The Empire of Lies Strikes Back… Extraordinary Cover-Up of Nord Stream Terrorism

March 10, 2023

Source

Western news outlets pompously claim to be pinnacles of journalism and defenders of public interest and democracy. They are nothing but the propaganda ministry for Washington – the Empire of Lies.

The New York Times and other Western news media ran with clumsy and blatantly diversionary claims this week, which in the end only serve to draw even more attention to the guilt of the United States in blowing up the Nord Stream gas pipelines.

Not only is the administration of U.S. President Joe Biden even more indictable over the criminal act; the absurd cover-up attempt this week exposes the Western media as nothing but a ministry of propaganda masquerading as journalism.

Four weeks ago, the eminent independent American journalist, Seymour Hersh, published a blockbuster investigative report that revealed how President Biden and senior White House staff ordered the explosive detonation of the natural gas pipelines connecting Russia to the European Union via the Baltic Sea and Germany. The legendary Hersh has an impeccable record of groundbreaking stories, from the My Lai massacre committed by U.S. troops in Vietnam in 1968 to the Abu Ghraib prison torture in Iraq under American occupation to the operation of ratlines to funnel weapons and mercenaries from Libya to Syria to fight Washington’s proxy war for regime change in Damascus.

In his seminal report on the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, Hersh relied on insider Washington sources. He published claims that the United States carried out the covert operation using a team of U.S. Navy divers under the cover of NATO war maneuvers known as BALTOPS 22 last summer. Explosives were planted on the seabed during the exercises held in June 2022 and then later detonated on September 26 with the help of Norwegian military aircraft.

The convincing aspect of Hersh’s report was not just the credible detail of the operation, but that it confirmed what many independent observers had already concluded from strong circumstantial evidence about who had the motive and means to conduct the sabotage. Readers are referred to a recent editorial by Strategic Culture Foundation which compiles the background of why the United States is deemed to be the culprit.

Now here is a curious thing. While Hersh’s report provoked shockwaves around the world, Western governments and the mainstream media chose to ignore his report. In a weird parallel universe sort of way, they pretended that Hersh’s resounding revelations did not exist.

One would think that given Hersh’s reputation for world-news-breaking scoops, and given that his latest report revealed a rock-solid plausible account of how a major civilian infrastructure project was sabotaged, and further given that the implication of this report was the inculpation of the United States and its president and his senior staff in ordering an act of terrorism – one would think that, maybe, just maybe, the Western media would be obliged to give some reportage on that matter. No, far from it, they unanimously kept schtum. In a way that is quite shocking and a travesty.

The charade of silence was maintained for a month until this week when the New York Times published a report claiming an alternative explanation for the Nord Stream explosions. As if on cue, there then followed a rash of other Western media reports regurgitating or spinning the same story.

Laughably, the New York Times claimed its report was “the first significant known lead about who was responsible for the attack on the Nord Stream pipelines”. This after a month of pointedly ignoring and effectively censoring from the public any knowledge of the spellbinding Hersh article.

The thrust of this week’s “reports” (if they could be called that) are that the sabotage was carried out by “pro-Ukrainian groups” which may have involved Ukrainian or Russian nationals. The source of the claims was anonymous US officials citing purported “new intelligence”. It was also claimed that a private yacht owned by Ukrainians was used and that the CIA had tipped off German intelligence about the impending attack months before it happened.

The information reported is so vague as to be impossible to verify, or frankly to even merit credibility. We are led to believe that a sophisticated, highly technical military operation on the Baltic seabed was somehow carried off by a group of unknown paramilitaries. The New York Times and other Western media outlets published stories that on their face are outlandish. This is gutter press stuff.

Furthermore, from the way the reports are formulated it is obvious that they are meant to serve as a rebuttal to the Hersh report without actually properly acknowledging the Hersh report. Thus, the United States denies any involvement in a criminal act that it barely refuses to acknowledge. This double-think is itself indicative of guilt in the Empire of Lies.

The problem for the Western propaganda peddlers – besides sheer implausibility – is the further burden of having to provide an alibi for the Kiev regime. The U.S. and its NATO allies need to distract from Washington as the obvious author of the crime, but they also cannot afford to implicate the Kiev regime because that could inflame European and American public antipathy towards the NATO-sponsored junta. This is why the New York Times & Co appear to be involved in a tortuous balancing act of blaming Ukrainian militants for the Nord Stream blasts but also claiming that these intrepid militants managed to do so without the knowledge of President Vladimir Zelensky and his cabal. Which again makes the narrative doubly ridiculous.

There is also an important element of timing to all these Western media shenanigans. Last week, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz was hosted in the White House by Joe Biden on March 3 in what was a bizarrely private meeting. Their conversations behind closed doors were not disclosed. Both leaders stonewalled reporters about their discussions. It can be fairly speculated that Scholz was pleading with Biden for some political cover because of the mounting anger among the German public about the economic consequences of America’s policy over Ukraine and Russia. Germany’s industry and export-led economy have been ravaged by the loss of Russia’s traditional natural gas supply. Scholz and his government are seen to be behaving treacherously by going along with what appears to be American vandalism of the German economy. For the Hersh report to go unanswered is causing massive public pressure on the Berlin government. Hence this week, we saw attempts to divert public attention with a concerted Western media campaign about who supposedly blew up Nord Stream. The aim is to absolve Washington and its lackeys in Berlin.

Another timing issue was the sudden appearance of Ukrainian and Russian fascist commandoes who carried out the terrorist attack in Russia’s Bryansk region on March 2 last week. Two adults were killed and a young boy was badly injured in what was a gratuitous atrocity that made international headlines. That daring raid, however, brought to public attention the existence of pro-Ukrainian militants who appear to act as lone wolves in international operations. This is the very kind of profile that the New York Times and other Western media outfits attributed to the Nord Stream sabotage. That begs the reasonable question: was the Bryansk terror attack enabled by Western military intelligence handlers in order to promote the subsequent media disinformation effort concerning the Nord Stream pipelines?

Let’s cut to the chase. The Western media disinformation campaign is a crude joke. It can’t distract from the glaring facts that the United States and its NATO allies carried out an act of international terrorism against European companies and governments, and an act of war against Russia as the main owner of the 1,200-kilometer Nord Stream pipelines worth at least $20 billion to construct. That criminal act was plausibly ordered by an American president and his White House aides. The geopolitical motives are overwhelming as are the self-indicting admissions by Biden and his aides before and after the odious event.

The cack-handed attempts this week to cover up by the Western media only serve to further incriminate the United States and its NATO crime partners. In addition, the Western media are exposed more than ever as being complicit in propagandizing war crimes. The New York Times and other Western news outlets pompously claim to be pinnacles of journalism and defenders of public interest and democracy. They are nothing but the propaganda ministry for Washington – the Empire of Lies.

Neocons’ Strategery

Feb 25, 2023

An American Lie by Any Other Name Would Smell as Dirty

February 19, 2023

Tatiana Obrenovic

The cost of all this is not only financial but the simple math can be worked out in terms of the distrust of the U.S. general public and loss of confidence in the U.S. institutions and the President’s credibility.

Washington DC is viewed by many as sending us terribly patronizing cancel culture messages along the lines of “Don’t you dare listen to what Vladimir Putin says”, but this is where a truth bombshell by Seymore Hersh, a seasoned professional in journalism who exposed the Mỹ Lai massacre in Vietnam, comes from. The 86-year old Seymore Hersh referred to the anonymous but genuine source with all the brutal details told the world how the Nord Stream’s three pipelines out of four in total were demolished. The Collective Biden is behind it of course. All the arrangements happened on the last floor of the old building of the Executive Cabinet in Washington DC. One cannot help noticing another grim example in a long succession of examples of U.S. Machiavellianism.

One has to wonder how much their Machiavellianism-ridden political rituals of all shapes and forms have cost the U.S. and the world so far. This is the U.S. effort to plunder as many resources globally and pocket as much profit as possible along the way. Ukraine is undoubtedly one of their ‘profit and power pursuits’. The U.S. goes around brandishing their quasi declaration that this is their courageous campaign for the EU/European energy security issue. But the real truth is normally quite the opposite. The U.S. regrettably chooses to bomb sovereign countries for alleged ‘humanitarian reasons’ only to diabolically call all civilian casualties ‘collateral damage’. By the same token, the U.S. evil elite bent almost double so as to destroy European energy efficiency in order to falsely declare it as the campaign for its safety and well being. The aftermath of it all is they are now paying several times more for gas than before.

Their desperation to oust Russia out of the big picture is almost palpable. The Nord Stream is the greatest willfully malicious damage done to any peacetime engineering project for the general public use. The damage wrought is estimated at circa 30 billion euros. This was one of the most wantonly destructive terrorist attacks of all time. What is the cost of the damage done to lay the Nord Stream to waste? Shall we go back in history and try to work out how much it cost to send nukes and destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945? And one wonders why the U.S. committed that monstrous cruelty on Japan if Japan had already been on the brink of capitulation? Nuclear bombs were thrown at civilians nonetheless with the intention only to send a clear message to the then USSR in close geographical proximity. Any country ready and willing to commit such appalling atrocities, is ready to do anything at any cost. Another such thing was to spread deliberate and downright American lies about Vietnam. The Tragic Tokyo Bay Plane Crash was proven to be made up, engineered and orchestrated with all the political theatrics.

To get back to Europe geographically and more recent history, with the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the explosion and the ensuing massacre in the Vace Mickina Street in Sarajevo on 27 May, 1992 was yet another false flag brutally engineered by USA though; the American perpetrators surely knew the then militant Muslim forces were to blame for it. But the U.S. political elite back then used that U.S.-orchestrated incident to launch the most brutal sanctions on the former Yugoslavia and to strongarm the rest of their vassal countries to follow suit. They were well aware all that was a barefaced lie. The same goes for Račak in Kosovo (and Metohija) and more recently Bucha incident in Ukraine. A German documentary ‘It began with a lie’ told the real truth yet it was presented on German TV once and never again. It talked about all the U.S. and NATO lies including the ones about Račak in Kosovo on 15 January 1999, which led to the aggression against Yugoslavia. And then one cannot help but recall the late Colin Powell and his infernal misdeeds with the fake claims about Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

All these colossal adverse consequences are beyond any quantifiable measure. Sadly all this seems to have ominous clang, leading to a possible world war now. And now back to the USA and all this ongoing monkey business over a balloon, which is soon to give way to the media spins about alleged aliens and UFOs and all the fear porn around it. Even Edward Snowden responded a couple of days ago that it is but a media spin to silence any questioning and/or reasonable debate on the Nord Stream blast, without the approval of the U.S. Congress, which might as well cost Biden even his presidential position.

So now besides the Nord Stream blast, we have a series of new confrontations with China. The cost of all this is not only financial but the simple math can be worked out in terms of the distrust of the U.S. general public and loss of confidence in the U.S. institutions and the President’s credibility to boot.

With hindsight, on January 17, 1961, Dwight D. Eisenhower ends his presidential term by warning the nation about the increasing power of the military-industrial complex. I am not entirely convinced that the sufficient critical mass in the U.S. will take heed of it soon enough.

Also by this author

• All the Pitiful Pitfalls of the Pseudo Plan by Macron-Scholz Circus for Serbia
• Kusturica’s Kustendorf and The Triangle of Sadness 2023
• Long Guns Primed at a Simple Wine Label Written in Serbian Cyrillic
• 1244, Dayton, Brussels, Washington, Non-Papers of All Sorts
• A New Brutal Purge Upon the Serbs in the Making, Orchestrated by NATOstan

The West Is Now Impotent In The Ukraine Conflict

February 01, 2023

Please follow me: https://twitter.com/GonzaloLira1968 Join my Patreon for weekly interactive livestreams: https://www.patreon.com/GonzaloLira

The most important question

December 27, 2022

Looks like we will make it to Dec 31, 2022. Will we make it to December 31, 2023?

This question is not hyperbole.  I would even argue that this is the single most important question for at least the entire northern hemisphere.

I have been warning that Russia is preparing for a fullscale war since at least 2014.  Putin basically said just that in his recent speech before the Russian Defense Ministry Board.  If you have not seen this video, you really should watch it, it it will give you a direct insight into how the Kremlin thinks and what it is preparing for.  Here is that video again:

I will assume that you have watched that video and that I don’t need to prove to you that Russia is gearing out for a massive war, including a nuclear one.

Foreign Minister Lavrov has publicly declared that “unnamed officials from the Pentagon actually threatened to conduct a ‘decapitation strike’ on the Kremlin…What we are talking about is the threat of the physical elimination of the head of the Russian state, (…)  If such ideas are actually being nourished by someone, this someone should think very carefully about the possible consequences of such plans.”

