Tag Archives: Volodymyr Zelensky

Seymour Hersh: the CIA Knows Ukrainian Officials Are Skimming US Aid

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Hersh says the CIA estimates at least $400 million was embezzled last year in funds earmarked for diesel payments

By Dave DeCamp

Source: Antiwar.com

On Wednesday, Investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report on Substack that alleged the CIA was aware of widespread corruption in Ukraine and the embezzlement of US aid.

The report said the Ukrainian government has been using US taxpayer money to purchase diesel from Russia to fuel its military. Hersh said Zelensky “has been buying the fuel from Russia, the country with which it, and Washington, are at war, and the Ukrainian president and many in his entourage have been skimming untold millions from the American dollars earmarked for diesel fuel payments.”

Hersh said according to one estimate by CIA analysts, at least $400 million in funds were embezzled last year. Sources told Hersh that Ukrainian officials are also “competing” to set up front companies for export contracts to private arms dealers around the world.

The issue of corruption was raised during a meeting between CIA Director William Burns and Zelensky in January. An intelligence official with direct knowledge of the meeting told Hersh that Burns delivered a stunning message to Zelensky.

Hersh wrote: “The senior generals and government officials in Kiev were angry at what they saw as Zelensky’s greed, so Burns told the Ukrainian president, because ‘he was taking a larger share of the skim money than was going to the generals.’”

During the meeting, Burns presented Zelensky with a list of 35 generals and senior government officials whose corruption was known to the CIA. Zelensky responded by dismissing 10 officials who were engaged in flagrant corruption. “The ten he got rid of were brazenly bragging about the money they had—driving around Kiev in their new Mercedes,” the intelligence official said.

Hersh said Zelensky’s “half-hearted response” and the “lack of concern” in the White House angered some US intelligence officials. The intelligence official speaking to Hersh criticized President Biden’s two main foreign policy advisors, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan.

“They have no experience, judgment, and moral integrity. They just tell lies, make up stories. Diplomatic deniability is something else,” the official said. The official said there was a “total breakdown between the White House leadership and the intelligence community.”

The report said the rift started in the fall when the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines were blown up. According to Hersh’s earlier reporting, President Biden ordered the operation that took out the pipelines. “Destroying the Nord Stream pipelines was never discussed, or even known in advance, by the community,” the official said.

The official said there is “no strategy for ending the war” within the Biden administration and offered more scathing criticism of Blinken and Sullivan.

“Burns is not the problem,” the official said. “The problem is Biden and his principal lieutenants—Blinken and Sullivan and their court of worshippers—who see those who criticize Zelensky as being pro-Putin. ‘We are against evil. Ukraine will fight ’til the last military shell is gone, and still fight.’ And here’s Biden who is telling America that we’re going to fight as long as it takes.”

Hersh’s story comes after a series of leaked top-secret documents from the Pentagon and other government agencies surfaced online. Some of the documents show US war planning for Ukraine and reveal the US doubts Kyiv’s ability to launch a successful counter-offensive, offering a starkly different view of Ukraine’s abilities than what Biden officials have been saying publicly.

Send in the Clowns

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Yellen and Garland perform back-to-back surprise visits to Ukraine

By Philip Giraldi

Source: The Unz Review

Sometimes I think that the script being used by the Biden Administration to manage its foreign and national security policies has been written by George Orwell, though I am not sure if it based on 1984 or Animal Farm. Maybe it is a combination of the two. Either way, it would help explain why there is something seriously wrong here. For example, at the end of February Congress, confronted by a debt ceiling, began discussing cutting Medicare and Social Security while more recently a banking sector crisis seems to be developing so Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen decided to go off doing photo-ops in Kiev embracing Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky shortly after handing him the keys to the US economy. She explained to Zelensky how the White House had approved an additional $12 billion in aid to Ukraine during the previous week, including $2 billion for the military and $10 billion to support Zelensky’s government and other infrastructure needs. The US Treasury is now de facto the source of the Ukraine government’s entire annual budget. In addition, Yellen described glowingly how the Treasury and State Departments will implement a new round of sanctions against more than 200 entities and individuals with ties to Russia’s military, high-technology industries, and its metals and mining sectors. The US Department of Commerce is also enforcing export restrictions on materials and technology, including semiconductors, sold by American companies to customers in Russia and China.

