A Telling Shift In Ukrainian War Propaganda

For the first months of the Russian invasion and war in Ukraine, Western politicians, propagandists, and government apparatchiks never, ever, said "Russia's invasion" or "Russia's war" without preceding those words with the adjective "brutal." As if other wars are NOT brutal. Just THIS one. A war BY RUSSIA is special, because it's a brutal war, unlike the NICE wars waged by the U.S. and its European lackeys, most of which were ruthless colonizing empires. [1]

But lately there's been an organized, and perhaps orchestrated, change in the propaganda jargon. Instead of "Russia's brutal war," now it's Russia's unprovoked war." (CNN's hyper-Zionist hack Wolf Blitzer gilded the lily, calling the war "totally unprovoked." Methinks thou doth protest too much, Bearded One!) 

The timing is rather odd. The time to screech "unprovoked" would have been when the war was launched, back in February, not seven months later, starting in September!

Why the inappropriate timing? Why now?

Perhaps because more and more people are hearing dissidents describe how indeed there was provocation. In fact, a lot of it.

I DIDN'T SAY JUSTIFICATION. Hold your horses! Provocation doesn't automatically justify a particular response or reaction. In this case I don't think it did. Indeed, Putin's decision to invade is the most disastrous decision he's ever made. It is causing the U.S. empire to wreck Russia's economy. It is costing the lives of Russians. The U.S. and its lackeys have stolen roughly a trillion dollars of Russia's money, which it will certainly hand over to its Ukrainian client regime to rebuild and as "reparations." Russia's strategic position is weakened, and its access to the Black Sea is in peril, as Kyiv regime president Zelensky has announced his intention to seize Crimea. And of course many Ukrainians have suffered, and died. (But this war has been great for at least one Ukrainian, namely Volodymyr Zelensky. He's built himself up into a Hero Of Western Democracy (so-called).

Before now, Putin played a weak hand deftly. But emotion apparently overcame better judgment. 

Maybe he didn't realize how weak his army actually was. On paper it may look strong, but in reality it is poorly trained, badly organized, and terribly led. And now Putin is conscripting 300,000 mostly untrained men to throw into the meatgrinder, to be senselessly killed and maimed. Which will achieve nothing militarily.

And make no mistake: This is a proxy war by the U.S. against Russia, using Ukraine to do the dirty work. The U.S. has been preparing for this war since the violent U.S. coup in 2014 that overthrew the elected Ukrainian government and replaced it with one that had (and has) neo-Nazis at its core. (Dishonestly, Western propagandists dismiss that fact as Russian propaganda.) For example, U.S. Special Operations Forces have been secretly training Ukrainian troops since 2014. [2]

But what were the provocations? you might ask. A fair question, and one that would require another essay to do justice to. So let me touch on some of the high points.

Overthrowing the Ukrainian government and installing an anti-Russian regime in its place, a regime SO anti-Russian that it subjected Russian-speaking Ukrainians to violence and persecution, resulting in the secession of two eastern districts. The new U.S.-created regime then proceeded to wage war on those districts, with an emphasis on bombing apartment buildings. This terrorist war was waged with full U.S. backing, and people like Senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain went to Ukraine to exhort Kyiv regime troops to attack and crush the secessionists.

Russia has been very restrained until this year. While providing military support for the seceded Republics, it did not recognize their independence until this year, after the invasion. Meanwhile a truce agreement and possible path for reintegration of the Republics into the rest of Ukraine, the Minsk accords of 2015, was ignored from the outset by the U.S. client regime, even though it had agreed to them.

Now a thought experiment. Say China arranged a coup in Canada, and installed an anti-U.S. regime there. Do you think the U.S. would wait eight years to invade? It would invade in a fucking WEEK!

So really, by U.S. standards, Russia has been extraordinarily restrained. Contrary to Western propaganda that portrays Russia as relentlessly expansive. But Putin should have resisted U.S. provocation. The truth is, Ukraine is a divided nation, and the just and natural solution IS (or was) for the east to become separate. But I surmise that many easterners who were formerly pro-Russian have changed their attitude, now that Russia has brought death and destruction upon them with its very ill-advised war.

The U.S. creation of a hostile state right on Russia's border was extremely provocative. Worse, there is the threat to bring that hostile state into NATO. NATO was created by the U.S. as an anti-USSR military alliance. When cracks started appearing in the Soviet empire, the U.S. made a deal with the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev. Gorbachev would allow East Germany to cease to exist and be absorbed into West Germany, on the promise that NATO would not expand "one inch to the east." The U.S. didn't keep its word, and never intended to. When Gorbachev complained, he was told with a sneer that he should have gotten it in writing. Meanwhile, in public, U.S. imperialist elites and their European lackeys lied through their teeth and denied any such promise had ever been made. (Gorbachev recently died, and Western media saluted him as a man of peace, a great statesman. The man they stabbed in the back. There are truly no limits to the cynicism of the Western ruling class.)

More provocations, indeed hostile acts: There is the relentless NATO expansion right up to Russia's borders, now with 30 plus members, including the 3 Baltic states on Russia's border, and soon Finland too, also on the border. There is the U.S. basing offensive weapons closer and closer to Russia. There is the U.S. withdrawing from all the arms control treaties with Russia PRIOR to this invasion of Ukraine. And there is the takeover of Ukraine by the U.S. and the 8 year long preparation for war, which has now come to fruition. With the ultimate goal of overthrowing Vladimir Putin, as the then-head of the so-called National Endowment for Democracy, (created by the Reagan regime to do overtly what the CIA used to do covertly, namely subvert and destabilize governments disliked by the U.S.), as Carl Gershman, threatened in a Washington Post op-ed in 2013. [3]

But the U.S. is thrilled that its Ukrainian proxies are winning. And it is willing to risk nuclear war, as it refuses to back down and call for a truce even after repeated threats by Putin to use tactical nuclear weapons. (He never says that explicitly, but it is clearly understood that is what he means.) The U.S. could force its Ukrainian client regime to negotiate any time simply by not sending any more advanced weaponry and ordnance, especially the HIMARS multiple rocket system. [M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System.]

The reckless bastards did this before, more than once, but especially during the "Cuban Missile Crisis," when the U.S. decided to dictate to Cuba what weapons it was allowed to base on its own soil, and was willing to start a nuclear war to get its way. Now U.S. propagandists have the nerve to invoke that deadly crisis as if the U.S. wasn't the guilty party!

Some people are just too dangerous to be allowed to be in power.

 

Vladimir Putin: Not as crafty as Western propagandists habitually portrayed him, before now.

1] U.S. propagandists and I assume European ones too, never referred to the Vietnam War as "brutal." Consider the following: the U.S. dropped six MILLION tons of bombs on Vietnam, THREE TIMES the tonnage it dropped in World War II, according to U.S. Air Force statistics. It  murdered between 3,000,000 and 4,000,000 Vietnamese- there will never be a precise count. For good measure, the U.S. slaughtered 500,000 Cambodians, and half a million Laotians. Vietnam was poisoned with dioxins from defoliants like Agent Orange, as the U.S. attempted to erase the forests of Vietnam, resulting in devastating birth defects to this day, cancers, and other diseases. The U.S. military routinely massacred defenseless Vietnamese peasants. And committed horrible atrocities, as we learned from veterans of that war, such as tying Vietnamese women to the ground and setting off flares in their vaginas.

Committing atrocities is a habit the U.S. military just can't break itself of, from its genocidal wars against the Native Americans to the last act it did when leaving Afghanistan, assassinating an aid worker who worked for a foreign NGO and 7 children in his driveway in Kabul, by drone, and then lying about it until even the New York Times called them on it.

So yes, the Russian army is committing atrocities in Ukraine. And the fact that the U.S. has committed many more in recent decades can in no way justify those Russian atrocities. This is merely to expose the grotesque hyper-hypocrisy of the U.S. and its lackeys. But the U.S. bourgeoisie have cooked up a move to brush aside exposures of their hypocrisy. It's a single word: "whataboutism." Cute, huh? So easy, no need to assemble facts, or arguments, or engage in debate, much less justify their own crimes or why they are RIGHTEOUS when they hypocritically attack their enemies for doing what they themselves do relentlessly and refuse to acknowledge. Just say "whataboutism" and brush the ugly truth aside. Way to go, U.S. power elites!

2] The New York Times let the cat out of the bag, perhaps inadvertently: Quote: "The decision by Ukraine to tout its counteroffensive in the south before striking in the northeast is a standard technique for misdirection used by the American Special Operation troops, who have been training the Ukrainians since the annexation of Crimea in 2014." {Or to put it another way, since the U.S. coup of 2014. And "annexation" is a distortion of reality, as are the even more overheated propaganda terms "seizure" and "Russia's invasion of Crimea," which have also been used in Western propaganda. See my explanation below.]