So, we have the following situation:

• For Russia this war is clearly, undeniably and officially an existential one.  To dismiss this reality would be the height of folly.  When the strongest nuclear power on the planet declares, repeatedly, that this is an existential war everybody ought to really take it seriously and not go into deep denial.
• For the US Neocons this is also an existential war: if Russia wins, then NATO loses and, therefore, the US loses too.  Which means that all those SOBs who for months fed everybody nonsense about Russia loosing the war to the general public will be held responsible for the inevitable disaster.

So much will depend on whether US Americans, especially those in power, are willing to die in solidarity with the “crazies in the basement” or not.  Right now it sure looks like they are.  Don’t count on the EU, they have long given up any agency.  Talking to them simply makes no sense.

Which might explain Medvedev’s recent words “Alas, there is nobody in the West we could deal with about anything for any reason (..) is the last warning to all nations: there can be no business with the Anglo-Saxon world because it is a thief, a swindler, a card-sharp that could do anything.”

Russia can do many things, but it cannot liberate the USA from the grip of the Neocons.  That is something which only US Americans can do.

And here we hit a vicious circle:

The US political system is most unlikely to be effectively challenged from within, big money runs everything, including the most advanced propaganda system in history (aka the “free media”) and the population is kept uninformed and brainwashed.  And yes, of course, a major defeat in a war against Russia would shake this system so hard that it would be impossible to conceal the magnitude of the disaster (think “Kabul on steroids”).  And that is precisely why the Neocons cannot allow that to happen because this defeat would trigger a domino effect which would quickly involve the truth about 9/11 and, after that, all the myths and lies the US society has been based on for decades (JFK anybody?).

There are, of course, plenty of US Americans who fully understand that.   But how many of them are in a real position of power to influence US decision-making and outcomes? The real question is whether there still are enough patriotic forces in the Pentagon, or the letter soup agencies, to send the Neocons back down into the basement they crawled out of after the 9/11 false flag or not?

Right now it sure looks like all the positions of power in the US are held by Neolibs, Neocons, RINOs and other ugly creatures, yet it is also undeniable that people like, say, Tucker Carlson and Tulsi Gabbard are reaching a lot of people who “get it”.  This *has* to include REAL liberals and REAL conservatives whose loyalty is not to a gang of international thugs but to their own country and their own people.

I am also pretty sure that there are many US military commanders who listen to what Col. Macgregor has to say.

Will that be that enough to break through the wall of lies and propaganda?

I hope so, but I am not very optimistic.

First, Andrei Martyanov is absolutely spot on when he constantly decries the crass incompetence and ignorance of the US ruling class.  And I very much share his frustration.  We both see where this is all headed and all we can do is warn, warn and warn again.  I realize that is is hard to believe in the idea that a nuclear superpower like the US is run by a gang of incompetent and ignorant thugs, but that IS the reality and simply denying it won’t make it go away.

Second, at least so far, the US general public has not (yet) felt the full effects of the collapse of the US-controlled financial and economic system.  So flag-waving “morans” can still hope that a war against Russia will look like the turkey shoot “Desert Storm” was.

It won’t.

The real question here is whether the only way to wake up the brainwashed flag-waving “morans” is by means of a nuclear explosion over their heads or not?

“Go USA” is a mental condition which has been injected into the minds of millions of US Americans for many decades and it will take either a lot of time, or some truly dramatic events, to bring these folks back to reality.

Third, the US ruling elites are clearly going into deep denial.  All this silly talk about US Patriot missiles or F-16s changing the course of the war in infantile and naive.  Frankly this would all be rather comical if it was not so dangerous in its potential consequences.  What will happen once the single Patriot missile battery is destroyed and the F-16s shot down?

How soon will the West run out of Wunderwaffen?

On a conceptual “escalation scale” what would be the next step up from Patriots and F-16s?

Tactical nukes?

Considering the rather idiotic notion that a “tactical” nuke is somehow fundamentally different from a “strategic” nuke irrespective of how it is used and where it is used is extremely dangerous.

I submit that the fact that the US ruling class is seriously contemplating both a “limited” use of “tactical” nukes and “decapitating strikes” is a very good indicator of the fact that the US is running out of Wunderwaffen and that the Neocons are desperate.

And to those who might be tempted to accuse me of hyperbole or paranoid delusions I will say the following:

This war is NOT, repeat, NOT about the Ukraine (or Poland or the three Baltic statelets).  At its absolute minimum this is a war about the future of Europe.  Fundamentally it is a war about the complete reorganization of our planet’s international order.  I would even argue that the outcome of this war will have a bigger impact that either WWI or WWII.  The Russians clearly understand this (see video above if you doubt that).

And so do the Neocons, even if they don’t speak about it.

The current situation is much more dangerous than even the Cuban missile crisis or the standoff in Berlin.  At least then both sides openly admitted that the situation was really dangerous.  This time around, however, the ruling elites of the West are using their formidable PSYOP/propaganda capability to conceal the true scope what is really going on.  If every citizen of the US (and EU) understood that there is a nuclear and conventional cross-hairs painted on his/her head things might be different.  Alas, this is clearly not the case, hence the non-existent peace movement and the quasi consensus about pouring tens of BILLIONS of dollars into the Ukrainian black hole.

Right now, the crazies are playing around with all sorts of silly ideas, including booting Russia off the UNSC (not gonna happen, since both Russia and China have veto power) or even creating a “peace conference” about the Ukraine without Russia’s participation (in a remake of the “friends of Syria” and “friends of Venezuela” thingie).  Well, good luck with that!  Apparently Guaido and Tikhanovskaia are not enough to discourage the Neocons and they are now repeating the exact same nonsense with “Ze”.

So, will we make it to December 31, 2023?

Maybe, but this is by no means sure.  Clearly, this is not an assumption the Kremlin makes, hence the truly immense strengthening of all of Russia’s strategic deterrence capabilities (both nuclear and conventional).

God willing, the old adage “si vis pacem, para bellum” will save the day, as Russia is very clearly prepared for any time of conflict, including a nuclear one.  China will also get there soon, but it is likely that 2023 will see some kind of end to the Ukrainian war: either a Russian victory in the Ukraine or a full-scale continental war which Russia will also win, (albeit at a much higher cost!).  So by the time the Chinese will be truly ready (they probably need another 2-5 years) the world will be a very different place.

For all these reasons I submit that 2023 might well be one of the most important years in human history.  How many of us will actually survive it is an open question.

Andrei

The Mushroom Principle

December 22, 2022

THE MUSHROOM PRINCIPLE (part 1) or How the AngloEuroZionist “democracies” operate: Keep the people in the dark and feed them shit

Source

by Eric Arthur Blair

After the dust had settled following the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, the US was ultimately forced to admit, after searching left and right, back and forth, up and down, that there were no WMDs to be found anywhere in Iraq. I was surprised by their admission back then, because I fully expected their propaganda machine to keep persisting ad nauseum with the lies, to disseminate numerous external pictures of closed-door warehouses and claim they were full of WMDs (but in reality empty). However there does eventually come a time when complete lies must be abandoned, especially when every single one of the US personnel in Iraq could never, ever, verify any finding of WMDs whatsoever.

So it turned out that the pre-invasion testimonies from experts such as Hans Blix, Scott Ritter (UN weapons inspectors) and Andrew Wilkie (Australian military intelligence officer) that no significant WMDs in Iraq existed back then were 100% vindicated. The US Deep State 1 (and its Satrapies) spared no effort to discredit, punish and even kill those who had dared to contradict the US “WMDs in Iraq” fabrications. Andrew Wilkie was forced out of his job. They harassed and bullied Hans Blix endlessly, prompting Blix to call the Anglo WMD liars “those bastards” who used “bad faith” to perpetrate a “witch-hunt”. Scott Ritter was character assassinated, tried and convicted on unrelated matters, in what was an obvious set-up 2. Word of warning to vocal opponents of the Deep State: their surveillance tentacles are all pervasive and they can easily plant kiddie porn on your computer as an excuse to throw you in jail.

In the UK, the story of Dr David Kelly, a scientific weapons expert who had contradicted Tony Blair’s claim that Saddam could deploy WMDs in 45 minutes, was even more tragic. Kelly, who had no prior psychiatric history, was found dead in the woods with a slit wrist. Very little blood was found at the scene, indicating that his wrist was slit elsewhere and his body then moved. Phoney Blair appointed good-ole-boy Hutton to head a bogus whitewash “enquiry” that dutifully declared Kelly’s death a suicide, exonerating his buddy Blair and the UK authorities 3.

In the USA, the psychopath in charge (limp-Dick Cheney, not the gormless crab-infested Bush) viciously turned against even long term Republican loyalists and CIA employees who did not toe the line. I refer of course to the Republican loyalist Joe Wilson, who proved that Saddam Hussein had never sought Uranium from Niger, which Wilson duly reported to Cheney. Cheney nevertheless persisted in spreading that lie to the public, which Wilson then openly disputed. In retaliation Scooter Libby, Cheney’s lapdog, publicly outed Valerie Plame (Wilson’s wife) as a CIA agent, a disclosure that was illegal under US law because it destroyed her career and could put her life in danger. What then happened? Scooter was found guilty and convicted in a court of law but later received a Presidential pardon.

The stinking corruption and devious double-dealing and rank hypocrisy that infests the Beltway swamp has become even more rancidly rotten over the past two decades 4.

Everyone needs to be reminded of the historical facts described above, because they remain of utmost importance today. It is in the interests of the US Deep State to impose blanket amnesia upon the global public regarding the war crimes they committed with regard to Iraq (as well as Afghanistan, Vietnam, Korea, not to mention more than 50 despicable “interventions” in foreign countries, from Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954 and one of the most egregious – Chile in 1973). Only by the imposition of such blanket historical amnesia can the Deep State today sanctimoniously point their finger at Russia for their “illegal, unprovoked invasion of Ukraine”.

What has changed today? The mechanisms of “narrative control” have been tightened exponentially. Back in 2003 it was still possible to read occasional pieces in the “respectable” press such as the BBC, NY Times, Washington Post or The Guardian that questioned the official narrative, particularly the fabricated justifications put forward by the Deep State for their invasion of Iraq. Ever since then, there has been a systematic purge of any and all honest investigative journalists who dare to challenge the Deep State narrative. Most notable was Chris Hedges, Pulitzer prize winning head of the Middle East Bureau of the NY Times, who was forced out of his job for his righteous opposition to the US invasion of Iraq. Another luminary, summarily removed from The Guardian (despite contributing to their Pulitzer Prize win in 2014), was Glenn Greenwald. Voices of reason such as that of Noam Chomsky have long been sidelined and shunned. The legendary John Pilger, former icon of Fleet Street, has been denied any mainstream platform that could earn him a living wage. There are many others too numerous to mention. Now the Deep State is slowly murdering the greatest journalist of our modern times, Julian Assange, using bogus charges that were trumped-up by the Trump regime. Assange’s greatest crime? Exposing the war crimes of the USA.

The US Establishment can now effectively block or stifle any public dissent opposing their War Agenda, while simultaneously instructing the stupid sheeple who they must direct their daily two minutes of hatred against. The Western media have truly turned Orwellian. They have learned how to do this step-by-step over the years since the Vietnam and Afghan and Iraq debacles, now achieving total control over the mainstream media. Hence when Russia was provoked by the USA into invading Ukraine in February this year, it was falsely and repeatedly and uniformly described as an “unprovoked invasion” by those MSM sewer outlets, completely ignoring the genocide the Ukronazi proxies of the US had been committing against Russophone civilians in Donbass over the previous 8 years. The war criminal Condoleezza Rice condemned Russia for their “criminal invasion” without the slightest hint of irony, while the stenographers “reporting” her words failed to point out the bleeding obvious. Ditto for sleepy Joe Biden who had supported the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003. Twenty years ago, France and Germany had enough wit and spine to disagree with the US invasion. This year in 2022, France and Germany are witlessly and spinelessly descending into economic and social collapse because of energy poverty brought about by their own sanctions imposed on Russia at the behest of the USA. Despite numerous public street protests in many European countries about their skyrocketing energy prices and out-of-control-inflation, the stupid sheeple remain locked in their Russophobic mindset and few seem to have a clue regarding the actual factual underlying cause for all their hardship. Well here is the clue: USA! USA! USA! Same answer as to who blew up the Nordstream pipelines (whether the British poodle actually pressed the button is neither here nor there – there is overwhelming evidence beyond any reasonable doubt that the USA was the underlying culprit).