In defense of her grand mission, Yellen penned an op-ed for the always compliant New York Times explaining the importance of Ukraine to the United States. She wrote how in Ukraine “…Russia’s barbaric attacks continue — but Kyiv stands strong and free. Ukraine’s heroic resistance is the direct product of the courage and resilience of Ukraine’s military, leadership and people. But President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Ukrainians would be the first to admit that they can’t do this alone — and that international support is crucial to sustaining their resistance. I’m in Kyiv to reaffirm our unwavering support of the Ukrainian people. Mr. Putin is counting on our global coalition’s resolve to wane, which he thinks will give him the upper hand in the war. But he is wrong. As President Biden said here last week, America will stand with Ukraine for as long as it takes… Ukrainians are fighting for their lives on the front lines of the free world. Today, and every day, they deserve America’s unyielding support.”

The Yellen op-ed drones on with a lie so large that it is astonishing that the New York Times would even print it: “When confronted with scenes of brutality and oppression, Americans have always been quick to stand up and do the right thing. Our strength as a nation comes from our commitment to our ideals — and our capacity to see in others the same desires that animated our own struggles for freedom and justice.” But then she tops that with assurances from “President Zelensky, [who] has pledged to use these funds in the ‘most responsible way.’ We welcome this commitment, as well as his longstanding agenda to strengthen good governance in Ukraine.” Huh?

And here is Yellen’s version of “Why We Fight!”: “Our support is motivated, first and foremost, by a moral duty to come to the aid of a people under attack. We also know that, as President Zelensky has said, our assistance is not charity. It’s an investment in ‘global security and democracy.’ Let’s look at the strategic impact of our support for Ukraine so far. Mr. Putin’s war poses a direct threat to European security, as well as to the laws and values that underpin the rules-based international system.”

So, Americans have a “moral duty” apparently up to and including sending their sons and daughters to die supporting Ukraine. And ah yes, it’s all about the “free” world, democracy and the notorious rules based international system! Has anyone yet cited Hegel’s observation that the President Joe Biden Administration’s foreign policy has already “repeated itself, first as a tragedy in Afghanistan, second as a farce”? Meanwhile one suspects Zelensky was laughing all the way to the bank as Yellen disappeared over the horizon to come up with the cash, as that old expression goes, and he probably already has one of his buddies shopping for a new villa on the French Riviera to supplement his other real estate! But wait! The story became even more exciting the following week, involving another visit to Mr. Z by America’s nearly invisible Attorney General Merrick Garland, a man who can literally look Z in the eye as they are both very short. Garland is generally engaged in chasing white supremacists and requiring all new FBI hires to learn all about how to identify and pursue antisemites, but he has made two trips to Kiev to meet mano-a-mano with the brave olive drab t-shirt clad warrior who is already being beatified as the twenty-first century’s Winston Churchill.

Garland was in town to do the other thing the engages his sense of law and order, which is to set up a tribunal to arrest, prosecute and punish Russian war criminals after Ukraine emerges triumphant from its conflict with the unimaginably evil President Vladimir Putin. It would be modeled on the Nuremberg Tribunals that tried leading Nazis after the Second World War, and Garland has cited his family’s escape from the so-called holocaust to explain why he is intent on personally being involved in delivering what he describes as “justice.” A Justice Department spokeswoman described Garland’s mission as being in Kiev to personally “reaffirm America’s commitment to help hold Russia responsible for war crimes committed in its unjust and unprovoked invasion against its sovereign neighbor.”

Garland had several meetings with President Volodymyr Zelensky and foreign law enforcement officials including Ukrainian Prosecutor General Andriy Kostin while attending what was billed as the “United for Justice Conference.” Zelensky elaborated that the purpose of the conference was to hold Russia’s leadership accountable for the alleged atrocities carried out by its army. “The main issue of all these meetings is accountability,” he said. The US Justice Department is reportedly actively engaged in the gathering of evidence to indict the Russians. During Garland’s first visit to Ukraine in June 2022 he announced the appointment of Eli Rosenbaum, an Office of Special Investigations prosecutor best known for going after former Nazis, to direct American efforts to identify and track Russian war criminals.

Garland laid it on thick, as was expected from someone responsible for prosecuting the rest of the world when it steps out of line. He told his hosts that “Just over twelve months ago, invading Russian forces began committing atrocities at the largest scale in any armed conflict since the Second World War. We are here today in Ukraine to speak clearly, and with one voice: the perpetrators of those crimes will not get away with them. In addition to our work in partnership with Ukraine and the international community, the United States has also opened criminal investigations into war crimes in Ukraine that may violate US law.” He concluded by throwing out the complete bullshit party line much beloved by Joe Biden and Tony Blinken, that “The United States recognizes that what happens here in Ukraine will have a direct impact on the strength of our own democracy.”