The Times continued:

"'These guys have been trained for eight years by Special Ops,' said [U.S. imperialist apparatchik] Evelyn Farkas, the top Pentagon official for Ukraine and Russia in the Obama administration. 'They've been taught irregular warfare. They've been taught by our intelligence operators [i.e. CIA etc.] about deception and psychological operations." [And what a victory for Feminism and Women's Rights that a female got to occupy that post! See what a difference having women in power makes?]

And those "psychological operations" have been visibly aimed at Western publics using a very cooperative Western media. Every single day. Zelensky's pronouncements are treated as if he's president of the U.S., UK, Germany, etc.

The article also mentions that the Russian military's secure communications don't work. That is, the NSA is intercepting, decrypting, and passing on to the Ukrainians all the Russians military messages- a huge advantage for the Ukrainians. The U.S. has also enabled the Ukrainians to assassinate Russian generals by locating them in real time.

"Ukrainian Officials Drew On U.S. Intelligence to Plan Counteroffensive," New York Times, Sunday, September 11, 2022, page 10, paragraphs 11 and 12.

3] "Former Soviet states stand up to Russia. Will the U.S.?," Washington Post, September 26, 2013.

Did The Queen Of The United States Just Die?

  [AFTER you read this, check out my Tribute video at

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XWxmPO8RZBs]

Finally they're going to bury her. After a mere TEN DAYS of dragging things out.

I don't have to pretend to be sad because some head of state I didn't know personally died. Let all the "world leaders" (country bosses) put on a show of feigned grief. They're all in the same racket, and birds of a feather flock together.

As for the ignorant masses lining up for a glimpse at her corpse, all I can say is- pathetic people laboring under false consciousness induced by a lifetime of imbibing propaganda.

I turned on the radio this morning to get some news. Instead I got British monarchy propaganda. From all "news" stations in New York City, self-proclaimed "Media Capital Of The World." NPR, the U.S.-Government created national radio network, started their morning broadcast at 5 am with these words: "Good morning, Britain is saying Goodbye to Queen Elizabeth The Second..." then I turned it off. They've been "saying Goodbye" for ten days. Indeed, the death of U.S. presidents don't get this grossly distended "coverage" from U.S. media! [1]

From the way U.S. media has been carrying on about the inevitable death of the 96-year-old "Queen" of Britain, you'd think she WAS the Queen of America! U.S. media have made the death of this "Queen" the top story, and are giving it saturation coverage. Since there really isn't much to say, every trivial detail is breathlessly conveyed, such as the new titles for her grandkids. We are being told such nonsense as that the entire world is affected by this. (Ron Elving, a senior NPR "commentator," compared the "queen" to the rock of Gibraltar. I kid you not. Saturday morning, Sept. 10.) U.S. (and of course British) media are pretending that every single person in Britain feels exactly the same way about this "Queen" and the British monarchy. Obviously a lie, as there are millions of republicans in Britain. Indeed, probably the  majority of people in Scotland do not want to be under the aegis of the British "crown." In the U.S., overt censorship is enforcing a totalitarian image of all citizens being of like mind. This is the essence of totalitarianism, the imposition of one mind on everybody. One example: Twitter has been busy deleting dissent from the "universal" adulation of the now dead career "Queen."

The incredible amount of gushing guff, of fawning admiration based on no actual accomplishments except that Elizabeth lasted in the post for so long, is not only cloying, and taxing to one's patience, as well as crowding out important news, but more importantly it reveals the true, anti-democratic nature of the bourgeois class dictatorships that "Western" countries are ruled by. Monarchies, which are systems of inherited power and privilege, and that originally claimed for centuries to be based on divine diktat, are completely anti-democratic. Yet the bourgeoisie promote aristocracy-worship, in both "news" media and "entertainment" media, which functions as an even more powerful indoctrination tool than "news." Think of Disney "princesses," to cite one ubiquitous and vastly influential example.

That's why I put "Queen" in quotes. I do not recognize the legitimacy of aristocracy! Nor should any normal human being. The idea that anyone is innately superior because their parents are innately superior and their parents were innately superior and their parents were and their parents were designated by a "god" to rule, and are entitled to special privileges, status, and wealth, by dint of this bogus designation, is a massive con game and the antithesis of democracy. Which doesn't stop the bourgeoisie from simultaneously claiming that democracy is one of their core values, and that all the wars they start and provoke, both hot and cold, are done to "defend democracy" or are "fighting for democracy," including the current Western proxy war between Ukraine and Russia, intended to bleed Russia white, or to "permanently weaken" it, as U.S. war secretary General Austin publicly revealed a few months ago.

Given the cravenness with which the UK government obeys every command of its U.S. masters, perhaps we could chalk up the U.S. power establishment's over-the-top treatment of yet another succession in the British monarchy, that barbaric, seemingly immortal medieval relic, as an imperialist courtesy. God knows the U.S. cares little for actual British interests. The only exception to that that I can think of was during the Falklands war, when the U.S. military provided support to the British war effort that was critical to Britain successfully defeating the Argentine invaders of those islands. [2]

Some facts obliterated by Western propagandists in their current campaign of aristocracy worship: The "Windsors" were a German monarchical family, but during the slaughter of World War I, that fact became a bit too awkward, so they conveniently changed their family name to something more appropriate to the country they were reigning over. (How does that affect their "divine" license to rule, I wonder? Never mind.) 

Here's another one: Elizabeth was the richest woman in Britain. And her and her family are subsidized by the government- meaning by the people of Britain, who pay for the government- to the tune of millions of pounds sterling a year.

Also totally whitewashed are the vicious crimes of the British empire during "Her Majesty's" reign, which began in 1953. These include the savage "counterinsurgency" campaigns Britain waged in several of its colonies to crush attempts to break free of oppressive British rule and the economic exploitation that enriched British elites. "Counterinsurgency" consists of torture and murder, mostly. In Kenya the British felt it necessary to castrate many of their prisoners. Who knows why. Was it to compensate for feelings of sexual inferiority that white racists commonly feel towards black men? Who knows. None of these savage beasts was ever put on a psychiatrist's couch to be asked. But there's an entire counterinsurgency literature explaining the theory and practice of oppressing the oppressed when they rebel, written by practitioners of the criminal arts and imperialist theorists.

Defenders of this barbaric medieval relic, "the monarchy," sometimes pretend that it's just for show, and doesn't actually have any power. This is nonsense. The current prime minister, Liz Truss, had to be appointed pm by the "Queen." The previous pm, Boris "Bojo the Clown" Johnson had to go to the "Queen" to submit his resignation. 

The monarchy exercises power in many ways semi-hidden from public view. The CIA-MI6 coup in Australia that overthrew a Labor government there needed the cooperation of the Queen's overseer in Australia to do that. . [Search "cia coup australia 1975" for details.]

Here's another example of power at work: At least 3 people are known to have been arrested for publicly voicing dissent from the Officially Required Monarchy Worship. One man was arrested for shouting a non-obscene rebuke to "Prince" Andrew referencing his sexual exploitation of the teenage girls in the harem of Jeffrey Epstein, the intelligence operative assassinated in a Federal jail in Manhattan to silence him.

The hereditary class of the Divinely Privileged are "Royal," and are high above mere humans, who are "Commoners," nobody special. Is British identity so insecure that only the glue of a monarchy can hold it together? That seems to be the hidden fear of British power elites. That certainly is one reason they have milked this death for all it's worth.

By modern convention, the monarch doesn't refuse to do what's expected. But this is a convention, not a law. What if the monarch refused? Then what? Would they call that a "Constitutional crisis"? This is a nation whose "Constitution" is unwritten. That is, it only exists as a mental construct. So what does it "say"? It is ideological vapor. It seems the power elite of Britain prefers not to be constrained by actual words that are written down. Very flexible, such a "system" with a notional, as opposed to an actual, Constitution. Having no fixed rules lets the powerful do as they wish.

One factor that partially accounts for some people's attraction to monarchy is political infantilism. They want a Big Mommy or a Big Daddy (the actual nickname for a number of African autocrats and dictators) to take care of them, to make all the decisions, to exercise power putatively on their behalf. (Then there is the periodic "shock" and "feeling of betrayal" when it turns out that people in power sre NOT the benevolent Parents Of The People but exercise power on their own behalf and for small elites.) 

The silver lining in this absurd obsession with the death of a desiccated relic of the middle ages is a partial respite from the Ukrainian war propaganda campaign that began really in October 2021 and was cranked up to World War II levels with the very ill-advised- and ill-starred- Russian invasion of February 24. The British elites have decided that it requires ten days of wallowing in her death to properly mark the passing of their "Queen,," so probably at least in Britain the Ukraine war propaganda noise machine will be turned down during that time. Although its substitute is hardly less noxious and psychologically harmful in the warping of minds.

I will acknowledge that Elizabeth was good at her job. The problem is, the job shouldn't exist.