Part 2 of “The Mushroom Principle” will look at certain lies of omission (keeping you in the dark) and commission (feeding you shit) perpetrated by today’s AngloEuroZionist mainstream media, as well as explore the true function (as opposed to the proclaimed, purported function) of the AEZ MSM.

Further reading: https://thesaker.is/tag/eric-arthur-blair/

Footnotes (please do your own websearch to verify the matters I outlined above):

1. By Deep State or Establishment I refer to the famous term MICIMATT coined by Ray McGovern. This applies as much to the US MIC and CIA as it does to the UK DOD and MI5&6 or the Israeli IDF and Mossad, with their associated corporations, banking/financial structures, media, academia and think tanks.
2. Neither you nor I can ever know for sure whether Ritter was guilty or not of the accused transgressions. It was the word of the Deep State against the word of Ritter in a situation that reeked of entrapment. But please use your common sense: do you accept the word of a proven liar (the Deep State) or the word of a proven truth teller (Ritter)? If you keep faith with a proven liar you are a fool. In any case, our opinions regarding Ritter’s personal proclivities have ZERO relevance with regard to his proven expertise in matters of military intelligence.
3. Any moron who believes that David Kelly committed suicide must also believe that Gary Webb, who exposed the CIA’s involvement in drug trafficking from Latin America, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head twice (which was the official verdict in the report written by, you guessed it, the CIA). Such people must also believe the Warren commission that JFK was killed by a lone shooter from behind, even though the shot obviously came from the front (Zapruder film + multiple witnesses + indisputable evidence that the exit wound was at the back of JFK’s head). Also another magic bullet was supposedly able to make wild turns through tissue and bone causing multiple injuries in different people, the bullet itself found to be undamaged and pristine when “found” on a hospital gurney.
4. For those moronic sheeple who continue to keep faith with the Establishment, here is a comforting grand delusion for you: Ukraine is winning the war and will reconquer Donbass and Crimea soon. Burisma will rebuild Ukraine under the brilliant scientific and engineering expertise of Hunter “Beelzebub” Biden, powered by US LNG and funded by FTX. The future’s so bright, you gotta wear shades! Let’s go Brandon!

سوريا: أميركا تصعّد حرب التجويع

لا دواء… لا مواد أولية… لا قَطع أجنبياً: أميركا تصعّد «حرب التجويع» على سوريا

 الخميس 15 كانون الأول 2022

فراس الشوفي

لم تتضّح بعد الاستراتيجية التنفيذية للقانون العدائي الجديد ضدّ سوريا (أ ف ب)

في إطار سياسة «الضغوط القصوى» الممارَسة على سوريا، تتّجه الولايات المتّحدة إلى تضييق الخناق على هذا البلد تحت ذريعة تحوّله إلى «دولة مخدرات». وفي ما يشبه تماماً الحملات التي استهدفت يوغسلافيا السابقة ودولاً في أميركا اللاتينية، بدأت الخطوات العملياتية على طريق تشديد الحصار على سوريا، التي تعيش أصلاً مأساة اجتماعية واقتصادية هائلة، في ظلّ هبوط حادّ في سعر العملة الوطنية، وفقدان للموارد

يستمرّ الكونغرس الأميركي في سنّ القوانين الهادفة إلى تصعيد «الضغوط القصوى» الممارَسة على سورية، في سياسة مستدامة منذ عام 1970. آخر الخطوات على هذا الطريق، هي «قانون مكافحة الكبتاغون»، الذي من المفترض أن يقرّه الكونغرس ويوقّع الرئيس جو بايدن قريباً عليه، بعد عبوره مجلس النواب ولجنة القوات المسلّحة لمجلسَي النواب والشيوخ. وفيما تغرق سوريا، مع غياب الحلول السياسية، في مأساة اجتماعية واقتصادية هائلة، وهبوط حادّ في سعر العملة الوطنية جرّاء الحصار الأميركي الخانق وفقدان الموارد، يشكّل القانون مادةً جديدة لتشديد الخناق على الشعب والاقتصاد السوريَين، في ظلّ الحديث بشكل علني عن ضرورة منْع الحكومة من الحصول على القَطع الأجنبي، بذريعة تحوّل سوريا إلى «دولة مخدّرات». وتبدو الدعوات الصادرة عن نواب وسيناتورات أميركيين، فضلاً عن بعض وسائل الإعلام ومراكز الأبحاث، لإعلان سوريا «دولة مخدرات»، مُشابِهةً للحملة التي استهدفت يوغوسلافيا السابقة، بعد إضعافها بتزكية نيران الحرب في البلقان، وقبل تدميرها بعدوان مباشر من حلف «الناتو»، وتفكيكها إلى دويلات. كما أن هذه السياسات لا تختلف عن تلك المتّبَعة مع دول أميركا اللاتينية التي لا تخضع للمشيئة الأميركية.

القانون الذي بُنيت استراتيجيته من ستّة بنود، يستند إلى التقارير الآتية من دول جوار سوريا، وإلى مجموعة من المواد الصحافية والإعلامية التي أسهمت طوال المرحلة الماضية في شيطنة هذا البلد، وتكريس اتّهام الدولة السورية و«حزب الله» بتغطية مختبرات إنتاج مادة الكبتاغون، وتهريبها إلى الخليج العربي ومصر، وحتى إلى أوروبا. باختصار، تشكّل البنود الستّة استراتيجية أمنية وسياسية واقتصادية متكاملة للتغلغل أكثر في محيط سوريا، وتطويقها وقطْع المواد الأوليّة عنها، بذريعة تفكيك «البنية التحتية لشبكات الكبتاغون للنظام السوري». ويكلّف القانون الإدارات الأميركية الأمنية المتعدّدة، تقديم الدعم والتعاون الأمني والديبلوماسي للجهات المعنية في دول الجوار السوري، ومساعدة وكالات مكافحة المخدّرات فيها على التطوّر وتقديم التدريب والدعم المادّي لها، واستهداف شخصيات وكيانات بالعقوبات، وممارسة الضغوط الاقتصادية على دمشق بالتعاون مع مؤسّسات وشركاء دوليين، وشنّ الحملات الإعلامية ضدّ الحكومة السورية. وبينما يضع القانون مهلة 180 يوماً أمام الإدارات التنفيذية لإنجاز استراتيجية تطبيق القرار الأميركي قبل عرضه مجدّداً على الكونغرس، يَظهر أن الخطوات العملية قد بدأت بالفعل.

وكانت الحملة الإعلامية سبقت مشروع القانون بكثير، وانخرطت فيها العديد من وسائل الإعلام العالمية والعربية، في خطوات ممنهجة لربط تجارة الكبتاغون بأخصام الولايات المتحدة في سوريا، وخلْق غيمة من التشويه ضدّ شخصيات سورية. أمّا مسألة التعاون مع وكالات مكافحة المخدرات والإدارات الأمنية في محيط سوريا، فهذا الأمر يجري بشكل منتظم مع الأردن ولبنان والعراق والدول الخليجية. والدعم العسكري والاستخباراتي الأميركي للأردن يشتمل، ضمن ما يسمّيه الأميركيون خطّة طرْد إيران من الجنوب السوري، «مكافحة المخدرات»، وقد سبق للأردن أن أعلن مراراً توقيف مهرّبين على الحدود مع سوريا. أمّا في لبنان، فيزداد التواصل الأميركي والدعم للأجهزة الأمنية، فيما وسّعت إدارة مكافحة المخدرات الأميركية، وهي وكالة لإنفاذ القانون تابعة لوزارة العدل، اهتمامها بمكتب مكافحة المخدرات المركزي في بيروت، انطلاقاً من مكتبها الدائم في قبرص. وعلمت «الأخبار» أن الدعم المادّي الأميركي للمكتب سيُستأنف قريباً بعد توقّفٍ سبّبته اتهامات للأخير بحالات تعذيب تَبيّن أنها حصلت في مكاتب أخرى. في المقابل، سبق للمندوب السوري لدى مكتب الأمم المتحدة والمنظمات الدولية الأخرى في فيينا، السفير حسن خضور، أن أعلن أمام لجنة المخدرات في الأمم المتحدة في آذار الماضي، أن مشكلة المخدرات قد تنامت في سوريا بفعل سيطرة التنظيمات الإرهابية المدعومة من عدّة دول على بعض المناطق الحدودية، الأمر الذي خلق مناخاً ملائماً لنقل المخدرات وترويجها، ووفّر عوائد مالية ضخمة لتلك التنظيمات، مؤكّداً أن الجماعات الإرهابية تبتكر دائماً طرقاً للتهريب وهي تمتلك تقنيات. وطلب السفير السوري تعاوناً دولياً مع بلاده وتبادلاً دائماً للمعلومات، وتوفير القدرات الفنية والتجهيزات المخبرية وأجهزة الكشف على المعابر الحدودية.

وعلى الرغم من أن الاستراتيجية التنفيذية للقانون العدائي الجديد ضدّ سوريا لم تتضّح بعد، وما إذا كان يتضمن توجيه ضربات عسكرية أو أعمالاً تخريبية أمنية بذريعة مكافحة المخدرات، عبّر عدد من المعارضين السوريين عن اعتراضهم على القانون كونه لا يتضمن خطوات عدائية أكثر وضوحاً ضدّ سوريا. لكن يجري حديث بالهمس يردّده مقرّبون من الأميركيين في بيروت، عن أن هناك نوايا لشنّ هجمات مجهولة الهويّة ضد مواقع لـ«إنتاج المخدرات» في سورية. إزاء ذلك، يلفت مصدر حكومي سوري، في حديث إلى «الأخبار»، إلى أن «هناك دائماً ذرائع كاذبة للاعتداء على سوريا كما يحصل من قِبل العدوّ الإسرائيلي»، مؤكّداً أن «الأجهزة السورية تسعى بكلّ قوتها لمكافحة المخدرات، وسوريا تاريخياً هي دولة عبور، إنّما بسبب الحرب استغلّت العصابات الإرهابية والجنائية المعارك العسكرية وانشغال الدولة بالحرب لتقوم بالترويج والتهريب والتصنيع، وبعضها يتلقّى دعماً غربياً وفي مناطق تحت سيطرة الأميركيين، لكن الدولة تستعيد قوتها وتعمل على ضرب هذه الأوكار وتحتاج إلى المساعدة والتعاون مع الدول الصديقة وليس إلى الحصار».
وعدا عن تبرير التجسّس على سوريا، وتعميق التدخّل في دول الجوار، يضع القانون بعض المواد الأوليّة اللازمة لصناعات عدة، لا سيّما الأدوية، تحت حصار جديد، من شأنه إضافة مأساة أخرى إلى مآسي الأزمة الطبّية الهائلة في هذا البلد. إذ أشار أكثر من تقرير غربي وعربي، ضمن الحملة الأميركية، إلى أن بعض المواد المصنّعة يتمّ استيرادها إلى سوريا من الصين والهند، وهي بمعظمها مواد تدْخل في الصناعات الدوائية، القطاع الذي تعرّض لنكسة كبيرة خلال الحرب ولتدمير مقصود من قِبَل الجماعات المسلّحة.

فيديوات ذات صلة

Damascus focuses on reviving productive projects in the face of Western sanctions

Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates: The American occupation forces and militias continue their systematic looting of basic resources

مقالات ذات صلة

• وقاحة أميركية… وتخاذل لبناني
• ماكرون ليلة الميلاد في بيروت ويلتقي بري وميقاتي… حول إدارة الفراغ آخر جلسة رئاسية هذا العام… والجلسات الحكومية مؤجلة حتى العام الجديد القومي : نشعر بأوجاع الناس وندعو للحوار…وفهمي : 3500 منظمة مخترقة للفتن
• أنقرة تُجمّد «الاجتياح» مؤقّتاً: إشارات ودّ متجدّدة تجاه دمشق
• موسكو متفائلة بجهودها: بداية تسوية «شَمالية»
• تشاؤم تركي بالمصالحة: إردوغان والأسد ليسا مستعجلَين
• روسيا تنقّح «تسوية» الشمال: فلْنستنسخ تجربة الجنوب
• سفير إيران في موسكو: 40 في المئة من تجارتنا مع روسيا تتمّ بالروبل

Great unsaid in US election: Love for ‘forever war’ is what cost Democrats

Sunday, 20 November 2022 8:22 AM  [ Last Update: Sunday, 20 November 2022 8:22 AM ]

A line of voters stretches outside the building as early voting begins for the midterm elections at the Citizens Service Center in Columbus, Georgia, US, October 17, 2022. (Photo by Reuters)

by Ramin Mazaheri

It is an American rite of passage to realize that the Democratic Party never achieves what they claim to want to achieve.

