-beeley-donbass-referendums/
JOHN PILGER’S 2014 WARNING ABOUT UKRAINE
- https://popularresistance.org/john-pilgers-2014-warning-about-ukraine/ By John Pilger, Consortium News., September 25, 2022, Educate!
- John Pilger Warned The “U.S. Is Threatening To Take The World To War” Over Ukraine, Words That Have Taken On New Meaning.
- Originally published in The Guardian on 13 May 2014.
Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is a “brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis”, as if the truth “never happened even while it was happening”.
Every year the American historian William Blum publishes his “updated summary of the record of U.S. foreign policy” which shows that, since 1945, the U.S. has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.
In many cases Britain has been a collaborator. The degree of human suffering, let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the west, despite the presence of the world’s most advanced communications and nominally most free journalism. That the most numerous victims of terrorism – “our” terrorism – are Muslims, is unsayable. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11, was nurtured as a weapon of Anglo-American policy (Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan) is suppressed. In April the U.S. state department noted that, following Nato’s campaign in 2011, “Libya has become a terrorist safe haven“.
The name of “our” enemy has changed over the years, from communism to Islamism, but generally it is any society independent of western power and occupying strategically useful or resource-rich territory, or merely offering an alternative to U.S. domination.
The leaders of these obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile, or they are murdered like Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo. All are subjected to a western media campaign of vilification – think Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, now Vladimir Putin.
Washington’s role in Ukraine is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the U.S. is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last “buffer state” bordering Russia – Ukraine – is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the U.S. and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.
Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington’s planned seizure of Russia’s historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.
But Nato’s military encirclement has accelerated, along with U.S.-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.
Instead, Putin has confounded the war party by seeking an accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing Russian troops from the Ukrainian border and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon the weekend’s provocative referendum.
These Russian-speaking and bilingual people – a third of Ukraine’s population – have long sought a democratic federation that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous of Kiev and independent of Moscow. Most are neither “separatists” nor “rebels”, as the western media calls them, but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.
Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a C.I.A. theme park – run personally by C.I.A. director John Brennan in Kiev, with dozens of “special units” from the C.I.A. and F.B.I. setting up a “security structure” that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by.
A doctor described trying to rescue people, “but I was stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals. One of them pushed me away rudely, promising that soon me and other Jews of Odessa are going to meet the same fate. What occurred yesterday didn’t even take place during the fascist occupation in my town in world war two. I wonder, why the whole world is keeping silent.” [see footnote]
Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival. When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border, the Kiev junta’s defence secretary, Andriy Parubiy – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party – boasted that attacks on “insurgents” would continue. In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has inverted this to Moscow “trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation“, according to William Hague. His cynicism is matched by Obama’s grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its “remarkable restraint” after the Odessa massacre. The junta, says Obama, is “duly elected”. As Henry Kissinger once said: “It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but what is perceived to be true.”
In the U.S. media the Odessa atrocity has been played down as “murky” and a “tragedy” in which “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) attacked “separatists” (people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine). Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says“. Propaganda in Germany has been pure cold war, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung warning its readers of Russia’s “undeclared war”. For the Germans, it is a poignant irony that Putin is the only leader to condemn the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe.
A popular truism is that “the world changed” following 9/11. But what has changed? According to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a silent coup has taken place in Washington and rampant militarism now rules. The Pentagon currently runs “special operations” – secret wars – in 124 countries. At home, rising poverty and a loss of liberty are the historic corollary of a perpetual war state. Add the risk of nuclear war, and the question is: why do we tolerate this?
Vladislav Ugolny: Ukraine is targeting civilians for retribution in the east while its Western backers turn a blind eye
Tens of thousands of residents of Kharkov region may become victims of Kiev’s “justice”
https://www.rt.com/russia/563216-future-victims-of-ukrainian-justice/ By Vladislav Ugolny, a Russian journalist based in Donetsk, 23 Sept 22
The Ukrainian offensive in Kharkov Region, launched earlier this month, led to Russia’s armed forces losing control of a number of settlements.
These include the towns of Balakleya, Izium, Kupiansk, Volchansk and a number of villages and small locales. Nevertheless, the Russian army, by concentrating on rearguard battles, was able to avoid significant losses and managed to retreat to the left bank of the Oskol River to regroup.
However, the primary victims of this turn of events were the inhabitants of the aforementioned areas who are now in the hands of Ukraine.
Left behind
There is no exact information about the population of this region. The last census was conducted by Kiev more than 20 years ago, and the country’s statistics are known to be wildly inaccurate.
At the outset, we can estimate the pre-war population at 200,000 people. After the outbreak of hostilities, some were forced to flee. The number of refugees depended on the intensity of the fighting. For example, in the Russia-border town of Volchansk, people continued to live normally – they had not heard firing in the city since March – and there has always been humanitarian aid. However, the frontline villages south of Izium were virtually wiped off the face of the earth.
In any case, we are talking about tens of thousands of people. Most likely, at least 100,000 people lived in the Russian-controlled territories. Some of them remain under the protection of the Russian army, which controls the left bank of the Oskol, and villages such as Kupiansk-Uzlovoi and Borovaya, which have now become the sites of intense hostilities.
After the beginning of the Ukrainian offensive, some Kharkov Region residents were forced to leave their homes. An evacuation was carried out in Volchansk, Veliky Burluk, Kupiansk and Izium. Various estimates suggest that between 5,000 and 25,000 people have fled to Russia in September alone.
According to Readovka journalists, Voronezh Region accommodated about a thousand refugees. Another small number left Kharkov and headed to the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, in particular to the nearest district center of Svatovo.
In any case, most local residents have remained in situ. Based on the communication with residents of small Donbass front-line towns that have been shelled for eight years, it is safe to say that such a decision is not politically motivated. Residents of such areas, many of whom are older people, those with disabilities, families with household plots or low-mobility relatives who require care, usually cling to their land, homes and traditional way of life to the end. They are the ones who have not evacuated their homes in recent months, and it is they who are now under threat.
Ukraine is preparing ‘mop-ups’
A number of channels have appeared in the Telegram messenger app, one of the leading social media platforms for both sides of the conflict, which publish the personal data of so-called “collaborators.” The basis for accusations could be anything, including communicating with the Russian military or receiving humanitarian aid. Some of these channels are currently blocked, after a wave of complaints to Telegram’s technical support.
Despite this, some remain operational and many dehumanize Russia’s supporters as “zhduny(rus) – waiters.” According to the public consensus in Ukraine, such people who sympathize with Moscow are the cause of the conflict. In the eyes of Ukrainian radicals, anyone who expresses a positive attitude towards Russia is a threat to national security.
Thus, personal data in the early days of the offensive was published for one purpose: to point out enemies so that they would be killed during the “sweep” – a set of actions aimed at establishing control over occupied territory undertaken by the army, mercenaries and nationalist battalions. ‘Mopping-up’ is outside the criminal procedure code and is not regulated by any laws. Law may come to the territory later but, in the very first days, “revolutionary justice” is carried out, without lawyers and with the functions of judge, prosecutor and executioner performed by Ukrainian combatants.