Of course, there is more than a little bit of irony in all this, not to mention top level hypocrisy, as the United States has killed more people directly or indirectly while committing more crimes against humanity dished out in various ways over the past twenty years than any other country, except, predictably, Israel, which currently is committing crimes against humanity on a nearly daily basis. Curiously, however, the normally tone-deaf White House and Pentagon seem to understand, on a certain level, that opening up Pandora’s box might not be a good idea when it comes to war crimes. Last week Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin refused to share US information on alleged Russian crimes with the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the Hague. The Pentagon is blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence with the ICC collected by American intelligence agencies regarding Russian activities in Ukraine because helping the court investigate Russians might set a precedent that could help pave the way for it to prosecute Americans. Washington does not recognize the ICC, fearing that it might well seek to examine the sorry record of US military crimes in Asia and Africa. Israel similarly does to recognize the court for roughly the same reason.

So here we are, two top level officials from the Biden regime sneak into Kiev to give an arch crook money and unlimited moral support, together with a pledge that more cash is on the way as are arms and war crimes tribunals await those nasty Russians. And guess what? It is all packaged as being good for America! This sounds like a song that was sung previously in places like Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan and it was a tissue of lies then just as it is now. Yellen ought to have stayed home to tend to the banking system and should be giving the billions of dollars earmarked for Zelensky back to the American people. If Garland wants to investigate anyone it should be the Pentagon, the intelligence agencies, and Congress. And yes, his own FBI! And don’t forget how the Bidens and Clintons became multi-millionaires! And then there is the destruction of Nord Stream. Funny how every time one turns over a rock in and around the US government something really smelly surfaces.

The Hunter Biden / Ihor Kolomoïsky affair

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By Thierry Meyssan

Source: VoltaireNet.org

The Biden Administration is finally reacting to the scandals that have arisen from the computer of the president’s son, Hunter Biden. This loser, whose only known activities are those of a junkie and a pimp, managed to become the director of a large gas company; a job he knows nothing about. A man of straw, he signed all sorts of big contracts, in different countries, where he travelled -without right- in official US planes. His father is now launching an operation to cover up his affairs, which has led him to clean up the Ukrainian government.

As time goes on, American voters are turning away from President Joe Biden. Many of those who say they voted for him tell pollsters they regret it. Some say that if they had known about the Hunter Biden affair beforehand, they would never have trusted his father as president.

During the presidential election campaign, the Republican Party filed a lawsuit with the Federal Election Commission because the social networks Twitter and Facebook censored thousands of accounts that relayed the New York Post’s revelations about Hunter Biden’s computer [1]. The seizure was dismissed, but the Twitter Files, revealed by Elon Musk, attest in detail that the FBI and an intelligence agency (probably the CIA) had intervened with Twitter and Facebook to censor this information.

I was astonished that in the United States, the son of a vice-president, then president, could travel in official planes to the four corners of the world, giving the impression of being an official personality when he was only a junkie [2]. This abuse was, in my opinion, a sign of the decadence of the US Empire.

However, the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives intends to carry out various investigations, notably on Joe Biden’s involvement in his son’s dirty dealings. If these investigations were to succeed, they could call into question the independence of the President of the United States and therefore lead to his impeachment.

It should be remembered that when Joe Biden was Barack Obama’s vice-president, 7 million dollars in bribes were paid to the Attorney General of Ukraine to keep his nose out of Burisma’s affairs. Later, this same prosecutor, who had become too greedy, was ousted by the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament) under pressure from the United States, the European Union, the IMF and the World Bank, which wanted to save the owner of Burisma and former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko at a lower price.

In a puritanical country like the United States, public opinion first focused on Hunter Biden’s frequent use of prostitutes and his drug use before it became clear that his financial affairs were much more important.

Now the Hunter Biden affair, which had been covered up by very senior members of the intelligence community, for whom the whole saga was “Russian disinformation” [3], is likely to turn the tables. It is no longer appropriate to deny the facts, so much so that Harvard University has just announced that it is closing its Technology and Social Change Project, a structure that had been constantly assimilating the existence of Hunter Biden’s laptop to Fake news [4].

