Tag: russia

NATO as Religion

The US/NATO/Ukraine/Russia controversy is not entirely new.  We already saw the potential of serious trouble in 2014 when the US and European states interfered in the internal affairs of Ukraine and covertly/overtly colluded in the coup d’état against the democratically elected President of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, because he was not playing the game assigned to him by the West. Of course, our media hailed the putsch as a “colour revolution” with all the trappings of democracy.

The 2021/22 crisis is a logical continuation of the expansionist policies that NATO has pursued since the demise of the Soviet Union, as numerous Professors of international law and international relations have long indicated — including Richard Falk, John Mearsheimer, Stephen Kinzer and Francis Boyle.  NATO’s approach implements the US claim to have a “mission” to export its socio-economic model to other countries, notwithstanding the preferences of sovereign states and the self-determination of peoples.

Although the US and NATO narratives have been proven to be inaccurate and sometimes deliberately mendacious on numerous occasions, the fact is that a majority of citizens in the Western World uncritically believe what they are told.  The “quality press” including the New York Times, Washington Post, The Times, Le Monde, El Pais, the NZZ and FAZ are all effective echo chambers of the Washington consensus and enthusiastically support the public relations and geopolitical propaganda offensive.  I think that it can be said without fear of contradiction that the only war that NATO has ever won is the information war.  A compliant and complicit corporate media has been successful in persuading millions of Americans and Europeans that the toxic narratives of the Ministries of Foreign Affairs are really true. We believe in the myth of the “Arab Spring” and “EuroMaidan”, but we never hear about the right of self-determination of peoples, including the Russians of Donetsk and Lugansk, and what could easily be called the “Crimean Spring”.

Often I ask myself how this is possible when we know that the US deliberately lied in earlier conflicts in order to make aggression appear as “defense”.  We were lied to in connection with the “Gulf of Tonkin” incident, the alleged weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.  There is abundant evidence that the CIA and M15 have organized “false flag” events in the Middle East and elsewhere.  Why is it that masses of educated people fail to take some distance and question more?  I dare postulate the hypothesis that the best way to understand the NATO phenomenon is to see it as a secular religion.  Then we are allowed to believe its implausible narratives, because we can take them on faith.

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Anonymous Officials Claim There’s An Evil Russian Plot Again But The Evidence Is Secret Again

Major western news publications are running a story about a sinister plot by the Russian government, and — you may want to sit down for this — the sources of the report are anonymous, and the evidence for it is secret.

The New York Times reports that according to anonymous individuals within the US and British governments, Russia is currently plotting to topple the existing government of Ukraine in some way using some method and then somehow install a puppet regime that is sympathetic to Moscow using some sort of means. What specifically those means and methods might be are not revealed to us in this very serious news report.

“The communiqué provided few details about how Russia might go about imposing a new government on Ukraine, and did not say whether such plans were contingent on an invasion by Russian troops,” the Paper of Record informs us. “British officials familiar with the situation, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the intent was both to head off the activation of such plans as well as to put Mr. Putin on notice that this plot had been exposed.”

Now if you are hoping to be provided with some sort of evidence for these incendiary claims, I’m afraid I’m going to have to disappoint you, because get this: the journalists reporting on this story have not seen any evidence. Apparently they’re just passing on unverified government assertions made by unknown spies to their readers because they were told to, which I guess is something journalists can do now?

I know, I know, I was a little surprised when I learned that too. But here it is, straight from the horse’s mouth:

“The British communiqué provided no evidence to back up its assertion that Russia was plotting to overthrow the Ukrainian government,” the Times reports.

You will be reassured however to learn that despite the actual evidence of the actual Russian nefariousness being kept invisible to us, anonymous officials within the US government have reviewed the intelligence gathered by anonymous British spies for us and concluded on our behalf that the evidence is solid.

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Lunatic Pundit Says It’s “All But Certain” We’re On The Cusp Of A Massive War With Russia

The Ukrainian-born MSNBC favorite Alexander Vindman, best known for his role in the Trump impeachment, has informed the network’s viewership that we are almost certainly on the cusp of a war with Russia comparable to World War II.