To help their murderous cause, similar channels are being created that publish personal data with calls for lynching.
After the ‘cleansing’ is completed, elements of the Ukrainian legal system will come to the captured cities. They will focus on the concealment of war crimes committed during the ‘clean-up‘, and instead point the finger at Russia. The last two tasks will be carried out simultaneously, such as in Bucha, and those killed by Ukrainians will be cynically presented as victims of the Russian army.
Demonstrative detentions
According to the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU), as of last week 16 people suspected of collaborating with Russian authorities had already been detained. The security agents are first and foremost interested in tax officials responsible for the functioning of local businesses during Moscow’s control of the territory. However, local teachers who switched to teaching the Russian curriculum are also at risk.
Despite international humanitarian law, which obliges the party in control of a territory to preserve the educational process and emphasizes that no harm be done to educators, Kiev seems determined to punish teachers, to use them as an example to others.
Deputy Prime Minister of Ukraine Irina Vereshchuk says that these teachers committed crimes and should be punished for high treason. Such measures by the Ukrainian government are aimed primarily at intimidating educators in Russian-controlled territory. By showing a willingness to prosecute civilian workers, Kiev is raising the stakes.
Ukrainian law enforcement is also known to detain forestry workers, for having helped the Russian army to collect firewood. The details are unknown: whether they supplied the Russians with firewood on a commercial basis, felled the forests entrusted to them, or simply told the soldiers where to chop, remains unknown.
Traditions of Ukrainian ‘justice’
Any civilian living in Russian-controlled territory could be charged with collaboration. Ukraine has a special ministry for the reintegration of “temporarily occupied territories,” which since 2016 has been developing a policy of “filtering” the civilian population. Initially, its activity was concentrated around Donbass and Crimea but its scope has now expanded.
The most striking example is the law ‘On the State Policy of the Transitional Period’, which has been criticized by, among others, the Venice Commission [on constitutional law] for the fact that Ukrainian state policy in the territories it occupies is aimed at investigating only the alleged war crimes of the opposite side, ignoring the goal of establishing the truth about all crimes. This law also introduced differentiated treatment of citizens, depending on their level of interaction with Russia and/or the Donbass republics.
The topic of differentiating guilt – and, according to Ukraine, the entire civilian population is guilty to a greater or lesser degree – was then promoted by all sorts of non-profit organizations. So the Crimean Tatar Resource Center engaged with the Soros Foundation’s ‘Vozrozhdeniye’ and the extremist organization ‘Mejlis of the Crimean Tatar people,’ who claim to be the exiled Ukrainian government of Crimea, developed a whole methodology for evaluating the degree of collaboration.
For a demonstration of this scale, Ukrainians cited three respective examples: a doctor at a Crimean city hospital, an acting city council deputy and the ex-chief prosecutor of Crimea, Natalya Poklonskaya.
According to the methodology, the doctor scores 17 points, the deputy 30, and Poklonskaya 86. Thus, any Crimean doctor is already guilty of collaborationism, having 17 points. Since 2014, Ukrainian society, represented by non-profit organizations, has debated the doctor’s degree of guilt and the punishment which ought be meted out. We see the results of such discussions in Kharkov Region.
Preparing the ‘next Bucha’
In addition to fighting teachers and foresters, Ukrainian law enforcement and the media are also busy falsifying war crimes. They open the so-called “cellars” – illegal prisons and torture chambers, in which alleged prisoners of war and civilians were kept. The process of falsification relies on vivid shots – frames with a prayer scratched on the wall of one of the basements.
Another fabrication involved seven Sri Lankan students attending the Kupiansky Medical College, which was allegedly held by Russian military personnel since March, who testified about torture by the Russians.
The official position is simple: angry Russians simply detained and tortured foreigners. That the Russian army in fact evacuated them from Mariupol and Kherson is ignored. For the time being, Sri Lanka’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs is asking Kiev to provide more information about its citizens. A fair investigation, however, should not be expected until those Sri Lankans find themselves outside the hands of the Ukrainian state.
Speaking of Kiev’s hand, another media symbol of the “genocide of the Ukrainian people” was presented as the hand of a deceased man with rubber bracelets in the colors of the Ukrainian flag. This was apparent evidence of a hate crime: a man killed for wearing Ukrainian symbols. As it turned out, the body was that of Sergey Sova, a member of the 93rd Mechanized Brigade, who was killed during fighting near Izium.
In general, the only mass graves that Ukrainian propaganda now clings to are the cemeteries organized by Russians, where the victims of the military conflict were buried, including Ukrainian soldiers. There is an inscription on one of the crosses, in particular, “APU [Ukrainian Armed Forces] 17 people, Izium, from the morgue.” Ukrainians claim that there are 440 bodies there. Some of the crosses have memorial plaques, some only an inventory number.
The bodies were buried by the Russian army in accordance with the traditions of the region. Perhaps, of course, among those buried under the cross are Muslims, Jews, or adherents to pagan beliefs popular among Ukrainian neo-Nazi battalions, but the Russians did everything possible on their part to ensure the remains of the enemy were not desecrated.
In normal circumstances, these bodies would have been given to the Ukrainian side in return for the bodies of dead Russian soldiers, but Ukraine boycotted these exchanges due to an unwillingness to admit significant losses. In particular, the son of the aforementioned Sergey Sova learned a few months later about the fate of his father and through the media requested the body be transferred back home for a proper burial. Prior to that, Sova had most likely been listed as missing, a ploy that suppresses official numbers of dead Ukrainian soldiers and avoids compensation payments to their families.
Now, however, the Ukrainian soldiers killed in battle and buried in accordance with the dominant religious traditions in Ukraine will be counted as victims of an “alleged genocide.” After a while, when it is impossible to distinguish whether people were killed in early September or mid-September, they will be presented as victims of the retreating Russian army.
All of this is a sinister and cynical story, the truth of which we can learn only after the return of the Russian army to Kharkov. Only then will the massive machine of lies, propaganda and disinformation, which is the work of the Ukrainian government in the occupied territories, be broken, and the world will be able to learn about the real war criminals. As when we discovered after the liberation of Mariupol and the establishment of control over the buildings of Mariupol Airport, that the Ukrainian Security Service and Azov turned it into a concentration camp, known as ‘The Library.’
Brainwashed for War With Russia
https://original.antiwar.com/mcgovern/2022/09/21/brainwashed-for-war-with-russia/ by Ray McGovern ,
Thanks to Establishment media, the sorcerer apprentices advising President Joe Biden – I refer to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, national security adviser Jacob Sullivan, and China specialist Kurt Campbell – will have no trouble rallying Americans for the widest war in 77 years, starting in Ukraine, and maybe spreading to China. And, shockingly, under false pretenses.
Most Americans are oblivious to the reality that Western media are owned and operated by the same corporations that make massive profits by helping to stoke small wars and then peddling the necessary weapons. Corporate leaders, and Ivy-mantled elites, educated to believe in U.S. “exceptionalism,” find the lucre and the luster too lucrative to be able to think straight. They deceive themselves into thinking that (a) the US cannot lose a war; (b) escalation can be calibrated and wider war can be limited to Europe; and (c) China can be expected to just sit on the sidelines. The attitude, consciously or unconsciously, “Not to worry. And, in any case, the lucre and luster are worth the risk.”