Until now, the citizens who cared about this affair were only “conspiracy theorists”, “extreme right-wing” followers of President Trump and readers of the gutter press. On the contrary, almost the entire ruling class had “discerned” that it was just a popular rumor, Fake News. On the one hand, there were the readers of the New York Post, which had revealed the affair [5], on the other hand, those of the New York Times, which kept on denying it.

Among the many financial affairs of the president’s son, two stand out. The first concerns a Chinese spy. It could reveal influence peddling in the service of a foreign power. While the second concerns his activities in Ukraine and particularly his appointment and that of his friend Devon Archer (former roommate of Christopher Heinz, John Kerry’s son-in-law, during their university period) to the board of directors of the oil company Burisma. This is the group that President Vladimir Putin denounced as “a bunch of drug addicts and neo-Nazis” [6] when he called on his armies to end the civil war in Ukraine under UN Security Council Resolution 2202.

This week two seemingly unrelated events have shaken things up. They were probably imagined by or with David Brock, the undisputed agitprop specialist on whom President Biden relied in 2016 against President Trump. Ill, he had disappeared, he is now back [7]

Hunter Biden has hired one of the most famous American lawyers, Abbe Lowell. He has requested a criminal investigation and sent letters to all the people who played a role in the disclosure of the contents of his client’s laptop, including former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Donald Trump advisor Steve Bannon. He accused them of violating the privacy of his client, urged them to retract the conclusions they drew from the contents of the computer, and thus bury the case. At the same time, a delegation from the Departments of Defense and State, as well as USAID, went to Ukraine to advise the Zelensky government to clean up some of the mess [8]. Officially, it was only to ensure that the money offered at the expense of the US taxpayers was not misappropriated by corrupt officials. Unofficially, it was only a matter of eliminating the annoying pawns without touching the others. In two days, fourteen personalities resigned in a chain. Five regional governors (Valentin Reznichenko (Dnipropetrovsk), Oleksander Starukh (Zaporizhia), Dmytro Zhivytsky Surya), Yaroslav Yanshayevich (Kherson) and Oleksiy Kulba (Kiev)), four deputy ministers (including Viacheslav Shapovalov (Defense) and Vasyl Lozynsky (Infrastructure)) and two heads of a government agency left their posts, in addition to the deputy head of the presidential administration (Kyrylo Tymoshenko) and the deputy prosecutor general (Oleksiy Symonenko).

The Western media reported faithfully on this major sweep. But the most important thing happened on the 3rd day and very few people talked about it. SBU troops searched the home of oligarch Ihor Kolomoysky, sponsor of both President Volodymyr Zelensky and the “integral nationalists”, but above all owner of… Burisma Holding, which he had bought from Mykola Zlochevskyi, in 2011, i.e. before Hunter Biden entered it. Of course the Anticorruption Action Center’s article on this change of ownership has long since been removed from its site [9].

Technically, Ihor Kolomoysky is not being prosecuted for the assassinations he ordered, but for rigging a gas lot auction involving two deputy energy ministers for nearly a million dollars.

Arresting mafia boss Ihor Kolomoysky removes the traces of many problems. He is the key witness to link President Volodymyr Zelensky with the “integral nationalists”, i.e. between a defender of democracy and anti-democrats, and between a Jewish personality and mass murderers of Jews. For the “President’s Men”, Kolomoysky is the main Ukrainian personality who can be held accountable for the corruption of Hunter Biden and, eventually, Joe Biden.

It will be remembered that in 2019 the US Secretary of Energy Rick Perry reportedly informed Rudy Giuliani about President Zelensky’s confidences during his inauguration ceremony about Hunter Biden [10]. President Donald Trump then asked the Ukrainians for information about their investigations. But the affair was leaked, President Trump was accused of acting out of revenge, and a new impeachment procedure was launched against him.

The Hunter Biden affair has many facets. One thing is to erase his role in Burisma, another is to erase his role in the activities of US military laboratories in Ukraine. These activities were carried out through Rosemont Seneca Technology Partners (RSTP), one of his companies that he created with Christopher Heinz, son-in-law of the special presidential envoy for the climate John Kerry, who joined him on the board of Burisma [11].

[1] «Republican National Committe Letter to the Federal Election Commission», Octobrer 16, 2020.

[2] « La décadence de l’Empire états-unien », par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 6 septembre 2022.

