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The Important Truth About The War In Ukraine An educational drill-down on the true history and nature of this conflict. IN FEBRUARY OF 2022, Western-financed, trained and equipped neo-Nazi troops under command of the regime installed in Kiev through a US-engineered coup in 2014 massed for a major, likely genocidal assault on the ethnic-Russian citizens of Donetsk and Luhansk in what had been Eastern Ukraine. At the same time, the relentless eight-year shelling of those provinces dramatically increased, clearly in preparation for that assault (all as documented in the material below). Faced with the imminent murder of tens of thousands, Russia finally accepted the plea for annexation by overwhelming majorities in the two provinces which was first made in 2014 and had been steadily renewed ever since. A small number of Russian troops moved into the provinces in support of the resident population. Events progressed from there, which can be summarized as the Ukraine military-- at the beginning of the war among the largest in Europe and which had been intensely trained and equipped by the US and its NATO tools for eight years in preparation for just this deliberately provoked conflict-- getting steadily slaughtered by the far superior Russian military, even as that latter force acted with excessive caution to minimize collateral and infrastructure damage. Casualty ratios have tended in the 8 - 10 to 1 in favor of the Russians, who now have taken firm control of 25% or more of previously Ukrainian territory (in which is included the breakaway provinces). Ukraine is down to a handful of press-ganged soldiers, with surrenders to the Russians on the battlefield of whole units now common. SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE KINETIC CONFLICT, I have written several articles meant to cut through the relentless, shameless mind-numbing and false propaganda by which all US war-mongering is typically facilitated. Posted below are three of those articles, which together tell (and show, through the evidence provided) the true story of this sorry affair. Please read this material, following links (which are there to substantiate or support my assertions) as they appear. I think when you are done you will realize that not only is everything you hear on this subject from stenographer-for-the-state mainstream media sources complete propagandistic bs, but also that even most of what you hear from critics and skeptics of the conflict lacks important details, context or sufficient depth. Share this page widely, please. It is because of the inaccurate picture of this matter held by most Americans that the war-mongers continue to have their way. BTW, the following material doesn't address EVERYTHING that could usefully be said about the conflict in Ukraine. Unmentioned are the (almost certainly illegal) US biolabs dotting the Ukrainian landscape and the influence their presence might be having on US policy, for instance. Likewise, unexplored are the implications of the fact that keeping this conflict alive promises to destroy evidence of personal Biden family crimes. Such matters of motive beyond the obvious and admitted antipathy toward Russia and the enrichment of various swamp creatures infesting DC will be left for the independent consideration of the thoughtful reader. *** Cutting Through The Mind-Numbing War-Monger Drumbeat ...along with a salute to Greg Abbott of Texas, who, as is his occasional wont, did a very good thing last week; some housekeeping notes; and an early appearance of the Irish Letter. I'M GOING TO BEGIN TODAY WITH THE EVENTS IN UKRAINE, the discussion of which, due to the efforts of war enthusiasts to poison the atmosphere against contrary views, might require frequently-repeated denials of being a Putin supporter or apologist throughout since what I have to say about it all is going to cut deeply against the narratives being churned out by Western media and officialdom. I ask you to simply assume and insert those denials as needed, so as to minimize what otherwise would be quite tedious for both of us. I also ask you to remember that the folks I will be contradicting are the same folks that assured you it would just be "two weeks to flatten the curve" and served up all the other bs and associated dissent-repression that has followed for lo, these past two years and more. That says all that should need be said on the matter of whose motivations should be considered suspect. (Finally, let me remind everyone that when links appear in my work, they are never software generated, or merely to definitions or such. Rather, they are to material supporting or expanding the statements in which they appear. Click on them all, please.) NOW, DISCLAIMER DULY ISSUED, let's dive into the deep end: The Russian invasion is NOT unprovoked. Though it is now as memory-holed (and/or spun) fact as the court-stenographer-and-propaganda-engine Western media can make it, in 2014 the Obama administration engineered a coup in Ukraine, turning that country into a direct security threat-- both technically and viscerally-- to Russia. The Russia-friendly, democratically-elected government of Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown by a violent mob of Ukrainian Nazis, fueled and guided by United States operatives with a $5 billion budget. In its place these operatives installed an unelected nest of rabid Russia-haters of and from Ukrainian collaborators with the German Nazi army which used Ukraine as a corridor in its invasion of Russia during World War II and left millions of dead Russians in its wake-- in fact, ~20 million-- who are eager to become a home for NATO missiles 250 miles from Moscow. Happily, the US-engineered coup is beyond dispute, as much as the presstitute media