The media also know they can always trot out died-in-the-wool Russophobes to “explain,” for example, why the Russians are “almost genetically driven” to do evil (James Clapper, former National Intelligence Director and now hired savant on CNN); or Fiona Hill (former National Intelligence Officer for Russia), who insists “Putin wants to evict the United States from Europe … As he might put it: “Goodbye, America. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
Absent a miraculous appearance of clearer heads with a less benighted attitude toward the core interests of Russia in Ukraine, and China in Taiwan, historians who survive to record the war now on our doorstep will describe it as the result of hubris and stupidity run amok. Objective historians may even note that one of their colleagues – Professor John Mearsheimer – got it right from the start, when he explained in the autumn 2014 issue of Foreign Affairs “Why the Ukraine Crisis is the West’s Fault.”
Historian Barbara Tuchman addressed the kind of situation the world faces in Ukraine in her book “The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam.” (Had she lived, she surely would have updated it to take Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine into account). Tuchman wrote:
“Wooden-headedness…plays a remarkably large role in government. It consists in assessing a situation in terms of preconceived fixed notions while ignoring or rejecting any contrary signs. It is acting according to wish while not allowing oneself to be deflected by the facts.”
Six Years (and Counting) of Brainwashing
Thanks to US media, a very small percentage of Americans know that:
- 14 years ago, then US Ambassador to Russia (current CIA Director) William Burns was warned by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov that Russia might have to intervene in Ukraine, if it were made a member of NATO. The Subject Line of Burns’s Feb. 1, 2008 Embassy Moscow cable (#182) to Washington makes it clear that Amb. Burns did not mince Lavrov’s words; the subject line stated: “Nyet means nyet: Russia’s NATO enlargement redlines.”Thus, Washington policymakers were given forewarning, in very specific terms, of Russia’s redline regarding membership for Ukraine in NATO. Nevertheless, on April 3, 2008, a NATO summit in Bucharest asserted: “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”
- 8 years ago, on Feb. 22, 2014, the US orchestrated a coup in Kiev – rightly labeled “the most blatant coup in history’, insofar as it had already been blown on YouTube 18 days prior. Kiev’s spanking new leaders, handpicked and identified by name by US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in the YouTube-publicized conversation with the U.S. ambassador in Kiev, immediately called for Ukraine to join NATO.
- 6 years ago, in June 2016, Russian President Vladimir Putin told Western reporters of his concern that so-called antiballistic missiles sites in Romania and Poland could be converted overnight to accommodate offensive strike missiles posing a threat to Russia’s own nuclear forces. (See this unique video, with English subtitles, from minute 37 to 49.) There is a direct analogy with the 1962 Cuban missile crisis when Moscow put offensive strike missiles in Cuba and President John Kennedy reacted strongly to the existential threat that posed to the US.
- On December 21, 2021, President Putin told his most senior military leaders:
“It is extremely alarming that elements of the US global defense system are being deployed near Russia. The Mk 41 launchers, which are located in Romania and are to be deployed in Poland, are adapted for launching the Tomahawk strike missiles. If this infrastructure continues to move forward, and if US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems. This is a huge challenge for us, for our security.” [Emphasis added.]- On December 30, 2021, Biden and Putin talked by phone at Putin’s urgent request. The Kremlin readout stated:
- On February 12, 2022, Ushakov briefed the media on the telephone conversation between Putin and Biden earlier that day.
Unprovoked?
The US insists that Russia’s invasion was “unprovoked”. Establishment media dutifully regurgitate that line, while keeping Americans in the dark about such facts (not opinion) as are outlined (and sourced) above. Most Americans are just as taken in by the media as they were 20 years ago, when they were told there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They simply took it on faith. Nor did the guilty media express remorse – or a modicum of embarrassment.
The late Fred Hiatt, who was op-ed editor at the Washington Post, is a case in point. In an interview with the Columbia Journalism Review [CJR, March/April 2004] he commented:
On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine.
“If you look at the editorials we wrote running up [to the war], we state as flat fact that he [Saddam Hussein] has weapons of mass destruction.” “If that’s not true, it would have been better not to say it.”
(My journalism mentor, Robert Parry, had this to say about Hiatt’s remark. “Yes, that is a common principle of journalism, that if something isn’t real, we’re not supposed to confidently declare that it is.”)
It’s worse now. Russia is not Iraq. And Putin has been so demonized over the past six years that people are inclined to believe the likes of James Clapper to the effect there’s something genetic that makes Russians evil. “Russia-gate” was a big con (and, now, demonstrably so), but Americans don’t know that either. The consequences of prolonged demonization are extremely dangerous – and will become even more so in the next several weeks as politicians vie to be the strongest in opposing and countering Russia’s “unprovoked” attack on Ukraine.
THE Problem
Humorist Will Rogers had it right:
“The problem ain’t what people know. It’s what people know that ain’t so; that’s the problem.”
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
US Media Held Murdered Russian Journalist to a Dangerous Standard
Whether or not one agrees with what they are saying, journalists of every nationality deserve protection from those who would use violence to silence them.
FAIR, LUCA GOLDMANSOUR, 23 Sept 22
After the August 20 car-bomb assassination of Darya Dugina, the daughter of a Russian ultranationalist political philosopher, US media outlets quickly branded the 29-year-old as an agent in Russia’s “disinformation war.” Rather than treating her as a member of the civilian press, they seemed to downplay her death as a casualty of war.
CNN (8/27/22) ran an article to this effect, failing to characterize her murder as an assassination, instead stating Dugina was “on the front lines” of Russia’s war effort, linking her to “Russia’s vast disinformation machine.” NPR (8/24/22) reported that Dugina was a “Russian propagandist” whose killing signaled the war was coming to Russian elites in their own territory. Foreign Policy (8/26/22) called Dugina a “dead propagandist” whose “martyrdom” did more to achieve her goals in death than she could have hoped for in life.
It is certainly true that during her life, Dugina, who espoused the philosophy of Russian Eurasianism, an expansionist political doctrine veiled as an objective analysis of Russian interests, had very little impact on Western audiences. This is true of most Russian journalists, despite the frequent warnings in US corporate media about the threat posed by Russian media messages. For instance, RT, often considered the foremost Russian outlet in the West, accounted for only 0.04% of Britain’s total viewing audience in 2017 (New Statesman, 2/25/22), and reached about 0.6% of the UK’s online population from February 2021 to the start of 2022—and this was before Western media platforms sharply restricted access to RT and other pro-Moscow outlets in the wake of the invasion of Ukraine.
Far more prevalent for Western viewers is the constant barrage of pro-NATO, pro-Western propaganda that vastly overstates the significance of Russian disinformation. Such was the case when CNN noted that Dugina ran a “disguised English-language online platform that pushed a pro-Kremlin worldview to Western readers.” By “disguised,” CNN is suggesting that the site she worked for, United World International, engaged in outright deception by not disclosing its Russian origins—much like CNN does not describe itself as a US-based outlet, but rather as a “world leader in online news and information.”