[3] “Public Statement on the Hunter Biden Emails”, Voltaire Network, 19 October 2020.

[4] «Harvard pulls the plug on disinformation research project led by Hunter Biden laptop skeptic», Yael Halon, Fox News, February 3, 2023. «Harvard shuts down ’misinformation’ research program and cuts ties with director who was skeptical of Hunter Biden laptop story (but claims it was for ’bureaucratic reasons’)», Will Potter, Daily Mail, February 3, 2023.

[5] “Smoking-gun email reveals how Hunter Biden introduced Ukrainian businessman to VP dad”, Emma-Jo Morris & Gabrielle Fonrouge ; “WH press secretary locked out of Twitter for sharing Post’s Hunter Biden story” , Steven Nelson, New York Post, October 14, 2020.

[6] “A gang of drug addicts and neo-nazis”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 5 March 2022.

[7] “David Brock, Clintons agitprop man, zeroes in to rescue the Bidens”, Voltaire Network, 2 December 2022.

[8] «Defense, State, and USAID Inspectors General Visit Kyiv», Department of Defense Office of Inspector Genral, January 31, 2023.

[9] « Kings of Ukrainian Gas », Anticorruption Action Center, 26 août 2012.

[10] “WSJ News Exclusive“, Timothy Puko & Rebecca Ballhaus, October 16, 2019, Wall Street Journal.

[11] «Hunter Biden Bio Firm Partnered With Ukrainian Researchers ‘Isolating Deadly Pathogens’ Using Funds From Obama’s Defense Department», Natalie Winters & Raheem J. Kassam, The National Pulse, March 24, 2022.

The New York Times is Orwell’s Ministry of Truth

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By Edward Curtin

Source: Behind the Curtain

“Ingsoc. The sacred principles of ingsoc. Newspeak, double-speak, the mutability of the past.” – George Orwell, 1984

As today dawned, I was looking out the window into the cold grayness with small patches of snow littering the frozen ground.  As light snow began to fall, I felt a deep mourning in my soul as a memory came to me of another snowy day in 1972 when I awoke to news of Richard Nixon’s savage Christmas bombing of North Vietnam with more than a hundred B-52 bombers, in wave after wave, dropping death and destruction on Hanoi and other parts of North Vietnam.  I thought of the war the United States is now waging against Russia via Ukraine and how, as during the U.S. war against Vietnam, few Americans seem to care until it becomes too late.  It depressed me.

Soon after I was greeted by an editorial from The New York Times’ Editorial Board, “A Brutal New Phase of the War in Ukraine.”  It is a piece of propaganda so obvious that only those desperate to believe blatant lies would not fall down laughing.  Yet it is no laughing matter, for The N.Y. Times is advocating for a wider war, more lethal weapons for Ukraine, and escalation of the fighting that risks nuclear war.  So their title is apt because they are promoting the brutality.  This angered me.

The Times’ Editorial Board tells us that President Putin, like Hitler, is mad.  “Like the last European war, this one is mostly one man’s madness.”  Russia and Putin are “cruel”; are conducting a “regular horror” with missile strikes against civilian targets; are “desperate”; are pursuing Putin’s “delusions”; are waging a “terrible and useless war”; are “committing atrocities”; are responsible for “murder, rape and pillaging,” etc.

On the other hand, “a heroic Ukraine” “has won repeated and decisive victories against Russian forces” who have lost “well over 100,000 Russian soldiers killed and wounded,” according to the “reliable” source, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chief of Staff, Gen. Mark A. Milley.  To add to this rosy report, the Ukrainians seem to have suffered no causalities since none are mentioned by the cozy Times’ Editorial Board members from their keyboards on Eighth Avenue.  When you support a U.S. war, as has always been The Times’ modus operandi as a stenographer for the government, mentioning the dead pawns used to accomplish the imperialists’ dreams is bad manners.  So are the atrocities committed by those forces, so they too have been omitted.  Neo-Nazis, the Azov Battalion?  They too must never have  existed since they are not mentioned.

But then, according to the esteemed editorial writers, this is not a U.S. proxy war waged via Ukraine by U.S./NATO “to strip Russia of its destiny and greatness.”  No, it is simply Russian aggression, supported by “the Kremlin’s propaganda machinery” that has churned “out false narratives about a heroic Russian struggle against forces of fascism and debauchery.”  U.S./NATO were “horrified by the crude violation of the postwar order,” so we are laughingly told, and so came to Ukraine’s defense as “Mr. Putin’s response has been to throw ever more lives, resources and cruelty at Ukraine.”

