Abstract

Why are we bombarded by fact-checks and “anti-disinformation” efforts in our timeline scrolls? When one reads news, further, they often find that “experts” are common sources behind whatever claim media professionals make, no matter how outlandish or disconnected from reality such claims may be. Through his concept and exploration of spectacle, a totalizing, negating force over our lives that results in unlife, French Philosopher Guy Debord’s famous Society of the Spectacle (1967) and his follow-up booklet, Comments on the Society of the Spectacle (1988), provide insights to these and other interconnected phenomena. When it comes to “fact-checks” and “experts”, Debord is clear: in a society subjugated by the economy, where “everything that was once directly lived has faded into representation,” such professionals do not exist to provide us the truth — they exist to serve the state and media through lies and distortions spun into what appears as true. If the “experts” lose influence, it will be because the public has learned and can articulate that their job is to systematically lie.

“Disinformation” appears as one of the biggest bogeymen in today’s increasingly online world. Governments warn of the dangers the phenomenon apparently poses to society and democracy, and mainstream media organizations in turn direct resources to counter-disinformation and fact-checking efforts. In the name of “being informed,” people often cannot go online without being bombarded by fact-checks or warnings to watch what content they consume and share with their social and professional networks.

While anti-disinformation efforts proliferate, what’s missing from the conversation is a discussion about power. Of course, the powerful have reasons for wanting to combat what they consider to be “disinformation” — they want their version of the truth to become ours. Many commentators observe as such, noting that so-called disinformation researchers, fact-checkers, and experts are often partisan in nature, and themselves frequently disseminate things that are not true.

This is one of the most basic and important insights if you want to how understand how the modern media functions.

Basically, anyone calling themselves a "misinformation expert" or "disinformation reporter" is a partisan fraud, trying to make their activism seem scientific: https://t.co/5gbDf2WJoD

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) November 21, 2022

But a larger force is at work within the rise of fact-checking and other counter-disinformation efforts. That force is our society’s current arrangement of appearances, the totality of social relations mediated by images, or spectacle. Spectacle, as elucidated in Debord’s The Society of the Spectacle, is a concept that can help us to understand seemingly unconnected, yet deeply intertwined phenomena that have come to fruition as the economy has subjugated society to its needs (as opposed to the other way around), and thus recover our ability to experience life directly.

As its dominance over our everyday lives grows complete, the spectacle has become powerful enough to turn our understanding of what is true upside down. Because spectacle replaces real life with a mere mediated representation of life that cannot be experienced directly, it provides a framework where mass deceptions and lies can consistently and convincingly appear as true. Thus, spectacle is perhaps one of the most effective tools we have to explain how elite deceptions, including fabrications and lies about imperialist wars like those in Iraq and Syria, can consistently go unpunished and even unnoticed. As such, it follows that spectacle can help us understand how modern fact-checks and counter-disinformation initiatives can consistently do the opposite of what they claim, as many have observed.

In this article, I examine the spectacle’s current “lines of advance” as they appear in our news cycles, feeds and timelines, where “fact-checks” and claims from “experts” are almost impossible to avoid.

Critically, the argument in this article cannot be understood solely as a critique of media systems and instead must involve spectacle as a whole, which as a concept (as Debord’s book title, The Society of the Spectacle, suggests) pertains to all of society. Aspects of modern life are “not accidentally or superficially spectacular,” or otherwise excessive: rather, society is “fundamentally spectaclist.” Within a fundamentally spectaclist society, the rise of power-serving fact-checkers or an adjacent force must be understood as inevitable.

What is Spectacle?

“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, life is presented as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has receded into a representation.”

-Guy Debord

In French philosopher Guy Debord’s 1967 Society of the Spectacle and its shorter follow-up booklet, the 1988 _Comments on the Society of the Spectacle_, he posits that modern life is mediated through images, or representations of life, in a state —a spectacle— that has become nothing less than objective and material reality. Our current reality, a society of the spectacle, is one where the world has been turned “upside down” because life can no longer be lived directly, but instead only through mere representations of life. Such an organization of appearances facilitates a backwards unreality where truth, when it makes a rare appearance, does so as “a moment of the false.”

The spectacle, which “presents itself as a vast inaccessible reality that can never be questioned,” exists to advance itself infinitely; as Debord says, its sole message is “What appears is good; what is good appears.” Its manifestation in the world is a “visible negation of life — a negation that has taken on a visible form” which “keeps people in a state of unconsciousness as they pass through practical changes in their conditions of existence.”

The world this spectacle emerges in is one where the economy has subjugated society to its own needs. Having no use for anything but itself, and for advancing itself, the spectacle ignores the reality of practical and natural processes, like ageing and rest, and tramples over humans’ need to connect in lieu of its own advancement. A master of separation, it has recreated our society without community, and it has obstructed the ability to communicate in general. Such processes and their ramifications ultimately mean people cannot truly experience life for themselves: they have become spectators, bound to an impoverished state of unlife.

The Society of the Spectacle and The Fact-Checking World

As the spectacle advances its control, message and ultimately “unlife” over daily life, an obvious tool it can use to perpetuate its cause is mass and social media, which take up growing portions of the average person’s waking hours outside work. Further blurring reality, as Debord claims in Comments on the Society of the Spectacle, the spectacle’s undermining and destruction of history means “contemporary events themselves retreat into a remote and fabulous realm of unverifiable stories, uncheckable statistics, unlikely explanations and untenable reasoning.”

A corporatized media is a perfect medium for such a “fabulous” realm, where truth and reality alike are obscured beyond recognition. Amongst this backdrop of confusion, spectacle increasingly deprives people of physical reality, common historical reference points and community necessary to discuss or debate important political happenings and events. As a consequence, elite narratives permeate from their respective channels unchallenged, especially as dissenting voices find themselves shut out of corporatized, elite- and tech-dominated public discourse.

Debord comments on this phenomenon in his writings on spectacle, explaining that the spectaclist world is characterized by one way, top-down communication, rather than meaningful dialogue. He writes that “the passive acceptance [the spectacle] demands is already effectively imposed by its monopoly of appearances, its manner of appearing without allowing any reply.”

As they command increasing control over today’s mass media, those in power are interested in legitimizing their banter — thus reinforcing the spectacle that has awarded them their status — and aim to maintain “whatever is established.” They have an abundance of tools to do this, one of them being a class of “experts,” which Debord warns of in Comments, that superficially appear to provide genuine information to inform the public sphere, but in fact perpetuate elite perspectives to advance their careers and maintain income. In a world “truly turned upside down,” these apparent experts do the exact opposite of what they claim.

Within the context of an expert class, “fact checkers” and the growing phenomenon of so-called disinformation reporters and researchers are a kind of “expert” that act to guard the spectacle’s version of truth. Lay readers and television viewers, likely tired by the demands of their own lives, may look to such professionals to best understand reality and current events; in practice, such fact-checking operations silence emerging news narratives that go against the grain, such as the once untouchable but now-proven likely Hunter Biden laptop story, in droves.

How did such backwards circumstances become reality? In The Society of the Spectacle, Debord explains that the economy subjugating society first presented itself as an “obvious degradation of being into having,” where human fulfilment was no longer attained through what one was, but instead only through what one had. As society’s capitulation to the economy accelerated, the decline from being into having shifted “from having into appearing.” With respect to knowledge, therefore, experts no longer have to be experts or have expertise, they only need to take on the appearance of expertise.

In other words, the “experts say” phrase that crawls unabated through news headlines and fact-checks can be rubber stamped onto just about anything to boost legitimacy because the appearance of legitimacy always trumps content.

As Debord writes in Comments on the Society of the Spectacle:

“All experts serve the state and the media and only in that way do they achieve their status. Every expert follows his master, for all former possibilities for independence have been gradually reduced to nil by present society’s mode of organisation. The most useful expert, of course, is the one who can lie.”

As Debord shows us here, experts only become experts according to the elite’s terms. And Debord’s observation that “former possibilities for independence have been gradually reduced to nil,” rings especially true in today’s world of corporate media, where journalists frequently face precarious work arrangements, mass lay-offs, and low wages in an oversaturated career field. Increasingly, to stray from mainstream media narratives is to end up blacklisted from the field all together, leaving many unable or unwilling to rock the boat.