Some Americans achieve this realization at 13, whereas the truly insufferable – because they lie about the past and are forced to deflect from those lies with aggressive self-righteousness – can persist in this self-harming delusion even past 63. 

Losing control of the House of Representatives means the election was a major loss. Democrats are spinning the idea that “We could have lost worse” actually represents a positive outcome, but only committed Democrats are able to delude themselves into thinking that such pathetic logic is actually believed by the average person.

Democrats might also lose the Senate, but it’s already a done deal: the United States will be stuck in two years of gridlock, with each party voting down each other’s legislation. An America badly in repair will have only have bipartisan agreement on the usual: increasing military spending. Republicans now have the ability to introduce and discuss legislation that Democrats greatly fear, such as the handling of the coronavirus, the anti-Trump efforts of the FBI, the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan, etc. 

It’s true that the sitting party’s president almost always loses Congressional seats in the midterm election, but what really cost the Democrats was their commitment to the American Dream of “forever war”.

The Pentagon just announced that they will be in Ukraine for “as long as it takes” and unveiled a new command center in Germany to help train and equip Ukraine’s military. Goodbye Afghanistan, but hello Ukraine.

What cost the Democrats on election day is the failure of the economy, and while Americans might have passively stood for another two years of inequality, poor wages, and precariousness (what’s 2 more on top of 40?), Washington’s choice to reject diplomacy and fuel war in Ukraine is what sent the economy into a tailspin at warp speed. The economic crisis was the number one issue for voters, and this pain was self-inflicted by the warmongering Democrats.

Just as the economic sanctions on Russia have rebounded so awfully against the West, so did the Democrats’ war drive rebound in their own sanctioning at the ballot box this week.

They did do better than expected, so just imagine how Democrats might have done if the economy was merely stable, instead of the current awful? They could have kept the House and won true control of the Senate – not the often-useless 50-50 split they eked out in 2020.

It’s completely accurate to say that the Democrat-led war drive in Ukraine is the reason why Democrats lost control of Congress, but it’s forbidden to say such things in the Western media.

What drove Democrats to be so reckless with the well-being of the everyday American?

Some will say it’s Russophobia, just as Islamophobia after 9/11 smoothed public opinion for a 20-year murder spree across the Muslim World.

You can’t demonize a nation every night on MSNBC and every day in The New York Times for 5+ years and then be surprised when their readers and leaders exacerbate a war with the object of demonization. Those are Democratic Party mouthpieces and not Republican ones, which can have very different ideas on Ukraine. Democratic Party leaders are obviously driven by an unjust need for vengeance against Russia – whom many Democrats falsely blame for influencing the 2016 election – and to hell with the costs on the working-poor class.

For Democrats, this vengeance is the highest display of political morality, just as vengeance towards Muslims was the highest display of political morality after 9/11. The war campaign against Russia took longer to work, but there was no bloody flag to wave to rally Americans around the president’s latest war – Russians killed no Americans. 

However, going back six years is a very short measuring stick. America has been at war since always. The world used to consider Democrats brave for saying that out loud, but it is no longer the 1950s – this is now common knowledge among the new generation.
Now being a true progressive certainly must include a desire to end civil and foreign violence. That latter seems to be the domain of the Republican Party in 2022, as they have actually threatened to cut funding for Biden’s Ukrainian quagmire.

That the Republicans are the “peace party” makes no sense, of course. The “CIA Democrats caucus” (Democrats in the House of Representatives who worked in intelligence, the State Department, or the military) has expanded to at least 15 people and that makes no sense, either. 

But since when has American politics made moral sense? America has always been a deeply reactionary country – its founding revolution was merely against foreign control and not in favor of a progressive reordering of society –  and thus its politics has always been defined by hypocrisy, zero memory, and even less understanding of this thing we share called human history.

The Democrats’ Russophobia made Russia the target, but the Democratic Party’s truly autocratic and anti-democratic commitment to “forever war” is the root cause of their undeniable electoral defeat this week.

Democrats are more committed to war this time, but it’s absurd to believe that even if Republicans don’t totally back this war that they won’t back future American wars. Simply refer to how France didn’t join the Western coalition against Iraq only to join all the following Western imperialist coalitions, and also spearheaded their usual imperialist domination across the Sahel and West Africa.

What’s the root effect, and the one which is most historically important? 2022 has shown that the US cannot handle its forever wars like it used to – not militarily, not politically, and obviously not economically.

That’s the biggest change Americans have to grapple with, and their solution is peace: A top foreign policy poll recently showed that 79% of Americans want peace with Iran, for example. Of course, despite all the insistence in the US and also Iran that a Democratic victory in 2020 will end America’s “forever war on Iran” Joe Biden has obviously disproved that, as well.

However, all the American people could do was punish the Democratic Party – it’s not as if any composition of Republicans and Democrats will actually implement the will of the average American.

The Democratic Party cannot and will not ever grapple with its inability to handle forever wars, which has been laid bare in 2022, because that’s not how Western Liberal Democracy works: it requires forever wars, both foreign and domestic.

Many incorrectly believe that the Democratic Party can somehow save Western Liberal Democracy, but not that many Americans engage in such wishful thinking – simply look at the vote results after two years of Democratic control of Washington.

Ramin Mazaheri is the chief correspondent in Paris for PressTV and has lived in France since 2009. He is currently covering the US midterm elections. He has been a daily newspaper reporter in the US, and has reported from Iran, Cuba, Egypt, Tunisia, South Korea and elsewhere. His latest book is ‘France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values’. He is also the author of ‘Socialism’s Ignored Success: Iranian Islamic Socialism’ as well as ‘I’ll Ruin Everything You Are: Ending Western Propaganda on Red China’.

(The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)

---

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir

www.presstv.co.uk

Electric War

November 24, 2022

by Pepe Escobar, posted with the author’s permission and widely cross-posted

Current Russian tactics are the absolute opposite of the military theory of concentrated force developed by Napoleon, Pepe Escobar writes.

Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.

T.S. Eliot, Burnt Norton

Spare a thought to the Polish farmer snapping pics of a missile wreckage – later indicated to belong to a Ukrainian S-300. So a Polish farmer, his footfalls echoing in our collective memory, may have saved the world from WWIII – unleashed via a tawdry plot concocted by Anglo-American “intelligence”.

Such tawdriness was compounded by a ridiculous cover-up: the Ukrainians were firing on Russian missiles from a direction that they could not possibly be coming from. That is: Poland. And then the U.S. Secretary of Defense, weapons peddler Lloyd “Raytheon” Austin, sentenced Russia was to blame anyway, because his Kiev vassals were shooting at Russian missiles that should not have been in the air (and they were not).

Call it the Pentagon elevating bald lying into a rather shabby art.

The Anglo-American purpose of this racket was to generate a “world crisis” against Russia. It’s been exposed – this time. That does not mean the usual suspects won’t try it again. Soon.

The main reason is panic. Collective West intel sees how Moscow is finally mobilizing their army – ready to hit the ground next month – while knocking out Ukraine’s electricity infrastructure as a form of Chinese torture.

Those February days of sending only 100,000 troops – and having the DPR and LPR militias plus Wagner commandos and Kadyrov’s Chechens do most of the heavy lifting – are long gone. Overall, Russians and Russophones were facing hordes of Ukrainian military – perhaps as many as 1 million. The “miracle” of it all is that Russians did quite well.

Every military analyst knows the basic rule: an invasion force should number three times the defending force. The Russian Army at the start of the SMO was at a small fraction of that rule. The Russian Armed Forces arguably have a standing army of 1.3 million troops. Surely they could have spared a few tens of thousands more than the initial 100,000. But they did not. It was a political decision.

But now SMO is over: this is CTO (Counter-Terrorist Operation) territory. A sequence of terrorist attacks – targeting the Nord Streams, the Crimea Bridge, the Black Sea Fleet – finally demonstrated the inevitability of going beyond a mere “military operation”.

And that brings us to Electric War.

Paving the way to a DMZ

The Electric War is being handled essentially as a tactic – leading to the eventual imposition of Russia’s terms in a possible armistice (which neither Anglo-American intel and vassal NATO want).

Even if there was an armistice – widely touted for a few weeks now – that would not end the war. Because the deeper, tacit Russian terms – end of NATO expansion and “indivisibility of security” – were fully spelled out to both Washington and Brussels last December, and subsequently dismissed.

As nothing – conceptually – has changed since then, coupled with the Western weaponization of Ukraine reaching a frenzy, the Putin-era Stavka could not but expand the initial SMO mandate, which remains denazification and demilitarization. Yet now the mandate will have to encompass Kiev and Lviv.

And that starts with the current de-electrification campaign – which goes way beyond the east of the Dnieper and along the Black Sea coast towards Odessa.

That brings us to the key issue of reach and depth of Electric War, in terms of setting up what would be a DMZ – complete with no man’s land – west of the Dnieper to protect Russian areas from NATO artillery, HIMARS and missile attacks.

How deep? 100 km? Not enough. Rather 300 km – as Kiev has already requested artillery with that kind of range.

What’s crucial is that way back in July this was already being extensively discussed in Moscow at the highest Stavka levels.

In an extensive July interview, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov let the cat – diplomatically – out of the bag:

“This process continues, consistently and persistently. It will continue as long as the West, in its impotent rage, desperate to aggravate the situation as much as possible, continues to flood Ukraine with more and more long-range weapons. Take the HIMARS. Defense Minister Alexey Reznikov boasts that they have already received 300-kilometre ammunition. This means our geographic objectives will move even further from the current line. We cannot allow the part of Ukraine that Vladimir Zelensky, or whoever replaces him, will control to have weapons that pose a direct threat to our territory or to the republics that have declared their independence and want to determine their own future.”

The implications are clear.

As much as Washington and NATO are even more “desperate to aggravate the situation as much as possible” (and that’s Plan A: there’s no Plan B), geoeconomically the Americans are intensifying the New Great Game: desperation here applies to trying to control energy corridors and setting their price.

Russia remains unfazed – as it continues to invest in Pipelineistan (towards Asia); solidify the multimodal International North South Transportation Corridor (INTSC), with key partners India and Iran; and is setting the price of energy via OPEC+.

A paradise for oligarchic looters

The Straussians/neo-cons and neoliberal-cons permeating the Anglo-American intel/security apparatus – de facto weaponized viruses – won’t relent. They simply cannot afford losing yet another NATO war – and on top of it against “existential threat” Russia.

As the news from the Ukraine battlefields promise to be even grimmer under General Winter, solace at least may be found in the cultural sphere. The Green transition racket, seasoned in a toxic mixed salad with the eugenist Silicon Valley ethos, continues to be a side dish offered with the main course: the Davos “Great Narrative”, former Great Reset, which reared its ugly head, once again, at the G20 in Bali.

That translates as everything going swell as far as the Destruction of Europe project is concerned. De-industrialize and be happy; rainbow-dance to every woke tune on the market; and freeze and burn wood while blessing “renewables” in the altar of European values.

A quick flashback to contextualize where we are is always helpful.

Ukraine was part of Russia for nearly four centuries. The very idea of its independence was invented in Austria during WWI for the purpose of undermining the Russian Army – and that certainly happened. The present “independence” was set up so local Trotskyite oligarchs could loot the nation as a Russia-aligned government was about to move against those oligarchs.

The 2014 Kiev coup was essentially set up by Zbig “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski to draw Russia into a new partisan war – as in Afghanistan – and was followed by orders to the Gulf oil haciendas to crash the oil price. Moscow had to protect Russophones in Crimea and Donbass – and that led to more Western sanctions. All of it was a setup.

For 8 years, Moscow refused to send its armies even to Donbass east of the Dnieper (historically part of Mother Russia). The reason: not to be bogged down in another partisan war. The rest of Ukraine, meanwhile, was being looted by oligarchs supported by the West, and plunged into a financial black hole.

The collective West deliberately chose not to finance the black hole. Most of the IMF injections were simply stolen by the oligarchs, and the loot transferred out of the country. These oligarchic looters were of course “protected” by the usual suspects.

It’s always crucial to remember that between 1991 and 1999 the equivalent of the present entire household wealth of Russia was stolen and transferred overseas, mostly to London. Now the same usual suspects are trying to ruin Russia with sanctions, as “new Hitler” Putin stopped the looting.

The difference is that the plan of using Ukraine as just a pawn in their game is not working.

On the ground, what has been going on so far are mostly skirmishes, and a few real battles. But with Moscow massing fresh troops for a winter offensive, the Ukrainian Army may end up completely routed.

Russia didn’t look so bad – considering the effectiveness of its mincing machine artillery strikes against Ukrainian fortified positions, and recent planned retreats or positional warfare, keeping casualties down while smashing Ukrainian withering firepower.