Nowhere in this diatribe by the Times’ Board of propagandists – and here the whole game is given away for anyone with a bit of an historical sense – is there any mention of the U.S. engineered coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014.  It just didn’t happen.  Never happened.  Magic by omission.  The U.S., together with the Ukrainian government “led” by the puppet-actor “President Volodymyr Zelensky,” are completely innocence parties, according to the Times.  (Note also, that nowhere in this four page diatribe is President Putin addressed by his title, as if to say that “Mr. Putin” is illegitimate and Zelensky is the real thing.)

All the problems stem from when “Mr. Putin seized Crimea and stirred up a secessionist conflict in eastern Ukraine n 2014.”

Nowhere is it mentioned that for years on end U.S./NATO has been moving troops and weapons right up to Russia’s borders, that George W. Bush pulled the U.S. out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and that Trump did the same with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, that the U.S. has set up so-called anti-ballistic missile sites in Poland and Rumania and asserted its right to a nuclear first-strike, that more and more countries have been added to NATO’s eastern expansion despite promises to Russia to the contrary, that 15,000 plus mostly Russian-speaking people in eastern Ukraine have been killed by Ukrainian forces for years before February 2022, that the Minsk agreements were part of a scheme to give time for the arming of Ukraine, that the U.S. has rejected all calls from Russia to respect its borders and its integrity, that the U.S./NATO has surrounded Russia with military bases, that there was a vote in Crimea after the coup, that the U.S. has been for years waging economic war on Russia via sanctions, etc.  In short, all of the reasons that Russia felt that it was under attack for decades and that the U.S. was stone deaf to its appeals to negotiate these threats to its existence.  It doesn’t take a genius to realize that if all were reversed and Russia had put troops and weapons in Mexico and Canada that the United States would respond forcefully.

This editorial is propaganda by omission and strident stupidity by commission.

The editorial has all its facts “wrong,” and not by accident.  The paper may say that its opinion journalists’ claims are separate from those of its newsroom, yet their claims echo the daily barrage of falsehoods from its front pages, such as:

  • Ukraine is winning on the battlefield.
  • “Russia faces decades of economic stagnation and regression even if the war ends soon.”
  • That on Jan.14, as part of its cruel attacks on civilian targets, a Russian missile struck an apartment building in Dnipro, killing many.
  • Only one man can stop this war – Vladimir Putin – because he started it.
  • Until now, the U.S. and its allies were reluctant to deploy heavy weapons to Ukraine “for fear of escalating this conflict into an all-in East-West war.”
  • Russia is desperate as Putin pursues “his delusions.”
  • Putin is “isolated from anyone who would dare to speak truth to his power.”
  • Putin began trying to change Ukraine’s borders by force in 2014.
  • During the last 11 months Ukraine has won repeated and decisive victories against Russian forces …. The war is at a stalemate.”
  • The Russian people are being subjected to the Kremlin’s propaganda machinery “churning out false narratives.”

This is expert opinion for dummies.  A vast tapestry of lies, as Harold Pinter said in his Nobel Prize address.  The war escalation the editorial writers are promoting is in their words, “this time pitting Western arms against a desperate Russia,” as if the U.S./NATO does not have CIA and special forces in Ukraine, just weapons, and as if “this time” means it wasn’t so for the past nine years at least as the U.S. was building Ukraine’s military and arms for this very fight.

It is a fight they will lose in the days to come.  Russia was, is, and will triumph.

Everything in the editorial is disingenuous.  Simple propaganda: the good guys against the bad guys.  Putin another Hitler.  The good guys are winning, just as they did in Vietnam, until reality dawned and it had to be admitted they weren’t (and didn’t).  History is repeating itself.

Little has changed and so my morning sense of mourning when I remembered Nixon and Kissinger’s savagery at Christmas 1972 was appropriate.  As then, so today, we are being subjected to a vast tapestry of lies told by the corporate media for their bosses, as the U.S. continues its doomed efforts to control the world.  It is not Russia that is desperate now, but propagandists such as the writers of this strident and stupid editorial.  It is not the Russian people who need to wake up, as they claim, but the American people and those who still cling to the myth that The New York Times Corporation is an organ of truth.  It is the Ministry of Truth with its newspeak, double-speak, and its efforts to change the past.

Let Harold Pinter have the last words:

The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis.