U.S. Practicing for War with Russia in Ukraine

On September 4th, the Pentagon, the global headquarters of the U.S. military leviathan, announced military “exercises” (practicing for war, in this case against Russia) with Kiev regime forces. This rehearsal, called Rapid Trident, will also involve military units from various U.S. lackey nations. Another rehearsal with Ukrainian regime troops will take place on a U.S. warship sailing in the Black Sea. (Maybe Russia should start sailing naval vessels in the Gulf of Mexico and off the Florida keys, with Cuban forces. See how the U.S. likes that! You'll hear the screeching and outraged fulminations then!)

No doubt there are other U.S. military operations in Ukraine that are being kept secret.

We already know that the U.S. secret police are running “operations” in Ukraine. No less than the head of the CIA himself, John “Cutthroat” Brennan, turned up in Kiev after the coup earlier this year. The U.S. media has maintained a total blackout on what the CIA (and other U.S. “intelligence” agencies) are doing in Ukraine.


The Western-installed president of Ukraine, Petro “Billionaire Candyman” Poroshenko, has publicly stated his intent to press Obama to sign a military alliance agreement when he sees Obama in Washington, D.C., the Imperial City, later this month. This “security” pact is to drag the U.S. into wholesale military intervention in Ukraine, Poroshenko hopes.


And the U.S.-chosen prime minister of Ukraine, Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk, shrilling screeched to a crowd of Western politicians and big business bosses that Russia wanted to gobble up all of Ukraine and Putin was recreating the Soviet Union. (Apparently the Soviet Union is such a great bogeyman that capitalist demagogues can't let it die. Like a zombie, or the Freddy Krueger character in A Nightmare on Elm Street, the Soviet Union is indestructible.) According to Yatsenyuk, “I clearly understand the final goal of Putin. He doesn't want to take just Donetsk and Luhansk. He is trying to take all of Ukraine. He wants to re-form the Soviet Union.” Seeking to alarm his audience with the ghost of the Soviet Union, Yatsenyuk continued to lobby for NATO membership for Ukraine, which he believes would force NATO to attack Russia on his regime's behalf.

“We are still in a state of war and the key aggressor is the Russian Federation,” squawked Yatsenyuk, completely ignoring the reality of an internal rebellion and civil war, with Russia aiding one side and the U.S. bloc the other. Then he made his oft-repeated pitch for NATO military intervention: “NATO in this particular circumstance is the only vehicle to protect Ukraine.” From a section of its own populace, not just Russia. And for “Ukraine,” read “the Kiev regime.” [1]


Other than kill some people and blow things up (“give the Russians a bloody nose” in U.S. imperialist parlance), violent U.S.-NATO interventions can't defeat Russia militarily in Ukraine. (Unless the U.S. starts a nuclear war- which would mean everyone loses and no one wins. Although there have always been American madmen inside and high up within the “national security state” who believe nuclear war is “winnable.”) The success of the violent mob coup in February made the U.S. overconfident. It thought, with the installation of a comprador regime of collaborators, that it had successfully ripped Ukraine out of the Russian orbit and added it to the U.S. domain. The almost immediate signing of an onerous “loan agreement” with the International Monetary Fund, including the usual economic “restructuring,” cemented the new relationship of subservience to Western high finance. [2]


The “agreement” mandates the impoverishment of the Ukrainian people, in effect, in order to pay off Ukraine's “debt” to the West. And here's an example of outrageous hypocrisy: Ukraine owes Russia for Russian natural gas Ukraine has consumed but not paid for. Russia's demand for payment, and warnings- called “threats” in Western media- to cut off the gas flow, is deemed to be economic blackmail and a form of pressure. Not so Western extortion of Ukraine with the forced impoverishment of its people. That's just sound economics, in the Western propaganda version of reality!


1] Yatsenyuk was personally anointed for his position by the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, the neocon imperialist Victoria Nuland, whose pet name for him is “Yats.” See “U.S. Enlisted UN Stooges in Ukraine Subversion.”


Yatsenyuk's yammerings rate entire articles in the New York Times, as that U.S. ruling class bulletin board sees things. “Yats's” latest war-mongering ravings rated a whole article in that paper on Sunday (probably Saturday online). “Putin Intent on Taking 'All of Ukraine,' Leader Says.” September 14, 2014, page 4. Nice inflammatory headline there, Times!


2] In addition to the IMF imposing the usual class warfare policies on Ukraine, raising taxes on the people, raising the prices they have to pay for the necessities of life, and cutting social services, as part of Ukraine's “association agreement” with the Western vultures the Ukrainian comprador rulers agreed to let Monsanto flood Ukraine with its Genetically Modified Organisms (special food crop seeds made to withstand heavy doses of Monsanto's agricultural poisons, mainly the herbicide Round Up), as a camel's nose under the tent to break into the European market. See “Monsanto in Ukraine: EU Association Agreement and IMF loan for Ukraine opens the backdoor for GMO into EU.”

Anders Fogh “Foghorn” Rasmussen Rattles NATO's Saber Again

The Secretary General of NATO, the Danish reactionary and former prime minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, is sabotaging the latest Russian effort at resolving the Western-created Ukraine “crisis.” [1]

Rasmussen has contemptuously brushed off Putin's call for a ceasefire and negotiated settlement in the Ukrainian civil war as not sincere. Rasmussen prefers creating a NATO “rapid reaction force” and stationing it in the Baltic states, which would do absolutely nothing to resolve the Ukraine imbroglio. In fact, it would only encourage the Kiev regime in its intransigence. Rasmussen wants Europe, in the midst of recession (and depressions in Spain and Greece, with the attendant mass misery) to direct its economic resources to increasing the militaries of the NATO states.

Both the U.S. and UK government radio propaganda networks, NPR and the BBC, treated us to Rasmussen's belligerent remarks.

Here are some of the latest bayings of the U.S.' barking dog, Rasmussen, as he opened a NATO get-together in Wales, to which nominal Ukrainian president Petro O. “Candyman Billionaire” Poroshenko was invited, even though Ukraine isn't a NATO member (yet):

“Russia has attacked Ukraine.”

Lumping Russia in with the Islamofascist “Islamic State,” Rasmussen vowed, "We will take important steps to counter these threats."

Then he demanded Russian surrender as the road to “peace,” just as “peace” is Israeli code for “Palestinian surrender and subjugation.” But he made it sound oh-so-reasonable:

"Let me stress we welcome all efforts to find a peaceful solution ... (but) what counts is what is actually happening on the ground," Rasmussen said.

"We continue to call on Russia to pull back its troops from Ukrainian borders, stop the flow of weapons and fighters into Ukraine, stop the support for armed militants in Ukraine and engage in a constructive political process.

"That would be a genuine effort to facilitate a peaceful solution," he said.

In other words, completely abandon the eastern Ukrainians, cut them off so their resistance can be crushed and the armed separatists annihilated, and then they'll be a “peaceful solution,” namely the conquest of eastern Ukraine by the Kiev cabal. Sounds like a plan, Rassy!

Recall that before Russia intervened, the “offer” the Kiev regime publicly made to the separatists was this: put down your arms, and then we'll negotiate. Literally, that's what Poroshenko “offered.” Guess what would have been “negotiated” once the rebels surrendered? Do you prefer death by firing squad or by hanging? Remember, the Kiev cabal is STILL calling the separatists “terrorists” (as one of their apparatchiks just did a couple of days ago on the BBC radio show “Hard Talk”). What do you do with terrorists? You kill them. Besides, the Kiev cabal sees themselves as the legitimate government of All Ukraine, therefore the separatists are traitors- another capital crime. And the Kiev cabal has already shown its ruthlessness in bloodily crushing opponents, not just in the systematic shelling of cities it doesn't control, killing over 2,000 civilians so far, but also in the 40 or so dissidents its street goons burned alive in a building a few months ago. (Even hear what became of the “investigation” that was promised after that?) And the Russians just found the body and burned out car of a Russian journalist who went missing in Ukraine a month ago when the column of Ukrainian refugees was was accompanying was attacked by Kiev's military forces. Don't hear any moaning and gnashing of teeth in Western media about THAT murder of a journalist! (Unlike with the “Islamic State” executions of two American hostage-reporters in recent days.)

                                                                              

                                                                       

U.S. lapdog Anders Fogh Rasmussen bares his fangs and growls at Russia.

1] To U.S.-bloc political elites, the “crisis” in Ukraine is that Russia doesn't roll over and play dead while the U.S. and its lackey-nations rip the country, with its vital Russian naval base on the Black Sea, out of the Russian sphere of influence and enlist it as a member in the anti-Russian military alliance, NATO. The real crisis in Ukraine is the killing of over 2,000 civilians by Kiev's military incursions and bombardments in the eastern part of the country, and the creation of a million “displaced people” (presumably temporary refugees, although some will turn out to be permanent). 

Some of these Ukrainians have fled across the border into Russia, creating a burden for that nation. So that is another Russian interest in settling the unrest and conflict in Ukraine. Naturally this interest goes unmentioned in Western media propaganda, which instead portrays Russia as an invading power intent on conquering Ukraine and then moving on to occupy the three Baltic states and even other states beyond.

The U.S.-bloc has consistently rejected every Russian compromise offer, including before the U.S. engineered the overthrow of the Yanukovych regime, when Russia offered to enter into a three-way economic arrangement between the EU, Ukraine, and Russia. When the EU stiff-armed Russia, Putin made clear to Yanukovych that Ukraine would face economic retaliation if it cut off Russia and entered into a sweetheart trade deal with the EU, so Yanukovych didn't go through with signing the EU treaty. For this “crime,” he was overthrown.

This demented propaganda is a baseless hoax, but it's hopeless to inform the brainwashed American and European populations of this. The only check on U.S.-EU aggressiveness is the unwillingness of their publics to support any war generally. This limits the U.S. and its NATO underlings to “special operations,” sneaky killings and so on, and to supplying and “advising” proxy forces such as the Kurds in northern Iraq (who deserve support, but that is not why the U.S. is giving it to them).

Russia and Ukrainian Separatists Can't Get Their Stories Straight. Is East Ukraine Russia's South Vietnam?

The Boys Who Keep Crying Wolf (Russian Bear, actually) in Kiev may finally be right this time.

The Kiev regime installed in power with U.S.-bloc connivance is squealing yet again about Russian troops (and, they claim, heavy military equipment) inside Ukraine. Russia is once again denying it. Yet a Ukrainian separatist chieftain went on TV to brag about “4,000” Russians helping fight the Kiev regime's forces. Not very plausibly, he claimed they were volunteers taking their vacation time to fight in Ukraine's civil war.

If there really are 4,000 Russian nationals fighting in Ukraine, I rather doubt they are 4,000 individuals who spontaneously on their own decided to go to Ukraine to fight. (Not many people have the zealous commitment of Jihadists, tens of thousands of whom travel from numerous countries to fight on the latest frontline in their global “Holy War.” In regard to that, the newly self-crowned “Caliph” of the “Caliphate” of the “Islamic State” made a savvy move. Fulfilling the dream of creating the Caliphate is sure to be a strong draw for yet more Islamofascists to join up with him.) So the 4,000 part might be true, or it might be exaggerated, or a boast (the separatist leaders seem given to bluster and bombast) but the part about them all being volunteers acting on their own is far-fetched. [Later today, the U.S. government radio propaganda network NPR reported that U.S. officials say there are 1,000 Russian troops in Ukraine.]

This has been a recurring problem for the Russians. They and the Ukrainian separatists are often reading from different and contradictory (or at least inconsistent) pages. The Russians have their scripts, and the Ukrainian separatists are undisciplined and inexperienced and not under Russian control (contrary to Western propaganda and repeated assertions by government bosses of the U.S. and EU), so they are given to spouting off without thinking or planning the effects of their words. So what they say is more honest in terms of reflecting their real thoughts and attitudes, and potentially more accurate as there is not the careful calculation Russian officials engage in before speaking.

The Ukrainian separatists are constantly stepping on Russia's propaganda lines and various assertions. But this doesn't stop Western “leaders” (government bosses) and propagandists (aka “journalists” and “commentators” and even some “historians”) from constantly painting the separatists as totally under Russia's control, if not puppets.

Meanwhile, in besieged Donetsk, the Kiev regime killed another 15 civilians with their artillery, reports U.S. government radio propaganda network NPR (August 28th, Noon, Washington, D.C. time). [1]

The U.S.' ambassador to the UN, Samantha “I'm So Moral!” Power has been attacking Russia almost daily, today demanding that “Russia has to stop lying and has to stop fueling this conflict.” She attacked Putin by name today for supporting “armed separatists.” (Well who supported armed rioters who overthrew the previous Ukrainian elected government, even AFTER it agreed to early elections, Samantha?) Power refers to the “illegal separatists.” Unlike the South Sudan “legal” separatists, backed by the U.S. Of course, legal in U.S. eyes has always been what the U.S. says is legal. That's why U.S. torture is legal, for example.

A larger power being drawn into another nation militarily to shore up a regime is a common story. Yet the U.S. and its lackey nations keep professing shock and outrage that Russia would do such a thing. They act as if it's some unprecedented violation of international law, an unconscionable tramping of Ukrainian national sovereignty. Doesn't Russia know that borders are inviolate? (Now remind me: who was it that recently invaded Iraq? And Afghanistan? And before that, Haiti, and Panama, and Grenada, and Lebanon, and on and on? And who goes around the world subverting and overthrowing governments- including the previous one in Ukraine? I think it was that nation located about 7,000 miles away from Ukraine, not the one bordering it that is currently the object of Western opprobrium. Oh, excuse me, when referring to the U.S. and its Eurolackeys, I'm supposed to say “the international community.” Okay, “the opprobrium of the international community,” just minus Africa, Asia, and Latin America, in other words, the homelands of 90% of humanity.)

There was one more thing I wanted to say. There's a little bit of a parallel with the U.S. and “South” Vietnam, and Russia and the Ukrainian separatists and their newly declared Republic. The U.S. got drawn in by stages to shore up a client regime, because the client regime was too weak to stand on its own. In the Vietnam case, the regime lacked the support of its own citizens. In the case of Ukraine, my sense is opinion is divided in eastern Ukraine. Some support the new republic. Some support a unified Ukraine. But many, perhaps most, just want the violence and destruction to end. They want a return to something like normal life.

Also the “South” Vietnamese fascist military dictators were not mere U.S. puppets and thus occasionally created complications for the U.S. This is also the case with the Ukraine separatists and Russia. [2]

Of course, while there are parallels with the U.S. in Vietnam, there are important differences.

One very large difference is that Ukraine is an important country to Russia, on its border, with a geostrategically vital Russian naval base in the Crimean peninsula, whereas Vietnam was a country where the U.S. historically had NO strategic interest or ties, and which is located literally on the opposite side of the globe from the U.S. The U.S. still insisted on imposing its will on Vietnam.

So there's one thing that is exactly the same in both situations: the U.S. was and is a hyper-aggressive empire that insists on dominating every square inch of the planet it possibly can.

If certain Western imperialists get their way, NATO will escalate the conflict. Belligerent perma-hawks in the U.S. and Europe have been beating the drums for months to send military aid to the Kiev cabal, and military forces to other countries in proximity to Russia like the Baltics and Poland. Just today the BBC “World Service” (a global radio arm of the British government propaganda network) put on an armchair militarist from Jane's Defense Weekly to loudly shill for military intervention. He said NATO was formed precisely for such a situation, to “defend Europe from Russian aggression.” (Actually it was formed as an anti-Soviet alliance.) When the BBC host pointed out that Ukraine is not a member of NATO, he brushed that off with some verbal parry- I forget his exact words, but it was specious. Guys like him are never fazed by facts or logic that refuge their arguments. (Later U.S. government radio propaganda network NPR similarly put on some “expert” from a “think” tank to beat his little war drum too.)

If the U.S. and its Eurolackeys refuse to cease their tug-of-war with Russia over Ukraine, you better fasten your seatbelts. We're in for a wild ride.

1] An example of obnoxious U.S./Western propaganda was aired at 1pm Washington time by NPR: “NATO is accusing Russia of drastically escalating its war with Ukraine...” defining the Kiev regime as “Ukraine.” Just as the Kiev side are referred to as “the Ukrainians” and the separatists are “pro-Russian separatists” and NOT Ukrainians. Even though they are. This habitual propagandistic nomenclature is followed undeviatingly by U.S. and Western media, marching in lockstep behind U.S. imperialist foreign policy.

One of few visible dissenters inside the U.S. establishment from its propaganda barrage has been Professor John J. Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago. A self-described “conservative,” ten-year military veteran, and friend of the late imperialist Harvard academic and Vietnam war criminal Samuel “Mad Dog” Huntington, Mearsheimer is a “political scientist” of the “realist” school of international relations. (“Mad Dog” is the sobriquet other American imperialists in Vietnam bestowed on Huntington, so you can imagine how bad he was. He also wrote a notorious paper, “The Crisis of Democracy,” on the need to beat back the American populace and keep them out of policy-making and decision-making.) Videos of Mearsheimer's appearances are on youtube.com, including an appearance on the government and corporate funded “Public Broadcasting System” “news” show, the “Newshour,” where he went head to head with an unreconstructed aggressive American imperialist academic. He also just published an article in Foreign Affairs, the publication of the “Council on Foreign Relations,” a sort of shadow State Department where elite poohbahs hang out between their government gigs. [“Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault: The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin,” Foreign Affairs, September 2014.] See also “Cross Talk 28 April . Cohen and Mearsheimer discuss Ukraine,” RT, on youtube.com, for the views of two academics who take objective views of the Ukraine situation, as opposed to the U.S.-chauvinist-centric view predominant in Western media and among elites.

2] The most notorious example of “South” Vietnamese rulers making trouble for the U.S. government was in 1968, when the Lyndon Johnson regime was negotiating a peace agreement with the “North” Vietnamese, and the traitor Richard Nixon, running for president, secretly told the “South” Vietnamese fascist generals to sabotage any deal, since he planned to continue the war. Nixon was elected president that November only because the CIA assassinated the prospective Democratic party presidential nominee, Robert Kennedy, in June. They also assassinated Martin Luther King, Jr., in April, which also aided Nixon by prompting black riots in numerous cities, directly feeding into Nixon's “law and order” propaganda theme, code for “repress the blacks.” White Americans in 1968 were even more racist and fearful of the oppressed African-American population than they are now. The support among whites for increased repression of blacks whenever blacks rebel or even apply legal political pressure is called “backlash” in U.S. political discourse.

Guide To Ukraine “Crisis” Vocabulary

Guide To Ukraine “Crisis” Vocabulary

First, “crisis.” That means, the U.S. isn't getting its way 100%.

“Ukraine.” Can mean the actual country. Often it means the satraps the U.S. installed in power in Kiev. As in “Ukraine asked for Western help against the Russian invasion [sic],” or, “the American government supports Ukraine.”

“International law.” The rules the U.S. insists on imposing, which boil down to, the U.S. does whatever it wants, and other nations do what the U.S. wants. If the U.S. does it, it's legal. So arranging the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian government by a neo-Nazi led mob and installing people in power handpicked by the U.S. State Department is perfectly legal, whereas Russia protecting its naval base in the Crimea and letting people vote in a referendum to choose to secede from western Ukraine or not is “a violation of international law.” And of the Ukrainian Constitution, too, which apparently has a provision allowing for neo-Nazi hoodlums to overthrow the government and its replacement by U.S.-approved puppets.

“The international community.” All the lackey and stooge nations that line up behind the U.S.

“The rights of all the Ukrainian people.” The U.S. decrees there shall be no partition and the entirely of Ukraine shall henceforth be in the U.S. domain. Self-determination for the populace of eastern Ukraine is not allowed. Controlled elections next year will ratify U.S. and neo-Nazi dominance of Ukraine.

“The territorial integrity of Ukraine.” No self-determination by the people of eastern Ukraine shall be allowed. A secession referendum is intolerable to the U.S. bloc, aka “the West.”

“Legitimate government.” The government of the U.S' choosing. See Obama statement of March 6th.

"Illegitimate." Any action the U.S. doesn't like.

"Unconstitutional." See "illegitimate."

"Destabilize." Interfere with the U.S. takeover of Ukraine.

"Violation of internationall law." Action that conflicts with the U.S. program for controlling Ukraine.

“Democratic leaders.” See “legitimate government.”

.

“Democracy.” A regime obedient to U.S. wishes. This is what that word always means.

Obama Dictates Terms to Russia To Keep Its Naval Base in Crimea

American Emperor Barack Obama made this public statement on March 6^th:

“The proposed, referendum, on the future of Crimea, would violate the Ukrainian Constitution, and, violate international law. Any discussion about the future of Ukraine must include the legitimate government, of Ukraine. In two thousand fourteen we are well beyond the days when, borders can be redrawn over the heads, of, democratic leaders. While we, take these steps [sanctions on Russia] I wanna be clear that there's also a way to resolve this crisis, that respects the interests of the Russian Federation, as well as the Ukrainian people. Let international monitors, into all of Ukraine, including Crimean, to ensure the rights of all Ukrainians are being respected, including, ethnic Russians. Begin consultations, between the government of Russia and Ukraine, with the participation, of the international community. Russia would maintain its basing rights in Crimea, provided that its abides by its agreements, and respects, Ukraine's, sovereignty and territorial integrity. And the world should support, the people of Ukraine as they move, to elections, in May. That's the path of de-escalation, and Secretary [of State John] Kerry is engaged in discussions with all of the relevant parties, including Russia and Ukraine, to pursue that path. But, if this violation of international law continues, the resolve of the United States and our allies and the international community, will remain firm. Meanwhile we've taken steps to reaffirm our commitment to the security and democracy of our allies in Eastern Europe, and to support, the people of Ukraine.” [video of Obama at bottom]

Now, it isn't easy to capture Obama's speaking patterns in a text transcript. His speech is typically (but not always) jerky, not flowing and smooth, so one must decide how long a pause between words merits a comma. He has pauses of varying lengths between words. Also, what words he emphasizes (which I have italicized) is tricky, since his speech is “cool,” not “hot,” that is, he mostly lectures like a university professor. So should the words on which his voice rises in tone be italicized? Sometimes the second syllable of a word seems emphasized. Anyway, you can watch and listen to him yourself below.

So let's parse this amazing speechlet. He really stands reality on its head in a most mendacious fashion. The chutzpah and hypocrisy would be breathtaking, except that it's more or less routine for U.S. Emperors.

First, he asserts that the referendum on secession would violate the Ukrainian Constitution. What, having a mob overthrow the elected government in Kiev, and then the U.S. anoint its hand-picked choices as a new “government,” is allowed under that Constitution? That just takes a lot of smug and arrogant chutzpah to assert. And I don't know what part of international law bars a referendum asking people to make a decision on their political alignment. On the other hand, international law might have something to say about foreign powers subverting and overthrowing a government and replacing it with one more to its liking. But the real reason the U.S. and its lackeys is so hysterically opposed to the referendum is because they know the majority in eastern Ukraine look set to vote in favor of it- hence the need to brand it as “illegitimate” and “illegal” in advance.

Then he refers to this puppet U.S.-installed “government” as “the legitimate government of Ukraine.” Not the elected one the U.S. just helped overthrow. And this new “government” is to have a veto on even holding a referendum in Crimea, the apparent meaning of his second sentence. His third sentence absurdly called the U.S.-installed, unelected puppets “democratic leaders.” I guess if you interpret “democratic” as code for “U.S.-controlled,” then it makes sense. The elected leader was overthrown. Most people equate “democratic” with “chosen by the people.” Which you would think would require an election. Obama promises a May election (which was already scheduled before the coup). Given that a fascist-led mob now wields significant power in Kiev, and just engineered a unanimous “vote” in the parliament there to endorse the coup, one is entitled to wonder how free and fair- and legitimately contested- the May election will be. After all, the mob now deemed “the legitimate Ukrainian government” by the U.S. and its lackeys couldn't even wait until that election to seize power.

As for borders: Obama doesn't have a problem with Israel redrawing its borders, in blatant violation of international law, to absorb its conquests of 1967. In fact the U.S. is paying it to do so, and protecting it, and arming it, so it can.

Next, feigning reasonableness, Obama tries to steer Russia down the path of surrender to the U.S. Let so-called “international monitor” into Crimea (and the rest of Ukraine, because Obama is SO fair and even-handed, you see) he demands, “to ensure the rights of all Ukrainians are being respected.” I don't even know what that's supposed to mean. I think it means “so we can veto secession in the name of the 'Ukrainian people.'” They're frantically calling the referendum “illegitimate,” apparently because they think the eastern Ukrainians will vote to split off from the coup puppet government in Kiev. Obama and his Eurolackeys just put a cop-killing mob in power in Kiev. Now he's prattling about “rights.” Obviously all he cares about is power. This is a guy who picks Americans to assassinate, who defends his right to imprison American citizens in military gulags without trial or charges indefinitely, who blows up wedding parties in other countries, and he wants us to believe he cares about the rights of Ukrainians? Are there sentient beings on this planet who still give the slightest credence to such guff?

Obama references the “crisis,” that is entirely of his and his Eurolackeys' making, and tells Russia what it has to do to “resolve” it. Russia has to pretend that the coup government is legitimate, and beg it to let Russia keep its naval base in Crimea. We can dismiss the empty rhetoric about “respecting the rights of all Ukrainians.” A fascist-led mob just overthrew the elected government and took over Parliament, and the U.S. installed a client regime. This blather about “respecting the rights of all Ukrainians” is horseshit. It is the RIGHT of the eastern Ukrainians to secede from this Western neocolonial creation if they so choose, just as it was the right of the southern Sudanese to secede (the U.S. supported that secession), for example, or the right of the Kosovar Albanians to secede from Serbia (again, with U.S. support). And those secessions were done by force of arms, not by referendum. (We're already being brainwashed to think that a Russian gun will be pointed at every eastern Ukrainian's head to make him or her vote for secession. The fact that Western propagandists- aka “journalists”- are freely roaming the Crimea makes me doubt that picture of repression.)

Then comes some doubletalk, starting with a demand: “Begin consultations between the government of Russia and Ukraine, with the participation, of the international community. Russia would maintain its basing rights in Crimea, provided that its abides by its agreements, and respects, Ukraine's, sovereignty and territorial integrity.”

Now in one sentence he's ordering Russia to talk to Ukraine. In the next sentence he says Russia “would” keep its naval “basing rights,” (not “base,” see the subtle difference?). Well how does Obama magically know in advance what the outcome of “consultations” between Russia and the “government of Ukraine” would be? Because it's a puppet government, and the U.S. said that for now Russia won't be immediately shoved out of Crimean.

But look at the poison pill Obama inserted, the conditions for the U.S. to allow Russia to keep its Black Sea Fleet and access to the worlds seas and oceans from there: “provided that its abides by its agreements, and respects, Ukraine's, sovereignty and territorial integrity.” And who will be the judge of that? The U.S., obviously. And given how distorted the U.S. view of reality is, how could the Russians breath easy over that? The mere presence of Russian troops in Crimea has already been denounced, repeatedly, as “a violation of Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity.” And if the easterners vote to secede? Why, that would be a “violation of blah blah blah.” The puppet “prime minister” who Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland told the U.S. ambassador to install, in that infamous intercepted phone call (that the Western media has conveniently chucked down the memory hole) has already made noises about abrogating the base treaty with Russia. The rump parliament voted to demote the Russian language from having official status in Ukraine, jamming a thumb in the eye of millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians (hey Obama, who exactly is violating whose rights here?) which the “prime minister” had to hurriedly reverse, no doubt on U.S. orders.

And let's remember, that this business of moving NATO right up to the borders of Russia violates the understanding Gorbachev thought he had with the U.S. when he allowed the Soviet Empire to collapse peacefully. The U.S. wasn't supposed to push the edge of its empire right to the Russian border. Now, not only is Russia not to be permitted any buffer zone at all from Western encroachment, it is not even to be allowed to maintain its naval base on the Black Sea, through which it transits to the Mediterranean, the Atlantic Ocean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean. This is the thanks Russia gets for aiding the U.S. in its war in Afghanistan (quite a generous gift, considering what the U.S. did to Russia there!). It doesn't pay to do the U.S. any favors, would seem to be the lesson. (Iran can draw a similar lesson from the help it extended to the U.S. after 9/11/01 when the U.S. went to war against the Taliban. The U.S. is an arrogant ingrate which thinks that all its demands are merely its due.)

The U.S. basically recognizes only its own interests as legitimate- and of course Israel's, which are Super-legitimate, superseding even the U.S.' own.

Obama throws in “the international community” a few times. Which is just a way of saying “the whole world against Russia.” The U.S. always uses that rhetoric. It seems that whichever nation the U.S. is attacking at the moment, it's always THE WHOLE WORLD against the target nation. Because the U.S. is so morally righteous and good, of course the WHOLE WORLD is always behind the U.S. I don't think there's ever been a nation as arrogant as the U.S. But “the international community” here really means the EU. Ever since World War II, Europe has been nothing but a collection of U.S.-flunky nations. We see that again here, as we have in the “war on terror,” where even Sweden- Sweden!- helped the CIA kidnap “terrorists” from Swedish soil and spirit them away to secret torture dungeons. (Some of those torture dungeons were in Europe too.) And thanks to Edward Snowden, we find that the European secret police help the NSA spy on the people of Europe, whose rulers supposedly care so much about human rights. Well, pleasing the Master comes first, I suppose. Politicians aren't really human beings. They are creatures of power. So they line up with the natural direction of power, like iron filings in a magnetic field.

Obama ends his peroration with a hackneyed faux-”stirring” pledge of support for “the people of Ukraine.” Well, the U.S. certainly supports some people of Ukraine- namely the new puppets it anointed as the “legitimate government” of Ukraine. And those satraps can rely on U.S. support until the U.S. decides not to support them. That happens sometimes. It happened to Diem in “South” Vietnam, where the U.S. gave permission for his assassination in a military coup. It happened to Ferdinand Marcos, dictator of the Philippines. It even happened, eventually, to the white racist rulers of apartheid South Africa, even though their regime was not much different from the “Jim Crow” U.S. South. Sometimes even the most iron-clad U.S. “guarantee” rusts away. [2]

Now, I don't really care if Russia keeps its naval base in Crimea. That's Russia's problem. I don't even believe that the division of humanity into nation-states is necessarily a good thing. I'm not on Russia's “side” in this. I simply don't side with this hyper-aggressive, megalomaniacally arrogant attitude on the part of U.S. imperialists that they should rule the entire planet. It's like the greed of the megarich. Just as the thirst of the megarich for more money is unquenchable, so the lust for more power on the part of the American imperialists can never be satisfied. While the U.S. maintains 750 military bases outside its national borders, an incredible number which is ignored in the western propaganda media, the U.S. want to shove Russia out of its historic Black Sea naval base, which is has maintained for centuries. [1] Crimea was part of Russia, until Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, a native Ukrainian, got it into his head to redraw the internal borders of the Soviet Union and transfer Crimea to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. The Ukraine then was like a U.S. state, like Texas, a political subdivision of a nation, not a nation in its own right. Now suddenly the U.S. says you can't redraw borders. As if borders aren't redrawn all the time! They're lines on a map! And Russia is not redrawing the borders, it is giving the eastern Ukrainians the opportunity to weigh in on whether they want to be dragged against their will, via a coup, into the arms of the EU (and sooner or later, of NATO).

The truth is, it's Russia that has been weak here. Russia has in effect ceded western Ukraine to the U.S.-bloc. Now it is trying to maintain a vitally strategic naval base. It's the hyper-aggressive U.S. that is demanding every inch of Ukrainian soil for itself, against the will of half the population (while Obama and the entire chorus of western politicians and propagandists falsely proclaim the fight is between “the Ukrainian people” and Russian “aggressors.”

Ask any American political scientist in the field of “international relations,” whether it is realistic to expect Russia to cede such a vital strategic interest as access to the sea. The U.S. won't even clear out of Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, which it has no need for and where Cuba has made clear for over half a century the U.S. “presence” (occupation, in point of fact) is not wanted.

It's not a “crisis” if the Ukraine divides in two. The only “crisis” is ENTIRELY a U.S. creation, since the U.S. won't accept a Russian presence outside its own borders, except to fall in line behind the U.S. to gang up on Iran, say, or otherwise act as a U.S. vassal state, as the U.S.' European lapdogs do. It takes the kind of monumental gall that only the U.S. seems to possess, to destabilize the Ukraine, as the U.S. and its Eurostooges did, and then to loudly denounce Russia for “destabilizing” it, and for “interfering” in the Ukraine's internal affairs! I would submit to you that Russia has a far more pressing interest in Ukraine than does the U.S., which is thousands of miles away. Ukraine is on Russia's borders and hosts a vital Russian naval base. Yet Russia hasn't declared a “Monroe Doctrine,” as the U.S. did almost two centuries ago, claiming the entire Western Hemisphere as its exclusive property (“our backyard”). But apparently the fundamental foreign policy principle of the U.S. is- What's Mine Is Mine, What's Yours Is Mine Too.

Update: Kerry is threatening Russia if the secession referendum isn't cancelled. And German chancellor Angela Merkel has been yapping at Russia. Apparently she's forgotten all about how the NSA tapped her cellphone. And Obama never even apologized!

1] In case you were wondering, against the U.S.' 750 bases on other people's lands, the Russians have- count 'em- two. The one in Crimea, and a naval base in Syria. Which they'd have a hard time getting to if the U.S. succeeds in kicking them out of the Crimea.

Oh, and speaking of “occupations,” the people of Okinawa positively despise the U.S. military occupation of their small island, which the U.S. invaded and conquered in World War Two, slaughtering an estimated 100,000 Okinawan civilians in the process. They especially don't like the constant rapes committed by U.S. Marines and sailors. And roaring jets flying low right over the main city every day. Gets annoying. But hey, Russia has to respect the will of “the Ukrainian people!” So says the U.S.! And that's an order!

The best, concise description of Okinawa's condition, still true today, is this segment of a talk by the late Japan expert, Chalmers Johnson, "Okinawa, Japanese Colony under USN-USMC boot heel."

2] Here's an interesting semantical tally. In his self-righteous pronouncement, Obama used the word “violate” or “violation” three times, “respect” or its variations three times, “people,” referring to the Ukrainians, three times, plus a reference to “all Ukrainians.” “Rights” pops up twice. The word “international” appears FIVE times. And naturally the words “sovereignty,” “integrity,” “reaffirm,” “support,” “firm,” “commitment,” “allies,” and “democracy” trot across the stage. A word processing program could have written the speech for him. For all I know, one did. U.S. imperialist rhetoric at this stage of history is a grab bag of trite cliches and bogus hot air, intended to send signals rather than impart meaning.

 

Here's the Ukraine, with the Crimea peninsula, site of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. From there, Russian ships can sail through the Dardanelles (straits that pass through Turkey) into the Mediterranean Sea and from there to the Atlantic Ocean, or through the Suez canal to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, Indian Ocean and east Pacific.

Here you see the limits of Russian access to the sea. Its northern border is inside the Arctic Circle and is icebound much of the year- although global warming is gradually increasing the passable days. It has access to the Pacific on its far eastern coastline. Ukraine is on the left side, between and below the words "Europe" and "Moscow" on the map.

Here's a larger area view of Asia. You can see how cutting off Russian access to the Black Sea would add many thousands of miles of sea distance to the oil-rich Persian Gulf region for Russian ships.

                                                                 Here's that unctuous Emperor I was telling you about.

U.S. Bloc Ups the Ante on Ukraine Confrontation, With More Violence and Military Reinforcements

The U.S. isn't backing off one inch from its brazen attempt to rip the Ukraine out of the Russian sphere of influence and have it all to itself- the entire Ukraine.

Recall that repeated Russian offers to share the Ukraine with the Western empire- incredibly generous and not something the U.S. would ever consider regarding Mexico, say, or Canada- have been rebuffed. Starting with the “take it or leave it” deal the EU demanded ousted president Yanukovych sign earlier this year, when the Russians offered a three-way economic arrangement which the EU peremptorily rejected, through the power-sharing arrangements Yanukovych offered the “opposition,” which they rejected, the U.S.-bloc has been playing a winner-take-all power game over Ukraine.

Now NATO blowhard-militarist Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a reliable U.S. tool in all matters who has been making veiled threats against Russia for weeks, has announced that NATO will send more military forces into NATO-states on the Russian border. The U.S. Navy is sailing warships in the Black Sea. (And the U.S. had the chutzpah to grouse about a Russian plane “buzzing” one of the intruder warships.)

On the same day the now fascist-led Ukrainian puppet government's forces were killing and wounding scores in their “anti-terrorist operations” to seize key facilities occupied by pro-Russian Ukrainians in eastern cities, White House Press Secretary Jay Carney was saying this: "We appreciate the [Western-installed Ukrainian client] government’s statements that any actions it undertakes will be gradual and responsible, and we agree that the use of force is not a preferred option. That said, the Ukrainian government has a responsibility to provide law and order, and these provocations in eastern Ukraine are creating a situation in which the government has to respond. The best way to de-escalate this situation is for the armed militants to leave the buildings they have seized." (April 16^th.) Or, surrender or die.

Notice what carney said; the U.S. PREFERS that the Ukrainians resisting the U.S. takeover of
Ukraine just give up and stop resisting. But if they don't, the puppet government HAS to crush them ("has a responsibility...")

Funny, when Western-sponsored “armed militants” (many of them fascists and flaming anti-Semites whose hero is World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera) had occupied government buildings in Kiev, gutting some by fire, shooting and throwing Molotovs at police, with false flag snipers working for Maidan (the “moderate” group which overthrew the government; see Ukraine Snipers Worked For U.S. Puppet Government, Estonian Foreign Minister Told Ashton), Obama demanded that then-President Yanukovych withdraw the security forces! (Which of course would have allowed the violent mob to completely take over Kiev and seize state power, as they subsequently did.) Now that the shoe is on the other foot, in eastern Ukraine, of course the U.S. takes exactly the opposite position.

The U.S. Assistant Secretary of State herself was physically present on the streets of Kiev during the violent siege of the seat of government, handing out cookies to the killers who were killing cop and who ultimately overthrew the elected government, leading to the installation of new rulers handpicked by Nuland herself. (As we know beyond a shadow of a doubt from the intercepted phone call between her and her underling, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, in which she gives Pyatt his marching orders. See U.S. Enlisted UN Stooges in Ukraine Subversion.)

Now Secretary of State John “These Days I'm a Hawk!” Kerry is meeting in Geneva with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, along with the U.S.' EU lackeys and Ukrainian puppets, to try once again to jawbone the Russians into surrendering their interests.

GOP Senator John “Permanent POW” McCain assumed his usual perch on the Sunday morning TV propaganda shows to demand that Obama ship more arms to the Ukrainian puppet regime to fight the Russians. Of course, Russia could crush the Ukrainian military with one finger, so the real purpose of more weapons would be to fight and win a civil war.

So after destabilizing Ukraine with a coup and takeover (the U.S. and various private donors spent up to $100 million or so on the destabilization effort and takeover) which included false flag snipers killing both policemen and rioters (and blaming it on the hapless former president Yanukovych), we hear from Western politicians, apparatchiks, and propagandists incessant condemnations of Russia for “destabilizing” Ukraine and for breaking “international law”

Something tells me Russia is not going to allow itself to be landlocked along its entire southern border just so “the West” will stop saying mean things about it, or so Putin's pals can sun themselves on the Riviera.

This is the gratitude the U.S. shows Russia for providing crucial logistical support for the U.S. crusade in Afghanistan. The U.S. depends on transit through Russia for its expeditionary force there.

Interestingly, Pakistan gets a much better deal from the U.S., even though the Taliban is the cat's paw of the Paki military secret police, the malevolent ISI! (Inter-Services Intelligence.) Go figure.

Fascist Ukrainian youth honor their idol, World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera.

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?


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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

Trump To Ukraine- Your Rare Earth Minerals Or Your Life

On February 28, 2025, Career Extortionist Donald John Trump got unexpected resistance from Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Trump had summoned Zelensky to the White House to sign an agreement to hand over to the U.S. (presumably U.S. corporations in favor with Trump) half the revenues from Ukraine's natural resources- the minerals, oil, natural gas. In return for- basically nothing. No guarantee of military aid, intelligence aid, nothing. Just a typical Trump move, vague rhetoric, nothing enforceable. Nothing Trump has any intention of enforcing. [1]

Trump's shakedown attempt failed, so far. Zelensky was describing his view of the history of the war with Russia. Trump didn't want to hear it. He laid into Zelensky, saying he doesn't have "the cards," meaning he's playing with a weak hand, while Trump held the, well, trump card of U.S. war support. (Recall that Trump in his previous go at being president, briefly delayed delivering military supplies to Ukraine in a clumsy effort to get information on the corrupt Biden family doings in Ukraine, which pro-Democratic Party media dismissed as "dirt" without mentioning the outrageous, openly corrupt deal that Biden son Hunter got from Ukrainian gas company Burisma- a seat on the corporate board for $50,000 a MONTH, for several years. That's a multi-million dollar not very well disguised bribe to the Biden family. Incredibly dishonest hiding of the facts by Democratic Party politicians and their media allies. Oh, and Trump was actually impeached by the Democrats for that delay. Needless to say, the Republicans, who have memories as long as their party symbol, the elephant, never forgot or forgave.)

In yesterday's meeting, Trump rebuked Zelensky for being "very disrespectful," and "you're not being thankful, and that's not a nice thing." (Trump always accuses people who stand up to him of being "not nice," and worse.) Trump's vice president, the slippery opportunist J.D. Vance, jumped on Zelensky, with an accusatory rhetorical question, "have you said thank you once," and then revealed a festering grudge, denouncing Zelensky for "campaigning for the opposition" (that is, Biden) last October. (Of course "campaigning for" is a matter of interpretation. Don't trust Vance's.)

Trump bellowed at Zelensky that he was losing the war, and using the fact that the Ukrainian military is dependent on U.S. weapons and ordnance, armaments that Europe cannot manufacture as leverage, his ranting made clear that Ukraine had no choice but to give in to Trump's extortion.

Or so Trump thought, and evidently had previously calculated.

Zelensky didn't back down, however, so he was effectively thrown out of the White House in front of the assembled media. The schedule joint lunch didn't happen.

Conveniently on hand outside the White House to verbally excoriate Zelensky was Trump's number one Senate stooge, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. He rabidly attacked Zelensky, and insisted Zelensky would have to go unless he changed his attitude. (Graham often thinks he has the right to choose the heads of other nations' governments, a consistent imperialist impulse.) Among the things Trump's barking dog Graham said about Zelensky was "The way he confronted the President was over the top." All Zelensky did was try to talk back to Trump, a major offense when dealing with an Emperor-King.

 

Meanwhile USAID had cut off an infrastructure program in Ukraine, all USAID programs having been cancelled by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the reactionary Florida Cuban Trump plucked from the Senate for a cabinet post, and Elon Musk and the fake "Department" Trump created, DOGE, for "Department Of Government Efficiency." A deceptive name for what should be called Artificial Department Of Government Dismantling Or Destruction, ADOGOD.

After leaving the meeting where he was dressed down by Trump and Vance, Zelensky posted Thank-Yous to Trump, America, and the American people, on Trump hitman Elon Musk's propaganda site, X (formerly Twitter). Zelensky has thanked the U.S. and Europe innumerable times during the war.

On Ukraine, Trump is right that it cannot win the war. However the way he wants to end it mirrors what he did in Afghanistan, when he negotiated with the Taliban, cutting the Afghan government completely out of the process, and leaving it to his successor, Biden, to pull the rug out from under the client regime that depended on the U.S. for its survival. That regime collapsed as soon as the U.S. hastily retreated, or "cut and ran," an oft-used expression in U.S. discourse by war mongers but was strangely absent in the Afghan case, when it perfectly applied in a very literal sense. The result of handing over that country to the medieval and deranged Taliban has been awful for the Afghan people, and especially horrendous for Afghan women, who are now banned from employment and education and virtually imprisoned as housework and breeding slaves in their homes. 

But Trump cannot totally cut the Ukrainian government out of the picture as it is much stronger than the Afghan regime and unlike that regime, has the support of its population which supports the war effort except in the eastern portions of the country, which seceded after the U.S. coup and was bombed and shelled by the Kyiv regime, which waged war on it, Russia supporting the secessionists. Europe also support Kyiv, although it will not be able to manufacture weapons and ordnance of the type and in the quantities the U.S. has been supplying. Hence Trump's arm-twisting of the Ukrainians.

Unfortunately the U.S. put Ukraine in this difficult position. Just a few days after the Russian invasion in February 2022, Putin initiated negotiations with Zelensky about an agreement to end the war, which at that point Russia's thrust to Kyiv was grinding to a halt. The U.S. immediately stopped that. British prime minister at the time Boris "Bojo The Clown" Johnson" immediately rushed to Kyiv to pull Zelensky away from the negotiation path. The talks with Russia were promising. 

Then Ukraine went on  to achieve victories in the war. In the fall of 2022 Ukraine was at its high point of military success. This isn't mere hindsight. The chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, the highest U.S. military officer,  general Mark Milley, said at that time that it wouldn't get better for Ukraine and this was the time to seek an end to the war. [2]

However, then-president Joe Biden was always an aggressive war monger in Ukraine for years. He rejected that option. So he doomed Ukraine to ultimate defeat. (As Obama's vice president, he pushed for weapons to be sent to Ukraine, but Obama demurred, opting for just training missions.)

There are larger ways in which the U.S. painted Ukraine into this corner. There was the U.S.-instigated fascist led coup of 2014, ordered by Obama, with high U.S. officials on the ground in Kyiv agitating, most notoriously Victoria Nuland of the State Department, and people like (now dead) U.S. Senator and rabid militarist John McCain.

And then there's the original sin. President George "Bush The Younger" Bush in 2008 strong-armed NATO, over objections from Germany and France, into declaring that Georgia and Ukraine would be brought into NATO. Russia immediately howled that this was intolerable. (The German chancellor at the time, Angela Merkel, says she knew this would never fly with Russia, but being a U.S. lapdog, as are all bourgeois European "leaders," she went along with the U.S. diktat.)

Most of the U.S. imperialist elite, being drunk on its power as usual, thought they could just shove it down Russia's throat, just as they had shoved down two earlier NATO expansions after the collapse of the Soviet Union down Russia's throat, betraying a promise made to Mikhail Gorbachev, the last, ill-fated head of the U.S.S.R., that NATO would not expand "one inch to the east" in return for the Soviets not to stand in the way of the absorption of East Germany by West Germany. (So-called "reunification," although by that time East Germany was a very different country from West Germany, just as Austria is different from Germany, regardless of the fact that all speak German. Hell, the U.S., Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and a bunch of other places all speak English. They're far from identical places.) William "Bill" Clinton expanded NATO in 1999, followed by another expansion by Bush and the notorious declaration at that 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Romania, NATO having already planted its flag that far east. NATO was created as an anti-Soviet military alliance by the U.S., with the obligation on the U.S. to go to war with the U.S.S.R. if that nation attacked any NATO member.

Why is bringing Ukraine into NATO a red line for Russia? Because the U.S. could put nuclear ballistic missiles in that country, as it has nuclear weapons all over Europe, which could annihilate the Russian government and key targets in a few minutes. No one enjoys having a loaded gun pointed at one's head, even if the person holding the gun purrs that it's strictly for self-defense! That is a form of coercive leverage. Moreover, imagine if China overthrew the government of Canada and Mexico, and brought one of those countries into an anti-U.S. military bloc. The U.S. wouldn't wait 8 years to invade, as Russia did after the 2014 U.S. coup. It would invade in 8 days!

UK prime minister tried to make up for the Trump gang's brutal treatment of Zelensky the next day, March 1st, warmly welcoming him with a crowd to provide cheers. The U.S. move to abandon Ukraine also go the backs up of people in Ukraine.

The fact is, in various ways, Trump is effectively forcing Europe to move towards independence from the U.S., finally, 80 year after the end of World War II in 1945. Not that that's Trump's intent, just a positive byproduct of his hostile and economically destructive actions. (Did someone say, "Tariffs"?) So while the Democratic Party and the U.S. imperialist elite are aghast at Trump's baseball bat whacks at the U.S. alliance system, which the U.S. has totally dominated, I think it's about time that system broke down. I'm an anti-imperialist, you see. Because all empires are in fact criminal enterprises that use violence, the threat of violence, and various forms of coercion to subjugate other peoples and economically exploit them and their resources, often to extreme degrees. Empires are not "glorious," contrary to their propagandists, including many so-called historians.
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CODA AND FOOTNOTE 

In a sense, Trump's bullying of Ukraine is far from unique in U.S. imperialist history. It's just a throwback to 19th century type imperialism, which was cruder than what we've come to expect, at least in appearance. We did have the unprovoked invasion of Iraq by George Bush, and thousands of assassinations (including of Americans, some in the U.S.) by Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama.

But with Trump, you have a person who is a bully, with the power of the most powerful position on earth. That is not a happy combination. Oh, and he's currently using that power to deconstruct pieces of the U.S. government, including the IRS. That alone with make the Federal deficit worse. The pretend deficit hawks of the GOP (Gang Of Plunderers) are onboard with that. The Trump-Musk regime has already fired several thousand IRS employees, including some in enforcement.

Every dollar spent on the IRS brings in more than a dollar in revenue. Every dollar spent auditing the rich brings in $6 in revenue. Those audits are now being virtually eliminated.

This is just greedy rich people cutting their taxes. While doing this, they and the lying corporate media pretend that the deficit is caused by Social Security and Medicare. That is one gigantic BIG LIE. Social Security and Medicare run annual SURPLUSES. Yes, by 2035 Social Security is expected to take in less in payroll tax contributions than it pays out. So it will make up the difference by tapping into its gigantic multi-trillion dollar trust fund. Big deal. That is not "bankruptcy," as demagogic politicians and dishonest media propagandists call it. And here's an easy fix: remove the cap on income subject to FICA tax so people who make millions a year in income (even a billion in some cases!) pay the tax on their full income. Right now poor people pay FICA starting on the first dollar of wages. (Unlike the income tax, there is no standard deduction under FICA.)

Those annual Social Security trust fund surpluses are spent by the government on other activities to reduce the annual deficit. Treasury bonds are placed in the trust fund in return. Of course those bonds then have to be paid off eventually, with interest, with other Federal revenue- income taxes, fees, tariffs, asset seizures ("forfeitures"), whatever.

This years-long attack on Social Security as the cause of deficits indicates that the rich oligarchs won't be satisfied until their taxes are set at zero, and they get even more hundreds of billions in government welfare than they already do every year. (Notice "welfare" is a dirty word in the U.S., and is only applied to the pittances grudgingly allotted to the very poor, mostly women with children, who are painted as undeserving parasites.)

Alright, this went off on some tangents, but they are connected and important to be aware of. I share my knowledge for free.

1] Speaking of Trump extortion, he recently extorted $15 million from the cowards running Disney Corporation, which owns ABC, a major pillar of the corporate propaganda system. ABC paid Trump to settle a completely meritless suit Trump brought for "libel," because on-air host George Stephanopoulos (a former Clinton regime figure) said Trump had committed rape. In the civil suit that one of Trump's rape victim's brought and won against Trump, the jury found that a sexual assault occurred, which the judge said was tantamount to rape. So this was an eminently defensible case for ABC. 

This is on the cowardly corporate execs. Or maybe cowardly misses the point. Disney, like all giant corporations, needs the goodwill of the Federal government to avoid friction in its obsessive drive for maximum profits lest that government throw sand in the corporate gears. Many regulations affect corporations. And these large corporations are rapacious in buying other corporations- which the U.S. Department of Justice can oppose by filing anti-trust suits to block the intended mergers. As in fact the Trump DOJ is doing right now to stop Hewlett-Packard Enterprises from buying Juniper Networks.

I guess the execs at those companies forgot to bribe Trump with campaign donations and/or gifts to his "Inauguration Fund." Or maybe Trump just didn't notice what the DOJ is doing. The Biden regime DOJ started objecting to the proposed merger in November 2024, a full 10 months after the merger was announced in January 2024, with an anticipated completion date in a year. Seems like a long time to wait to raise an objection. But the DOJ didn't file suit in court until January 30 of 2025, the eleventh day of Trump's latest term as president. Idiosyncratic for Trump, who makes a point of doing the opposite of whatever his Democratic predecessors did.

2] "U.S. scrambles to reassure Ukraine after Milley comments on negotiations," Politico, Nov. 14, 2022, for example.
 

 

 

 

U.S. Hounds Baying at Russia Over Ukraine

Here's U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha “Saint Sam” Powers speecifying at UN: [1]

“The United States would condemn any attempt [by Russia, it's understood] to undermine Ukraine's sovereignty.”

How's that for gall? This from the nation that just overthrew the elected president and installed its own handpicked replacements. That's not intervention? But maybe only the U.S. is allowed to “intervene” (meddle in the internal affairs of other nations), and those doing so with U.S. permission. Well, when you're Boss of the World, I guess it's only natural to see things that way.

Powers called for an “urgent” UN “mediation” committee to be set up, to try and cement the U.S.' precarious victory and keep the Crimea in Ukraine (which would give the U.S. puppet regime official control over the Russian naval base there) instead of splitting off. At the same time, Obama threatened to be a no-show at the next G-8 Big Shots' Preening gathering, to be held in Moscow, if Putin doesn't roll over and play dead in response to the U.S. seizure of Ukraine. Just a hunch, but I don't think Putin will want to trade Russia's Crimean naval base just to have Obama drop by for a photo-op. (No doubt the omnipresent neofascist chorus of U.S. right-wing politicians, ex-apparatchiks, "think" tank pseudo-scholars and professional opinionators will soon be out in force to denounce Obama for weakness and demand he get tough with Russia. As usual, these imperialist zealots will have no practical options to offer, just fulminations.)

As soon as the U.S. installed its puppet government, high State Department apparatchik William Burns hied to Kiev to “consult” with the newest U.S. clients/satraps. (I.e. to pull their strings.)

The U.S. now keeps threatening Russia- You better not intervene militarily! [2] (Or else what, I wonder?) At the same time, they're struggling to keep their newly filched prize from crumbling like a stale cookie in their greedy fingers. Ukraine seems likely to split in two, between the part “the West” just grabbed, (on the pretext that Yanukovych, the elected president their mob just overthrew, failed to sign a trade deal! There's the first rule of “international relations,” as imposed by the U.S.: do what we say, or else!) and the Russian-leaning eastern section. The population is genuinely split, it would seem, with easterners tied economically, culturally, linguistically to Russia, and the coupsters with dollar signs (or Euro signs, actually) in their eyes, thinking the West is a giant welfare state that will put them on Easy Street. (Those fools will soon learn. The World Bank is already hovering in the wings with its usual austerity demands to pay off debt.)

Oh, and Russia just raised the issue of Ukraine's arrears on paying for the discounted natural gas it gets from Russia. Russia is threatening to raise the price. We've seen this before. The West thinks Russia should give away free gas, and regards it as the worst kind of extortionist imperialist bullying if Russia wants to be paid for its product. Maybe the Russians should take a leaf from U.S. history and send in troops to collect the debt, as the U.S. repeatedly invaded Caribbean nations with Marines to act as collection agents.

Quick Quiz: What's the difference between a “democracy protester” and a “gunman”? Answer: the first are backed by the West, the second are not. “Pro-Russian gunmen” seized the Crimean parliament, the BBC “news” reiterated again March 1^st. And more threats of “consequences” if Russia intervenes militarily. And here's an example of “objective journalism,” courtesy of the New York Times, the self-anointed “newspaper of record” of the U.S. (and presumably of the world), the top of page one headline and subhead on February 28^th: “GRAB FOR POWER IN CRIMEA RAISES SECESSION THREAT” “Pro-Russia Militants Overrun Buildings as the Rift in Ukraine Deepens.” Say, didn't a Western-backed violent mob led by fascists “overrun” government buildings and “grab power” in Kiev, overthrowing the elected government? And isn't that violent seizure of power exactly what led directly to the current secession “threat”? Just asking.

And now, after destabilizing Ukraine, the U.S. and its Euro-lackeys are busy blaming Russia for the mess. Cute. I don't care for Russia. It's a repressive, autocratic, backward nation. But blaming them for what the West just did in Ukraine makes as much sense as blaming Russia for the global financial crisis the U.S. created in 2008, for example. It's absurd.

Prying Ukraine away from Russia's sphere of influence would mean threatening the Russian navy's base in the Crimea, the southern peninsula of Ukraine that juts into the Black Sea. The Black Sea provides Russia with access to the Mediterranean via the Dardanelles. From the Mediterranean the Russians can sail to the Atlantic Ocean, or through the Suez Canal to the Red Sea, Persian Gulf, and Indian Ocean. Thus depriving Russia of access to this sea route would be a partial strategic blockade of Russia. It's incredibly aggressive of the U.S. and its Eurolackeys to attempt this- not to mention hostile. Yet at the same time the U.S. expects Russia to fall in line behind U.S. goals such as forcing Iran to abandon its nuclear enrichment program and kill the Arak reactor.

The propaganda drumbeat is growing louder by the day, with the U.S. media and much of European establishment media shrilly accusing Russia of meddling, destabilizing, intervening...all the things the West is doing in Ukraine. The BBC has been particularly sleazy, constantly speculating that the eastern Ukrainians who seized the Crimean parliament and refused to accept the coup in Kiev of being Russian soldiers in disguise. “The West” regards it as a “crisis” that Russia would use troops to protect its naval base and other interests in the Crimea. Just as in the Cuban Missile Crisis, the “crisis” is entirely of the U.S.' making, with its unreasonable, hyper-aggressive demands. (Cuba had every right, as a sovereign nation, to invite the Soviet Union to station nuclear-armed missiles there to deter U.S. invasion. And the U.S. had long had nuclear weapons in Turkey and Europe and in the Far East aimed at the Soviet Union at that time, making it hypocritical as well as unreasonable to demand that the missiles be withdrawn, on threat of a nuclear war.)

This is a good time to deconstruct that word, “stability,” and its uses in U.S. Imperialist-Speak. “Stability” is invoked, always as a Good Thing, when the U.S. wants to keep some dictatorship or oligarchy in power. “Instability,” a Bad Thing, means unwanted changes in the political status quo. But as we see in Ukraine, the U.S. is fine with destabilizing things to get what it wants. Stability becomes a virtue only after the U.S. has the set-up it seeks. Then “instability” becomes a bad thing. So destabilizing and destroying democratic systems in Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Brazil (1965), Chile (1973), etc., were Good Things. (They called it “fighting communism,” but that's just fascist code for destroying democracy, human rights, labor rights, freedom of speech and assembly, and so on.)

1] As part of the U.S.' never-ending “human rights” burlesque, Powers wrote a hand-wringing book about the Rwandan genocide that rued the fact that the U.S. didn't intervene to stop it. Based on that credential, Powers is put forth as a moral avatar. We've seen acts like this many times before. Jimmy Carter's entire presidency was in part a “human rights” charade. His actual record: forming the contra terrorists who helped the U.S. wreck Nicaragua; initiating the U.S. arms pipeline to Afghan jihadists after the Soviet invasion; conniving with China to invade Vietnam (he also opined that the U.S. didn't owe Vietnam anything for destroying that country, because “the destruction was mutual,” by which I guess he meant the U.S. bombed Vietnam, and the Vietnamese shot down some of the U.S.' bombers); praising the Shah of Iran, one of the worst dictators on earth at the time (as per Amnesty International) as a great friend; the standard U.S. support for Israel's crushing of the Palestinians (now, decades later, he's a critic of Israel- too bad he didn't say- and DO- anything when it would have made a difference); and more.

2] By the way, there are large numbers of ethnic Russians in Ukraine. When Reagan invaded Grenada to topple a regime there that was anathema to U.S. reactionaries, the excuse used was a bogus threat to the safety of American third-rate medical students there (who couldn't get into med school anywhere else, apparently). So it seems that Russia as ample VALID concern for a military incursion in Ukraine!

But of course the usual hypocritical double-standard applies, so Russia will be vociferously denounced by the West if it does so.

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.