The collective West believes it holds the Ukraine proxy war card. Russia bets on reality, where economic cards are food, energy, resources, resource security and a stable economy.

Meanwhile, as if the energy-suicide EU did not have to face a pyramid of ordeals, they can surely expect to have knocking on their door at least 15 million desperate Ukrainians escaping from villages and cities with zero electrical power.

The railway station in – temporarily occupied – Kherson is a graphic example: people show up constantly to warm up and charge their smartphones. The city has no electricity, no heat, and no water.

Current Russian tactics are the absolute opposite of the military theory of concentrated force developed by Napoleon. That’s why Russia is accumulating serious advantages while “disturbing the dust in a bowl of rose-leaves”.

And of course, “we haven’t even started yet.”

Exposed: Masih Alinejad cashes out on anti-Iran ‘cinematic’ stunts

November 21, 2022

Source: IRIB + Al Mayadeen English

By Al Mayadeen English 

Iranian media broadcast a report revealing how CIA-backed instigator Masih Alinejad used media propaganda to incite Iranophobia and ignite riots and violence in the country.

Masih Alinejad. Designed by: Mahdi Rtail

CIA-backed instigator and Washington-based journalist, Masih Alinejad, fell into the trap of her own words.

“Each video should be one minute long… I told you before not to read from a paper, so you don’t seem like you’re receiving instructions from somewhere else,” is what Masih Alinejad was recorded instructing the mothers of those killed in the western-backed riots in 2019 to say.

She told them to mention that their children were killed by the Iranian security forces.

The western tool to flare up riots in Iran was exposed in a report by the IRIB news agency, which, by means of the footage, revealed the hidden agenda behind Alinejad’s role in Tehran’s unrest.

The #CIA-backed instigator, #MasihAlinejad, is making a lot of money in exchange for inciting violence in #Iran and even using victims' mothers to provoke more riots in the country. pic.twitter.com/k4svccmz96

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) November 20, 2022

Alinejad can be clearly heard addressing the now-deceased mother of Ibrahim (who died in 2019) in the protests, “Nahid dear, if there is a black cloak behind you, your face will look better and it will be more cinematic. And instructed Bakhtiari’s mother to say, “your first sentence should be: For the sake of my son, Pouya Bakhtiari.”

She was instructing the mothers on what to say. Setting the scene for a Hollywood-style script, she told Nahid to say, “I am Ibrahim’s mother… I came with my phone to the street to take you to where my son was killed, where my son drew his last breath. This is the street.”

“Then I link these videos with Nahid’s video, and I talk about Ibrahim and a word about Pouya, and the two mothers tell the story of their two sons.”

‘Sanctions on Iran’ 

In the video, she pointed out that “I worked very hard to send e-mails to all the channels I communicate with. Each of these videos shown here is aimed to reach the lobbies of Western officials.”

Her meetings with Western officials were to target one goal, sanctions on Iran. The videos entailed a common keyword, SANCTIONS. “Targeted sanctions… sanctions on Iranian sports,” she reiterated. 

Masih Alinejad "worked very hard" to get in contact with Western channels to incite Iranophobia and violence against #Iran. pic.twitter.com/Xla8aD0ykD

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) November 20, 2022

“We support the imposition of sanctions, and we want you to impose sanctions on the oppressors, and sanctions on Iranian sports as well, in addition to economic sanctions,” she continued.

The recorded footage included a dubbed voice saying, “US President Biden should, by continuing their withdrawal from the nuclear talks and freezing billions of dollars, stand with the Iranian people.” 

Here's how Masih Alinejad pushed for the imposition of sanctions on #Iran and its people. pic.twitter.com/52sWzDHDJy

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) November 20, 2022

To this end, the report highlighted that the more sanctions are imposed on Iran’s financial sources, the higher the CIA-backed instigator’s income becomes. She gets paid annually twice what a regular journalist in New York earns, and she receives her wages directly from the US government because the Iranian file is important to the US and it is ready to break all the boundaries of morality to pursue whatever causes unrest in the Islamic Republic.

According to the Iranian channel, earning money from sanctions under the pretext of claiming the rights of the victims’ mothers and fathers of the victims, which they themselves sparked, is just one part of the play.

‘Blah, blah, blah… Just put a sock in it’

Later in the report, an audio file of two anchors from the (anti-Iran) Manoto channel regarding the huge amounts of money that Masih Alinejad is being paid was leaked.

One of the anchors said, “She gave us the file, the one of Pouya Bakhtiari’s mother, she gave us the video. Then Pouya’s Bakhtiyari mother called, begging us not to publish it because they [security forces] came to her house,” adding, “Then Masih Alinejad called and told Keyvan (the other anchor) to broadcast the video, but Keyvan didn’t, so Masih Alinejad sent him a bill telling him to pay her 10,000$, so Keyvan said, ‘I’ll give you your money, but I want to know what I’m giving this money for.'”

According to the report, that’s when Keyvan understood how dirty she is. She said, “I will stand up for these mothers until my last breath… blah.. blah.. blah… Just put a sock in it!! What can I say!?”

Read next: Dirty money: Meet the US agent driving the CIA-led riots in Iran

Who is Masoumeh "Masih" Alinejad-Ghomi, the leading face of the "revolution" in #Iran?

For more details read @ItsMonaIssa's article:https://t.co/IguTMkgDy4#MahsaAmini pic.twitter.com/nuboQyutBl

— Al Mayadeen English (@MayadeenEnglish) September 29, 2022

Masih Alinejad has been living in the United States for the past decade, working as a full-time employee for VOA Persia – or, Voice of America, Persia – Washington’s propaganda mouthpiece funded directly by the Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG), a soft power arm of the empire fully funded by US Congress, designed to capitalize on harmful narratives in favor of Washington’s interests.

It is worth noting that between 2015 and 2022, the US Agency for Global Media paid Alinejad over $628,000 to use her show in order to lure Iranian women into challenging Iranian laws, while also demanding more sanctions against her country.

Alinejad is involved in a massive disinformation campaign and media propaganda aimed at fueling protests and unrest and encouraging more sanctions against the Islamic Republic for her own benefit, summed up by the tons of money she is receiving, and for the best interest of her bosses, summed up by the unrest in a country that has progressed despite years of draconian sanctions, refusing to yield to their imperial intents and dictates. The truth reverberated through the exposed footage and audio recordings.

Masoumeh “Masih” Alinejad-Ghomi, aka Masih Alinejad, is just another Western tool used to infiltrate the Iranian population and direct the masses against their own country, each time under a different pretext. 

Her efforts to stir emotions among the opposition and Western community were translated into directed cinematic stunts coupled with trumped-up scripts that lack any verity. Alinejad is neither a revolutionary, nor does she care about the rights of Iranian women. She only cares about her interests that don’t go anywhere beyond a handful of dirty dollars.

Related Stories

• Dirty money: Meet the US agent driving the CIA-led riots in Iran
• Riots ‘Israel’-made, UK media-sponsored, Saudi-funded: Tehran
• When double standards reign, Western ‘humanity’ dies between the lines

Western Media Smear President Xi’s ‘Aggressive China’ As CIA Front Holds Secessionist Summit in Taiwan

October 25, 2022

Source

By Finian Cunningham

Beijing might be better taking Taiwan now – once and for all – before it festers anymore under American influence.

President Xi Jinping’s re-election for a record-breaking third term as China’s leader was promptly ambushed by Western media smears.

Xi becomes the first Chinese leader since Chairman Mao to hold three terms in office after he was re-elected by delegates at the 20th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in Beijing last weekend.

Western media rushed to predict that China would become more autocratic and repressive, without providing any substantiation for its lurid claims, and while ignoring the phenomenal economic and developmental successes of the People’s Republic under Xi during the past decade.

The U.S.-based Council on Foreign Relations cited the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace which predicted that China would become “more assertive and aggressive” in its foreign relations over the next five years.

The BBC ran a particularly scurrilous hit piece by its veteran anti-China apparatchik, Rupert Wingfield-Hayes, which alleged that President Xi’s policies are “creating the hostile world that he claims he is defending against”.

Quoting Susan Shirk, a “China expert” dredged up from the Bill Clinton administration in the 1990s, the BBC accused China of “self-encirclement”, “picking fights” with neighboring countries, “ramping up tensions with Taiwan” and “taking on America and trying to run it out of Asia”.

“It is a kind of self-encirclement that Chinese foreign policy has produced,” the so-called China expert obligingly commented for the BBC.

The negative focus on China’s government sounds absurdly misplaced coming from U.S. and British media whose own nations are assailed with political crises over governance. Polls show unprecedented numbers of American citizens losing faith in their political parties and election system. In Britain, the country is reeling from the sacking of a third prime minister in as many years.

But what’s asinine about the smears against Xi purportedly turning China into a more aggressive power is that they turn reality on its head.

This week sees the U.S.-based National Endowment for Democracy (NED) holding a summit for “world democracy” in Taiwan. The event is being attended by over 300 activists and policymakers from some 70 nations to “promote freedom” and other virtue-signaling causes.

The NED describes itself as a “non-governmental organization” even though it is bankrolled by the U.S. government and works closely with the Central Intelligence Agency. As American author, the late William Blum pointed out, the NED took over the CIA’s covert roles in the 1980s because it was more politically palatable given the agency’s notoriety for fomenting deadly coups and assassinations.

Taiwan is officially recognized under international law as an integral part of China, albeit having an estranged relationship since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. The One China Policy is recognized legally by the United Nations and by most governments including the United States since the late 1970s.

Washington nevertheless maintains a policy of “strategic ambiguity” whereby it proclaims to support Taiwan’s defense from China’s ambitions to incorporate the island territory under Beijing’s sovereign authority.

President Joe Biden has stretched this duplicity to breaking point by declaring on four occasions since he took office in January 2021 that the US would intervene militarily to defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion from the Chinese mainland. Despite subsequent White House denials, Biden’s utterances are a flagrant violation of the One China Policy and a brazen attack on Chinese sovereignty.

Since the strategic Pivot to Asia in 2011 taken by the Barack Obama administration, Washington has ramped up arms sales to Taiwan. The flow of arms and covert stationing of U.S. military trainers to Taiwan continued under Trump and now Biden.

The calculated signals from Washington are promoting a more secessionist political climate in Taiwan, which feels emboldened that it has America’s backing to declare independence from China. Beijing has repeatedly warned against U.S. incitement in its backyard.

When Democrat House of Representatives Leader Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in August, the incident infuriated Beijing to mount massive military exercises in the Taiwan Strait. For a few days, it looked as if an invasion could take place.

Since President Xi was first elected in 2013, he has strongly asserted China’s historic right to rule over Taiwan, preferably by peaceful means but also through force of arms if necessary. He repeated that aim during a keynote address to the 20th Congress.

Any reasonable observer can see that Beijing’s resolve is being cynically provoked by Washington’s interference in China’s internal affairs with regard to Taiwan’s sovereign status. Arming the island to the teeth with American missiles and thumbing noses at Beijing with pro-separatist political delegations would be not tolerated in the slightest if the shoe were on the other foot. Indeed, the U.S. would have gone to war against China already in a reverse scenario.

For the Western media to make out that Xi is taking China in a more aggressive direction is a ludicrous distortion that conceals who is the real aggressor – the United States and its NATO partners who relentlessly accuse Beijing of expansionism. The only “expansionism” China is engaging in is building mutual trade and commerce with other nations through its global Belt and Road Initiative.

The National Endowment for Democracy [read “Destabilization”], the CIA’s very own Trojan horse, is this week calling on “activists” in Taiwan to overthrow autocracy. It is a veritable call to arms by the CIA conducted on Chinese sovereign territory.

Not only that, the NED summit declares that Taiwan and Ukraine are “two major frontlines of the struggle for democracy”.

NED was a major driver of the coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014 which ushered in a fascist anti-Russia regime in Kiev and which led to the current war with Russia. The Americans are blatantly using the same playbook for Taiwan.

And yet China and President Xi are being smeared as the aggressors!

Beijing might be better taking Taiwan now – once and for all – before it festers anymore under American influence.

As Russia is finding out, to its cost, delaying the disease can lead to more fatal conditions.

Lies, Lies, Lies

October 13, 2022

Source

By Batiushka

Introduction: Narcissists All

One of the laziest but most effective forms of lying (propaganda/spin) is not simply to tell the opposite of the truth, but rather to lie by attributing to your enemy your own weaknesses. That way you do not have to invent anything, you just make a transfer. An example is how the Kiev regime, which at that time had lost 60,000 dead from their armed forces and claimed that the Russians had lost 60,000 dead from their armed forces, rather than the actual figure of 6,000 (1). Children do this: ‘It wasn’t me, it was him’. This is in fact a form of psychological transfer, used by all narcissists and gaslighters: ‘You are the one who is ill, not me’. And it typifies the narcissistic (‘West is best’) Western mentality.