Whether UWI is purposefully misleading or not, CNN‘s underlying assumption is that Western audiences are so fickle that the most minimal exposure to pro-Kremlin viewpoints represents a threat to national security. It’s this stance that turns journalists with foreign ideologies into the equivalent of enemy combatants.
If CNN thinks disclosure is what separates journalism from propaganda, it might have disclosed the biases of the sources it used to contextualize Dugina’s murder. The article mostly relied on information from the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab and the Center for European Policy Analysis, both of which are “used to promote the information interests of the US-centralized power alliance in Europe and North America” (Transcend.org, 9/5/22) and are funded by the US government, European allied nations and weapons manufacturers.
Whether or not one agrees with what they are saying, journalists of every nationality deserve protection from those who would use violence to silence them. So when CNN or other Western media downplay the assassination of Dugina on the grounds that she spread Russian propaganda, or even disinformation, that supported a war of aggression and other war crimes, they are setting a standard that puts their own colleagues at risk. (The exceptionalism that holds that US institutions can avoid the consequences faced by others is, of course, a central pillar of US propaganda.)
US corporate media have a long track record of advocating for illegal US aggression while knowingly parroting their government’s false pretenses. The New York Times, for instance, hasn’t opposed a US war since its tacit disapproval of Ronald Reagan’s invasion of Grenada in 1983 (FAIR.org, 8/23/17). The Times advocated for the illegal invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (8/8/01, 2/12/03); the CIA’s attempted regime change in Syria (8/26/13); and US drone wars in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia (2/6/13). With the body count from these conflicts far surpassing that of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, how would the assassination of a New York Times editorial board member differ from Dugina’s murder? Aside, of course, from the fact that Dugina supported Washington’s geopolitical adversary…………………….. more https://fair.org/home/us-media-held-murdered-russian-journalist-to-a-dangerous-standard/
It was set to be Nebraska’s largest wind project. Then the military stepped in.
Flatwater Free Press. By Natalia Alamdari, 16 Sept 22,
“…………………….. With about 150,000 acres leased by energy companies, this county of just 625 people stood poised to become home to as many as 300 wind turbines.
It would have been the largest wind project in the state, bringing in loads of money for the landowners, the developers, the county and local schools.
But then, an unexpected roadblock: The U.S. Air Force.
Under the dusty fields of Banner County are dozens of nuclear missiles. Housed in military silos dug more than 100 feet into the ground, the Cold War relics lie in wait across rural America, part of the country’s nuclear defenses.
For decades, tall structures like wind turbines needed to be at least a quarter mile away from the missile silos.
But earlier this year, the military changed its policy.
Now, they said, turbines now can’t be within two nautical miles of the silos. The switch ruled out acres of land that energy companies had leased from locals — and wrested a potential windfall from dozens of farmers who’d waited 16 years for the turbines to become reality.
The stalled Banner County project is unique, but it’s one more way that Nebraska struggles to harness its main renewable energy resource.
Oft-windy Nebraska ranks eighth in the country in potential wind energy, according to the federal government. The state’s wind energy output has improved markedly in recent years. But Nebraska continues to lag far behind neighbors Colorado, Kansas and Iowa, all of whom have become national leaders in wind.
The Banner County projects would have grown Nebraska’s wind capacity by 25%. It’s now unclear how many turbines will be possible because of the Air Force’s rule change.
“This would have been a big deal for a lot of farmers. And it would have been an even bigger deal for every property owner in Banner County,” Young said. “It’s just a killer. Don’t know how else to say it.”
LIVING WITH NUKES………………………..
Today, there are decommissioned silos scattered throughout Nebraska. But 82 silos in the Panhandle are still active and controlled 24/7 by Air Force crews.
Four hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles — ICBMs — are burrowed in the ground across northern Colorado, western Nebraska, Wyoming, North Dakota and Montana. The 80,000-pound missiles can fly 6,000 miles in less than a half-hour and inflict damage 20 times greater than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima in World War II.
“If we ever get bombed, they say this is the first place they’re going to bomb, because of the silos that we’ve got here,” said farmer Tom May.
Every acre of May’s property sits within the two miles of a missile silo. Under the new Air Force rule, he can’t put a single wind turbine on his ground……….
Banner County had what developers called “world-class wind.” Many landowners were eager – signing away their acres came with the promise of roughly $15,000 per turbine per year. The turbines were also going to pump money into the county and school system, said county officials and company executives.
“In Banner County, it would have reduced property taxes to damn near nothing,” Young said they were told.
Eventually, two companies – Invenergy and Orion Renewable Energy Group – finalized plans to put up wind turbines in Banner County.
Environmental impact studies were completed. Permits, leases and contracts were signed.
Orion had 75 to 100 turbines planned, and hoped to have a project operating by this year.
Invenergy was going to build as many as 200 turbines. The company had qualified for federal tax credits to start the project and had even poured the concrete pads that the turbines would sit upon, covering them back up with earth so farmers could use the land until construction began.
But discussions with the military starting in 2019 brought the projects to a screeching halt. Wind turbines pose a “significant flight safety hazard,” an Air Force spokesman said in an email. Those turbines didn’t exist when the silos were built. Now that they dot the rural landscape, the Air Force said it needed to reevaluate its setback rules. The final number it settled on was two nautical miles — 2.3 miles on land …….
…………………………………… For most landowners, the news came as a gutpunch. They said they support national security and keeping service members safe. But they wonder: Is eight times as much distance necessary?
“They don’t own that land. But all of a sudden, they have the power to strike the whole thing down, telling us what we can and can’t do,” Jones said. “All we’d like to do is negotiate. 4.6 miles [diameter] is way too far, as far as I’m concerned.”
………………………………………. By 2010, Nebraska was 25th in the country at producing wind-generated power — the bottom of the pack among windy Great Plains states.
The reasons fueling the lag were uniquely Nebraskan. Nebraska is the only state served entirely by publicly owned utilities, mandated to deliver the cheapest electricity possible.
Federal tax credits for wind farms only applied to the private sector. With a smaller population, already cheap electricity and limited access to transmission lines, Nebraska lacked the market to make wind energy worthwhile.
A decade of legislation helped change that calculus. Public utilities were allowed to buy power from private wind developers. A state law diverted taxes collected from wind developers back to the county and school district — the reason the Banner wind farms may have shrunk taxes for county residents………………………………..
John Hansen, president of the Nebraska Farmers Union, said pushback over wind farms has ramped up in recent years. But it’s a loud minority, he said. Eighty percent of rural Nebraskans thought more should be done to develop wind and solar energy, according to a 2015 University of Nebraska-Lincoln poll……………
“This resource is just there, ready to be used,” Brady Jones, John Jones’ son, said. “How do we walk away from that? At a time when we’re passing legislation that would vastly increase investment in wind energy in this country? That energy’s got to come from somewhere.” https://flatwaterfreepress.org/it-was-set-to-be-nebraskas-largest-wind-project-then-the-military-stepped-in/
Hundreds Of Children Included In Ukrainian Public Kill-List
International organizations remain silent while children are threatened by Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime.
thefreeonline by Lucas Leiroz, researcher in Social Sciences at the Rural Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; geopolitical consultant.