 
But Elizabeth's lifetime of "duty" and "service" to British imperialist power extends past her death. Now the woman's corpse is being used to shore up support for the British power establishment, both among its "subjects" (including in the Commonwealth nations, the Commonwealth being Empire Lite) and in allied and any other nations that can be mesmerized by the ritual display of "pomp and circumstance."

But the "royal" family is well paid for its "sacrifice," not just in status and privilege, but in filthy lucre. At root, imperialism is about economic exploitation, so it is fitting that the "royals" should be rich.

1] I try again to get some news at 5:22 AM, and STILL no news, just more "royalty" propaganda: "I'm Rachel Martin in London. And today we are remembering the life of England's [sic] longest serving monarch..." Haven't "we" been "remembering" for the past 9 days, now 10? In other words, more lionization of that woman.  NPR flew a morning "news" anchor, Martin, over to London just to read bromides that could have been read from a studio in the U.S. The main NPR affiliate in NYC, WNYC, broadcasts BBC all night, which is easily 70% monarchy propaganda during this period. WNYC owns a classical music station, WQXR, which at 7 am treated its listeners to the following assertion masquerading as news, from the mouth of Kerry Nolan: "Britain and the world [sic!] are saying a final goodbye to Queen Elizabeth..." etc. The WHOLE WORLD is drafted into this compulsory mourning, according to UK and U.S. propagandists!

Among the most cravenly fawning "royalty" guff in U.S. media is aired courtesy of Michael Bloomberg Billionaire. He owns a network of radio stations, broadcasts on TV, and of course on youtube. He flew his morning economic chatter team over to London on his private jet to spew the same platitudes they'd already been spouting from their New York lair. No surprise that a billionaire would support monarchy. Monarchy teaches submission to "authority" in the form of ones "betters." And billionaires all think they're better than us.

2] It was only because Reagan's "Defense" Secretary, Caspar Weinberger, on his own initiative went to Britain's aid that the U.S. helped Britain. The fascist Jeane Kirkpatrick urged president Reagan to side with the fascist Argentine military junta, a criminal gang that tortured and murdered 30,000 defenseless Argentine civilians whose supposed political leanings were not to the fascist military dictators' liking. That regime was backed 100% by the U.S. government AND media, including the "liberal" New York Times, which for years lied about how many victims were murdered by the fascists the Sulzberger family was supporting. (The Sulzbergers have owned and controlled that rag for over a century.) The NYT hid the mass murders for years. Then they claimed the deaths were in the hundreds. Gradually they went into the thousands, but always well below the true figure. Finally, in only ONE ARTICLE, the true toll popped up. Then in subsequent articles the number was shrunk back down! Shades of George Orwell's "1984."

The NY Times, in this and many other instances, acted as an accomplice to state terrorism.

Reagan, acting to allow the fascist Argentine dictatorship to keep the now-occupied Falklands,  telephoned British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and urged her to back down, but she refused. The Falklands had been colonized by Britain in a previous century and was inhabited by Anglo British citizens who had no desire to come under the boot heel of the fascist Argentine military dictatorship.
See my video: "Jeane Kirkpatrick urged Reagan To Back Argentina In Falklands War. "

Slavishly Subservient To Zelensky Propaganda, Western Media Refuse To Report Kyiv Regime Is Shelling Ukraine Nuclear Power Plant

 "Someone" is shelling "Europe's largest nuclear reactor," which is occupied by Russian troops. Ukrainian president and frontman for U.S. imperialism Volodymyr Zelensky yells at the top of his lungs it is the Russians doing it. Russia, whose soldiers occupy the plant, say it is the Ukrainians. Who to believe? It is a baffling mystery to Western media propagandists, including the creme de la creme "quality" media like the BBC and NPR, government and quasi-government propaganda platforms of the UK and U.S., respectively. They "report" that "Ukraine" (the Kyiv regime installed by the U.S.) and Russia "each accuse the other." This absurd agnosticism is in fact an improvement over the first week or so, when they treated Zelensky's preposterous lie that the Russians were BOMBARDING THEIR OWN FORCES as true, and of course anything Russia says is a lie. Now we're in the "both sides blame the other" phase of hiding the obvious truth from Western publics.

We can be reasonably certain- in fact we can be 99.99999% certain, that the Russians are NOT shelling the Russian-occupied Z nuclear plant because as a general rule ARMIES DO NOT DELIBERATELY ATTTACK THEIR OWN SOLDIERS. Know what I mean? There are accidents, to be sure, but this has been a sustained campaign of shelling for weeks. Fires have been started, power lines and other infrastructure on the plant grounds damaged by the deranged Ukrainian bombardment campaign.

But Zelensky, with Western "journalists" and Western-controlled institutions in tow, are pretending that Russia is attacking its own position. Zelensky, an erstwhile comedian, has proven himself a breathtakingly mendacious demagogue at the leve of Donald J. Trump, an erstwhile "reality" TV show host and steak salesman.

Zelensky, with extreme cynicism, almost daily denunces Russia for shelling the nuclear facility AS HIS ARMY IS SHELLING IT! The Euroslug handmaidens to U.S. imperialism have taken to demanding stop risking nuclear disaster and vacate the plant. This is all an incredibly cynical and dangerous ploy to force the Russian army to retreat.

To be sure, the Russians are using the plant to fire munitions towards Ukranian positions. Apparently they thought the Kyiv regime forces wouldn't be so reckless and irresponsible as to return fire. Yet another Russian miscalculation. (Of course by far their biggest miscalculation, and it was a whopper, was invading western Ukraine in the first place.)

Examples abound in broadcast and print media of playing dumb about who is shelling the Russian position. "Each side blames the other" is what Western propagandists have settled on.

This is as far as U.S. propaganda radio network NPR will go towards telling the truth: "Russia and Ukraine blame each other for shelling that has damaged the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, there are concerms that [blah-blah]" "reports" Dave Mattingly, NPR "news," [1] The nuclear plant is being shelled and "both sides are blaming the other" says another NPR propagandist, Frank Langford, on "Morning Edition," the morning dose of NPR propaganda. [2]

On MIchael Bloomberg Billionaire's propaganda radio channel WBBR New York City, limey propagandist Leanne Garrels tells us that Russia is using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant "to shield its troops according to [conveniently anonymous] European intelligence officials." [3]  Leanne won't even tell us which countries these faceless secret police are from.

Well, the plant doesn't seem to be "shielding" the Russian soldiers very well, since the Kyiv regime keeps bombarding it, then screeching that Russia is endangering Europe by being there, and the Eurolackeys of U.S. Imperialism chime in (as does the U.S.), and they all work to draft the UN bureaucracy and its head, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in the effort to force the Russians to retreat. 

You see, as long as the Russians are occupying the plant, all Europe and indeed the world is in danger of a nuclear disaster! Why? Well THAT part is left unsaid. It's because THE KYIV REGIME'S FORCES ARE SHELLING THE PLANT.

[Zelensky working to enlist UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his war effort and scheme to for a Russian retreat from nuclear plant- Lviv, Ukraine, August 18, 2022.]

Zelensky, a supremely cynical man, is blaming the Russians for being shelled, repeating over and over the whopping lie that the Russians are shelling themselves, and no Western media or politician will contradict this preposterous lie.

All this obfuscates the obvious: the shelling by the Kyiv regime is what's endangering the plant. But Western propaganda works overtime to hide this obvious reality, with remarkable success.

                       Oh you devilishly clever comedian-president, you!

1]  NPR, "Morning Edition," August 18, 2022.
2] NPR, "MOrning Editon," August 19, 2022.
3] WBBR, New York City, August 19, 2022.

British Tory Party's Game Of Musical Chairs To Pick Next UK Prime Minister Enters Final Round

A race by eleven pygmy right-wing politicians who all wanted to be the next chair of the "Conservative" (Tory) party in Britain began about two weeks ago. Only one will get to sit in the seat. That person will then be anointed prime minister of the country, head of government, since the Tories control Parliament with a big majority of MPs (Members of Parliament).

The field was winnowed down to four by several rounds of voting by the Tory MPs. The final round between the two left standing will be decided by the entire Party membership. The lucky winner will then be anointed by the Tory politicians in Parliament as prime minister. 

So the next PM will be chosen by the approximately 200,000 members of the Conservative Party. Britain is a country of over 67,000,000 people. But there will be another election for Parliament in a couple of years. The citizens will then get to choose which politicians will pick the next PM. That's democratic enough, right?

The Magnificent British Parliament, Birthplace Of Democracy! Sail On, Oh Noble Ship Of State!

Manchin Insists Earth Not Hot Enough Yet

 Democratic Senator Joe "Motherfucker" Manchin III has done it again. Once again he has almost singlehandedly struck a blow against humanity. This time he's prevented passage of Federal legislation desired by the president of his own party and by all or almost all its Congressional members to finally take steps to mitigate the disastrous warming of our planet caused by burning fossil fuels (coal, oil, methane gas, and the products of oil such as gasoline, diesel fuel, jet fuel, etc.).