Thus, in 1854 Commodore Perry forced Japan by military threat to ‘trade with’ the USA, in order to ‘take it out of its isolation’ and that led to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Those who lived in those two cities then much regretted their lack of isolation. And as for the USA? It was itself still in a state of cultural isolation, having learned nothing from age-old Japanese culture, but instead imposing its own anti-culture on all and sundry. Or then there was that war criminal General Curtis LeMay who boasted of his potential to ‘bomb back into the Stone Age’ in order to bring freedom and democracy, when in fact his brain was in the Stone Age and he had no idea what freedom and democracy are. Or there is the statement that Russia is corrupted by oligarchs, when in reality ‘Russian’ oligarchs (most of them are Jewish) are purely Western creations from the 1990s, following the model of the only system that the Western world has ever practised – Feudalism, with its economic serfdom (2). What are Musk, Bezos, Gates and Buffett, if they are not oligarchs/feudal magnates?

This technique was clearly displayed in the 2006 Litvinenko and 2018 Skripal cases in the UK. In the first case, a Russian traitor and British spy was murdered by polonium. Now, if you wanted to murder someone (who presented no threat to you) without incriminating yourself, would you rather not just employ a hired killer who would leave no trace? It would be much cheaper. Interestingly, polonium is a very rare radioactive substance, but is available to British secret services. In the Salisbury case of the Skripals, involving a retired British spy, who seemed to be wanting to repent for his treason (he had already served his sentence in a Russian prison), and who was poisoned with a substance available in only about three places worldwide, one of which is twelve kilometres away from where he lived in one of the most fearsome chemical weapons establishments in the world. His murder was bungled, on which Skripal and his daughter were then abducted and ‘disappeared’ (to New Zealand?), though an innocent woman did die of the poison. When questions were asked about some very strange aspects of the case, the British media were issued with a ‘DSMA-Notice’, censoring them and forbidding them to report any further on the matter.

Below are just a few examples of this psychological transfer taken from the current War on Russia (WOR) being conducted by the Western elite in what is still for the moment known as the ‘Ukraine’:

Lies

1. This is a war for the freedom of the sovereign and democratic Ukraine.

Now anyone knows that the Ukraine is run by the hated SBU, or Secret Police, which threatens to examine every e-mail, Viber, Whatsapp or Telegram message for any evidence that you may not support the Kiev regime, which overthrew the previous democratically-elected in 2014 and has genocided part of its population. (By the way, if you do not support the Neo-Nazis in Kiev, expect to be waterboarded – after all the SBU are CIA-trained). The Ukraine – a sovereign country? It is in fact a US vassal, a colonial client-state, which has no sovereignty at all and is run by Jewish (Poroshenko, Kolomoisky etc) and US (Hunter Biden and Monsanto) oligarchs.

2. Ukrainians are against Russia.

Some are. Some are not and they greet Russian logistical aid as liberation. The conflict in the Ukraine is basically being fought between US-backed and Russian-backed Ukrainians. Not surprising when you consider that the Ukraine is a purely artificial State, constructed by monstrous, Non-Russian, Marxist dictators, Lenin in 1922, Stalin in 1939 and Khrushchov in 1954. Interesting to see how the ‘Free World’ fully supports the tyrannical decisions of Communist dictators….

3. The war in the Ukraine started in 2022.

It started in 2014 with the coup d’etat which cost the US taxpayer $5 billion. Read a little history.

4. The rouble will be rubble.

Claimed by Biden last February, the opposite soon became true. It is already the euro and sterling that are rubble.

5. The Russian economy will be in tatters.

Claimed by Biden last February, the opposite soon became true. It is Western economies that are in tatters.

6. Russia is Bankrupt

Claimed by Biden last February, the opposite soon became true. It is Western economies that are bankrupt and above all the Ukrainian economy, which depends on a transfusion costing the US taxpayer $1.5 billion per month. According to today’s edition of the Rothschild comic ‘The Economist’, the Russian economy has never done so well.

7. Putin is dying of cancer and has only weeks to live.

Claimed last February, he seems to have made a miraculous recovery since! Whereas Biden is clearly not always compos mentis….

8. Putin is mentally ill.

Is this why he can make high-level speeches with powers of analysis and depth of logic completely lacking in any Western politician? Biden, Johnson, Truss, Zelensky? Here is where you should be looking for mental illness.

9. The Russian armed forces have run out of fuel.

Claimed last April about the armed forces of the country with the largest oil reserves in the world. On the other hand, Kiev forces clearly lack fuel.

10. The Russian have run out of ammunition.

Claimed last April, they have no shortages at all. After all they have a huge and independent arms industry, with arms so technologically advanced that they do not exist anywhere else in the world. (After all, 80% of the International Space Station is Russian-made). On the other hand, Kiev ran out of ammunition just about that time and now NATO supplier-countries are also running out.

11. Ukrainian refugees are fleeing the war for Europe.

Yes, they are. Over 2,000,000 have fled the Kiev regime’s genocide in the Eastern Ukraine and Russia has more Ukrainian refugees than any other European (yes, Russia is a European country) country. I personally know some of them. In Western Europe we also have a lot of Ukrainian refugees. But with rare exceptions, until now they had no reason whatsoever to flee non-War zones where they lived, apart from the large numbers of young men fleeing conscription into the Kiev Army (bribes of up to $5,000 dollars were being paid to Ukrainian border-guards to get out last March; I know cases). Most of them here in Paris are doctors, dentists, interior designers and other professionals, middle-class and upwards, with German cars much better than those owned by the average Western European. They simply left the Ukraine (where in 95% of the country no war was apparent until a few days ago) to get residence permits in Western European countries. Indeed, 4,000,000 of them have returned to the Ukraine since May, when they realised that Western European streets are not paved with gold and that here you have to work for a living.

12. Russians Commit Atrocities

According to the State-controlled media in Kiev, Russians love to waste their missiles on civilian apartment blocks and cultural edifices, like the Philharmonia in Kiev. They also love to murder civilians, especially babies (though not this time round in Belgium or Kuwait, only in the Ukraine) and they especially target hospitals and primary schools. As the filming from Bucha showed, Russians generally murder people three days after they have left the area (by long-distance hypnosis?) and lay out the bodies of their own supporters from local morgues, face down at regular intervals along roads. This is a great aid to filming.

13. The Russian have killed millions of civilians.

Where are the bodies? On the other hand, the graves of the 14,000, including 400 children, murdered by Kiev since 2014, are visible to all in the Donbass.

14. The Russian have lost hundreds of thousands of troops.

Since fewer than 100,000 have been used, this would be rather difficult, unless the Russians have a technique for resurrecting the dead several times over. If it were true, there would be a public outcry in Russia at such losses. On the other hand, Ukrainian losses….

15. The Russians have so few soldiers that they are recruiting new ones in prisons.

The fact is that the Russian Army, at 1,000,000 and with 2,000,000 reservists, is one of the largest in the world. As for recruiting in prisons, this is the technique of the French government. Any convicted murderer in France is offered a choice: Go to prison or else join the Legion (the Foreign Legion).

16. Russia is preparing to start a nuclear war.

The only nuclear threat made so far has been that made by the British Truss. However, since British nuclear weaponry depends on the USA, she will not be allowed to use it without US permission. And the US are frightened.

17. Putin’s operation is doomed.

Claimed by Western journalists in September 2022, the statement has yet to be justified. On the other hand, the Ukrainian operation…

18. The Russians blew up its own Nordstream Pipelines.

Obviously: The Russians are so logical that they always blow up their own pipelines, especially when Biden has announced that he would do something like this, the former Polish Foreign Minister has thanked the USA for doing it, and the pipelines are in NATO-controlled waters, infested with NATO submarines, underwater drones and divers, and the pipelines are not being used anyway because of illegal sanctions.

Conclusion: Mental and Spiritual Feudalism

I am sure that readers can find a host of other examples, the fruit of the creative writing of State-controlled Western media. We mentioned above economic serfdom, the result of Feudalism, which was nothing but a protection racket run from castles (bizarrely now become tourist sites), surrounded by their concentration camp villages. Indeed, the Italian mafia is only a late leftover of Norman-introduced Sicilian Feudalism, which, like its later form of Capitalism, never knew the difference between price and value. However, worse than economic serfdom is mental and spiritual serfdom. And this is the fruit of the institutionalised system of lies, called the State-controlled Western media.

13 October 2022

Note:

1. This miraculous multiplication reminds me of a Ukrainian Uniat (Greek Catholic) bishop I met many years ago. When I asked him, how many Ukrainian Greek Catholics there are, he answered: ‘700,000, but at the Vatican we always tell them 7,000,000. If you don’t multiply the real numbers by ten, they won’t take you seriously’.

2. For the academically-minded, regarding the history of the development of Feudalism around the eleventh century, French historians are the best, naturally, given that Feudalism began there. See, for instance: La Societe Feodale, Marc Bloch; L’An Mil, Georges Duby; L’An Mil, Henri Focillon; L’Europe est-elle nee au Moyen Age, Jacques Le Goff; Le Pape Leon IX et la Reforme de l’Eglise 1002-1054, Charles Munier; Les Grandeurs de l’An Mille, Pierre Riche. In English, apart from Richard Southern’s studies, you have a translation from French with The Feudal Transformation 900-1200, Poly and Bournazel; and original works by, for example: The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization and Cultural Change, 950-1350, Robert Bartlett; The First European Revolution 970-1215; R.I. Moore; The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe 950-1250, R.I. Moore. In German, apart from the older studies of Tellenbach, you have especially Karl Leyser’s Am Vorabend der ersten europaeischen Revolution. Das 11 Jahrhundert als Umbruchzeit and his lecture in English The Ascent of Latin Europe.

Western Propaganda and its Aftermath

August 31, 2022

Source

by Asia Teacher

As President Zelensky attains celebrity media status, revered by western political leaders and Hollywood’s glitterati all jostling for a photo shoot, let’s not forget the propaganda behind it and the consequences now beginning to emerge.

The western propaganda we’re currently experiencing is nothing new. Today’s President Putin joins yesterday’s Middle East “monsters” as current Ukrainian Nazi militias become “freedom fighters” and the Russians become “Nazis.” Likewise, the previous Middle Eastern terrorist groups became “moderate Islamist’s” but only if they were fighting for a US led NATO in Iraq and Syria. Yet such is the power of belief on an already stupefied majority western population that it’s become factual.

In our upside down world, reality has long vanished to 15% of our western leaders who regard themselves as the “international community.” On August 24th, only 54 countries out of 193 supported a UN resolution which condemned Russia for not stopping its intervention in the Ukraine, which begs the question of why, if the majority population loathe today’s western politicians, do they passionately and often even fanatically believe their every word?

Supplying weapons and financial aid to the Ukraine which enables Russia to get bogged down in an endless war with mounting casualties, coupled with sanctions to bring down Russian middle-class living standards is just another attempt at regime change. Moreover, having failed to control the Middle East oil producers, it has not gone unnoticed that Russia is itself a major gas and oil producer.

Bathsheba Crocker, US Ambassador to the UN warned in the New York Times on February 21^st before the incursion occurred that Russia had a ‘hit list’ of people destined for arrest, detention and torture including “vulnerable populations such as religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ persons.” How she knew that is not explained, but the inclusion of homosexuals as a vulnerable group now appears mandatory in any media story.

From allegations presented as facts by Ukraine’s Human Rights Commissioner Lyudmyla Denisova and picked up by The British Daily Mail and the US New York Times in May, of multiple repeated child rapes and murders near Kiev. Meanwhile, Newsweek also in May ran the headline “Russians Targeting Kids’ Beds, Rooms With Explosives: Ukrainian Bomb Team”; what kind of sick minds dream this up?! Although written in a news format, both headlines carried disclaimers that the content remained unverified. In which case, why report it as news? One assumes that in time these stories will join Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction and the Ghost of Kyiv hoaxes.

The problem with current western propaganda is that it relies on sensationalism and each manufactured story must outdo the last to retain its WOW effect. In today’s world, neighbors Poland and Slovakia propose building an oil “peace pipeline” as opposed to what Polish President Morawiecki refers to as the German Nordstream “war pipeline.” Meanwhile, debate continues to rage over why Russia is shelling itself in the Zaporizhzia nuclear power plant with American made missiles and fragments of US HIMARS missiles found in Yelenovka, where 57 Azov prisoners died and 130 were wounded whilst giving testimony for the upcoming War Crimes trials. Getting rid of the evidence?