Despite many complaints, appeals and critiques, the infamous Ukrainian website “Myrotvorets” remains active on the internet.
The site exposes the personal data of thousands of people considered enemies by the Ukrainian neo-Nazi regime, making it the largest public kill-list ever witnessed.
Journalist Olesya Buzina shot dead in Kiev Western media’s invented ‘Narrative’ ignores Ukraine’s public Kill List: ’12 journalists killed already’- must be deleted!
The most terrible point of this situation is that hundreds of ethnic Russian children are included in this list. Russian diplomats demand a position on the part of UNICEF on the matter, but international organizations remain silent.
“Publishing personal data, addresses and phone numbers, on minors is a crime. It’s like a menu for pedophiles or people doing human trafficking.”
Although Myrotvorets is officially an NGO, in practice it operates in a fully integrated manner with the Ukrainian government. The very purpose of the site is to provide a database of alleged “enemies” of the Ukrainian state, thus being much more of a Kiev intelligence department than an NGO.
The website project started precisely in 2014, as well as the beginning of the ethnic and political persecution against Russian citizens and Maidan’s opponents.
The word LIQUIDATED was placed on the entry of Russian photojournalist Andrei Stenin after his murder and many others listed and subsequently killed, including the Italian Andrea Rocchelli.
Also, it must be noted that many of the people included in the list were actually murdered, such as Russian journalist Daria Dugina, which shows that Ukrainian intelligence forces really use the data provided by Myrotvorets and try to “fulfill” the kill-list proposed by the website.
However, what is most shocking in this issue is the presence of children on this list. The Ukrainian government and its allied neo-Nazi organizations do not seem to distinguish who actually poses a threat to the Maidan’s political regime and who does not.
For them, everyone who opposes the government and publicly expresses their critical opinions must be exterminated, even innocent civilians and children.
According to a recent data survey by journalist Mira Terada, at least 327 children would have had their personal data exposed by Myrotvorets. Considering that Ukrainian forces really try to kill those on this list, the lives of these children are in danger.
Investigations into this topic increased after Faina Savekova, a 12-year-old girl from Lugansk, was added to the list for posting letters on the internet expressing pride for the Russian identity of her people and criticism against the current Ukrainian policies in her region.
After her data was exposed, Faina asked the UN for help, even writing letters to the Secretary General, which were never answered.
Russian journalist Veronika Naydenova, originally from Crimea but living in Germany, was added to the list in January, also after raising the inclusion of children, including 13-year-old Faina Savenkova, from the Lugansk People’s Republic.
“The same day my article was published, I was added to the list. But this hasn’t stopped me, I’ve written many articles since.”
UNICEF, which would be the UN office responsible for caring for children, also remained silent, showing the omission of international organizations in the face of the serious Ukrainian problem.
Currently, we know that Faina is just one of hundreds of children in the kill-list, but that has not changed the international silence.
On September 14, Russian diplomat at the UN Dmitry Polyanskiy made some comments on this matter on his social media. He criticized the omission on the part of the UN and called on UNICEF to comment on the case.
Polyanskiy was realistic and said that he does not expect legal or coercive action against Ukraine, but only a simple formal condemnation for these acts…………………….
Considering recent Ukraine’s history, in which murders, massacres of civilians and terrorist attacks have become commonplace, it is possible to say that these 327 children, as well as the thousands of other innocent people exposed by the site, are indeed in danger………………….. https://thefreeonline.com/2022/09/17/waiting-to-die-hundreds-of-children-included-in-ukrainian-public-kill-list/
How we got to an $850 billion Pentagon budget – “independent” think tanks are funded by weapons corporations.
Speaking Security Newsletter | Note n°173 | 16 September 2022, Stephen Semler
Situation
The Senate might vote on the fiscal year 2023 military budget this month. Or it might not; nobody’s sure. What’s for certain is that the bill the Senate considers will have at least as much as $850 billion for the Pentagon. In other words, we’re staring down a $72 billion year-to-year increase in military spending with this legislation: The FY2022 version of the same bill (National Defense Authorization Act, or NDAA) licensed $778 billion for the Pentagon.
How we got to an $850 billion Pentagon budget
In March, Joe Biden proposed increasing annual military spending by $35 billion—to $813 billion—as part of his FY2023 budget request. In June, the House Armed Services Committee (HASC) added another $37 billion on top of that before advancing the $850 billion bill to the House floor for approval.
This decision was reportedly a matter of course for the committee. According to one HASC member, there was “almost no debate” on dumping another $37 billion on top of Biden’s own proposed increase. An overlooked reason why the committee’s move was so automatic was the ‘expertise’ that made a $72 billion year-to-year increase seem appropriate or even natural.
Think tanks are said to be free from the ugly forces that bias in-house policy planning—namely, all the lobbying and campaign cash that encourage members of Congress to make decisions based on parochial interests and not the public’s. The problem is that establishment think tanks are corrupted by the same monied interests members of Congress are. In this case, we’re talking about the arms industry.
Every think tank represented in a House Armed Services Committee hearing to provide expert testimony from January 1, 2020 through September 16, 2022 that disclosed its donors received funding from military contractors (the one that didn’t disclose its donors was the hawkish American Enterprise Institute).
The result? Military contractors were able to launder their profit-driven interests through ostensibly non-political institutions, while powerful lawmakers on the HASC got their parochially-driven policy positions validated by ostensibly unbiased ‘expertise’.
Pentagon opens sweeping review of clandestine psychological operations
Ellen Nakashima, The Washington Post, Mon, 19 Sep 2022
The Pentagon has ordered a sweeping audit of how it conducts clandestine information warfare after major social media companies identified and took offline fake accounts suspected of being run by the U.S. military in violation of the platforms’ rules.
Colin Kahl, the undersecretary of defense for policy, last week instructed the military commands that engage in psychological operations online to provide a full accounting of their activities by next month after the White House and some federal agencies expressed mounting concerns over the Defense Department’s attempted manipulation of audiences overseas, according to several defense and administration officials familiar with the matter.
The takedowns in recent years by Twitter and Facebook of more than 150 bogus personas and media sites created in the United States was disclosed last month by internet researchers Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory. While the researchers did not attribute the sham accounts to the U.S. military, two officials familiar with the matter said that U.S. Central Command is among those whose activities are facing scrutiny. Like others interviewed for this report, they spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military operations.
The researchers did not specify when the takedowns occurred, but those familiar with the matter said they were within the past two or three years. Some were recent, they said, and involved posts from the summer that advanced anti-Russia narratives citing the Kremlin’s “imperialist” war in Ukraine and warning of the conflict’s direct impact on Central Asian countries. Significantly, they found that the pretend personas — employing tactics used by countries such as Russia and China — did not gain much traction, and that overt accounts actually attracted more followers.