With the U.S. Senate split 50-50 between the Democrats and the Republicans, the Party of Evil, the Democrats need every single vote to pass anything in the Senate. (The vice president of the U.S. casts tie-breaker votes in the Senate, and currently she's Democrat Kamala Harris.) But they also need to vote to eliminate the filibuster, a rule instituted long ago by Southern racist Senators which in its current form requires assent by 60 Senators to pass most legislation. Manchin, and his fellow reactionary Democratic Senator Kirsten Sinema, adamantly opposes eliminating the filibuster.

The same pattern of the past year and a half has played out yet again. House Democrats either pass or are for necessary legislation, whether it's to build infrastructure, fill holes in the pathetically inadequate U.S. social safety net, or protect human rights, especially the right of women to decide whether to have children when they become unintentionally pregnant. Manchin jerks his Senate Democratic colleagues, the House Democrats, and president Biden around for months, making them grovel and water down their legislation more and more, until finally saying No. He did it again this time, "negotiating" in bad faith, taking up time until the Republicans can seize control of Congress again after this November's mid-term elections. Manchin behaves exactly like Republicans, insisting Democrats should seek "compromise," which is just code for "surrender to me." Manchin is a DINO, a Democrat In Name Only.

 

MAN O MANCHIN! 

Most political observers expect the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) to win the House, and possibly the Senate.  (The GOP state legislatures have so gerrymandered Congressional districts that currently House Democrats represent 40 million more people than GOP ones, even though the two sides have almost the same number of Representatives. In some states they control overwhelming majorities in state legislatures with a minority of voters due to their gerrymandering, which has made peaceful change through the ballot box almost impossible in the U.S. now.)

Manchin represents the woebegotten State of West Virginia, a primitive backwater largely populated by ignorant slugs. His rightwing Democratic partner in sabotage is Senator Kirsten Sinema representing the awful state of Arizona, who on occcasion has joined Manchin in saying Nyet to a Democratic Party proposal. (Arizona is the State that gave the world neofascist racist Senator Barry Goldwater and racist fascist Sheriff Joe Arpaio.)

Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who caucuses with the Democrats and is effectively a left-wing auxiliary of them, denounced Manchin on one of the Sunday morning TV yak shows July 17. Democracy Now aired on excerpt the next day during its "Headlines" segment narrated by host Amy Goodman.

Manchin Betrays "His" Party Again, Votes AGAINST Abortion RIghts

The U.S. Senate just voted down a Federal abortion rights bill that was passed by the House of Representatives. The vote was 49 for to 51 against. All 50 Republican Senators plus nominal Democrat Joe Manchin of West Virginia voted NO. So no Federal law to protect abortion rights. Forced child bearing or dangerous illegal abortions will now be the fate of millions of poorer women in the U.S. in the coming years, as theocrats and reactionaries and male supremacists, operating through the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) bring the U.S. closer to the dystopia of Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale."

Democratic Senate leader Charles Schumer of New York staged the vote to force every Senator to go on record as to where they stood on the abortion issue. He stated this as the reason. Because the vote would have been moot in any event because it needed 60 votes in the 100 seat Senate to overcome the filibuster rule.

The Democrats could change that rule, as they have 50 Senators and the Vice President, Democrat Kamala Harris, breaks ties in the Senate. A simple majority is all that is needed for rule changes.

But Manchin and fellow DINO (Democrat In Name Only) Kirsten Sinema of Arizona oppose altering the ridiculous filibuster rule. That rule, by the way, was invented by racist Southern Democrat Senators. It has nothing to do with the constitution or statutory law. It is simply a Senate RULE that the Senate created for itself. (It used to be even worse, requiring 67 Senators to bypass it. It was modified to 60. Another modification made judicial nominations exempt from this minority veto.

Obviously Manchin voted the way he thought would be approved of my the voters of his benighted state. Apparently the backward hicks of the poor state of West Virginia think having more unwanted children is the way to a more prosperous and humane future. This is a state that opposes Federal programs that help the people there. It's a state that wants its children and their children and their children to work in coal mines. This is a state of stubbornly ignorant people unwilling to change one bit.

"Progressive" Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Protects Donald Trump From Criminal Liability

 A New York Grand Jury in the borough of Manhattan has been dismissed without bringing charges against the target of its inquiry, Donald J. Trump. When a Grand Jury is disbanded without bringing charges, this means no charges will be brought, absent extraordinary public pressure.  As American grand juries are tools of prosecutors totally under prosecutors' control, the failure to indict Trump for his crimes reflects the decision of Alvin Bragg, elected just last year masquerading as a progressive. 

Several months ago, two attorneys in the Manhattan district attorney's office who were leading the investigation of the criminal Trump, resigned in protest, asserting that Bragg was blocking them from bringing charges. Bragg responded by publicly lying that he was determined to pursue the already years-long investigation that his predecessor, the smarmy Cyrus Vance Jr.), had dragged his feet on for years. Vance, son of a U.S. secretary of state and born into an elite, privilege class of U.S. brahmins, is himself a man with a history of protecting "elite" sexual criminals like movie mogul Harvey Weinstein and French poohbah and ruling class luminary Dominique Strauss-Kahn  (who forced a hotel maid to perform oral sex on him, a habit of his as he believes he is entitled to free sexual services from the working class). Vance is a man steeped in class privilege who extends the privilege to even obviously criminal members of his own class. He is also cowardly. Not only did he drag out the "investigation" of Donald Trump for years, handing the hot potato to his successor, the ambitious and self-serving Bragg, but Vanee ignored his own staff and failed to prosecute two of Trump's children,  Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. for fraud in 2012, instead taking a "campaign contribution," i.e. a legal bribe. 

Trump himself has been under the gun for fraud for committing numerous felony violations in his financial statements. Bragg for his part lied and kept up a charade of going after the career criminal Trump until the very moment the Grand Jury was excused.

For decades, the New York city and state political and judicial elites (which are one and the same, as the judges are political clubhouse members) protected the career criminal Donald Trump, for two reasons: He gave them money, and he was a member of the elite ruling money class.

Now we have a hustler as the most important local prosecutor in New York State, heading an office that even pursues international investigations. Bragg is a operator who knew what mask to wear to get elected in Manhattan in the year 2021, a year of ferment and discontent with the establishment power structure following the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis, Minnesota police in 2020. Being "black" added to the illusion he wished to create of being progressive, as there is a prejudice in the U.S. that African-American are innately progressive. This prejudice, like all prejudices, ignores obvious facts, like the large number of reactionary blacks clearly visible in public view, from Supreme Court "Justice" Clarence Thomas to various politicians to a variety of media "commentators" who are part of the ubiquitous reactionary propaganda chorus which baths Americans in a twisted worldview from birth to death.

In the midst of incessant Ukraine war propaganda, Bragg's weaselly act protecting Trump has gone barely noticed by the Blatherariat here. Well timed, Con Man!

Are Alvin's eyes set on higher office? "I don't like to BRAGG, but I'm a pretty slick dude!"

Establishment news media have widely reported what the New York City tabloid The New York Daily News calls an "abdication" by Bragg. See "Bragg's abdication: The Manhattan DA looks set to let Donald Trump walk," May 1, 2022.

Ukrainian President's "Churchillian" Speech To Congress Shakes Loose More Weapons

Comedian and Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky made another of his impassioned appeals to a Western elite audience and public for more war support this morning. The guilt-tripping and political pressure worked. Hours after his performance for the U.S. Congress, designed to shake loose more weapons from the U.S. armaments tree, U.S. president Joseph "Grinning Joe" Biden announced yet another weapons shipment to Ukraine, this time 800 anti-aircraft weapons. Ukraine has already received thousands of anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons- U.S. -made ones- from Germany and other NATO nations, as well as from the U.S.

Some U.S. corporate propagandists insist on invoking UK Winston Churchill's World War II address to the U.S. Congress as similar, elevating the comedian Zelensky to an absurd historical status on a par with the deified reactionary imperialist Churchill. (Specifically propagandists on the media of Michael Bloomberg Billionaire have fawningly pushed the "Ooh, he's just like Churchill!" line.) 

Zelensky has shown that his prior experience as a tv entertainer has stood him in good stead, as his performances as leader of a beleaguered nation being attacked by the Evil Putin and the Russian Bear have been nothing short of bravura. He has rallied most of the populace to resist (except the estimated 3 million who have fled the country so far). It doesn't hurt that he declared martial law, and forbade males between the ages of 18-60 from leaving the country on the first day of the war, February 24.

He has personally addressed the British parliament, the Canadian parliament, and the UN. He has insistently demanded that NATO (i.e. the U.S.) establish a no-fly zone over his country- that is, that the U.S. go to war with Russia.