Who will western politicians blame if the weapons they’re sending to the Ukraine are responsible for another Chernobyl type incident as inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency arrive at the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and before entering suggest the facility be handed back to the Ukrainian authorities. Am I the only one aghast at the thought of a nuclear plant in the hands of the Ukraine armed forces which number Neo-Nazi militia battalions in their ranks?

That the Ukraine is not about freedom and democracy but Russian regime change isn’t a well-kept secret. A year before the 2014 overthrow of Yanukovych, Carl Gershman, Director of US NGO National Endowment for Democracy (NED) had already stated: “Ukraine is the biggest prize … If it could be pulled away from Russia and into the West, Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.” More recently, on the first of March 1^st 2022, a spokesman for the British Prime Minister said, “but the measures [sanctions] we are introducing, that large parts of the world are introducing, are to bring down the Putin regime.” Or as Bruno Le Maire, French Minister of the Economy and Finance stated, “We are going to wage a total economic and financial war on Russia.”

Conversely, the opposite has happened. At the beginning of the intervention the ruble stood at 85 to the dollar. Yet today it’s 61.35; in other words, the ruble is actually strengthening against the dollar. No matter the amount or severity of sanctions, major oil producers, despite what any other calamities befall them, do not go bankrupt.

Yet six months into the incursion, the adverse effects of sanctions on energy and industrial fertilizers are becoming all too visible in the west. Soaring inflation and food prices, record bankruptcies and huge energy price increases as millions of Ukrainian immigrants flood into an already weakened and recession hit Western Europe. Who will blink first?

Although the west is currently in dire social and economic straits, removing President Putin and replacing him with another 1990’s Yeltsin type puppet would be a major boost for the west and Wall Street of course.

In our highly technologically advanced western societies, cheap energy and lots of it is why we exist as first-world societies. The alternative and sustainable green energy myth hasn’t happened as it doesn’t exist. If we take away our lifeblood support, what we’re beginning to experience is a terminal collapse. Despite the political pessimism and hype, when the present situation comes to an end our economies are not going to bounce back, the lost jobs aren’t going to return and inflation will not magically return to near zero. This is it, the final battle of civilizations and personally, I can do without identity politics, the homosexuality agenda, drug and crime epidemics and open borders.

Asia Teacher is a UK citizen, retired teacher of English plus Social and Political Science.

Shea Lies Through Her Teeth as Lebanon’s Electricity Crisis Worsens

August 30, 2022

By Mohammad Youssef

More than a year ago, US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea has given a promise to help Lebanon with power supplies from Egypt and Jordan. A year later, all those promises have proven to be utter lies.

Meanwhile, the new Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, has repeated his predecessor’s offer to supply Lebanon with free fuel had the Lebanese government requested this officially.

This reflects clearly who are the real friends of Lebanon during its dire crisis.

The US ambassador has never been summoned by any official at the foreign ministry to ask her about her continuous lies, nor was she criticized by any Lebanese government official.

The whole issue would cost a decision by Washington to ease the sanctions against Lebanon and lift the siege that blocks the way for receiving help from Egypt and Jordan. Washington which is veteran in sieges against people and bringing them to the brink of deprivation and famine is exercising its criminal policy now against Lebanon and the Lebanese.

This kind of suffocating blockade is reminiscent of other blockades and sieges that the US imposed against free nations in different parts of the world, namely Venezuela, Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Syria, among many others.

This criminal punishment by Washington has cost dear lives, in Iraq alone half-a-million child died because of this, not to mention the great suffering of the people on many levels.

At the time, no one dared to criticize and condemn America for its crimes except for an independent initiative by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad who set an international tribunal in the year 2005 in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur to sue the war criminals, the tribunal which was a kind of international conference for judiciary and law experts condemned war criminals namely, US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Contrary to this, Iran has extended and continues to extend a helping hand to Lebanon on many levels.

It has expressed its willingness and readiness to help Lebanon in building two power plants for electricity supplies which will be of great benefit for our country.

Time and again, the Islamic Republic of Iran has offered help to Lebanon and never given false promises. Nowadays, Iran waits for an official Lebanese answer to the new offer to supply Lebanon with free fuel oil.

The problem has been always because of the official Lebanese stance that fears Washington and its sanctions.

The kind of official conduct by the Lebanese government is shameful and lacks respect for our country and people alike. It does not reflect at all that we are a free and sovereign country, rather a pro-western nation that is dictated by Washington.

My vision and our promise, this will not continue and the majority of the Lebanese will not accept to be subordinate to Washington or any other country.

It is time for our officials to learn how to protect our dignity and independence so they would resemble their people that sacrificed lives for the sake of the country’s independence and liberation.

Algeria ready to provide Lebanon with fuel: Energy Minister

Due to severe fuel shortages, Lebanon’s last running power station is set to be forced out of service on Friday afternoon

August 26 2022

Lebanese Energy Minister Walid Fayyad. (Photo credit: Getty Images)

ByNews Desk

Lebanon’s Energy Minister Walid Fayyad says Algeria is ready to provide the country with fuel for its electricity plants, and is willing to do so through Sonatrach, the North African country’s state-owned oil company.

“The country ready to help us in securing fuel oil is Algeria, and I met with [their] Minister of Foreign Affairs… we are preparing for a future visit to Algeria,” Fayyad said on 26 August.

“The agreement with Iraq will secure us 40 thousand tons, but we [still need] 110 thousand tons in order to secure… electricity from other countries,” the energy minister added.

Fayyad went on to say that the ministry has reviewed a decision by Lebanon’s state-owned power company, Electricite du Liban (EDL), to partially increase the supply needed for the country’s power grid.

However, the decision is awaiting approval from Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati.

Under the current situation, Lebanese citizens are forced to rely on private generators, as they usually do not receive more than one hour of electricity a day from Lebanon’s power plants.

According to Fayyad, the remaining 110 thousand tons of fuel that Lebanon needs will secure a daily nine hours.

Alongside the crippling economic crisis that Lebanon faces, the country has been dealing with severe fuel shortages.

Lebanese media reported this week that the Al-Zahrani power station, the country’s last running power plant, will be shut down on the Friday afternoon due to the depletion of its fuel supply.

Earlier this month, Mikati met with the Iranian ambassador to Lebanon, Mojtaba Amani, and agreed to an offer of “free fuel” from Iran, an official close to Mikati told The Cradle.

Despite the agreement, however, the Prime Minister-designate has failed to provide the documents necessary for initiating the process to receive the Iranian fuel.

Moreover, Lebanon is still waiting for the fruition of a US-sponsored gas deal to import electricity into the country through Jordan and Syria. The deal, however, has failed to materialize due to a US refusal to provide a sanctions-waiver for the countries and states involved.

It has also stalled due to the reluctance of the World Bank in financing the agreement, a reluctance that it has failed to provide a clear reason for.

US embassy tweet sparks outrage in Lebanon

Lebanese citizens are up in arms over the US embassy latest violation of the nation’s sovereignty

August 25 2022

Lebanon USA protester stands on a portrait of US Ambassador to Lebanon Dorothy Shea. (Photo credit: Hussein Malla/AP)

ByNews Desk- 

Social media users in Lebanon are expressing outrage over a tweet from the US embassy’s official account published on 24 August.

“Today, on Ukraine’s National Day, we stand at the US Embassy in Beirut in solidarity with the Ukrainian people who suffered six months of aggression by the Russian regime,” the tweet reads, alongside an image of the Lebanese flag next to a Ukrainian flag.

اليوم، في العيد الوطني لأوكرانيا، نقف في السفارة الأميركية في بيروت تضامنًا مع الشعب الأوكراني الذي عانى ستة أشهر من الاعتداء من قبل النظام الروسي. pic.twitter.com/bcECdoVdAN

— U.S. Embassy Beirut (@usembassybeirut) August 24, 2022

A majority of commenters blasted the embassy for blatantly disrespecting Lebanon’s sovereignty by using a Lebanese flag in their post, essentially speaking on behalf of an entire nation.

“Who allowed you to [use] the Lebanese flag? Your opinion does not represent us,” one of the most liked comments reads.

“By what right does the US embassy place the Lebanese flag next to the Ukrainian [flag] for solidarity? Is this not a violation of Lebanese sovereignty?” another tweet asks in Arabic.

“The Lebanese flag is not yours to use for your political agenda! You are so disrespectful to our country and our autonomy!” another commenter decries.

The US Embassy tweet is the most recent example of Washington’s attempts to frame the Lebanese state’s opinions in the promotion of its various geopolitical agendas – in this case, Ukraine.

At the onset of the war in February, US ambassador Dorothy Shea directly requested that Prime Minister Najib Mikati release a statement condemning Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, which he faithfully executed.

Reactions to Mikati’s statement were swift to arrive, with everyone from the country’s president to cabinet members and members of parliament heavily criticizing the flagrant violation of Lebanon’s policy of disassociation and neutrality.

US embassy blames Russia for Lebanon’s woes

Wednesday’s ill-conceived tweet from the US embassy is the first in a short thread that claims Lebanon is “increasingly food insecure due to the [Russian] invasion.”

ليست الحرب التي تختارها روسيا في أوكرانيا مجرد أزمة أوروبية. الملايين حول العالم – بما في ذلك الشعب اللبناني – يعانون من انعدام الأمن الغذائي المتزايد بسبب الغزو.https://t.co/QJx7SNILwf

— U.S. Embassy Beirut (@usembassybeirut) August 24, 2022

This, however, ignores the wide ranging effects that US sanctions on Syria have had on the Lebanese economy since 2019. Syria represents Lebanon’s only land border, and Washington has prohibited – under threat of sanctions – the transport of goods over this vital border.

It also ignores a recent blackmail attempt by the Ukrainian embassy in Lebanon over a cargo ship that was carrying thousands of tons of Russian grain to Syria, and whose owners decided to unload some of the cargo in Lebanon.

The Ukrainian embassy accused the Syrian vessel of carrying “stolen grain” from Ukraine, and demanded Beirut impound the ship after it docked in Tripoli and pay Kiev for the grain.

Lebanese customs authorities quickly confirmed the grain originated in Russia and released the ship.

The US embassy’s twitter thread also hailed a recent $29.5 million donation in “food assistance from the US Agency for International Development (USAID).”

بصفتها الشريك الحقيقي للبنان، تتخذ الولايات المتحدة خطوات لمساعدة الشعب اللبناني، كان آخرها من خلال تقديم 29.5 مليون دولار إضافية كمساعدات غذائية من الوكالة الأميركية للتنمية الدولية. pic.twitter.com/aX8olLJetf

— U.S. Embassy Beirut (@usembassybeirut) August 24, 2022

Washington’s paltry donation was a public relations show made to counter an offers of free fuel from Iran and hundreds of thousands of tons of wheat from Russia.

At the time, the US embassy warned Lebanese officials against accepting these offers from Washington’s adversaries, despite Beirut’s desperate need for food and fuel.

Since 2019, Lebanon has been experiencing the complete collapse of its economy, as the currency lost over 90 percent of its value and 80 percent of citizens plunged below the poverty line. The country’s energy sector has also been destroyed by decades of mismanagement, while fuel and bread shortages are a common occurrence.

Many commenters in the US embassy’s post also reminded the US of its empty promise to implement an energy sharing deal with Egypt and Jordan via Syria.

“We also remember every day the siege that you imposed on us and our peoples, and on this day we commemorate the anniversary of your promise to help in importing gas and electricity from Jordan and Egypt,” prominent Lebanese journalist Hosein Mortada highlighted.

ونتذكر كذلك في كل يوم الحصار الذي تمارسوه علينا وعل شعوبنا ، وكذلك في مثل هذا اليوم نُحيي الذكرى السنوية لوعدكم بالمساعدة في استجرار الغاز والكهرباء من الاردن ومصر، https://t.co/apK5nKrxwy

— حسين مرتضى hoseinmortada (@HoseinMortada) August 25, 2022

The US embassy in Lebanon has long been accused of interfering in the country’s affairs, not only by monitoring and impeding Beirut’s foreign relationships, but also by plotting to persecute resistance groups and shielding corrupt Lebanese authorities from the law.

‘US-Backed ‘Israeli’ Whitewash’: US Probe into Abu Akleh Assassination Draws Wide Condemnation

July 5, 2022

By Staff, Agencies

A US probe into the killing of Palestinian journalist Shireen Abu Akleh that seeks to give the Zionist occupation forces a clean chit for the murder, unlike other independent investigations, has drawn wide condemnation from human rights advocates, including the Hebrew leading human rights group B’Tselem, as well as Palestinian officials.