…………………………. The U.S. government’s use of ersatz social media accounts, though authorized by law and policy, has stirred controversy inside the Biden administration, with the White House pressing the Pentagon to clarify and justify its policies. The White House, agencies such as the State Department and even some officials within the Defense Department have been concerned that the policies are too broad, allowing leeway for tactics that even if used to spread truthful information, risk eroding U.S. credibility, several U.S. officials said.
…………. ..A spokeswoman for the National Security Council, which is part of the White House, declined to comment.
Kahl disclosed his review at a virtual meeting convened by the National Security Council on Tuesday, saying he wants to know what types of operations have been carried out, who they’re targeting, what tools are being used and why military commanders have chosen those tactics, and how effective they have been, several officials said.
…………………… Congress in late 2019 passed a law affirming that the military could conduct operations in the “information environment”
……The measure, known as Section 1631, allows the military to carry out clandestine psychological operations without crossing what the CIA has claimed as its covert authority, alleviating some of the friction that had hindered such operations previously.
The first defense official recalled:
“Combatant commanders got really excited. They were very eager to utilize these new authorities. The defense contractors were equally eager to land lucrative classified contracts to enable clandestine influence operations.”
………………………………… https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/09/19/pentagon-psychological-operations-facebook-twitter/
Zelensky and NATO plan to transform post-war Ukraine into ‘a big Israel’.
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/09/17/zelensky-nato-ukraine-big-israel/— ALEXANDER RUBINSTEIN·SEPTEMBER 17, 2022
The NATO-backed Atlantic Council has proposed apartheid Israel as a blueprint for a hyper-militarized Ukraine. The paper was authored by Obama’s former ambassador to Tel Aviv, now an Israeli spy-tech consultant.
Just forty days after Russia’s military campaign began inside Ukraine, Ukrainian President Vlodymyr Zelensky told reporters that in the future, his country would be like “a big Israel.” The following day, one of Israel’s top promoters in the Democratic Party published an op-ed in NATO’s official think tank exploring how that could be executed.
Zelensky made his prediction while speaking to reporters on April 5, rejecting the idea that Kiev would remain neutral in future conflicts between NATO, the European Union, and Russia. According to Zelensky, his country would never be like Switzerland (which coincidentally abandoned its Napoleon-era tradition of nonalignment by sanctioning Russia in response to its February invasion).
“We cannot talk about ‘Switzerland of the future,’” the president informed reporters. “But we will definitely become a ‘big Israel’ with its own face.”
For those wondering what a “big Israel” would actually look like, Zelensky quickly elaborated on his disturbing prophecy.
“We will not be surprised that we will have representatives of the Armed Forces or the National Guard in all institutions, supermarkets, cinemas — there will be people with weapons,” Ukraine’s president said, predicting a bleak existence for his citizens. “I am sure that our security issue will be number one in the next ten years.”
Though the web post was based on comments Zelensky made to reporters, the president’s office mysteriously excised a section of his remarks in which he declared a future Ukraine would not be “absolutely liberal, European.” Instead, along with his vision for a heavily militarized Ukraine, the post emphasized Zelensky’s readiness to join NATO “already tomorrow.”
For NATO’s power brokers, however, Zelensky’s intimated willingness to join the military alliance was perhaps the least remarkable aspect of his statement. Instead, within 48 hours of his comments, the Atlantic Council – NATO’s semi-official think tank in Washington – published a “road map” exploring how to transform Ukraine into “a big Israel.”
Authored by Daniel B. Shapiro, the former US Ambassador to Israel under President Barack Obama, the document posited that “the two embattled countries share more than you might think.”
Just as former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig presented Israel as “the largest American air craft carrier in the world that cannot be sunk,” Shapiro put forward a vision of Ukraine as a hyper-militarized NATO bastion whose national identity would be defined by its ability to project US power against Russia.
Despite Israel’s reluctance to join the Western sanctions campaign against Russia, it has aided Ukraine’s militarily, sending two large shipments of defensive equipment since February of this year. In the past, however, Israel’s support for Ukraine in its fight against Russia has been more than defensive.
Back in 2018, over 40 human rights activists petitioned the Israeli High Court of Justice to stop arming Ukraine after members of the neo-nazi Azov Battalion were caught brandishing Israeli-made weapons. As Israel’s Ha’aretz noted at the time, “The militia’s [Azov] emblems are well-known national socialist ones. Its members use the Nazi salute and carry swastikas and SS insignias… One militia member said in an interview that he was fighting Russia since Putin was a Jew.”
Zelensky, a Ukrainian Jew, was apparently unperturbed by Israel’s alleged arming of Nazi elements in his country. One year after his 2019 election, he made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem to launch what he called a “prayer for peace,” and to attend an event entitled “Remember the Holocaust to fight anti-Semitism.” Ahead of the junket, Zelensky heaped praise on Israeli society, remarking in an interview that “Jews managed to build a country, to elevate it, without anything except people and brains,” and that Israelis are a “united, strong, powerful people. And despite being under the threat of war, they enjoy every day. I’ve seen it.”
Caitlin Johnstone: Ukraine crawling with CIA & Co
https://johnmenadue.com/caitlin-johnstone-ukraine-crawling-with-cia-co/ 17 Sept 22
The previously unthinkable idea that the U.S. is at war with Russia has been gradually normalised, with the heat turned up so slowly that the frog doesn’t notice it’s being boiled alive.
The New York Times reports that Ukraine is crawling with special forces and spies from the U.S. and its allies, which would seem to contradict earlier reports that the U.S. intelligence cartel is having trouble getting intel about what’s happening on the ground in Ukraine.
This would also, obviously, put the final nail in the coffin of the claim that this is not a U.S. proxy war.
In an article headlined “Commando Network Coordinates Flow of Weapons in Ukraine, Officials Say,” anonymous Western officials inform us of the following through their stenographers at The New York Times:
“As Russian troops press ahead with a grinding campaign to seize eastern Ukraine, the nation’s ability to resist the onslaught depends more than ever on help from the United States and its allies — including a stealthy network of commandos and spies rushing to provide weapons, intelligence and training, according to U.S. and European officials.
Much of this work happens outside Ukraine, at bases in Germany, France and Britain, for example. But even as the Biden administration has declared it will not deploy American troops to Ukraine, some C.I.A. personnel have continued to operate in the country secretly, mostly in the capital, Kyiv, directing much of the massive amounts of intelligence the United States is sharing with Ukrainian forces, according to current and former officials.
At the same time, a few dozen commandos from other NATO countries, including Britain, France, Canada and Lithuania, also have been working inside Ukraine.”
he revelation that the C.I.A. and U.S. special forces are conducting military operations in Ukraine does indeed make a lie of the Biden administration’s insistence at the start of the war that there would be no American boots on the ground in Ukraine. And the admission that NATO powers are so involved in operations against a nuclear superpower means, we are closer to seeing a nuclear exchange than anyone should be comfortable with.
This news should surprise no one who knows anything about the usual behaviour of the U.S. intelligence cartel, but interestingly it contradicts something we were told by the same New York Times not three weeks ago.