 It's not surprising that he would make this move. Since the U.S. acts as if Ukraine is like a member of NATO, and indeed insisting on NATO making a formal declaration in 2008 that both Ukraine and Georgia WOULD BE taken into NATO, it makes sense that the U.S. step up to the plate.

But the U.S. is only willing to use Ukraine as a proxy to degrade the Russian army, inflict casualties as it did when it tricked the Soviet Union into invading Afghanistan in 1979, and as a reason to wreck  the Russian economy with economic warfare (aka 'sanctions"). The ultimate goal is the overthrow of Putin. The U.S. has always devoted itself assiduously to making sure that every nation possible has a boss under U.S. sway. [1]

The lust to oust Putin someday was even hinted at publicly by the guy in charge of overthrowing governments, Carl Gershman, in a column he wrote in the Washington Post, the house organ of the Washington D.C. national political elite, in 2013. Gershman heads something called the "National Endowment for Democracy," which was set up to do openly what the CIA used to do covertly, namely subversion, electoral interference, creating the funding opposition groups and parties and media, and other kinds of political interference in other nations' internal affairs. As the CIA was thoroughly exposed, it was decided to do these things openly and claiming they are legitimately "supporting democracy" by doing so. The brazenness is breathtaking, yet the U.S. has gotten away with it- that is how powerful the U.S. is.

Over the years, U.S. political and media elites have frequently expressed their loathing for Putin and their desire to overthrow him. They have lionized the racist "opposition leader' Alexi Navalny. (Why not? Fascists and racists are very often the U.S.' go-to guys for satraps.)

Meanwhile, U.S. Secretary of State and military-industrial complex profiteer Antony Blinken spent SEVEN HOURS threatening the Chinese foreign minister in a meeting in Rome, Italy, that China better not help Russia OR ELSE. Such U.S. gangster threats are referred to as "warnings" in Western propaganda coverage.

The way current talks between the Kyiv regime and Russia are going, it looks like Ukraine may finally agree to a reasonable settlement; namely Ukrainian neutrality and no NATO membership. Too bad Russia had to invade the country and kill people to get to it. 

Russia for months had military forces on Ukraine's border and tried to get these "concessions." Biden and the rest of the U.S. government adamantly ruled out EVER not including Ukraine in NATO, and insisted it would put attack missiles in NATO nations right on Russia's borders. These Russian demands were deemed "extreme" by Grinning Joe Biden himself.

Finally, U.S. obduracy left Putin almost no choice but to accept a strategically unacceptable situation, or escalate. I think a more limited invasion, to seize the Kyiv regime's Black Sea ports, would have been smarter. Apparently Putin's patience ran out.

As far as civilian casualties are concerned, they are estimated to be about 4,000 as of this writing. There will be more. I find it galling in the extreme to be subjected to Western politicians, apparatchiks, and propagandists beating their chests in moralistic denunciations of Russian "war crimes" when they were fine with the U.S. causing the deaths of around 900,000 Iraqis. Or for that matter, 4,000 Panamanian civilians when Bush the Elder invaded Panama with the specific goal of overthrowing the president, a goal attributed to Putin in Ukraine with great outrage. Or the millions murdered in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia by the U.S. and its accomplices. There is more, but the point is made.

That doesn't justify Russia's behavior in Ukraine. It means that the denunciations of blood-drenched hypocrites should carry no weight and be dismissed with contempt. Unfortunately they have great power because of the totalitarian ideological domination of the U.S. and its lackey nations. A domination which they are increasing by corporations banning any dissenting voices. Youtube brags of removing 1,000 channels and 15,000 videos in recent days. RT and Sputnik have been erased from Western communication channels. Iranis Press TV's website was stolen by the U.S. government.

Such is the arrogance of imperialists. And in a supreme act of gaslighting, they call their totalitarianism "freedom and democracy."

"I'll muscle you politically to fight my war with me!"

1] To read president James Earl Carter's "National Security Adviser" Zbigniew Brzezinsky letting the cat out of the bag about the U.S. setting a "trap" for the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, go to my essay, "You Call This "Three-Dimensional Chess"? Putin's Boneheaded Invasion Of Ukraine Exposes U.S. Elites' Fatuous Blather."

What's The Difference Between Bombing A Hospital In Ukraine And Bombing One In Afghanistan?

The level of moral outrage in Western Media, is the difference.

In the case of Ukraine, where the Russians are the culprits, Maximum Outrage. In the case of Afghanistan, where the guilty party was the U.S., a yawn. Or more precisely,  curt, clinical reports,  devoid of emotion, completely neutral morally, with the most damning details omitted.

In addition to Western propagandists whipping up outrage against the Russian crime, add furious denunciations by Western politicians and government apparatchiks. You don't see that when the U.S. commits war crimes and lies through its teeth about it.

The Russians are accused to bombing a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The U.S., during the regime of Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama, attacked the Medicins Sans Frontieres  (Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, with a U.S. gunship. And "gunship" understates the power of the weapon used, an AC-130 outfitted with cannons and machine guns and much else, capable of directing hugely destructive attacks on the ground, massacring large numbers of people.

There are significant differences between the two attacks. In the case of the Russian attack, based on Western media reports, there is no clue as to whether the hospital was deliberately targeted or the victim of Russian random area bombardment by artillery and missiles fired from miles away. In the case of the MSF hospital destroyed by the U.S., MSF had REPEATEDLY given the exact location coordinates of the hospital to the U.S. military so it wouldn't accidentally attack it. Unfortunately this helped the criminal U.S. deliberately attack it.

The MSF hospital had giant red crosses on the roofs, clearly visible to the pilots of the attacking flying warship. That plane also carries numerous magnification equipment for suveillance, aiming, targeting, firing, and recording evidence of the military's own crimes. (Or "actions," if you prefer euphemisms.)

There is also a difference in the deaths that resulted. The total death toll in the Mariupol attack, as reported by the Kyiv regime and Western media, is 3. Two adults, and one child. A tragedy.

The number murdered in the deliberate U.S. attack in Kunduz- 22, plus dozens more maimed and wounded. More than 7 deaths in Kunduz for each one in Mariupol. Both staff and patients were casualties of the vicious U.S. attack.

Western media harped on the Mariupol attack for several days. But the later reports omitted the number of casualties. Apparently the propagandists decided 3 deaths wouldn't be shocking in the context of a war.

MSF described the attack on their hospital, which was actually a series of repeated bombings lasting an hour in the dead of night:

From 2:08 AM until 3:15 AM local time today, MSF’s trauma hospital in Kunduz was hit by a series of aerial bombing raids at approximately 15 minute intervals. The main central hospital building, housing the intensive care unit, emergency rooms, and physiotherapy ward, was repeatedly hit very precisely during each aerial raid, while surrounding buildings were left mostly untouched. [In contrast, apparently the Mariupol hospital was hit with a single munition.]

The U.S. then followed its usual playbook when caught dead to rights committing an atrocity that ends up publicly visible in "the West." (The people in the victim countries know all about U.S. war crimes. It is the Western publics that are blissfully unaware.) It insists the target was legitimate, a "terrorist" hit. Then when that lie loses all credibility, it switches to "oops, sorry, it was an accident." Apparently the U.S. didn't like the fact that MSF treats all comers, indeed HAS to do so to maintain neutrality and be tolerated by all sides. So Taliban combatants were among the patients there.

The MSF hospital was the ONLY hospital for the city of Kunduz. The U.S. forced its closing, a crimes against all the inhabitants of that city.

For good measure, while issuing soothing, evasive unctuous verbiage publicly, Obama had a U.S. army tank smash through the gates of the hopital days after the aerial attack, an act of intimidation intended to silence MSF. Obama could have a second career as a Mafia don.

For its part, Russia issued this excuse for attacking the Mariupol hospital, through foreign minister Sergey Lavrov: Lavrov said the hospital was being used by fighters. In other words, Russia used the standard Israeli justification for blowing up civilian targets. When Israel periodically devastates the open air concentration camp of Gaza,  "mows the lawn," as the Israeli rulers cynically refer to their periodic wars on the trapped population of Gaza, they claim Hamas fighters are hiding in the targets, using the population as "human shields." (So of course they are justified in murdering the "shields.") 

But the excuse doesn't work for Enemies of The West. Only for the West and its colonial settler implant in Palestine, Israel.

The current U.S. president, the grinning and semi-senile Joseph R. Biden, now has the unmitigated gall to call for war crimes investigations of Russian actions in Ukraine. This guy was vice president for 8 years during the Obama regime, a regime that committed thousands of war crimes and violations of the rules of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places such as Libya where it targeted civilian targets such as homes and infrastructure. He's the absolutely wrong guy for that task.

Except in the morally-inverted world of Western power politics.