attempts to suggest otherwise by ignoring or pooh-poohing it: In a(n unfortunately) rare instance of such covert or heavily-spun malefaction being proven by hard evidence, a telephone call between US State Department operative Victoria Nuland and Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt was intercepted in which Nuland and Pyatt discuss who they would put in place as the US puppet government upon completion of the coup (if approved by Joe Biden, who had overall control of the operation). Listen to the call here (with subtitles onscreen). PROMPTLY UPON BEING GIVEN CHARGE of Ukraine's military, the US-installed usurpers launched oppressive measures-- all the way from banning the use of the Russian language to artillery shelling-- against the population of the eastern part of the country. It was from there that the majority of Yanukovych's electoral support had come, and those folks, now disenfranchised by the coup, refused to accept the usurper regime as legitimate. The areas attacked included Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea-- all historically Russian from the late 1700s (and in some respects or for some intervals since the mid 1500s or even earlier). Each of these districts promptly applied to Russia to be annexed, with local referenda on that request yielding hugely overwhelming majorities in favor. (If a paywall appears blocking the preceding link, click here and then click on the link below the video placeholder.) Russia accepted Crimea's application (due in large part to Crimea being already a major Russian military installation under a long-term lease with the legitimate Ukrainian government, and being nominally a part of Ukraine at that point only by virtue of Nikita Khrushchev having "reassigned" it from Russia proper-- to which it had belonged outright since 1783-- as part of the politics involved in shoring up his claim to primacy in the USSR after Stalin's death). The applications of Donetsk and Luhansk were declined. Eventually the military assaults on what became known as the separatist regions (Donetsk and Luhansk) became the grounds for the Minsk Agreements (I, in 2014, being a declaration of principles and II, in 2015, being specific implementations). Those agreements have been steadily violated ever since, while the US sent hundreds of $millions in weapons to the Russia-hostile regime over the last year alone. IN LIGHT OF ALL THE FOREGOING, I say again, Russian actions of the last 7 days are NOT "unprovoked". This is endlessly asserted (with an intensity suggestive of its propagandistic character and purposes) by those salivating for war and trying to keep alive the years-long campaign to demonize Russia and Putin, but it is plainly not true. I can't say why this assertion (and the demonization it supports) is endlessly made. Perhaps it is to help ensure big "defense" budgets. Perhaps it is to maintain the politically-protective pretense that Hillary Clinton only lost to Donald Trump due to "Russian interference" and to justify the slow murder of Julian Assange, who is falsely accused of being a Russian tool in his release of DNC emails showing the organization cheating Bernie Sanders supporters for Clinton's benefit. But whatever the reason, again, the assertion is plainly not true. Now, whether the provocations serve to justify Russia's actions is a different matter entirely, of course-- and I am not saying that they do. My purpose in making these observations is simply to ensure that the American public discourse regarding current events in Eastern Europe is well-informed by facts, and not simply a product of manipulated emotions and other hind-brain influences (a subject nicely covered by Glenn Greenwald here). I hope I have succeeded, to at least some degree (and whether I do will depend heavily on you sharing this material with others...). ** BTW, David Stockman presents a useful sketch of the history of Ukraine and Crimea here. Kit Knightly bullet-points coup-related events of 1990 through 2014 here. Also, over the last several days we have seen dozens of highly-partisan "journalists" interviewing Ukrainians with great expressions of sympathy (never any Russians) and urging them to "hang on" and fight to the bitter end. This is madness. The Russian army IS going to take Ukraine. To suggest otherwise is delusional. The only question concerns how many people will die in the process, which is directly related to how long the process takes. On the same note, and in a even greater expression of madness, Ukrainian president Voldomyr Zelenskyy has urged Ukrainian civilians to take up arms against the Russians as well. This converts these non-combatants into legitimate targets for Russian soldiers-- again, ensuring that many more will die than need to have done so. None of this is to disparage the impulse of Ukrainians to fight (although to do so on behalf of an illegitimate regime installed by a foreign-engineered coup has its own special issues). I respect that impulse. It is, instead, to denounce and condemn outsiders who are urging Ukrainians to pointless deaths in service to their own self-interests, be they simple psychotic blood-lust, perceived political benefits from lots of carnage in this affair, anticipated upticks in armament sales, or whatever. Such encouragements are grotesque and those engaging in them should be ashamed of themselves. Anyone is free to root for the Ukrainians. But they should do so in silence, just as should any who might take the side of the seceding provinces and the Russian insistence on Ukrainian neutrality. *** Laying Blame For Every Ukrainian And Russian Death In This War ...and for every extra penny you are paying at the gas pump, and for the destabilization of world affairs, and the possible collapse of the dollar, and the risk of nuclear holocaust.
"There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men." -Edmund Burke IN LAST WEEK'S NEWSLETTER, I LED OFF with the backstory of the current events in Ukraine, explaining the provocation that brought Russia to invade Ukraine: In a nutshell,
Add to that summary that the US had unilaterally abrogated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty in 2019, and has steadily indicated that NATO membership was soon to be extended to Ukraine. Also add that the coup-installed government, now featuring the presidency of Voldomyr Zelenskyy after elections from which the participation of the Ukraine's eastern population was excluded, is in no way a democracy (contrary to the incessant propagandistic assertions of every Western government and media mouthpiece-- all of whom seem to be taking bribes from Ukraine-- but wait, I'm getting ahead of myself...). Tulsi Gabbard summarized THAT issue nicely in a video previously available on YouTube but tellingly removed soon after being posted:
Some of the behavior to which she referred in that censored video can be seen discussed in detail here, here and here. BUT I HAD LEFT ONE BIG PART OF THE STORY OUT (because frankly, I was not familiar with this significant detail). It seems that in the years leading up to the US State Department-engineered 2014 coup disenfranchising the Russia-friendly Ukrainian electoral majority, Ukrainian oppositional interests had fed $millions in donations to then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton... Here is a chart of foreign donations to Hillary (and Bill's) "Clinton Foundation" from 1999 to 2014 published by the Wall Street Journal illustrating that fact:
It's astonishing how many wealthy foreigners in other countries are obviously smitten with the good work of the Clinton Foundation, isn't it? But let's focus on Ukraine's entry. One of the most important things to add to what is conveyed by this chart is that of the $10 million from Ukrainian donors over the course of 1999 to 2014, at least $8.6 million-- 86% of the total-- was donated by one oligarch, billionaire Victor Pinchuk, during just the five years leading up to Victoria Nuland and company "investing" $5 billion of OUR money to overthrow an elected government Victor Pinchuk preferred to do without. Those Pinchuk donations began upon Hillary Clinton taking office as Secretary of State in 2009, and were completed in 2014, when Clinton's State Department accomplished the overthrow of the elected government of Ukraine, whose policies Pinchuk opposed. How about that! NOW, I'M NOT SAYING that the remarkable coincidence of Victor Pinchuk giving Hillary Clinton $8.6 million from 2009 to 2014-- the beginning of her taking office as Secretary of State and the State Department devoting $5 billion (which belonged to the rest of us) to accomplishing Victory Pinchuk's fond desire-- is anything but a remarkable coincidence. I'm not saying this is plain evidence, even if only circumstantial, of utterly corrupt influence peddling. I'll leave it to each reader to come to his or her own conclusions. But I WILL say that if it IS the utterly corrupt influence peddling of which it seems to reek-- the outcome of which also happens to suit the well-known interests of Russia hate-mongers in the defense industries and certain domestic political factions (and also to set up the "foreign aid" kickback dynamic gift-that-keeps-on-giving discussed here)-- then it would seem that the death of every Ukrainian (and Russian) victim of the ongoing war can be laid at the feet of Hillary Clinton, Victoria Nuland and Joe Biden (who apparently had oversight responsibility for the coup). The same responsibility can be laid for every extra penny paid by any American at the gas pump, for every worry-line carved into anyone in the world with enough brains to recognize the danger of nuclear holocaust resulting from the grossly reckless reaction by US officials, the media, and other so-called "western-aligned" governments and organizations to the situation (and their refusal to grasp or acknowledge Russia's legitimate security concerns-- on the subject of which Vladimir Putin's February 24 address to his country on the reasons for his actions is very much worth reading), and for many other current and future evils. GOING FORWARD, and as the pain and the peril deepen, let's keep one other simple thing in mind: Every evil being suffered by anyone from events in Ukraine today could have been avoided by the much celebrated Voldomyr Zelenskyy simply adhering to the Minsk agreements to which his government is signatory, or even just by declaring his resolve to eschew NATO membership and ensure Ukrainian neutrality vis-a-vis Russia. Rather than be a man of integrity and honor his commitments, or be a man of humility and act in the best interests of his people, attention-hound Zelenskyy (like the sleazy TV personality of his former life from which he was apparently plucked by a corrupt oligarch looking to put a puppet into office) is presiding over completely unnecessary death and destruction in order to keep independence-minded eastern Ukraine captive to his illegitimate regime. (BTW, Oliver Stone does a valuable deep-dive into the relevant history of Ukraine in his 2016 film, 'Ukraine on Fire'. He adds significantly to the picture with his follow-up film of 2019, 'Revealing Ukraine'.)
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SOME FINAL THOUGHTS on this really ugly subject to add to those above and in last week's post, all of which I deeply hope you all will share like your lives depend on it, as they very well might: WE NO MORE HAVE an American national interest in the fate of Ukraine than we did in the fate of Vietnam (and no more of a risk of a "domino effect" in the demilitarization and denazification of Ukraine than we did in the defense of South Vietnam from rule by communists). Anyone saying otherwise, and that "Ukraine is just the beginning...!" is a nutcase or a deliberate propagandist. ** LEAVING ASIDE ANY personal profiteering from possible influence peddling by the likes of Hillary Clinton (and Hunter Biden and "the big guy"-- remember Burisma?), what is being played out in the bigger picture way in the inherently aggressive and threatening expansion of NATO to the border of Russia is the "Wolfowitz Doctrine" of the 1990s. This hubristic fantasy holds that Washington has the capacity, and the right, to suppress/prevent the emergence of any substantial rival in power and influence anywhere in the world, by military force. The doctrine is the geopolitical equivalent of imposing gun control or election-fixing to ensure that outcomes are what you would prefer, rather than striving to achieve them through honest competition of ideas and examples and adhering to the best and most prosperity-yielding principles. It is resorted to by small minds who have no love of freedom and simply don't understand what led to the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is particularly pernicious that this cramped and clouded view is being deployed against a Russia made up of the very virtuous people who not long ago threw off a tyrannical state of the same sort that adherence to the "Wolfowitz doctrine" has caused to take root here in America. THE EVILS EMBRACED by anyone relying on a militaristic suppression of competition are many, not least of which are the inevitable smothering of civil society in propaganda and the aggrandizement of the bellicose "deep state". But more importantly, the ambition of the "Wolfowitz doctrine" is impossible-- even beyond the perverse transformation of America herself into the very enemy of her own principles against which the doctrine is supposed to guard. Current events make this impossibility clear, with China about to eclipse the USA economically, and Russia already overmatching the US militarily. (You don't hear NBC reporting on Russian hypersonic weapons, for some reason, but they're aimed at us, nonetheless...) Our hegemonic competition has already emerged, and that toothpaste can't be put back into the tube. Pretending otherwise just further distorts domestic politics and the erosion of Constitutional rule of law at home, and produces needless death and destruction like what is going on in Ukraine. RUSSIA JUST WANTS TO FEEL SAFE, and to sell oil and gas to Europe. Washington should review the sandbox rules it was supposed to have learned in Kindergarten and hit the reset button. The unipolar moment could have persisted had the United States stuck to George Washington's foreign policy wisdom and played fair and square with everyone. But it did not. Russia and China are now showing us that the unipolar moment has been squandered and has passed. Washington needs to stop pretending otherwise and start figuring out how to make the best of the new situation without impoverishing the American people or even getting us all killed. ** LASTLY, and without meaning to divert anyone from the highly-important task of sharing all the foregoing with everyone possible, I want to mention the possibility that, whether in any way planned for that purpose or simply being taken advantage of as the exploitable crisis du jour, the Ukraine affair may well serve as cover for a more insidious threat to the well-being of Americans (and everyone else)-- if we let it continue to hold the attention of society at large as it is now doing. The insidious threat to which I refer is that of the creepy technocratic schemers at the "World Economic Forum"-- and those operatives with which they have infested positions of power and influence here and in other countries. I have posted about this threat periodically over the last few years (see here, for instance), and have just seen a nice reminder video by JP Searle, posted below. Again, don't let this digression interfere with sharing the facts and perspectives on the Ukraine war, above-- the need to do so is as immediate and as serious as a heart attack. But watch JP's reminder, as well-- the threat it highlights offers a good and important reason for everyone to tamp down mightily on Ukraine insanity so that attention can be turned from the fire in the attic to the snake pit in the basement.
*** Narrative Management The American people are awash in spin-- so thoroughly and so relentlessly that the response to the latest output of the propaganda machine is often reflexive, Pavlovian buy-in-- a profoundly unhealthy thing. Let's look closely and correctively at two of the current storylines, concerning events in Ukraine and in the 2020 election. As a bonus, we'll wrap up with a few words correcting misperceptions of FRPs, the favorite IRS gimmick in its efforts to discourage inconvenient refund claims. The Russian Action In Ukraine Is An Intervention, And Brings To Mind The Alamo TWO THINGS HAVE BEEN CONSISTENTLY OMITTED from reporting in the West on the Russian Special Military Operation (SMO) which began in February, closely preceded by Russia's formal recognition of the Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. Both are highly dangerous to the Manichean propaganda flood with which the West has been steadily inundated for the last six weeks. The first omitted fact is that both of these former provinces of Ukraine had seceded in the face of a relentless, murderous offensive against their populations by the usurping "government" in Kiev after the US-engineered coup in 2014 which overthrew the legitimately-elected government of Viktor Yanukovych-- an aggression which had continued for eight long years. See the reporting on all this by an American journalist who has been living in the Donbass for the last eight years:
Also see this related, important, and well-sourced reporting on the Crimea "annexation", which the usurper government in Kiev vowed to undo-- by any means necessary and in defiance of the Crimean people's wishes-- in a 'National Security and Defense Council' decree issued March 24, 2021. The second thing omitted from the hypnotic Ukraine Good, Russia Bad narrative is that in the weeks preceding the Russian SMO, the Nazi thugs in Kiev (most intensely represented in their malicious character by the so-called "Azov Battalion", headquartered in Mariupol) had amassed 150,000 troops on the eastern border of Ukraine facing the breakaway region, in preparation for a genocidal "ethnic cleansing" attack-- the imminence of which prompted the Russian actions. In fact, on February 18, six days prior to the commencement of the Russian SMO, 1,400 artillery strikes from the western Ukraine Nazis rocked Donetsk and Luhansk. Instructively, the behavior of the coup-installed western Ukraine Nazis is much like that of 1836 Mexico in response to the independence movement of Texas. Likewise (and also instructively), Russia's response to the independence aspirations of the newly-minted Donetsk and Luhansk Republics is much as America's was to the actions of the Texans (and to the oppressions of the Mexican government in trying to crush the Texans' assertion of independence). AS THIS VERY SIGNIFICANT MOMENT in the history of liberty continues to unfold, strive to keep in your own mind and that of others the foregoing very important backstory. At the same time recognize that, just as we all have had that very important backstory kept from us by Western governments and their media presstitutes, so, too, we are being fed falsehoods about "Russian atrocities" in Ukraine and everything else going on there, by the most accomplished dog-waggers in the history of the world. Recognize that the reason Russian media is now being rigidly censored here in America is so that you won't hear or see anything about the subject that doesn't suit the narrative of those who plotted and conducted the coup in 2014 (and have long been using Ukraine as an opportunity for graft, evasion of the Biological Weapons Convention, and as a goad to prompt Russia into a widely-destabilizing military action in the name of which further restrictions on the liberties and prosperity of Western populations can be imposed and those fastened in place under the pretext of the "pandemic" can solidify while pushed off the front burner of public consciousness. (Kit Knightly shares a few cogent thoughts on this last point here.) Keep all of this firmly in mind. And for goodness sake, awaken to the seriousness of this situation! Everyone of you should be furiously spreading the word about CtC so there's a chance that the lunatic Leviathan state at whose feet all this can be laid might get defunded and shrunk down to relative harmlessness before it's too late. There's a very good reason the Founders structured the Constitution so that one thing shielded from the impulses of an ignorant majority is the extent to which you can be legally compelled to finance those impulses. Don't spurn their wisdom. Your only defense against "official" and collective insanity and irresponsibility and nihilism is keeping the state too poor for the commission of great harms, as discussed here. Use that defense!!
*** Other Voices (followed by an important afterword) Kramatorsk Train Station Attack Kiev and its Western backers immediately blamed Russia for the incident, but a proper investigation is likely to disagree. by Scott Ritter In a conflict where accusations of wrongdoing fly back and forth between Russia and Ukraine on a daily basis, when it comes to the missile attack on the Kramatorsk train station that occurred at 10:30am on April 8, 2022, both sides are in rare agreement – the missile used was a Tochka-U, a Soviet-era weapon known in the West by its NATO reporting name as the SS-21 Scarab, and in the former Soviet republics that use the weapon by its GRAU designation, 9K79. Beyond that one technical piece of information, however, any semblance of unanimity regarding the narrative surrounding how that missile came to strike a bustling railway station, killing and wounding dozens of civilians desperately trying to evacuate from eastern Ukraine in anticipation of a large-scale Russian offensive, collapses, with each side blaming the other. Making this tragedy even more bizarre, the Russian words Za Detei – “for the children” – had been hand-painted on the missile in white. The Tochka made its appearance in the Soviet military in 1975. A single-stage, solid-fuel tactical ballistic missile, the Tochka was assembled at the Votkinsk Machine Building Plant before being delivered to the Soviet Army, where it was further disseminated to the various units equipped with the system. An improved version of the Tochka, known as the Tochka-U (Uluchshenny, or “improved”) was introduced in 1989; the improvements included increased range and accuracy. The Tochka-U operates as a simple inertially-guided ballistic missile. Simply put, the operators, working from a known location, orient the launcher in the direction of their target, and then calculate the distance between the point of launch and point of impact. The solid-fuel engine of the Tochka-U burns for 28 seconds, meaning that the range of the missile isn’t determined by engine burn-time alone, but rather the angle that the missile was launched – the more vertical the missile at time of launch, the shorter its range will be. Because the missile burns to depletion, once the engine shuts down, the missile will cease its pure ballistic trajectory, and instead assume a near-vertical posture as it heads toward its target. The warhead is released at a designated point above the target. In the case of the Kramatorsk attack, the Tochka-U was equipped with the 9N123K cluster warhead, containing fifty submunitions, each of which has the effect of a single hand grenade in terms of explosive and lethal impact. The flight characteristics of the Tochka-U result in a debris pattern which has the cluster munitions impacting on the ground first, followed by the depleted booster, which hits the earth some distance behind the impact of the warhead. This creates a tell-tale signature, so to speak, of the direction from where the missile was launched, which can be crudely calculated by shooting a reverse azimuth from the point of impact of the warhead through the booster. It is this physical reality which provides the first real clue as to who fired the Tochka-U that hit Kramatorsk. The relationship of the booster when it came to earth, when assessed to the impact zone of the cluster munitions, provides a reverse azimuth which, even when factoring in a generous margin of error for potential drift, points to territory that was under the excusive control of the Ukrainian government, which means that there is little doubt that the missile that struck the Kramatorsk train station was fired by a launcher under the operational control of the 19th Missile Brigade, Ukraine’s only Tochka-U-equipped unit. More specifically, a forensic evaluation of the missile debris clearly shows that it was launched by the 19th Ukrainian Missile Brigade, based near Dobropolia, some 45 kilometers from Kramatorsk. The 19th Missile Brigade is considered a strategic asset, meaning that it responds directly to the orders of the Ukrainian Ground Forces Command. In short, if the missile was, as it appears, fired by the 19th Missile Brigade, it was doing so based on orders given from high up the chain of command. The launch was no accident. Continued... Click here to read the rest of this article ...and then proceed to the afterword below...
Afterword "There is no safety for honest men but by believing all possible evil of evil men." -Edmund Burke FORMER US MARINE CORPS INTELLIGENCE OFFICER SCOTT RITTER was one of the chief UN WMD inspectors in Iraq prior to the US invasion, and among the loudest voices debunking the bogus claims of Iraqi WMDs on which that invasion was fraudulently based. In recent years he has been a valuable source of honest analysis and reporting against the relentless propaganda churned out by the US Deep State and its clients. Ritter's article above starts out as a good example of his valuable reporting. In just the portion of his piece posted above, Ritter makes clear that all other considerations and future additions to the evidence aside, the immediately available evidence-- the ballistic signature-- allows for not a single credible claim from any quarter that the missile that struck the Kramatorsk train station was Russian-launched. In fact, that immediately available evidence indicates plainly that the missile was launched by the Ukrainian coup-government which is backed with a frothy frenzy by a cabal of governmental and mainstream media voices. Those voices, let's keep in mind, are the ones in the business of 24/7 design and promotion of self-serving narratives which the rest of us would never adopt if left to consider all the actual facts on any given issue, unfiltered by their officious "curating". IN THIS CASE OF NARRATIVE MANAGEMENT, the special interests have various reasons for wanting to demonize Russia. In furtherance to those agenda, they have both induced the current conflict in Ukraine and created and maintained a ferocious propaganda campaign valorizing the actually quite odious Voldomyr Zelenskyy and the seriously neo-Nazi Ukrainian factions who seized power in Kiev during the 2014 US-engineered coup. As has been recently observed by folks with open eyes, while during the preceding 20 years Americans saw practically nothing on their TVs about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, for months now we have had a non-stop flood of images and reporting from Ukraine, all carefully designed and edited to make the Kiev-based coup-installed Ukrainians seem like valiant Davids admirably defending freedom against the ogre-like Russian Goliaths. The false and indefensible spin on the Kramatorsk train station attack is a typical example. The actual facts appear to be that the coup-Ukrainians have learned the lessons well known to the CIA about how useful false flag attacks can be as tee-ups to narrative management partners in the United States, who will use them to manipulate public opinion and generate at least the pretense of support for agenda-supporting belligerence-- in this case, more munitions for Kiev at American expense, and maybe even eventual direct engagement with Russia, something certain seriously insane nutcases in Washington have lusted after for decades. The Ukrainians want those outcomes, and are happy to sacrifice some civilian resources toward that end. Let's remember, the expenditure of civilian lives for what is seen to be important state purposes is of no greater moral significance than the sending of troops into combat where numbers of them are certain to die, and this is especially the view of fascists like the coup-Ukrainians, in whose eyes the interests of the state itself, as distinct from the citizens of the state, are paramount. Btw, the strike on the Kramatorsk train station is not the first Tochka-U missile deployed by the Ukraine usurpers. See the reporting here, covering a lot of information somehow overlooked by the newsrooms at NBC, CNN, Fox, etc.. SO, MY POINT (OR PURPOSE) HERE is two-fold. First, I hope that everyone takes in the lesson of the Kramatorsk train station attack: that what is churned out by the Biden administration and the aforementioned presstitutes about events in Ukraine is unreliable at best, and must be very skeptically scrutinized, and that the western-backed coup-Ukrainians are unscrupulous actors who have been actively preventing civilian evacuations which would leave military units without hindering cover that thus far has compelled the Russian forces to tread slowly and carefully in prosecuting their intervention. Secondly I hope everyone takes this false narrative about the Kramatorsk train station attack as a Red Pill, awakening them to the increasingly imperative need to shrink the Leviathan United States (the federal behemoth) back down to its Constitutional dimensions, whereby its ability to pour American treasure into the hands of clients and cronies is curtailed to the point that efforts to induce such behavior-- whether at the expense of innocent civilian lives or not-- are abandoned. No one will vie for control of Washington's head or heart if Washington has little or nothing to hand out as a result. HAPPILY, DOING THAT RESTORATIVE DOWNSIZING is easy, and within the individual powers of every American. The Founders and Framers anticipated today's Leviathan disease and, characteristically, prepared against it. Those wise and well-educated men-- knowing, as they did, that all governments inevitably lurch toward the accretion of power unto themselves and the corruption which accompanies all accretions of state power-- pre-emptively put into place a solution. That solution is baked into the Constitutional cake and ready to the hand of individual Americans, entirely bypassing all supervision or approval of any official. The only requirements to implement that solution are eyes with which to see the problem, reasoning with which to recognize the truth and rightness of the solution, and courage, confidence and clarity of mind enough to pull the trigger in the face of the natural and predictable effort of the targeted rogue state to discourage doing so. Learn about the Founder's solution at this link. Then help others do so, as well. *** A Few SOTFPWTWGB Thoughts ...that is, sitting-on-the-front-porch-watching-the-world-go-by thoughts, on the Ukraine war fraud, the unconstitutionality of the EPA, the LGBTetc. "genocide" trope, and more. CONGRESS HAS THE SOLE AUTHORITY in the federal government to initiate military action by the United States (other than highly limited presidential latitude to repel active or imminent hostile attack for a brief period of time-- something not applicable to any US military action undertaken in quite a long time, notably including the current action against Russia). This is widely understood in at least an academic way. The manifest implication of that widely understood fact-- that most of the military actions undertaken without a Congressional declaration of war over the last eight decades or so have been illegal, notably including the current action against Russia (the degree of which illegal action has just been much more widely exposed by the brave whistleblower, Jack Teixeira)-- is seldom acknowledged.* WHAT I IMAGINE IS MUCH LESS WIDELY UNDERSTOOD is that the current illegal, undeclared war being prosecuted by the United States against Russia was begun solely by the United States. Nine years ago the US organized and carried out a coup overthrowing the legitimately-elected government of Ukraine. This was followed by a civil war between the majority of Ukrainians supporting the legitimate, overthrown government (the bulk of whom live in the eastern part of the country) and the US-backed minority which had engaged in the coup (and which is comprised in significant part by neo-Nazis). At the beginning of this internal conflict Crimea, which had seceded from Ukraine repeatedly since the breakup of the USSR in 1991, voted overwhelmingly to be annexed by Russia. The other loyalist regions sued for similar annexation, but the Putin government, exercising astonishing restraint and being a bit naive, declined those requests, putting misplaced faith in a negotiated resolution to the civil conflict under the terms of the Minsk accords (I and II) which the US and the western Ukraine coup-plotters steadily violated to a greater and greater degree until Russia had no choice but to invade in order to forestall an imminent genocide in the Donbas. See the details and documentation of all of this here. ALSO LESS WIDELY UNDERSTOOD is that the illegal war the US is prosecuting in Ukraine is against the largest and most technologically accomplished nuclear force on the planet. Russia has more nukes and bigger nukes and more diversified nukes that the US, and has submarine and hypersonic delivery technology well beyond that of the US and which cannot be intercepted by US countermeasures. If pushed to any definitive sense of existential peril by US encroachments, military or political, and whether directly or through the neo-Nazi Ukrainian proxy, Russia can be expected to take us out with it. Why not, after all? China, which knows perfectly well that it is next on the hit list if the US succeeds in its aggression against Russia, will add its own throw weight to the obliteration of America. Why not, after all? Here is an idea of what that will mean:
The day before one tiny nuclear bomb (since then, nukes literally thousands of times more powerful are made) was dropped on Nagasaki, what you see above had been a thriving city of 240,000.
Where outlying buildings remained erect in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the "shadows" of incinerated inhabitants were burned into walls and sidewalks. Americans need to stop sleepwalking and relying on someone else to arrest this madness being committed against us all by a political and military and industrial elite blinded by pomp and profits or in the sociopathic steer-into-the-iceberg grip of nihilism and narcissism. We need to defund (and thus, shrink back into its britches) the Leviathan state by the grossly swollen size of which the lunacy is enabled. See the solution here, and pass it around like your life depends on it. *This illegality remains true even in the face of pretenses like the "Authorization of the Use of Military Force". After all, Congress is not Constitutionally-authorized to delegate its war-making power to the executive, and no nations upon which war is being declared are named in the AUMFs, and yet the executive has treated them as license to bomb, invade and occupy other sovereign nations-- in other words, as license to prosecute undeclared wars at its discretion. *** Even Well-Intentioned Commentators Persist In Getting The Ukraine Story Wrong ...and the war-mongers (and Biden supporters) benefit considerably thereby. I AM FREQUENTLY DISAPPOINTED with commentaries critical of US behavior in and about the current conflict in Ukraine. This is true even though I, too, am critical of that behavior-- extremely critical. The problem commentaries do acknowledge correctly that the Russian special operation in Ukraine was provoked. This is good as far as it goes, and is very important in response to propaganda absurdly and falsely characterizing Russia as a naked aggressor (and maybe one trying to recreate the Soviet empire by military conquest, a trope calculated to garner support for a militaristic NATO response). But these commentaries mistakenly confine their articulation of that provocation to the matter of NATO expansion toward Russian borders (and its declared intent to include Ukraine in that expansion). See this one-- by a writer whom I otherwise hold in high esteem-- as a recent example. It is certainly true that NATO's aggressive expansion-- especially coupled with the US abrogation of the IMF treaty-- is reason enough for Russia to have drawn a serious red-line and reacted to its arrogant disregard. But the threat of NATO expansion to Ukraine was not the proximate cause provocation of the Russian actions in February of 2022. THE ACTUAL PROXIMATE CAUSE of Russia's February, 2022, entry into Donetsk and Luhansk-- the two eastern regions comprising the Donbas-- was the amassing of ~150,000 troops by the US-fomented coup government in Kiev in preparation for an invasion and ethnic cleansing of that territory. The Kiev regime had been shelling the Donbas, home to the majority which had duly-elected ousted president Viktor Yanukovich, for all of the 8 years since the coup (in illegal disregard of the 2014 Minsk Accords to which it was a signatory). Beginning in early February, the neo-Nazi coup regime had escalated that shelling dramatically, telegraphing its intention to commence the genocide at any moment. When the coup-plotters consolidated their hold on Kiev and its governmental apparatus in the spring of 2014, the populations of Donetsk and Luhansk-- seeing the writing on the walls and facing edicts such as the banning of the Russian language historically prevalent in eastern Ukraine-- declared their independence (as had Crimea in just the latest of its many attempts to free itself from Kiev since the breakup of the USSR). Like Crimea, Donetsk and Luhansk had applied for annexation by Russia, but while the former was accepted, the latter were not. In fact, Russia even declined to simply recognize Donetsk and Luhansk independence. But when Russia saw the accelerated shelling in February, 2022 and the massing of coup-regime troops on the Donbas border, and recognized the atrocities about to commence if nothing was done to stop them, Vladimir Putin announced Russian recognition of the Donbas states as independent and honored their request to assist in their defense. All of the foregoing summarizes the real provocation to which Russia was responding in its February, 2022 entry (not invasion) of the Donbas, and its related efforts to denazify and demilitarize coup-regime Ukraine. IT SHOULD BE OBVIOUS WHY the reporting of this more complete backstory is important to successfully countering the mindless (or maniacal) plumping for the corrupt regime in Kiev and the ever-more-dangerous war with Russia. When all that is argued is that Russia was faced with security threats, its actions in Ukraine are easy to condemn as a bad choice from a menu of alternatives responses. But when it is shown that a largely Russian-ethnic and overwhelmingly Russia-friendly population was about to be slaughtered wholesale had Putin not finally taken action that he had plainly made every effort to avoid for eight long years-- and which was eventually taken in the most restrained, harm-minimizing fashion possible, as well-- everything changes. Then there is no room left for the condemnation of Russia used to justify sanctions which hurt Americans more than Russians and which are destroying the dollar's status a world reserve currency. Then there are no moral grounds for endless tranches of arms and money to the coup-regime in Kiev, or the reckless escalations, or the tedious posturing of ass-hats like Lindsey Graham. Then it becomes possible-- even inevitable-- to recognize that the coup-fomenting, Ukraine-military-training and spittle-flecked bloviating Biden administration and its congressional choir are, and have always been, the actual aggressors in Ukraine since at least 2014, and that the death and destruction and vast economic and political destabilization by which the world is being rocked belongs squarely and solely at their feet. THERE IS YET MORE to the backstory of events in Ukraine-- see the revelations on the Clinton Foundation and Ukraine posted here, for instance. But the true reason for Russian intervention is enough by itself to flip the false war-monger narrative on its head and turn the tide of public opinion around in time to avert still more and worse barbarism and tragedy. It will do so if YOU spread this information around with all your might. You perhaps imagine that what I have told you here-- which I have said before, more than once (such as here, for instance)-- is known to all, and certainly to journalists and pundits. You would be wrong. Those influencers of public opinion and policy are even less likely to know truths such as this than you are. They live in bubbles and echo chambers, and most never began paying attention to the Ukraine story until they started getting memos on the subject last February-- memos heavily-tainted by the Washington narrative. As with so much else in these twilight times, corrections of bad behavior by the state must well up from the grassroots. Make yourself part of that virtuous effort. "It is not the function of our Government to keep the citizen from falling into error; it is the function of the citizen to keep the Government from falling into error." -United States Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson
"All governments are run by liars and nothing they say should be believed." --I. F. Stone
"A nation of sheep begets a government of wolves." -Edward R. Murrow *** This page is permalinked here. |