Abu Akleh, a veteran reporter for the Qatar-based Al Jazeera network, was assassinated in cold blood by ‘Israeli’ occupation forces in May while covering their raid at the Jenin refugee camp in the occupied West Bank.

Her tragic death sent shockwaves across the region, drawing widespread condemnation and outrage against the occupying regime.

The US State Department on Monday claimed that the US Security Coordinator [USSC] had concluded that Abu Akleh was likely killed by “unintentional” gunfire from ‘Israeli’ positions, but said the independent investigators could not make a “definitive conclusion” on the origin of the bullet that struck her.

B’Tselem denounced the US probe as a “US-backed ‘Israeli’ whitewash.”

“All investigations published so far conclude that ‘Israel’ is responsible for the killing of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh,” the group said in a tweet on Monday.

The previous findings by the Associated Press, CNN, New York Times, and Washington Post, as well as the office of the UN human rights chief, have established the fact that the veteran scribe was murdered by ‘Israeli’ troops.

Abu Akleh’s family has expressed its disappointment over the conclusions of the US investigation, but vowed to keep fighting for justice.

“With respect to today’s announcement by the State Department — on July 4, no less — that a test of the spent round that killed Shireen Abu Akleh, an American citizen, was inconclusive as to the origin of the gun that fired it, we are incredulous,” the family said in a statement on Monday.

“To say that this investigation, with its total lack of transparency, undefined goals, and support for ‘Israel’s’ overall position is a disappointment would be an understatement,” the statement read.

The findings of the US probe come as the Zionist military said that ‘Israeli’ experts rather than American ones examined the bullet extracted from Abu Akleh that was handed over by Palestinian officials to US officials.

US “representatives were present throughout the entire process,” the Zionist military claimed.

Palestinian officials maintain that the Zionist regime cannot be trusted to conduct a fair and transparent probe into the killing.

Related Videos

Angry Palestinian responses to the US State Department’s statements regarding the murder of journalist Shireen Abu Akleh

الغرب الكاذب يفضح نفسه في أوكرانيا

يونيو 21, 2022

صحيفة الوطن السورية-

تحسين الحلبي:

يستشهد العقيد المتقاعد من الجيش الأميركي دوغلاس ماك غريغور، وقد كان مستشاراً لوزير الدفاع الأميركي في إدارة دونالد ترامب وقد ألف خمسة كتب عن الحروب والسياسة الدولية، في تحليل نشره بعنوان «وصلت الأكاذيب إلى البيت» في 17 حزيران الجاري بعبارة للفيلسوف اليوناني ديوجين يقول فيها: «الأكاذيب هي عملة السياسة»، ويعلق ماك غريغور أن «إيجاد رجل صادق في واشنطن أصبح اليوم مستحيلا» ويتابع «فالصحافة الغربية قامت بكل ما في وسعها من أجل تصوير الجيش الأوكراني بقوة أكبر مما لديه، وكانت إدارة الحكم في واشنطن تقدم الأكاذيب طوال شهور للرأي العام الأميركي عن أسباب الحرب، وها هي وسائل الإعلام الأميركية والبريطانية والغربية الأخرى تحضر خطابها الإعلامي لعرض انهيار القدرة العسكرية الأوكرانية، بعد أن كان ذلك مطلوبا قبل فترة طويلة».

ويكشف ماك غريغور أن «الإعلام الغربي كان يعرف الحقيقة ولكنه تبنى ما تريده واشنطن من حربها ضد روسيا بوساطة الوكيل الأوكراني، رغم أن كييف خسرت الحرب أمام روسيا ولن يكون بمقدور كل المساعدات العسكرية الأميركية والأوروبية ولا التدخل الأميركي العسكري المباشر تغيير هذه النتيجة».

يستخلص ماك غريغور أن «المشكلة أمام الغرب لم تعد تنحصر بموضوع أراضي وسكان أوكرانيا الشرقية التي تسيطر عليها موسكو الآن، بل إن موسكو ستضمن السيطرة التامة على خيرسون وزابورجيا وكل الدونباس وعلى المدينتين الروسيتين تاريخياً خاركوف وأوديسا اللتين يتحدث سكانهما بلغة روسية وأصبحت المشكلة تتعلق بكيفية إيقاف كييف للقتال».

في النهاية يقر ماك غريغور أن الدول الأوروبية التي اصطفت مع واشنطن دفعت ثمناً اقتصادياً باهظاً بسبب مشاركتها في دعم أوكرانيا، ثم انتقلت هذه الأضرار الاقتصادية إلى البيت الأميركي إضافة إلى نفقات الدعم الأميركي التي بلغت 60 مليار دولار بمعدل 18 ملياراً شهرياً من واشنطن وحدها، ويستذكر غريغور سلسلة الهزائم والخسائر الأميركية في العقدين الماضيين بسبب نفقات حروب واشنطن في أفغانستان والعراق وليبيا وسورية، والتي ما تزال تراكماتها السلبية مستمرة تضرب مكانة ونفوذ واشنطن واقتصادها وبخاصة بعد خسائر جائحة كورونا في السنوات الماضية.

يستنتج غريغور أن الحزب الديمقراطي سيتلقى خسارة في الانتخابات النصفية للكونغرس التي ستجري في تشرين الثاني المقبل بسبب الأزمات التي ولدها للولايات المتحدة في سياسته الخارجية المهزومة وفي نتائجها السلبية الفادحة على الاقتصاد الأميركي مثلما دفع الرئيس الأميركي هيربرت هوفر فاتورة «الركود الكبير» في الاقتصاد الذي ضرب الولايات المتحدة عام 1929 وزعزع أركانها، فدفع ثمنه هوفر في انتخابات عام 1932 هو وحزبه الجمهوري.

إن ماك غريغور عارض التدخل العسكري الأميركي في كوسوفو في تسعينيات القرن الماضي، وكذلك أجرى مقابلة مع القناة الروسية آر- تي بالانكليزية عام 2014 ليعرب عن معارضته لأي تدخل عسكري ضد روسيا بعد استعادتها لشبه جزيرة القرم والدونباس من أوكرانيا وأعرب علناً عن رأيه بحق روسيا ضم الدونباس والقرم لأنهما روسيتان.

في السياق ذاته، يرى المستشاران في مجلس الأمن القومي الأميركي بين 2005- 2009 ستيفين هادلي وتشارلس كوبخان في حوار مع مدير مجلس العلاقات الخارجية الأميركي ريتشارد هاس في 31 أيار الماضي أن موسكو تمكنت من فرض نقاط قوة ميدانية عسكرية وسكانية داخل أوكرانيا على طريق تحقيق أهدافها وستستند لها في زيادة توسعها وسيطرتها بسرعة لكي لا يطول زمن هذه الحرب، كما يرى الاثنان أن خيارات الجيش الأوكراني بدأت تضيق كثيراً ولم يقدم الدعم الأميركي والأوروبي المباشر بالسلاح، نفعاً كثيراً في توسيع هامش مناورته في الدفاع والتحرك الميداني.

نخلص للقول إن جبهة موسكو وحلفاءها ما زالوا يثبتون تماسكاً ووحدة في الموقف في حين أن الدول الأوروبية ودول الأطلسي تفتقر لهذا العامل المهم والإستراتيجي بعد أربعة أشهر على الحرب الأميركية على روسيا وتدفع ثمنه اقتصاداً ومكانة دولية وعسكرية.

When the Lies Come Home

June 19, 2022

After lying for months, the media are preparing the public for Ukraine’s military collapse.

Douglas MacGregor at The American Conservative

Diogenes, one of the ancient world’s illustrious philosophers, believed that lies were the currency of politics, and those lies were the ones he sought to expose and debase. To make his point, Diogenes occasionally carried a lit lantern through the streets of Athens in the daylight. If asked why, Diogenes would say he was searching for an honest man.

Finding an honest man today in Washington, D.C., is equally challenging. Diogenes would need a Xenon Searchlight in each hand.

Still, there are brief moments of clarity inside the Washington establishment. Having lied prolifically for months to the American public about the origins and conduct of the war in Ukraine, the media are now preparing the American, British, and other Western publics for Ukraine’s military collapse. It is long overdue.

The Western media did everything in its power to give the Ukrainian defense the appearance of far greater strength than it really possessed. Careful observers noted that the same video clips of Russian tanks under attack were shown repeatedly. Local counterattacks were reported as though they were operational maneuvers.

Russian errors were exaggerated out of all proportion to their significance. Russian losses and the true extent of Ukraine’s own losses were distorted, fabricated, or simply ignored. But conditions on the battlefield changed little over time. Once Ukrainian forces immobilized themselves in static defensive positions inside urban areas and  the central Donbas, the Ukrainian position was hopeless. But this development was portrayed as failure by the Russians to gain “their objectives.”

Ground-combat forces that immobilize soldiers in prepared defenses will be identified, targeted, and destroyed from a distance. When persistent overhead intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance assets, whether manned or unmanned, are linked to precision guided-strike weapons or modern artillery systems informed by accurate targeting data, “holding ground” is fatal to any ground force. This is all the more true in Ukraine, because it was apparent from the first action that Moscow focused on the destruction of Ukrainian forces, not on the occupation of cities or the capture of Ukrainian territory west of the Dnieper River.

The result has been the piecemeal annihilation of Ukrainian forces. Only the episodic infusion of U.S. and allied weapons kept Kiev’s battered legions in the field; legions that are now dying in great numbers thanks to Washington’s proxy war.

Kiev’s war with Moscow is lost. Ukrainian forces are being bled white. Trained replacements do not exist in sufficient numbers to influence the battle, and the situation grows more desperate by the hour. No amount of U.S. and allied military aid or assistance short of direct military intervention by U.S. and NATO ground forces can change this harsh reality.

The problem today is not ceding territory and population to Moscow in Eastern Ukraine that Moscow already controls. The future of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions along with the Donbas is decided. Moscow is also likely to secure Kharkov and Odessa, two cities that are historically Russian and Russian-speaking, as well as the territory that adjoins them. These operations will extend the conflict through the summer. The problem now is how to stop the fighting.

Whether the fighting stops in the early fall will depend on two key factors. The first involves the leadership in Kiev. Will the Zelensky government consent to the Biden program for perpetual conflict with Russia?

If the Biden administration has its way, Kiev will continue to operate as a base for the buildup of new forces poised to threaten Moscow. In practice, this means Kiev must commit national suicide by exposing the Ukrainian heartland west of the Dnieper River to massive, devastating strikes by Russia’s long-range missile and rocket forces.

Of course, these developments are not inevitable. Berlin, Paris, Rome, Budapest, Bucharest, Sofia, Vilnius, Riga, Tallin, and, yes, even Warsaw, do not have to blindly follow Washington’s lead. Europeans, like most Americans, are already peering into the abyss of an all-encompassing economic downturn that Biden’s policies are creating at home. Unlike Americans who must cope with the consequences of Biden’s ill-conceived policies, European governments can opt out of Biden’s perpetual-war plan for Ukraine.

The second factor involves Washington itself. Having poured more than $60 billion or a little more than $18 billion a month in direct or indirect transfers into a Ukrainian state that is now crumbling, the important question is, what happens to millions of Ukrainians in the rest of the country that did not flee? And where will the funds come from to rebuild Ukraine’s shattered society in a developing global economic emergency?

When inflation costs the average American household an extra $460 per month to buy the same goods and services this year as they did last year, it is quite possible that Ukraine could sink quietly beneath the waves like the Titanic without evoking much concern in the American electorate. Experienced politicians know that the American span of attention to matters beyond America’s borders is so short that an admission of defeat in Ukraine would probably have little or no immediate consequences.

However, the effects of repeated strategic failures in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria are cumulative. In the 1980s, General Motors wanted to dictate the kind of automobiles Americans would buy, but American consumers had different ideas. That’s why G.M., which dominated the U.S. market for 77 years, lost its top spot to Toyota. Washington cannot dictate all outcomes, nor can Washington escape accountability for its profligate spending and having ruined American prosperity.

In November, Americans will go to the polls. The election itself will do more than test the integrity of the American electoral process. The election is also likely to ensure that Biden is remembered for his intransigence; his refusal to change course, like Herbert Hoover in 1932. Democrats will recall that their predecessors in the Democratic Party effectively ran against Hoover for more than a half century. Republicans may end up running against Joe Biden for the next 50 years.

---

Douglas Macgregor, Col. (ret.) is a senior fellow with The American Conservative, the former advisor to the Secretary of Defense in the Trump administration, a decorated combat veteran, and the author of five books.

Gonzalo Lira: The Great Ukraine Blame Game Has Begun!

June 10, 2022