“I think we’re basically just on the cusp of war,” the retired lieutenant colonel told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace on Friday. “I think it’s all but certain in my mind that there’s going to be a large European war on the order of magnitude of World War II, with air power, sea power, massive ground force offensives, and my concern right now is making sure that the United States is postured for that outcome. I think there’s little to be done to avoid it at this point.”

Rather than yell and scream like a normal human being at Vindman’s incendiary claims about a near-certain world war against a nuclear superpower, Wallace merely asked Vindman to clarify that he did indeed believe it’s a foregone conclusion that there is going to be a military confrontation with Russia on the level of the second world war. Vindman maintained throughout the appearance that there was going to be a war with Russia, that it would be large, that it would involve Ukraine, and that Russia would be the aggressor.

“I hope to God I’m wrong,” Vindman said at the end of the segment. “But I’m willing to go ahead and raise this alarm, put my credibility on the line, to make sure that people are paying attention.”

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US will send Russian-made helicopters to Ukraine

The US government is expediting the transfer of five transport helicopters to Kiev, as Washington insists that Moscow could “invade” Ukraine any day now. The Mi-17 helicopters were originally purchased from Russia and intended for the former Western-backed government in Afghanistan, before it surrendered to the Taliban last August.

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed on Friday that Congress has been notified of the move, which will be conducted under the Excess Defense Articles program. The State Department said on Thursday this was the “fastest transfer ever” for the US government.

The helicopters are already in Ukraine, which was servicing them on behalf of the Pentagon and was supposed to send them to Afghanistan until the Taliban takeover disrupted those plans. Ukrainian Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov requested them from the Pentagon in late November, along with ammunition also earmarked for the defunct Afghan Army, Foreign Policy reported last month.

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Why Does the Media Keep Blaming the Russians for JFK’s Assassination?

In mid-December, the Biden administration released nearly 1,500 documents related to the John F. Kennedy assassination. Out of all the intelligence agencies memoranda, dossiers, and interview transcripts, the media has seized upon one: a CIA memo about Lee Harvey Oswald’s supposed in-person meeting with Valery Kostikov, a notorious KGB official, in Mexico City in September 1963.  

There’s nothing new about the memo in question. The same is true for most of the JFK records released in December. But as a round of fresh press coverage indicated, the encounter suggests Oswald was working for the Soviets, and that America’s Cold War nemesis was responsible for Kennedy’s killing — not the mob, anti-Castro Cubans, the CIA, or the military-industrial complex.  

The theory that Oswald was a KGB asset has persisted for decades, despite a lack of evidence. Even the CIA concluded that any contact Oswald had with KGB-affiliated Russians was a “grim coincidence.” (A man claiming to be Oswald did contact the Soviets in Mexico City — but that man was an impostor.) 

This most recent recycling of the “Oswald and the Russians” story — the JFK assassination’s very own Russiagate — follows a predictable pattern that appears every time there’s a release of JFK records. It happened in 2017 and during the 1990s.

So, what gives? Why does the media gravitate toward the Oswald/KGB “revelation” every few years rather than any of the other more plausible theories? 

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The CIA Has Been Training Ukrainian Paramilitaries To ‘Kill Russians’

The CIA has been overseeing a secret training program for Ukrainian special operations forces and intelligence operatives since 2015, Yahoo News reported on Thursday, citing five former intelligence and national security officials.

One former CIA official said the US is “training an insurgency” in Ukraine and that the program teaches the Ukrainians how “to kill Russians,” although other officials downplayed the training and said it was not meant for offensive purposes.

The training has been held at an undisclosed base in the southern United States. It was started by the Obama administration, was expanded by President Trump, and further expanded by President Biden. The program includes training in firearms, camouflage techniques, land navigation, and other areas, former officials told Yahoo.

According the report:

The program has involved “very specific training on skills that would enhance” the Ukrainians’ “ability to push back against the Russians,” said the former senior intelligence official.

The training, which has included “tactical stuff,” is “going to start looking pretty offensive if Russians invade Ukraine,” said the former official.

The program was overseen by the CIA’s Ground Branch, the spy agency’s elite paramilitary unit. The Yahoo report said by 2015, Ground Branch personnel were deployed to the front in eastern Ukraine to advise the Ukrainian forces.