The Western elites expressing outrage over the Ukraine attack are either guilty of selective outrage and applying a double standard, which makes their arrogation of moral judgship an act of insolence, or are flat out putting on an act, which is outrageous, cynical, and disgusting. It can be hard to tell who among them are "sincere," that is to say, feeling actual emotions, which are method actors getting into it, and which are totally feigned in their outrage.

One way to tell if a person or organization  genuine in its denunciations is to test for consistency in their behavior. In this case, we can go back and check if they denounced the U.S. bombing of the MSF hospital. If not, they are phonies. At best, they are self-indulgent poseurs. 

Well, do you really need to check if any Western "leader" (political boss) or major media or government apparatchik or favored house intellectual morally condemned the Obama-Biden regime and the U.S. military for the Kunduz atrocity? Do they EVER condemn ANY U.S. atrocity? Hell, they cooperated in CIA kidnappings and torture of "terrorism suspects"! For those of us with memories, who pay attention, there is no need to check. Feel free to do so as a research project. It would be useful to publish such a study.

I wrote four essays on the Kunduz atrocity by the U.S. in 2015, when it occurred. I wrote at the same time condemning Russia for bombing hospitals in Syria. So I am not motivated by "anti-Americanism," an invented ideology used to dismiss out of hand any critique of U.S. Imperialism and its crimes. I am motivated by NORMAL HUMAN MORALITY!

If you click this link, you will get a page with the four essays on the Kunduz atrocity, the one on Russia, and several other related articles. For details about the attack, see in particular "Why Did the U.S. Launch a Sustained Aerial Bombardment of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital?"
To learn about the murderous AC-130 warplane in particular, see "WikiLeaks Invites Obama to Bomb It," and  "What Happens When One Nobel Peace Prize Winner Bombs Another Nobel Peace Prize Winner?"

Russian Invasion of Ukraine Is A Political Godsend For Joseph Biden and Boris Johnson

Two corrupt and venal politicians, the top two politicians in the political power structures of the U.S. and UK respectively, have had a political life preserver tossed to them by Vladimir Putin. (Not that Putin intended that!) Yet the power establishment's "pundits," who spend so much time dissecting political minutiae, haven't deigned to take the slightest public notice of this obvious, major turn in the political fortunes of their "leaders," not in the U.S. anyway. (I haven't studied the UK media on this, but I suspect the same is largely true.) You see, there is a reason this blog is called "Taboo Truths."

Both of these ruthless, selfish individuals, with lifelong records of immoral and sometimes criminal behavior, were in deep political trouble prior to Putin's reckless and foolish move. 

For most of the past year, the chatterers of the U.S. media Blatherariat have been clucking their tongues like a bunch of malicious high school student gossips about how terrible Biden has been doing in the polls, with popularity around only 40% of the public, comparable to Trump's during his presidency. There has been a constant stream of yammering of the dire prospects for the Democratic Party in the 2022 Congressional elections and even the 2024 presidential one. Much ink has been spilled and much gas expelled criticizing the Democratic Party's failure to make itself more popular and to "sell its program" to "the American people."

Establishment power media chatterers said the party may be over for Smokin' Joe Biden.

Suddenly, along comes this great distraction, a foreign "crisis" that has absorbed almost all of the U.S. media propaganda system's attention. BIden, being the lifelong imperialist that he is, immediately started beating his breast and waxing moralistic about the blackness of Russia and the Evil Putin as contrasted with the purity and beauty of the U.S. and its bloc of "democracies" that love "freedom" so much. He and his subaltern lackeys running Europe (plus NATO frontman Jens Stoltenberg and even the ludicrous Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, the U.S.' northern satellite nation) immediately and incessantly vomited forth an unending stream of high-handed, superior than thou denunciations of what they claimed was Putin "threatening to invade Ukraine." While this could be a reasonable inference as to Russia's intent (as indeed turned out to be the case) as a factual statement it was the opposite of reality, as  the Russians repeatedly denied they were going  to invade (while massing military forces along the Russian border with Ukraine). THey were either lying, or Putin changed his mind, but they NEVER THREATENED to invade Ukraine.

It doesn't matter, because BIden is now playing the role of "Leader of the Free World and Defender of Global Democracy" to the hilt. Thanks to the cooperation of most of the propaganda system excluding its neo-fascist organs like the Murdoch propaganda empire and others, Biden benefits from the rally-around-the-leader effect during a manufactured "crisis."  In point of fact, what happens in Ukraine CANNOT POSSIBLY BE A CRISIS FOR THE U.S. BECAUSE UKRAINE IS NOT A VITAL STRATEGIC AREA FOR THE U.S. It only matters because the U.S. is determined to shrink Russia down, to compress it as much as possible.

Unfortunately for the U.S., Russia is one of the two major nuclear weapons powers in the world, the other being the U.S., naturally. Between them, the two possess 93% of the world's nuclear weapons.
Now on to the British prime minister. Boris "Bojo The Clown" Johnson had seemingly been clinging to office as prime minister of Britain by his fingernails. A series of revelations of revelry and partying by him and his staff, in violation of COVID lockdown restrictions imposed by his regime, enraged the public. People had been prevented from visiting dying relatives by the restrictions. Revelations kept coming, with Johnson repeatedly lying, denying, playing dumb, and being just asinine, enraging people even more. (He's done this his whole life, and always gotten over with it, so he can be forgiven for sticking to habit.) Member of his own party, the "Conservaties" (also known as Tories) were publicly criticizing him, some advocating his replacement. (Britain has a parliamentary system, in which the party or coalition that controls Parliament, the legislature, gets to pick the prime minister, the chief executive of the nation.)

 Some wanted the PM to go!

Then, as a side effect of the Ukraine invasion, Vladimir Putin came to the rescue. For Bojo, Russia intimidated and then invaded Ukraine in the nick of time. Johnson has matched Biden in blistering rhetoric, self-righteously posing as an avatar of virtue against the Evil Putin, striving to outdo the stridency of Biden and calling for even stricter "sanctions" (economic warfare).

Bojo The Clown Socks It To Putin! (Rhetorically.)

U.S. elites (political and media) and the ducks lined up behind them (Europe, Canada, Japan) consistently claimed to be "the world." Apparently Africa, Latin America, India, China, indeed almost all of Asia, aren't part of "the world."( Jair Bolsonaro, president of the largest nation in population  in the Western Hemisphere south of the U.S., even sided with Putin!) But don't you call them "racist!" (While the motivation for their hyperbolic lying maybe wasn't racist, the effect sure comes off that way!) 

But finally a bit of evidence to support the notion that "the world" sees things the U.S. way. 140 nations at any rate, which voted in the UN general assembly to denounce the Russian invasion. But 35 nations, presumably on earth and thus part of "the world," abstained, and 5 voted against: Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Eritrea. All are easy to understand, except Eritrea isn't so obvious. Presumably they need Russia for something. The Assad dictatorship of Syria needs the Russian air force to stay in power. The Belarus' dictator needs Russia to prop him up, and has allowed Russian forces to stage on Belarus' soil to invade Ukraie. North Korea is North Korea, and has been under brutal economic siege enforced by the U.S., which has pushed sanctions through the UN over N.K.'s missile and nuclear weapons programs. No love lost there.

Bottom line: for both Biden and Johnson, the invasion of Ukraine is a tremendous blessing, with perfect timing to boot. And that's not a "cynical" statement, it's a TRUE statement reflecting REALISM. Taboo truths are are often branded "cynicism" by the power establishment's propagandists. Their other go-to epithet to suppress unwanted facts is "conspiracy theory." Be aware.

"Ohhhh, What A Lucky Man, He IS!"

To understand what led up to the current Ukraine "crisis," you need to read my prior essays at https://jasonzenith.blogspot.com/search?q=UKRAINE, especially "Obama Dictates Terms to Russia To Keep Its Naval Base in Crimea." 

When you go there, you can click on"2022" on the side of the page to see my latest essays. Or just scroll down from where you are now! And put your email in the box on the right side of the page to be notified of future posts. You DO want to be NOTIFIED, DON'T you?

You Call This "Three-Dimensional Chess"? Putin's Boneheaded Invasion Of Ukraine Exposes U.S. Elites' Fatuous Blather

 

 

                                                         Putin: Chess Genius or Boob?

Over the years, a favorite propaganda trope of U.S. media "pundits," imperialist foreign policy apparatchiks and  "experts," and politicians scoring points against other politicians and presidents of the rival political party, has been that "Russia is playing chess" and the U.S. is playing checkers. Then imperialist yakkers trying to stand out in the babbling "foreign policy" mob hyped it up to "The Russians are playing three-dimensional chess," outclassing the asleep at the switch U.S. (This as the U.S. dominates the world, as it has done continuously since 1945.)