“American intelligence agencies have less information than they would like about Ukraine’s operations and possess a far better picture of Russia’s military, its planned operations and its successes and failures,” The New York Times told us earlier this month. “U.S. officials said the Ukrainian government gave them few classified briefings or details about their operational plans, and Ukrainian officials acknowledged that they did not tell the Americans everything.”
It seems a bit unlikely that U.S. intelligence agencies would have a hard time getting information about what’s happening in a country where they themselves are physically located. Moon of Alabama theorised at the time that this ridiculous, “We don’t know what’s happening in our own proxy war” line was being pushed to give the U.S. plausible deniability about Ukraine’s failures on the battlefield, which have only gotten worse since then.
So why are they telling us all this now? Well, it could be that we’re being paced into accepting an increasingly direct role of the U.S. and its allies in Ukraine.
The other day Antiwar’s Daniel Larison tweeted, “Hawks in April: Don’t call it a proxy war! Hawks in May: Of course it’s a proxy war! Hawks in June: It’s not their war, it’s our war!”
This is indeed exactly how it happened. Back in April President Joe Biden told the press the idea that this is a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia was “not true” and Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin said “It’s not, this is clearly Ukraine’s fight” when asked if this is a proxy war. The mainstream media were still framing this claim as merely an “accusation” by the Russian government and empire spinmeisters were regularly admonishing anyone who used that term on the grounds that it deprives Ukrainians of their “agency.”
Then May rolled around and all of a sudden we had The New Yorker unequivocally telling us that the U.S. is in “a full proxy war with Russia” and hawks like U.S. Rep. Seth Moulton saying things like,
“We’re not just at war to support the Ukrainians. We’re fundamentally at war, although somewhat through a proxy, with Russia, and it’s important that we win.”
And now here in June we’ve got war hawks like Max Boot coming right out and saying that this is actually America’s war, and it is therefore important for the U.S. to drastically escalate it in order to hand the Russians “devastating losses.”
So, the previously unthinkable idea that the U.S. is at war with Russia has been gradually normalised, with the heat turned up so slowly that the frog doesn’t notice it’s being boiled alive. If that idea can be sufficiently normalised, public consent for greater escalations will likely be forthcoming, even if those escalations are extremely psychotic.
Back in March when I said the only “agency” Ukraine has in this conflict is the Central Intelligence one, empire loyalists jumped down my throat. They couldn’t believe I was saying something so evil and wrong. Now they’ve been told that the Central Intelligence Agency is indeed conducting operations and directing intelligence on the ground in Ukraine, but I somehow doubt that this will stir any self-reflection on their part.
U.S. Finally Admits Ukraine Bombs Zaporizhzhia’s Nuclear Power Plant.
The Duran, by Eric Zuesse, September 15, 2022, Unnamed American officials, according to the New York Times, have admitted that the explosives fired against Ukraine’s nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia have been fired against the plant by Ukraine’s Government, not by Russia’s Government, and furthermore these officials make clear that Ukraine’s attacks against the plant are a key part of Ukraine’s plan to win its U.S.-backed-and-advised war against Russia, on the battlefields of Ukraine, using Ukrainian soldiers.
Zaporizhzhia is a city in Ukraine that is in Russian-controlled territory, and Ukraine’s strategy is to destroy the ability of the plant to function, so that areas controlled by Russia will no longer be able to benefit from that plant’s electrical-power output. The United States Government helped Ukraine’s Government to come up with this plan, according to the New York Times.
This information was buried by the Times, 85% of the way down a 1,600-word news-report they published on September 13th, titled “The Critical Moment Behind Ukraine’s Rapid Advance”, in which it stated that, “Eventually, Ukrainian officials believe their long-term success requires progress on the original goals in the discarded strategy, including recapturing the nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, cutting off Russian forces in Mariupol and pushing Russian forces in Kherson back across the Dnipro River, American officials said.”
When IAEA inspectors arrived at that plant on September 1st, after a lengthy period of trying to get there to inspect it but which was blocked by Ukraine’s Government, and the IAEA started delivering reports regarding what they were finding at the plant, no mention has, as-of yet, been made concerning which of the two warring sides has been firing those bombs into the plant.
Even when the IAEA headlined on September 9th “Director General’s Statement on Serious Situation at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant”, and reported that the plant’s ability to operate “has been destroyed by shelling of the switchyard at the city’s thermal power plant, leading to a complete power black-out in” the entire region, and that “This is completely unacceptable. It cannot stand.”, and closed by saying they “urgently call for the immediate cessation of all shelling in the entire area,” no mention was made as to which of the two sides was shooting into the plant in order to disable it, and which of the two sides was firing out from the plant in order to protect it against that incoming fire.
Previously known was only that the city of Zaporizhzhia has been and is under Russian control ever since March 4th. Consequently, all news-media and reporters have known that (since Russia was inside and Ukraine was outside) Russia has been defending the plant and Ukraine has been attacking it, but until “American officials” let slip, in this news-report, the fact that this has indeed been the case there, no Western news-medium has previously published this fact — not even buried it in a news-report.
So, although nothing in this regard may yet be considered to be official, or neutral, or free of fear or of actual intent to lie, there finally is, at the very least, buried in that news-report from the New York Times, a statement that is sourced to “American officials,” asserting that this is the case, and the Times also lets slip there that this “shelling” of that plant is an important part of the joint U.S.-Ukraine master-plan to defeat Russia in Ukraine.
It is part of the same master-plan, which the U.S. Government recommended to Ukraine’s Government, and which also included the recent successful retaking by Ukraine of Russian-controlled land near the major Ukrainian city of Kharkov, which city’s recapture by Ukraine is also included in the master-plan. Both operations — the shelling of the nuclear power plant, and the recapture of that land near Kharkov — were parts of that master-plan, according to the New York Times.
The Times report asserts that
Long reluctant to share details of their plans, the Ukrainian commanders started opening up more to American and British intelligence officials and seeking advice. Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser, and Andriy Yermak, a top adviser to Mr. Zelensky, spoke multiple times about the planning for the counteroffensive, according to a senior administration official. Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and senior Ukrainian military leaders regularly discussed intelligence and military support.
And in Kyiv, Ukrainian and British military officials continued working together while the new American defense attaché, Brig. Gen. Garrick Harmon, began having daily sessions with Ukraine’s top officers.
Ukraine cracks downs on civilians – official
Amazingly, this is reported also in the Washington Post – article headed:
“Ukraine hit squads are killing Russian occupiers and collaborators“
(I can’t read this – as it’s behind a paywall.)
https://www.rt.com/russia/562619-ukraine-crackdown-kharkov-russia/ 12 Sept 22, Kiev’s forces “are shooting people” in the north of Kharkov region, pro-Russian local authorities claim.
The Ukrainian military has unleashed repressions on the civilian population in Kharkov region, with mercenaries executing people on the streets to frame Russia, a local official claimed on Monday.
“The Ukrainian Armed Forces have occupied settlements in the north of the Kharkov region. They have started repressive actions,” Vitaly Ganchev, the head of pro-Russian administration, said.