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False Flags Suddenly No Longer A Crazy Conspiracy Theory

In a drastic pivot from typical denunciations of false flag operations as conspiratorial nonsense that don’t exist outside the demented imagination of Alex Jones, the US political/media class is proclaiming with one voice that Russia is currently orchestrating just such an operation to justify an invasion of Ukraine.

“As part of its plans, Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion,” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki told reporters on Friday. “We have information that indicates Russia has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine.”

“Without getting into too much detail, we do have information that indicates that Russia is already working actively to create a pretext for a potential invasion, for a move on Ukraine,” Pentagon Spokesperson John Kirby told the press on Friday. “In fact, we have information that they’ve pre-positioned a group of operatives, to conduct what we call a false flag operation, an operation designed to look like an attack on them or their people, or Russian speaking people in Ukraine, as an excuse to go in.”

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Senate Democrats Use the Jim Crow Filibuster to Protect the Kremlin

That the filibuster is an inherently racist tool, a relic of Jim Crow, is an odd position for Democrats to take given that just yesterday, they used the filibuster to block legislation proposed by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX). Indeed, Sen. Cruz’s bill not only attracted the votes of forty-nine out of fifty Republican Senators (the only exception was Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)), but also six Democratic Senators who face close races in 2022 and/or are from purple states: Senators Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), Catherine Cortez-Masto (D-NV), Mark Kelly (D-AZ), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Maggie Hassan (D-NH) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA). That meant that Cruz had 55 votes for his bill — a clear majority. So why did it not pass? Because Senate Democrats invoked the racist Jim Crow relic in order to refuse to allow a vote on that bill unless it first attained 60 votes to close the debate. In other words, Democrats — on Thursday— used the filibuster to block Cruz’s bill despite its having the support of the majority of the Senate.

What makes the Democrats’ conduct here even more notable is the substance of Cruz’s bill that they blocked with the filibuster. Cruz sought to impose sanctions on the Russian pipeline company Nord Stream 2, which is constructing the pipeline that will allow Moscow to sell large amounts of cheap natural gas to Germany and to Europe more broadly. There are few more pressing priorities for the Kremlin, if there are any, than construction of this pipeline. So by blocking Cruz’s bill, Democrats not only used a racist filibuster, but they did so in order to protect Vladimir Putin and a vital Russian company from sanctions.

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Another Nail in the U.S. Empire’s Coffin… Biden Signs $770 Billion War Budget

As this year ends, U.S. President Joe Biden signed into law military spending of $770 billion. That’s just for the next year alone. The scale of wastefulness and bloated corruption is eye-watering. It eclipses what the United States is willing to invest for overhauling its badly neglected civilian infrastructure and for combating the coronavirus pandemic that has killed far more people in the U.S. than in any other nation.

If there is one thing that portends a historic collapse of U.S. global power it is its pathological addiction to militarism that is hemorrhaging vital resources.

What is also amazing is how this gargantuan deformity in economic planning is presented as somehow rational and normal by the Western media.

Three decades after the Cold War officially ended, the U.S. is setting a new record high for annual expenditure on its armed forces.

Biden’s budget – his first as president – exceeds the record set by the previous Trump administration for military largesse of $740 billion.

So much for wishing humanity peace and prosperity – as is the international tradition at this time of year – when the U.S. allocates such a grotesque amount of resources to the means of war and annihilation.

This obscene expenditure is not in any way conceivably a “defense budget” as it is termed in Orwellian newspeak. It is a dreadful and despicable war budget.

The United States spends more on its military than the next 11 top nations combined. Compared with China ($250bn) the U.S. budget is nearly three times bigger. The U.S. spends over 12 times more than Russia ($60bn) on its armed forces.

Those figures alone tell beyond any doubt which nation is the ultimate aggressor. Yet, farcically, the Western corporate media in Orwellian fashion portray China and Russia as the aggressors against whom the United States is “defending’ the rest of the world.

Biden’s 2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), as it is formally titled, devotes billions more to devising new nuclear weapons and to provoke China and Russia. Camouflaged with Orwellian rhetoric, there is some $7 billion for the “Pacific Deterrence Initiative” and $4 billion for the “European Defense Initiative”.

The Biden administration has committed a further $300 million in military support for Ukraine over the next year. This is on top of the $2.5 billion in arms that Washington has plowed into Ukraine since the CIA-backed coup d’état in Kiev in 2014 which brought to power a Russophobic regime.

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