Well, if we're talking political strategy, Russian ruler Vladimir Putin is no chess Grandmaster. Incredibly, he has invaded Ukraine- for real this time. Western propagandists and politicians refer to this actual invasion as "another" invasion,  pretending Russia "invaded" the secessionist regions of Ukraine when in actuality they sent in small forces and aid to help defend the regions from attack by the Kyiv regime, which targeted apartment complexes and other civilian targets. Two new states were declared in 2014, which Russia only now recognized, putting U.S. president Joseph Biden into a state of high dudgeon. 

Unmentioned was the fact that for years, Russia has tried to bring about an accommodation between the Kyiv regime and the newly-declared Republics, whereby those Republics would be part of Ukraine but with some autonomy to protect their language and culture.  The Kyiv regimr signed the Minsk Accords, which called for ceasefire, yet the Kyiv regime has never stopped its military attack on the breakaway regions, killing over 10,000 people, committing many war crimes- targeting apartment buildings for shelling and bombing. (The twisted Western media refers to this as "Russian invasion" and a war forced on Kyiv!) 

Another tortured use of the word "invasion" is now even occasionally being applied to Russia and Crimea. Apparently calling it an "occupation" or "annexation" is too feeble a denunciation. Crimea is the site of a vital Russian naval base, which after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia leased from Ukraine. After the U.S. coup of February 2014 and the installation of a regime which immediately targeted Russian-speaking Ukrainians for repression, local Crimea parliament and then the citizens both voted to reunite with Russia. (The people voted 97% in favor, with the Tatar inhabitants, 15% of the populace there, boycotting the referendum.) AFTER that, the Russian Duma voted to reunite with Crimea. (Crimea had been part of Russia until 1954, when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the U.S.S.R.)

Russia is landlocked for virtually its entire southern border. Crimea is on the Black Sea, through which ships can navigate to the Mediterranean Ocean and hence to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Geostrategically, Russia had NO CHOICE but to make sure Crimea stayed in friendly hands. [To understand this, see my article with maps:  FOOTNOTE 1 BELOW.]

Why was it so dumb for Putin to invade Ukraine? I mean really invade. Because even if the Russian army successfully occupies it, it will have to stay there in force to prop up whatever government Russia installs. And it will be subjected to endless guerrilla warfare funded and armed by the U.S. and its Eurolackeys. It will be a bleeding wound, just as Afghanistan was for the Soviet Union. (Does Putin's pining for the defunct SU extend to its debacles?) And the "sanctions"- economic warfare- being waged by the U.S. and its lackeys will significantly damage the Russian economy and hurt its people. In fact, bringing misery to people is the main point of U.S. sanctions. The goal is to create discontent with the government and undermine it, hopefully to overthrow it, as the U.S. is trying to do to Venezuela and Iran, North Korea, Cuba for 60 plus years, and whoever else gets in its way or displeases it.

Ukraine as another Afghanistan brings to mind another interesting parallel. It has emerged that the U.S. WANTED the Soviets in Afghanistan to bleed their army and weaken the Soviet regime. Likewise, the invasion of Ukraine can only be destructive for Russia. The U.S. and its lackeys are doing much to wreck the Russian economy right now. And billions of people are being subjected to saturation, non-stop anti-Russian propaganda which is putting a saintly glow of plucky martyrdom around Ukraine, hiding the key role played by actual neo-Nazis in the regime and its wars. 

The truth is, the U.S. practically forced Russia to invade Ukraine. For weeks leading up to the invasion, the Russians reiterated the same demands they've been making since 1999, when the U.S. double-crossed them and expanded NATO into more nations, violating a deal made with Mikhail Gobachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, in 1989. The U.S. publicly, adamantly refused to budge; Biden himself rejected the Soviet demand to keep Ukraine out of NATO. The U.S. had NATO announce in 2008 that Ukraine (and Georgia) would be welcomed into NATO. Infuriatingly, U.S. propagandists ignore what Putin actually "wants" and invent imaginary goals for him.

The second outrageous provocation was the U.S.-neo-nazi coup in 2014 that overthrew the elected president and replaced the government with one so hostile to everything Russian that it passed laws aimed at oppressing Russian-speaking Ukrainians. 

Here's the echo of Afghanistan: The Soviet Union was lured into invading Afghanistan by a dastardly plot of the Carter regime, masterminded by Carter's "National Security" Advisor, the Russia-despising Pole, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski actually went to Afghanistan to put his fiendish plot in motion, and shortly thereafter the Soviets fell for it. Years later, Brzezinski slipped up and blurted out a boast about what he had done to a French publication, Le Nouvel Observateur [Paris], January 15-21, 1998, p. 76.:

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. Is this period, you were the national securty advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention [emphasis added throughout].

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it?

B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q : When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan , nobody believed them . However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime , a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?


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So these supremely cynical U.S. imperialist brought the world Islamofascism. And people tolerate their continuance in power, their continued rule over us all.

And next time you hear propagandists and politicians describing Putin as diabolically cunning, remember they are building up a bogeyman to distract the people in the countries they rule and to rally support for their own imperialist aggressions.

Brzezinski interview translated from the French by William Blum and David N. Gibbs. This translation was published in Gibbs, "Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect," International Politics 37, no. 2, 2000, pp. 241-242.

Original French version appeared in "Les Révélations d'un Ancien Conseilleur de Carter: ‘Oui, la CIA est Entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes...’" Le Nouvel Observateur [Paris], January 15-21, 1998, p. 76. Click here for original French text.


1]  I published a series of articles on the Ukraine situation in 2014 which are still apropos today.. To see why the U.S. grabbing Ukraine is a dagger aiimed at Russia's vital strategic interests, read "Obama Dictates Terms to Russia To Keep Its Naval Base in Crimea."  When you go there, you can click on "2022" on the side of the page to see my latest essays.
You can search on that page the word "Ukraine" in the search box to pull up all the essays, or use this URL which is the search result: https://jasonzenith.blogspot.com/search?q=UKRAINE

What Is A "Crisis?"

It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Iraq.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Haiti (again).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Haiti (again).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Panama.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Grenada.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Cambodia.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Vietnam.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Cuba (again).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Lebanon.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Haiti.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Cuba.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Mexico (four or five times).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded the Philippines.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded the British colony that became Canada.
It's a crisis when Russia invades Ukraine.

Understand?

File under "Hyper-Hypocrisy."
And by the way, I've missed some.

Countries have been invading countries for as long as they have existed. War and conquest are thousands of years old.

Ukraine is over 6,000 airmiles from the U.S. at the closest points. Ukraine is right next to Russia. Seems that Russia would naturally have a much greater interest in Ukraine than the U.S. should. Yet the U.S. insisted on making Ukraine a U.S. vassal state with the 2014 violent coup.
Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine- morally and politically. To quote Tallyrand,in strategic terms it's worse than a crime, it's a blunder. But the U.S. created the situation, both with its hostile takeover of Ukraine, and it's treachery towards Russia by breaking its promise not to expand NATO, instead relentlessly pushing it right up to Russia's borders and vowing to bring in Ukraine and Georgia as NATO nations. Russia has said scores of times that this is unaccepotable to them. The U.S. answer is the same as what U.S. apparatchik had to say about the EU in her infamous phone calll to U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Pyass- "Fuck the EU." It's "Fuck You Russia. You're too weak to stop us."

The biggest loser from U.S. arrogance and aggressiveness is Ukraine.

Republican Supreme Court Rules "Death To Workers!"

  Very predictably, the Republican Supreme Court denied the Biden regime permission to have OSHA [1] require companies employing 100 or more workers to require their employees to  be vaccinated against Covid-19 OR wear masks and get tested weekly. Hardly an onerous requirement, and no one is being forced to get vaccinated. You could see this one coming a mile away. HOWEVER The Supremes aren't taking any chances with their OWN health! They gave the executive branch a permission slip to allow Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra to require all health care workers at institutions that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding to be vaccinated, unless they get a medical or religious exemption.

After all, one of THEM might wind up in a hospital or clinic or doctor's office sometime!

The vote to emasculate OSHA was 6 to 3. The 6 Republican apparatchiks voted as a bloc. Disingenuously they said it was up to Congress to empower OSHA to mandate this, knowing full well that such a thing is impossible in the U.S. Senate as currently constituted. This is a ploy these cynics have pulled before, for example when they screwed Ledbetter out of a lifetime of stolen wages with an absurd decision. (That time Congress did act, unlike when the Republican Court gutted the 1965 Voting Rights act in two decisions and erased the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law from the books, opening the way to the stranglehold that reactionary billionaires currently have over U.S. electoral politics.)

The 3 Democratic appointed justices don't matter, despite media propagandists pretending they do, pretending there's some mystery about how the reactionary bloc will decide issues. The power establishment's propaganda system has made strenuous efforts to maintain the absurd fiction that this court is some kind of neutral judicial body when it is patently purely political, very partisan, and with an extreme rightwing ideology. The 6 reactionaries are mislabeled as "conservatives." The ACTUAL conservatives, that is, those who want to preserve the status quo, are the 3 mislabeled as "liberals."

