Is NATO helping Ukraine to fight Russia or is it using Ukraine to fight Russia? | RT World News

By Glenn Diesen

The bloc could help end the conflict, at any time, by addressing the issues around its plans for further expansion.

The Western public, like others, are justly appalled by the human suffering and the horrors of the Ukrainian war. Empathy is one of the great virtues of humanity, which in this instance translates into the demand for helping Ukrainians. Yet, propaganda commonly weaponizes the best in human nature, such as compassion, to bring out the worst. As sympathy and the desire to assist the displaced are used to mobilize public support for confrontation and war with Russia, it is necessary to ask if the Western public and Ukrainians are being manipulated to support a proxy war.

Is NATO helping Ukraine to fight Russia or is NATO using Ukraine to fight Russia?

The organization as a passive actor?

The US-led military bloc commonly depicts itself as an innocent third party that merely responds to the overwhelming desire of the Ukrainian people to join its ranks. Yet, for years NATO has attempted to absorb a reluctant Ukraine into its orbit. A NATO publication from 2011 acknowledged that “The greatest challenge for Ukrainian-NATO relations lies in the perception of NATO among the Ukrainian people. NATO membership is not widely supported in the country, with some polls suggesting that popular support for it at is less than 20%”.

In 2014, this problem was resolved by supporting what Statfor’s George Friedman labelled “the most blatant coup in history” as there were no efforts to conceal Western meddling. Regime change was justified as helping Ukrainians with their “democratic revolution”. Yet, it involved the unconstitutional removal of the elected government as a result of an uprising that even the BBC acknowledged did not have majority support amongst the general public. The authorities elected by the Ukrainian people were replaced by individuals handpicked by Washington. An infamous leaked phone call between State Department apparatchik Victoria Nuland and Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt revealed that Washington had chosen exactly who would be in the new government several weeks before they had even removed president Yanukovich from power.

Donbass predictably rejected and resisted the legitimacy of the new regime in Kiev with the support of Russia. Instead of calling for a “unity government”, a plan for which Western European states had signed as guarantors, NATO countries quietly supported an “anti-terrorist operation” against eastern Ukrainians, resulting in at least 14,000 deaths. 

The Minsk-2 peace agreement of February 2015 produced a path for peace, yet the US and UK sabotaged it for the next 7 years. Furthermore, Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s Francois Hollande recently admitted that both Germany and France considered the deal an opportunity to buy time for Ukraine to arm itself and prepare for war.

In the 2019 election, millions of Ukrainians were disenfranchised, including those living in Russia. Nevertheless, the result was a landslide with 73% of Ukrainians voting for Vladimir Zelensky’s peace platform based on implementing the Minsk-2 agreement, negotiating with Donbass, protecting the Russian language, and restoring peace with Moscow. However, the far-right militias that were armed and trained by the US effectively laid down a veto by threatening Zelensky and defying him on the front line when he demanded to pull back heavy weapons. Pressured also by the US, Zelensky eventually reversed the entire peace platform the Ukrainians had voted for. Instead, opposition media and political parties were purged, and the main opposition leader, Viktor Medvedchuk was arrested. Subverting the wishes of Ukrainians in order to steer the country towards confrontation with Russia was yet again referred to as “helping”Ukraine.

Towards proxy war

In 2019, the Rand Corporation published a 325-page report ordered by the US Army titled “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground”. In the language of a proxy war, the report advocated arming Ukraine to bleed Moscow stating, “Providing more U.S. military equipment and advice could lead Russia to increase its direct involvement in the conflict and the price it pays for it”. The US Chair of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, similarly explained in 2020 the strategy of arming Ukraine claiming“The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there and we don’t have to fight Russia here”.

In December 2021, the former head of Russia analysis at the CIA warned that the Kremlin was under growing pressure to invade to prevent Washington from further building up its military presence on its borders, which included modernising Ukrainian ports to fit US warships. “That relationship [US-Ukraine] will be far stronger and deeper, and the United States military will be more firmly entrenched inside Ukraine two to three years from now. So inaction on [the Kremlin’s] part is risky,” George Beebe explained. Yet, despite being convinced that Russia would invade, Washington refused to give any reasonable security guarantees to Moscow.

Kiev agreed to enter into negotiations merely three days into the Russian invasion, which resulted in a peace agreement outline a few weeks later. Former intelligence official Fiona Hill and Angela Stent later penned an article acknowledging that “Russian and Ukrainian negotiators appeared to have tentatively agreed on the outlines of a negotiated interim settlement: Russia would withdraw to its position on February 23, when it controlled part of the Donbass region and all of Crimea, and in exchange, Ukraine would promise not to seek NATO membership and instead receive security guarantees from a number of countries”.

However, after a visit by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Kiev suddenly withdrew from the peace negotiations. Reports in the Ukrainian and American media have suggested that London and Washington had pressured Kiev to abandon negotiations and instead seek victory on the battlefield with NATO weapons.

Johnson gave multiple speeches warning against a “bad peace,” while German General Harald Kujat, a former chairman of the NATO Military Committee, confirmed that Johnson had sabotaged the peace negotiations in order to fight a proxy war with Russia: “His reasoning was that the West was not ready for an end to the war”.

The American objectives also had seemingly little to do with “helping” Ukraine. US Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin stated US goals in Ukraine as the weakening of a strategic rival: “We want to see Russia weakened to the degree that it can’t do the kinds of things that it has done in invading Ukraine”. President Biden argued for regime change in Moscow as Putin “cannot remain in power”, which was repeated by Boris Johnson’s op-ed stating that “The war in Ukraine can end only with Vladimir Putin’s defeat”.

US Congressman Dan Crenshaw advocated for a proxy war by supplying weapons to Ukraine as “investing in the destruction of our adversary’s military, without losing a single American troop, strikes me as a good idea”. Similarly, Senator Lindsey Graham argued the US should fight Russia to the last Ukrainian“I like the structural path we’re on here. As long as we help Ukraine with the weapons they need and the economic support, they will fight to the last person”. The rhetoric is eerily similar to that of Hungarian billionaire George Soros, who argued that NATO could dominate if it could use Eastern European soldiers as they accept more deaths than their Western peers: “the combination of manpower from Eastern Europe with the technical capabilities of NATO would greatly enhance the military potential of the Partnership because it would reduce the risk of body bags for NATO countries, which is the main constraint on their willingness to act”.

Following NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s recent Orwellian statement that “weapons are the way to peace”, it is worth assessing if NATO is helping Ukraine or using Ukraine. NATO powers have stated that they are supplying Ukraine with weapons to have a stronger position at the negotiating table, yet one year into the war, no major Western leaders have called for peace talks. NATO has a powerful bargaining chip that would actually help Ukraine, which would be an agreement to end NATO expansion toward Russian borders. However, whitewashing the bloc’s direct contribution to the war prevents a negotiated settlement.

Source: RT World News

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World War III has Officially Started | David Icke

So, now it is out in the open. The German Foreign Minister has stated that we are at war with Russia.

The mainstream media was too concerned with the usual dross to notice, but this means that World War III has officially started.

On the day that Germany announced WWIII, the leading section of the BBC’s news site carried no mention of the German Foreign Minister’s announcement but managed to find space for the following headlines: ‘Homeowner’s fury over sofa wedged in stairs’ and ‘BBC News Presenter gets emotional in last ever sign off’.

And once again, for the third time, a world war was officially started by Germany.

This is no big surprise. I mentioned many months ago that German citizens were hearing Air Raid Warning signals being tested.

And, of course, many months ago, the UK and the US pulled out of peace talks and abandoned any attempt to negotiate a settlement with Russia.

US President Biden and European Ministers and the UK are all sending tanks to Ukraine (one of the most corrupt countries in the world) to fight Russia. (Biden, of course, has financial links with the Ukraine.)

The odd thing is that the Ukraine has over 1,000 tanks already. So the few dozen the West is sending – and which will take months to arrive – will not make a great deal of difference. This is a tactical donation. Military experts claim that some of the promised arms will take nearly three years to arrive in the Ukraine. Is that a sign of how long the West is hoping this war will last?

And, of course, those tanks will need trained soldiers. You can’t just hand over tanks and expect the Ukrainians to know how to use them. Apart from anything else, Ukraine has very few soldiers left. Around 150,000 Ukranian soldiers have been killed and several hundred thousand have been wounded. (In comparison, of the 600,000 Russian soldiers in Ukraine, between 16,000 to 25,000 have died.)

But the tanks aren’t enough for Ukraine.

Ukraine, which is losing its war, now wants warships, submarines and planes.

Seriously. Check it out.

And they’ll get them.

Source: David Icke

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U.S. Torpedo Appeared at Explosion Site of the Nord Stream | Lew Rockwell

By Niels K. Eriksen

According to reliable sources, an American torpedo was found at the explosion site of the Nord Stream gas pipeline. It was the torpedo type carried by the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS Paul Ignatius (DDG 117) – RGM-84 harpoon missile. The Harpoon has been the primary anti-ship weapon in the United States Navy, it has a range of 300 km and is known as a “ship-killer”.

The U.S. provided Ukrainian forces with the Harpoon anti-ship missiles at the end of May this year, and then the Ukraine used Harpoon missiles to sink the Russian Navy’s Vasiliy Bekh tugboat around June 17. Actually, the U.S. Navy tested the destructive power of Harpoon missiles on the battlefield in Ukraine. Around the same time, the U.S. Sixth Fleet began collecting accurate mapping of the vicinity of the Nord Stream pipeline in order to perform remote sabotage.

All about Blowing up the NS! U.S. Navy’s Sixth Fleet carried out the sabotage

From Obama to Biden administrations, they all charged that the NS pipelines will deepen the extensive dependence of Germany and other portions of democratic Europe on Russian energy supplies, Biden has even threatened to “put an end” to the Nord Stream 2. Since 2022, the U.S. Navy has been making intensive displays of its military presence in the Baltic region, ostensibly dictated by the international situation and the new phase of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. In fact, the following timeline shows that the U.S. Navy’s “use of force” against the Nord Stream pipeline was deliberate.

First, quietly deploy commander familiar with underwater fast attacks

The U.S. Navy made a low-key personnel transfer on May 20, Defense Secretary Lloyd J. Austin III announced that Navy Rear Adm. Thomas E. Ishee for appointment to the grade of vice admiral, and assignment as commander, 6th Fleet. Thomas Ishee is well versed in underwater fast attack, and he commanded fast attack submarines and oversaw the operations of torpedo retrievers, floating dry dock and the Navy’s submarine rescue systems.

Second, by taking advantage of the military exercise, collect detailed data on the intended attack location in advance

The Baltic Operations (BALTOPS 22), led by U.S. Sixth Fleet, took place from June 5 to 17, the important scenarios include anti-submarine, mine clearance operations, unmanned underwater vehicles, explosive ordnance disposal, etc. Significantly, in period BALTOPS U.S. Navy 6th Fleet partnered with U.S. Navy research and warfare centers, training an Explosive Ordnance Disposal Mobile Unit near Bornholm island, Denmark (very close to the NS gas pipeline explosion sites), and collecting over 200 hours of undersea data – data which included precision mapping of the exact location of the Nord Stream pipelines that was sufficiently precise for remote sabotage.

USS Paul Ignatius (DDG 117) quickly left the Baltic Sea after completing its mission.

Sept. 15, USS Paul Ignatius arrived in Riga, Latvia for a scheduled port visit. Sept. 26, this destroyer docked in the port Gdynia, Poland after completing its “mission”, on the same day, explosions occurred at Nord Stream pipelines. After that, Paul Ignatius was immediately sent back to the Naval Station Rota, Spain to escape the accident site.

Source: Lew Rockwell & Global Research

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Berlusconi trashes NATO narrative on Ukraine – media | RT.com

The former Italian PM reportedly blamed Kiev for inciting conflict with Russia, putting the would-be ruling coalition in doubt.

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has reportedly claimed that Kiev triggered a conflict with Russia by reneging on a peace plan for eastern Ukraine, a tape provided to the media suggests. In an apparent response to the leak, Giorgia Meloni, who has been tasked with forming a new Italian government, stated that people who do not share a pro-NATO stance would have no place in her coalition.

Speaking to members of his Forza Italia party on Tuesday, Berlusconi reportedly offered a viewpoint about the origin of the Ukraine crisis that clashed with the NATO-favored narrative of unprovoked Russian aggression against its neighbor.

Italy is an important member of the US-led alliance and anyone who disagrees with this position will be excluded from government, Meloni, the leader of the Brothers of Italy party, pledged on Wednesday evening, as quoted by the newspaper La Repubblica.

In the audio clip, Berlusconi can be heard accusing Kiev of failing for years to uphold a peace deal with the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. When Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky came to power in 2019, he “tripled down” on attacking the regions, the politician stated.

Donetsk and Lugansk asked for Moscow’s protection, he continued. Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine in the hope that Zelensky would be overthrown and replaced with “good people of common sense” within a couple of weeks, Berlusconi claimed. The wording resembles what he told the Italian public broadcaster RAI after the September election.

During this week’s meeting, Berlusconi allegedly suggested that the conflict in Ukraine could last for over “200 years,”after the country unexpectedly resisted Russia and received money and arms from Western nations to continue the fighting.

In another part of the recording, which was published by the LaPresse news agency, Berlusconi claimed to have received a crate of vodka and a “nice letter” from Putin for his birthday. He added that he responded by sending Lambrusco wine to the Russian leader. After the clip was released, the former prime minister’s party claimed he had been referring to historical contacts with Putin and not recent events.

READ MORE: Berlusconi exchanged ‘sweet’ letters with Putin – LaPresse

Berlusconi, a three-time former leader of the Italian government, has a long record of friendly relations with Putin, which stretched beyond his tenure as prime minister. His participation in the right-wing coalition has resulted in claims that the country could make a foreign policy U-turn and oppose the US-led anti-Russian campaign under Meloni. She repeatedly pledged her support for the EU and NATO after winning the election.

Source: RT.com

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Ukraine’s ‘Nazi regime‘ must be dismantled – former Russian president | RT.com

The current government in Kiev poses a constant threat, Dmitry Medvedev claimed.

Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday called for a “complete dismantling” of Ukraine’s “political regime.”

Writing on Telegram, Medvedev, who now serves as deputy head of the Security Council, shared his “personal opinion,” claiming that the current “Nazi political regime” in Kiev will represent “a constant, direct and clear threat to Russia.”

“Therefore, in addition to protecting our people and protecting the borders of the country, our future actions, in my opinion, should be aimed at a complete dismantling of the political regime of Ukraine,” Medvedev said.

Commenting on the numerous missile strikes carried out across Ukraine on Monday morning, the former Russian leader said that that was a “first episode” and that “there will be others.”

READ MORE: EU makes fresh military pledge to Kiev

Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier on Monday confirmed that the major operation against Ukrainian infrastructure was in response to the October 8 attack on the Crimean Bridge. Moscow considers it an act of terrorism organized by the Ukrainian security services. Claiming that “the Kiev regime has been using terrorist methods for a very long time,” Putin warned Ukraine against further attacks on Russian soil. Otherwise, Kiev will face a response “on a scale corresponding to the threats created against Russia,” the president said.

Meanwhile, Ukraine has not claimed responsibility for the attack on the Crimean Bridge, despite the country’s top officials openly celebrating the deadly explosion.

The EU condemned Monday’s shelling of Ukrainian cities by Moscow, with the bloc’s top diplomat Josep Borrell pledging to provide more military assistance to Kiev in response. 

The Russian Defense Ministry confirmed that its forces had carried out multiple strikes “on objects of military command and control systems, communications and energy of Ukraine.” Kiev, Lviv, Kharkov, Odessa and other cities were targeted, according to the local authorities, while regions across Ukraine are facing blackouts and rotating power cuts.

Source: RT.com

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30th Anniversary Edition ~ Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty Now Available! | Liberty International

If you have ever heard talk or been to a seminar about “sovereignty”, then very likely those conversations were influenced by the foundational research of the author and educator.

His research and educational journey reaching millions of people worldwide began in 1992 and culminated in 2022 with the 3-Volume book release – his final word on the subject.

At the turn of the millennium his books and audio courses facilitated in part –  a sovereignty and tax-honesty movement that involved millions of Americans.

This 3 Volume series comprises the life’s work of Johnny Liberty filled with comprehensive insights into the last few hundred years of history, law, economics, money, citizenship and governance. 

These books show how it is supposed to be done in a constitutional Republic. 

How did We the People get to where we are today? 

What can we do to reclaim our inherent sovereignty and natural rights? 

Many of the answers may be found within these revolutionary pages. Available as a paperback, E-Book (PDF) or an Amazon Kindle format. Thank you for supporting the author. 

Sincerely, 

With Freedom For All, 
~ Johnny Liberty

Sovereign’s Handbook by Johnny Liberty (30th Anniversary Edition)

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Germany Labels Journalist ‘Criminal’ And Seizes Her Bank Accounts For Reporting From Ukraine | Kanekoa’s Substack

A German journalist living in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region has been criminally charged by the German government for interviewing Ukrainian citizens and reporting her findings.

Independent reporter, 28-year-old Alina Lipp, moved to the Donbas area six months ago, where she transmits first-hand information to her audience in German, Russian, and English from her telegram channel.

Lipp claims she is only doing what any journalist would do — interviewing citizens and documenting what is happening around her.

The journalist explained she is “doing interviews with people in Donetsk and merely translating them into German.”

“I am simply filming everything I see around,” Lipp added.

She inquired rhetorically “what is it that’s illegal in that, or dangerous?”

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The controversy around Lipp began in March when one of her videos explaining the history and the context of the war went viral.

In Lipp’s viral video, she said, “you need to understand that Russia has been asking for eight years that the Minsk agreement be upheld. Ukraine did not adhere to it, nor did they approach the Donbas region in an attempt to come to agreement.”

“Instead, they have been bombing the outskirts of the Donbas region for eight years. They are shooting at civilians, who now also have to live in completely shot-up houses. Very many people have died here,” Lipp continued.

In the video, Lipp alleged that the Donbas citizens who overwhelmingly voted to secede from Ukraine in 2014 had been, “thankful that Russia finally did something”.

Lip added, “Finally, the people here have been liberated from the terror that they’ve been experiencing for the last eight years,” under continuous shelling by the Ukrainian military.

Soon after the video went viral, Lipp’s YouTube channel was closed, her PayPal account was blocked, and the Ukrainian government labeled her a “terrorist”.

Source: Kanekoa’s Substack

Invasion of Ukraine ‘Totally Avoidable: Interview with General Michael Flynn | The Epoch Times

The current Russian invasion of Ukraine could have been avoided, and it demonstrates a failure that the U.S. leadership couldn’t effectively communicate with its Russian counterpart, according to Gen. Michael Flynn, a retired Army lieutenant general who briefly served as the National Security Advisor to former President Donald Trump.

“Russia, Ukraine, Europe … what’s happening? At the 60,000-foot level, this is a totally avoidable war. Totally avoidable,” Flynn recently told NTD’s “Capitol Report” program.

“It really goes back to 1994, what was called the Budapest Accords, in Budapest, Hungary, at the end of the Cold War,” said Flynn.

On Dec. 5, 1994, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States signed an agreement with Ukraine called The Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances in Budapest, Hungary. The three nuclear powers gave their assurances on independence and sovereignty of Ukraine in exchange for removing all nuclear weapons from its territory and becoming a member of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Two other nuclear powers, China and France, gave their assurances in separate documents.

These nuclear powers also signed identical security assurances with Belarus and Kazakhstan at the time.

Epoch Times Photo
U.S. President Bill Clinton (L), Russian President Boris Yeltsin (C), and Ukrainian counterpart Leonid M. Kravchuk (R) join hands after signing the nuclear disarmament agreement in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on Jan. 14, 1994. Under the agreement, Ukraine, the world’s third-largest nuclear power, said it would turn all of its strategic nuclear arms over to Russia for destruction. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images)

“One of the big-ticket items that came out of the Budapest accords was no further encroachment of NATO against this new Russian Federation,” Flynn said, explaining that no country leaders wanted to have nuclear missiles across the boundary between Russia and European countries.

The Budapest Memo (pdf) didn’t mention the NATO expansion. However, Western leaders had promised no NATO eastward expansion throughout the process of German unification in 1990 and on into 1991. The most famous one is then-Secretary of State James Baker’s “not one inch eastward” assurance about NATO expansion in his meeting with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev on February 9, 1990.

According to recently declassified documents by the National Security Archive at George Washington University published on Nov. 24, 2021, before and after the Budapest meeting in 1994, then-President Bill Clinton kept assuring then-Russian President Boris Yeltsin that any NATO enlargement would be slow, with no surprises, building a Europe that was inclusive not exclusive, and in “partnership” with Russia.

In a Sep. 28, 1994 conversation, Clinton told Yeltsin that he had never said that Russia could not be considered for NATO membership, and that “when we talk about NATO expanding, we are emphasizing inclusion, not exclusion,” and “there is no imminent timetable.”

In a Nov. 30, 1994, letter to Clinton, Yeltsin said, “We have agreed with you that there will be no surprises, that first we should pass through this phase of partnership, whereas issues of further evolution of NATO should not be decided without due account to the opinion and interests of Russia.”

Epoch Times Photo
U.S. President Bill Clinton (R) and Russian President Boris Yeltsin greet each other in the Green room at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, on Jan. 13, 1994. (Luke Frazza/AFP via Getty Images)

The war also shows the Biden administration’s failure to communicate with Russia in an effective way to prevent the escalation of the Ukraine situation, said Flynn.

“War is a failure of policy and diplomacy,” said Flynn. “Anytime you see states, nations, nation-states, at war with each other, it’s because there’s a failure to communicate some way somehow. And that’s what happened.”

Flynn said Russian President Vladimir Putin kept saying Ukraine shouldn’t join NATO and it should declare neutrality, but “we won’t come into play here, and they never did.”

Current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy had pushed for joining NATO after taking office. Joining NATO and the European Union has been put into the constitution of Ukraine during his tenure.

Last month, Zelenskyy said his country has to accept that it will not become a member of NATOIn a Mar. 26 speech in Poland, Biden said of Putin, “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.”

“Immediately after he said it, they had to start walking it back. They had to start walking it back,” said Flynn. “Because it’s so wrong to say that.”

The White House and the State Department clarified that Biden didn’t talk about regime change.

Biden defended himself two days later.

“I want to make it clear: I wasn’t then, nor am I now, articulating a policy change. I was expressing the moral outrage that I feel, and I make no apologies for it,” Biden said.

Source: The Epoch Times

“We’re approaching the most dangerous point in human history” says Noam Chomsky | The New Statesman

By George Eaton

It was as a ten-year-old that Noam Chomsky first confronted the perils of foreign aggression. “The first article that I wrote for the elementary school newspaper was on the fall of Barcelona [in 1939],” Chomsky recalled when we spoke recently via video call. It charted the advance of the “grim cloud of fascism” across the world. “I haven’t changed my opinion since, it’s just gotten worse,” he sardonically remarked. Due to the climate crisis and the threat of nuclear war, Chomsky told me, “we’re approaching the most dangerous point in human history… We are now facing the prospect of destruction of organised human life on Earth.” 

At the age of 93, as perhaps the world’s most cited living scholar, Chomsky could be forgiven for retreating from the public sphere. But in an era of permanent crisis, he retains the moral fervour of a young radical – more preoccupied with the world’s mortality than his own. He is a walking advertisement for Dylan Thomas’s injunction – “Do not go gentle into that good night” – or for what Chomsky calls “the bicycle theory: if you keep going fast, you don’t fall off”. 

The occasion for our conversation is the publication of Chronicles of Dissent, a collection of interviews between Chomsky and the radical journalist David Barsamian from 1984 to 1996. But the backdrop is the war in Ukraine – a subject about which Chomsky is unsurprisingly voluble. 

“It’s monstrous for Ukraine,” he said. In common with many Jews, Chomsky has a family connection to the region: his father was born in present-day Ukraine and emigrated to the US in 1913 to avoid serving in the tsarist army; his mother was born in Belarus. Chomsky, who is often accused by critics of refusing to condemn any anti-Western government, unhesitatingly denounced Vladimir Putin’s “criminal aggression”. 

But he added: “Why did he do it?” There are two ways of looking at this question. One way, the fashionable way in the West, is to plumb the recesses of Putin’s twisted mind and try to determine what’s happening in his deep psyche.

“The other way would be to look at the facts: for example, that in September 2021 the United States came out with a strong policy statement, calling for enhanced military cooperation with Ukraine, further sending of advanced military weapons, all part of the enhancement programme of Ukraine joining Nato. You can take your choice, we don’t know which is right. What we do know is that Ukraine will be further devastated. And we may move on to terminal nuclear war if we do not pursue the opportunities that exist for a negotiated settlement.”

How does he respond to the argument that Putin’s greatest fear is not encirclement by NATO but the spread of liberal democracy in Ukraine and Russia’s “near abroad”

“Putin is as concerned with democracy as we are. If it’s possible to break out of the propaganda bubble for a few minutes, the US has a long record of undermining and destroying democracy. Do I have to run through it? Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, Chile in 1973, on and on… But we are supposed to now honour and admire Washington’s enormous commitment to sovereignty and democracy. What happened in history doesn’t matter. That’s for other people.” 

“What about NATO expansion? There was an explicit, unambiguous promise by [US secretary of state] James Baker and president George HW Bush to Gorbachev that if he agreed to allow a unified Germany to rejoin NATO, the US would ensure that there would be no move one inch to the east. There’s a good deal of lying going on about this now.” 

Chomsky, who observed in 1990 that “if the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every postwar American president would have been hanged”, spoke witheringly of Joe Biden. 

“It’s certainly right to have moral outrage about Putin’s actions in Ukraine,” he said of Biden’s recent declaration that the Russian president “cannot remain in power”. “But it would be even more progress to have moral outrage about other horrible atrocities… In Afghanistan, literally millions of people are facing imminent starvation. Why? There’s food in the markets. But people who have little money have to watch their children starve because they can’t go to the market to buy food. Why? Because the United States, with the backing of Britain, has kept Afghanistan’s funds in New York banks and will not release them.” 

Chomsky’s contempt for the hypocrisies and contradictions of US foreign policy will be familiar to anyone who has read one of his many books and pamphlets (his first political work, American Power and the New Mandarins, published in 1969, foretold the US’s defeat in Vietnam). But he is now perhaps most animated when discussing Donald Trump’s possible return and the climate crisis. 

“I’m old enough to remember the early 1930s. And memories come to mind,” he said in a haunting recollection. “I can remember listening to Hitler’s speeches on the radio. I didn’t understand the words, I was six years old. But I understood the mood. And it was frightening and terrifying. And when you watch one of Trump’s rallies that can’t fail to come to mind. That’s what we’re facing.”

Though he self-identifies as an anarcho-syndicalist or a libertarian socialist, Chomsky revealed to me that he had voted for Republicans in the past (“like them or not, they were an authentic party”). But now he said, they were a truly dangerous insurgency. 

“Because of Trump’s fanaticism, the worshipful base of the Republican Party barely regards climate change as a serious problem. That’s a death warrant to the species.” 

Faced with such existential threats, it is perhaps unsurprising that Chomsky remains a dissident intellectual – in the manner of one of his heroes, Bertrand Russell (who lived to 97 and similarly straddled politics and philosophy). But he also still spends hours a day answering emails from admirers and critics, and teaches linguistics at the University of Arizona, the state where he lives with his second wife, Valeria Wasserman, a Brazilian translator. 

Chomsky is also still engaged by British politics. “Brexit was a very serious error, it means that Britain will be compelled to drift even further into subordination to the US,” he told me. “I think it’s a disaster. What does it mean for the Conservative Party? I imagine they can lie their way out of it, they’re doing a good job of lying about a lot of things and getting away with it.”

Of Keir Starmer, he scornfully remarked: “He’s returning the Labour Party to a party that’s reliably obedient to power, that will be Thatcher-lite in the style of Tony Blair and that won’t ruffle the feathers of either the US or anyone who’s important in Britain.” 

The Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci advised radicals to maintain “pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will”. What, I asked Chomsky at the close of our conversation, gives him hope? 

“A lot of young people; Extinction Rebellion in England, young people dedicated to trying to put an end to the catastrophe. Civil disobedience – it’s not a joke, I’ve been involved with it for much of my life. I’m too old for it now [Chomsky was first arrested in 1967 for protesting against the Vietnam War and shared a cell with Norman Mailer]… It’s not pleasant to be thrown in jail and beaten, but they’re willing to undertake it.”

“There are plenty of young people who are appalled by the behaviour of the older generation, rightly, and are dedicated to trying to stop this madness before it consumes us all. Well, that’s the hope for the future.”

Source: The New Statesman

The War Propaganda Changes Its Shape | Lew Rockwell

By Thierry Meyssan

If the Russian army has won the war against the Banderites in Ukraine, NATO has won the cognitive war against its own citizens in the West. The Atlantic Alliance has developed a new form of propaganda based on what it denounced a short time ago: Fake News, that is to say not false information, but biased information. The question is, how to protect yourself from it?

THE NATO DEVICE

“Subduing the enemy by force is not the highest art of war, the highest art of war is to subdue the enemy without shedding a single drop of blood.
~ Sun Tzu, The Art of War.

French General Philippe Lavigne of NATO’s Allied Command Transformation (ACT) oversees research on new propaganda methods.

His command has 21 centers of excellence, including one for propaganda, the Strategic Communications Center of Excellence (STRATCOM) in Riga, Latvia. It has created the NATO Innovation Hub (iHub) under the direction of Frenchman Francois du Cluzel, a former professor at the Collège militaire interarmes de Coëtquidan. It funds research at John Hopkins University and Imperial College of London on cognitive abilities (similar cohorts who engineered the COVID-19 propaganda machine). This research covers the entire cognitive domain with various applications ranging from bionic soldiers to war propaganda.

NATO’s general idea is to add to the five usual domains of intervention (air, land, sea, space and cyber), a sixth: the human brain. “While actions in the five domains are carried out in order to have an effect on the human domain, the objective of cognitive warfare is to make each one a weapon,” writes François du Cluzel.

If war propaganda was based, during the First World War, on false information popularized by great writers; then on the repetition of selected messages during the Second World War; today it is conceived as an illusionist’s act. It is about moving people to distract their attention and hide from them what they should not see. They judge what they see with the uninteresting information they are fed. In this way, we manage, without lying to them, to make them take bladders for lanterns.

We are living the first application of this technique, on the occasion of the war (or Russian police action) in Ukraine.

To make myself understood, I will first present some information to be ignored, then come back on the treatment of the war by French State television. I would have obtained the same result if I had used a German, British or American example.

(Number of explosions recorded in Donbass (February 14-22, 2022)

You can download the daily reports of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) observers at: https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/reports

THE RESPONSIBILITY OF WESTERN LEADERS FOR THE WAR IN UKRAINE

In the West, the narrative of the war in Ukraine places all the blame solely on the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, and secondarily on the political and financial figures of his regime. However, this version is clearly false if one considers the daily reports of the observers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

They testified that they heard an attack from the Donbass (still Ukrainian) by Kiev forces on the afternoon of February 17. All news agencies reported that at least 100,000 civilians had fled into the Donbass or to Russia. In addition, the main political leaders of NATO heard Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tell them at the Munich Security Conference that he intended to acquire nuclear weapons against Russia. It is clear that it was not Moscow, but Kiev, that triggered the hostilities.

No one can imagine that Kiev has unleashed this war against a far superior enemy without having received prior assurances from allies apparently capable of defending the country against Russia. This can only be NATO or the United States and possibly the other two nuclear powers, France and the United Kingdom.

The first meeting where this war was presented as desirable was held to our knowledge in the House of Representatives on September 5, 2019. It was organized by the Rand Corporation, the think tank of the US military-industrial lobby. The purpose was to present two reports, “Overextending and Unbalancing Russia” and “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground”  to the congressmen/women. The main idea is to use against it the particularity on which Russia bases its defense. Since it is a huge territory that the Russians defend by moving around and practicing the “scorched earth strategy”, it is enough to force them to move abroad to exhaust them.

The importance of this event is shown to us by the incident that affected our collaborator, the Italian geographer Manlio Dinucci. His article on the subject was censored by his newspaper, Il Manifesto, which he had to leave.

Three events attest to the involvement of the United States, the United Kingdom and France in the secret preparation of the war.

On March 24, 2022, a video of a 22-minute telephone conversation between the British Minister of Defense, Ben Wallace, and two Russian comedians Vladimir (Vovan) Kuznetsov and Alexei (Lexus) Stolyarov was published. One of the Russians was posing as the Ukrainian Prime Minister, Denys Shmyhal, whom Wallace never met.

1) Asked whether the UK would help Kiev to acquire nuclear weapons, the Rt. Hon. Wallace replied that he had to consult with Prime Minister Boris Johnson and that “The principle is that we will support Ukraine as a friend in whatever choice you make.”. In one sentence, he swept aside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NNPT).
2) On the subject of the Next generation Light Anti-tank Weapon (NLAW) missiles that the United Kingdom has just sent to the Ukrainian army, Ben Wallace admitted that they were not working properly and that spare parts had also been sent.
3) But it is especially on the subject of NATO that Ben Wallace’s language has been too prolix. The British minister once again invited Ukraine to join the Atlantic Alliance. In passing, he unwittingly revealed that the United Kingdom had been sending military instructors to prepare the Ukrainian army for several years.

Boris Johnson’s government used every means at its disposal to conceal, or rather minimize, these statements. It claimed that the interview lasted only 10 minutes and forbade YouTube/Google to broadcast the entire sketch. The Western media was asked to talk about his blunder on the atomic bomb and to cover up the other two points. This is how the British always do it: not to deny everything, but to make the most dangerous points disappear.

On March 25, 2022, President Joe Biden visited the Congress Palace in Rzeszów, Poland. He was accompanied by the director of USAID, Samantha Power (former ambassador to the UN), and the Polish president, Andrej Duda. It is worth noting that Andrej Duda had his parliament passed a law denying the role of the Polish state in Nazi crimes and authorizing legal action against anyone who mentions them.

Joe Biden spoke with various NGOs to praise their assistance to Ukrainian refugees. Afterwards, he gave a speech to his soldiers of the 82nd Airborne Division, stationed there. He also visited them in the dining hall and spoke to them without a teleprompter or cameras. As always at such times, the old man (79 years old) revealed state secrets. According to the witnesses, he thanked them for their commitment in Ukraine for a long time, even though officially there have never been any US soldiers in that country.

On March 29, 2022, General Eric Vidaud, director of French military intelligence, was dismissed. No official explanation was given. It seems that in reality, General Viaud had deployed men on the direct instruction of President Macron’s private staff, in 2021 when he was commander of special operations, to supervise the Azov Banderites regiment. Immediately, five Ukrainian helicopters tried to flee Mariupol, the stronghold of the Azov regiment. Two were shot down on March 30. The survivors were taken prisoner by the Russian army. They spoke immediately. The soldiers of the Special Operations Command are placed for all logistical matters under the orders of the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Thierry Burkhard, but they take their orders directly from the head of the armed forces, President Emmanuel Macron.

Afterwards, relations between Presidents Macron and Putin cooled sharply.

HOW WAR PROPAGANDA MASKS REALITY

In France the state has France-Télévision for its own population, with France-2 being the most watched channel, and France Médias Monde for abroad. The latter group depends directly on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and broadcasts France-24 in several languages.

To begin with, France 2 proposed a live newscast from Lviv (Ukraine) presented by its star, Anne-Sophie Lapix, on March 14, 2022 [6]. This newscast gathers every day a little more than 20% of the public. The young woman showed a lot of destruction and traumatized refugees. She walked through the city, but did not notice the imposing monument to Stepan Bandera, the leader of the Ukrainian Nazi collaborators. She also questioned the mayor of Lviv, Andriy Sadovy, without explaining that he is one of the country’s leading oligarchs. She did not ask him about his media group, of which his wife is the director. So she did not ask him about the remarks made the previous day on his channel, 24 Канал, calling for the killing of all Russians, women and children included, according to the method advocated by SS Adolf Eichman. At no time was it specified that this program was an initiative of the Banderite oligarch Andriy Sadovy and his wife, both former clients of the Publicis agency of Arthur Sadoun, the husband of Anne-Sophie Lapix.

The viewer who ignores Ukrainian tributes to the Nazis and exhortations to follow their example can only weep at the accumulation of suffering that was shown to him. He cannot doubt that the Russians are liars and criminals and that Ukrainians in general are innocent victims.

On March 25, France 24 in English, in its column Truth or Fake, reported on the interview of British Defense Minister Ben Wallace by Russian comedians. Following the instructions of Boris Johnson’s cabinet, the French Foreign Ministry’s television channel mocked his statements on the atomic bomb in order to better conceal those on the inefficiency of his anti-tank weapons and especially those on the presence of British military instructors in Ukraine for several years. The journalist presented the comedians as youtubers, whereas they work for the NTV channel, which allowed her not to mention that they are censored on YouTube in the country of the 1st amendment and freedom of expression. The column was produced by journalist Catalina Marchant de Abreu, a specialist in debunking fake news (sic)

The peak was reached on March 31 with France 2 news. France-Television, which until now denied the ideological character of the Azov regiment, broadcast a report on this formation. The public television admitted that it had, in 2014, been infiltrated by neo-Nazi elements, citing one of its founders, Andriy Biletsky, but assured that it had since changed into a respectable Defense force. France-2 did not mention one of its other founders, Dmytro Yarosh, a NATO agent and former coordinator of European neo-Nazis and Middle Eastern jihadists against Russia, who has become a special advisor to the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armies.

France-2 referred to an old UN report on torture, but not to the discovery of his special prisons by the Russian army, nor to recent UN statements on the subject. The report also failed to explain what Banderites are in Ukrainian history and reduced the importance of neo-Nazis to the wearing of the swastika. Having thus glossed over the problem, the channel estimated the danger to be between 3,000 and 5,000 men, while Reuters assures us that the Banderite paramilitaries today represent 102,000 men divided into numerous militias incorporated into the Territorial Defense.

Source: Lew Rockwell