Speaking to Russian media, he said local residents who managed to escape from the areas retaken by Kiev’s forces, described Ukrainian “mercenaries that are driving around and shooting people while filming it on camera.”
“As I see it, they want to cleanse these towns, and to portray it as if the Russian troops are behind it, to allege that it was them who had committed these atrocities,” he said.
He added that in many cases residents could no longer cross the Russia-Ukraine border due to the Ukrainian military presence, with many civilians forced into hiding.
Nevertheless, according to Ganchev, more than 5,000 people have been evacuated to Russia in recent days, with local authorities doing their best to fast-track the process.
Ganchev’s comments echo remarks made by Leonid Pasechnik, the head of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR), who claimed on Sunday that Kiev’s forces were cracking down on the civilian population in areas from which Russian forces had retreated.
“The Ukrainian authorities have confirmed their neo-Nazi nature. In Kharkov region, in a number of cases Ukrainian intelligence services set up purges and repressions against the civilian population“, he claimed.
The comments came after Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigations said last week it would conduct a “filtration” of civilians in Balakleya, a town in Kharkov region that’s been retaken by Kiev’s forces.
The purpose of these efforts is to “prevent the subversive activities of the Russians and their allies” and retaliate against those “who cooperated with aggressors,” the agency said at the time.
Russia sent troops into Ukraine on February 24, citing Kiev’s failure to implement the Minsk agreements, designed to give the regions of Donetsk and Lugansk special status within the Ukrainian state. The protocols, brokered by Germany and France, were first signed in 2014. Former Ukrainian President Pyotr Poroshenko has since admitted that Kiev’s main goal was to use the ceasefire to buy time and “create powerful armed forces.”
In February 2022, the Kremlin recognized the Donbass republics as independent states and demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join any Western military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked.
Western media continues to ignore Ukraine’s public ‘kill list’ aimed at those who question the Kiev regime
Ukraine has a list ( Myrotvorets) of people, giving addresses and contact numbers, – people considered as enemies of the state, – able to be killed by extreme nationalists. The Ukraine government does nothing to stop this.
“There are so many people in Ukraine who want to push for peaceful negotiations with Russia. But if anybody in Ukrainian society wants to stand up and push this line, they’re most likely going to be put on that list. Myrotvorets is very much a symbol of the extremist elements in Ukraine at the moment.”
https://ingaza.wordpress.com/2022/09/11/western-media-continues-to-ignore-ukraines-public-kill-list-aimed-at-those-who-question-the-kiev-regime/ September 10, 2022, -by Eva K Bartlett
The Myrotvorets list is an issue trending in independent and Russian media, but not in the mainstream international press
This week, a number of international and Russian journalists convened in Moscow – with more joining by video link – to discuss the now-infamous Ukrainian Myrotvorets “kill list.” Many of them are included themselves.
While some don’t take it seriously, the horrific car-bombing murder of Darya Dugina on August 20 and the subsequent marking on her Myrotvorets entry as “liquidated” makes it fairly clear the people behind the list do, in fact, want people dead.
The same thing happened to the entry of Russian photojournalist Andrei Stenin and many others listed and subsequently killed, including the Italian Andrea Rocchelli.
What it feels like to be on the list
The head of the Foundation to Battle Injustice, Mira Terada, who convened the panel, noted that of the thousands of names entered on the site, 341 are journalists and, shockingly, 327 are minors.
“Publishing personal data on minors is a crime. It’s like a menu for pedophiles or people doing human trafficking.”
While her concern is for the children, journalists, activists, political figures and even ordinary Ukrainians who have somehow angered the Kiev regime and those behind the list, Terada now needs to exercise some caution after she herself was added to the database.
An hour and a half after a July 21 press conference about children being placed on Myrotvorets, Mira found herself listed. “This changed my life. I have to be vigilant 24/7,” she said.
Christelle Néant, a French war correspondent reporting from Donbass for the past six and a half years, mentioned to me before the panel began that some of the information on the site is not disclosed to the general public, and is password-locked.
Néant, who said she’s been receiving death threats for years, spoke of how it impacts her: “Every time I use my car, I check underneath it for any unpleasant surprise,” referring to a potential car bomb. “I don’t publish any photos with people I live with or love. I have to be vigilant at all times.”
“I’m not a terrorist, not a criminal, I’m just a correspondent. This list must be closed and all of those involved must be held accountable.”
German journalist Thomas Röper rightly noted that Western media outlets prefer to look the other way. “They could have reported on this, but they’re saying nothing.”
He also pointed out the silence of the German government, even when asked at press conferences.
“A state has a duty to protect its citizens, but I haven’t seen anything from my government to condemn the fact that Germans are on this list and one German national has been killed.”
And, in fact, rather than protect German journalists, the government is persecuting them, as is the case with Alina Lipp, whose bank account, and that of her mother, was closed after the German government launched a criminal case against her for her reporting from Donbass.
Russian journalist Veronika Naydenova, originally from Crimea but living in Germany, was added to the list in January, also after raising the inclusion of children, including 13-year-old Faina Savenkova, from the Lugansk People’s Republic.
The same day my article was published, I was added to the list. But this hasn’t stopped me, I’ve written many articles since.”
She highlighted an additional, very real, threat: that of the refugees who’ve come to Germany from Ukraine, it isn’t possible to know who is merely a refugee and who holds Ukrainian nationalist extremist views. This is a very real fear for Naydenova, whose address is listed on Myrotvorets.
The same happened with Syrians who entered Germany and other countries as refugees. Some of them had affiliations to, or were members of, terrorist groups in Syria, and posed very real threats to supporters of Syria in Germany. As I wrote in a previous article, Kevork Almassian, a Syrian living in Germany, was chased, smeared, harassed and even physically attacked multiple times by the sympathizers of the Free Syrian Army (FSA) and other terrorist groups.”
Dutch journalist Sonya van den Ende likewise fears returning home. “I’m labeled an ‘enemy of the state’ now in the Netherlands. I cannot go back, it’s very dangerous for me to do so.”
Janus Putkonen, a Finnish journalist who has been living in Donbass since 2015, pointed out how the risk extends globally.
“Because the Myrotvorets kill list has not been stopped, people around the world are now in danger of falling victim to the state terrorism of Ukrainian Nazism, comparable to ISIS terrorism.”
But, most of all, it threatens Ukrainians within Ukraine, something British journalist Johnny Miller emphasized.
“If you’re a journalist, blogger, political figure, or a citizen in Ukraine who wants to criticize extremism in Ukraine, which there is a lot of, or if you want to criticize Ukrainian government policies, most likely you’re going to be put on that list. And be under serious threat of death.”
Miller, who has reported from areas of western Ukraine, raised another important point:
“There are so many people in Ukraine who want to push for peaceful negotiations with Russia. But if anybody in Ukrainian society wants to stand up and push this line, they’re most likely going to be put on that list. Myrotvorets is very much a symbol of the extremist elements in Ukraine at the moment.”
For myself, I’ve been on the list since 2019, after going to Crimea and reporting from areas of the DPR where civilians were being terrorized by Ukrainian shelling, houses destroyed “street by street” as a local told me.
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