The U.S. Supreme Court has been a Republican court since the regime of Richard Nixon (1969-1974). Nixon filled four of the nine seats on the court with reactionaries. Reagan in 1986 gave us the extreme reactionary Antonin Scalia, with 100% approval from the Democrats. The Senate voted to confirm Scalia 98-0! I was sick to my stomach when he was nominated, just reading The New York Times whitewashing version of how reactionary he was. (Ironically, then-Senator Al Gore voted to confirm Scalia, who later repaid the favor by cheating Gore out of the presidency in 2000 with four GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) accomplices on the high court. (Reagan had previously put Scalia on the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, the most important appeals court in the Federal system. That was 1982, again with no obstruction from Democrats.)

After Reagan, Bush the Elder gifted us with sex offender Clarence Thomas, a black man with the mind of a white bigot. Here again the Democrats made sure to confirm this bitter right-wing fanatic to a lifetime appointment to one of the most powerful posts in the U.S. government. The Democrats controlled the Senate, and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee was none other than Senator Joe Biden (the same Joe Biden who is now president of the U.S.). Thomas used to sexually harass the women working for him. (Bush had made him head of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, for the purpose of sabotaging government anti-racial discrimination efforts- perversely, Thomas despises affirmative action even though he is black.) One of his victims, Anita Hill, testified to this, only to be savagely smeared in hearings by the Republicans, which Chairman Biden allowed. Privately Biden told the Senate Democrats not to believe Hill, and he blocked a number of corroborating witnesses from appearing. This is told in damning detail in the book Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, by Jill Abramson and Jane Mayer. They were reporters at the Wall Street Journal at the time, and later climbed higher up the media hierarchy ladder. Mayer became a staff writer for The New Yorker magazine, and Abramson the first female top editor at The New York Times, both publications being at the pinnacle of U.S. media prestige and influence.  Abramson then discovered she was being paid less than her predecessors and confronted her boss, publisher and scion of the Sulzberger family (that owns controlling interest in the corporation) Arthur Ochs "Pinch" Sulzberger Jr., about this, it peeved him, so he fired her and trashed her after that.

One other side note: Thomas' video porn viewing habits were revealed during his confirmation process by the simply expedient of getting his video store rental records. This prompted Congress to rush through a law protecting the privacy of such records. Congress can act when it's an emergency!

Then we come to the Obama rollover. In the last year of his presidency, a vacancy occurred on the court. The Senate boss at the time, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky (the Gang Of Plunderers held the Senate then) refused to allow confirmation hearings to even occur for Obama's nominee. This went on for eleven months. Then Trump was "elected." (Hillary Clinton beat him by 2.9 million votes total, but the Electoral College, the real electorate, elected Trump. Democracy as practiced only in America. That was the FIFTH time in U.S. history that the winner lost and the loser won.(The previous time was 2000, when the Republican Supreme Court robbed Al Gore of victory.) So the Democrats proceeded to blame Vladimir Putin for the outcome.)

What did Obama and the Democrats do during this outrageous subversion of the Constitutional duty of the president to fill court vacancies? Nothing much. Did you hear any outrage? Imagine if Democrats blocked a Republican president from filling a vacancy! They'd be threatening civil war- or starting one! It wasn't even a campaign issue in that year's presidential election (2020). So much for making sure the Supreme Court doesn't abolish the right to abortion! (Not to mention dozens of other ways the Supreme Court messes with people's lives.)

"Uhhh, you really thought I cared about YOU?"

Next we got the sociopathic, narcissistic con man Trump getting to fill FOUR seats on the court. He openly proclaimed that he would appoint people to overturn Roe vs. Wade. Yet during Senate confirmation hearings for these far-right-wing extremist ghouls, Democratic Senators went along with the pretense that this wasn't necessarily so. And in another example of a Democrat protecting a sex offender nominee, rightwing California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein hid from her colleagues the fact that nominee Brett Kavanaugh attempted to rape a teenage girl (as well as having committed sexual offenses in college). His Federalist Society-approved picks included a fundamentalist religious fanatic, Amy Coney Barrett.

"Baby, it's back to coat hanger abortions for YOU!"

So we've got Scalia/Thomas/Kavanaugh/the Obama Rollover, and all the other reactionaries the Federal judiciary has been crammed with on all three levels (District, which try cases, Appeals, and the Supreme Court, which rejects 90% of attempted appeals, agreeing to review only a small number of cases a year so as not to interfere with the four months they're on vacation). You've probably noticed a pattern here. For at least the past 30 years or so, the Democrats have been accomplices to the Republicans in creating an arch-reactionary Supreme Court, indeed a revanchist one that is driving the U.S. back to a 19th century legal regime. Why does the "liberal" Democratic Party keep aiding and abetting the Republican packing of the virtually all-powerful Supreme Court with reactionaries? The fact that they are doing it is undeniable on the evidence. Their motives are two:

First, just as the awful reactionaries the Republicans run for president provide convenient bogeymen for the Democrats to run against, forcing many people to vote for the Democrats while holding their noses  (political extortion), so the specter of the Supreme Court overturning the Roe vs. Wade decision of 1973 which finally granted women a limited right to terminate pregnancies, has been a perennial fright campaign the Democrats trot out at every election. I've received years of fund-raising letters from the Democrats, such as from Nancy Pelosi, and their various committees, telling me how the Supreme Court "hangs in the balance" and thus so does "a woman's right to choose"- maybe if they weren't allergic to the word "abortion," the procedure wouldn't still be so stigmatized that most women still refuse to stand up and defend it. But now it looks like the Democrats cut it too close, as the high court they have helped create is about to strip women of the right to control their own bodies. NOW what, Democrats? Fucking assholes!

Second, and more fundamentally, the Democratic Party IS a right-wing party. It is just as imperialist as the Republicans, and just as dedicated to the perpetuation of corporate oligarchy as is the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers). It is not "better" than the GOP. It is merely somewhat less awful. Having a rightwing court is a useful backstop for when the Democratic politicians feel compelled to give in to pressure from their voters and actually pass some progressive legislation. They can rely on the reactionary Supreme Court to cancel the legislation by declaring it "Unconstitutional." There is always a slew of corporate and billionaire-funded reactionary dogs to bring legal challenges to such laws. So reactionary rich people pay reactionary anti-social freaks to sue and reactionary judges do the rest. It's a neat system. Reactionaries working hand in hand, in an organized system of repression and economic rapine. Works for the ultra-rich and their neo-fascist attack dogs. For the rest of us, not so much.

"We're one big happy SUPREME court!'

1] OSHA is the Occupational Safety and Health Agency, part of the Department of Labor. OSHA is a mostly toothless regulatory agency that is deliberately extremely underfunded and understaffed by Congress so it is unable to do its putative task of regulating all the workplaces in the U.S. for health and safety violations. Typically, when it happens to discover a violation (it only discovers a tiny percentage of them, we can safely assume, since it can rarely inspect most workplaces) the company is merely told to correct the violation. Sometimes a small fine is "proposed," which the company typically challenges and gets reduced. If a worker or workers are killed on the job, things are taken a bit more seriously, but the companies and their managers and executives still get away with what in many cases is murder. (For example, criminally negligent homicide, and depraved indifference homicide charges would apply in many cases.)

The sorry history of how U.S. companies are allowed to get away with maiming, killing, and sickening workers has been well documented in numerous books and articles, including in outlets like Mother Jones and The Nation magazines, and even in the rare major media story about a particular company.

Speaking of vicious businessmen, some years back there was a case in New York City, the Pymm Thermometer company. It made glass thermometers which are filled with mercury. It knowingly exposed its uneducated and naive workers to mercury vapors without respiratory protection. The result was a number of them were permanently maimed with holes in their brains. The local district attorney in Brooklyn brought criminal charges against I believe the company owner, and the jury convicted. The trial judge immediately threw out the convictions, and the criminals got away with it. This in "liberal " New York City, where the Democratic Party appoints its party hacks and  wired insiders as judges. (There is a charade of democracy in that the judges are on the ballot in elections but they never have any opposition candidates so like in China or the Soviet Union or Iraq under Saddam Hussein there is only one "choice.") 

The story was reported in The Village Voice weekly newspaper, a publication that reported what the "mainstream" media systematically hid, and it was gradually destroyed. But that's a long story. An internet search on "Pymm Thermometer" turned up a civil suit filed on behalf of Pymm's crippled working class victims, who can no longer earn a living and are reliant on the crumbs that poor unemployed people can squeeze from the government. The victims lost, and their case was dismissed, as the so-called "Workers Compensation" law barred them from suing. The NY state courts ruled that what Pymm did was NOT an "intentional tort"- BULLSHIT!- therefore the victims could only collect crumbs from Workers Comp. Thus do capitalist courts protect criminal businesspeople, in the U.S. version of capitalism.