The conditions ultimately crystalize Debord’s “expert” class, which comprises a variety of persons whose societal roles ultimately exist to defend and perpetuate spectacle. Despite constant distortions and lies, their appearance of legitimacy gives the spectacle cover when anyone publicly questions the state of current events.

Because their role is not about legitimate fact-checking, but instead about advancing spectacle, fact-checkers and adjacent media professionals’ work on current events manifests in almost comical ways, including hyper-specific references and the ridicule of potential circumstances later proven to be true.

In 2018, for example, NowThis adorned with circus music a clip of German officials laughing at President Donald Trump over what it called “exaggerated” and “outrageous” claims made at the UN about Germany’s dependence on Russian oil. Yet only four years later, President Trump’s concerns became reality when Russia cut off major oil pipeline Nord Stream 1’s access to Europe.

Further, while mainstream outlets long hailed the COVID-19 “lab-leak theory” as conspiracy theory or as “disinformation,” thus legitimizing the mass ridiculing and deplatforming of those finding the theory plausible, mainstream media outlets Vanity Fair and ProPublica have finally considered the theory’s possible validity almost three years after the initial crisis began.

In these and countless other examples, fact-checkers worked, and continue to work, tirelessly to ridicule legitimate developments and smear them as false, further blurring reality for and gaslighting an atomized population already reduced to living life indirectly.

How Fact-Checkers and Disinformation “Experts” Crush Dissent

Often, fact-checkers are hailed as “independent,” presenting themselves as neutral and principled analysts of current events. In reality, their roles are often created and maintained by wealthy or otherwise-compromised individuals, organizations and governments.

After all, fact-checking and related efforts are often considered vital to stopping “disinformation,” a recently-popularized term that Debord believes primarily serves spectacle. Yet here lies another contradiction that exists openly in a spectaclist society: the entities most concerned with the so-called disinformation problem (i.e. governments, intelligence agencies, and mainstream media professionals) are the most likely to spread falsehoods themselves.

Debord outlines his understanding of the term “disinformation” in Comments, writing that disinformation “is openly employed by particular powers, or, consequently, by people who hold fragments of economic or political authority, in order to maintain what is established; and always in a counter-offensive role.” Of course, “fact-checks” often come out after controversial or power-incriminating news stories do, further fulfilling the counter-offensive role Debord insinuates they play to bury challenges to power.

And many prominent fact-checking media organizations and institutions have partnered with or been funded in some capacity by the US government, suggesting their partial or full utility as proxy intelligence instruments. So-called “trust rating” system NewsGuard Technologies, for example, partners directly with organizations including Microsoft, the US Departments of Defense and State, and is even advised by former CIA and NSA director Michael Hayden and former NATO Secretary General Anders Fogg Rasmussen.

Further, as Alan MacLeod reported in MintPress news, organizations including VoxCheck, the Poynter Institute and StopFake have received funding through the U.S. Embassy or the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a US government-backed organization explicitly established during the Reagan era as a Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) front group. Former NED acting president Allen Weinstein even admitted in a 1991 interview that “A lot of what [the NED does] today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA. The biggest difference is that when such activities are done overtly, the flap potential is close to zero. Openness is its own protection.”

Perhaps to cover for their dubious funding sources and affiliations, fact-checking and equivalent operations often take on elaborate appearances, frequently employing “experts” who effectively act to bolster mainstream narratives. Examples include documented proxy British intelligence operation Bellingcat, an initially one-man-organization that, with heavy publicity, became one of journalism’s biggest names overnight. Through apparently sophisticated “open source investigations,” the organization has ultimately worked to protect mainstream news narratives about the wars in Syria and Ukraine, including labelling research critical of the western-backed and terrorist-turned-humanitarian White Helmets in Syria as, predictably, “disinformation.”

Similarly, government- and Gates Foundation-funded Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) frequently smears reporters countering mainstream media narratives through their work, jeopardizing their targets’ careers. In its work to “revers[e] the rising tide of polarisation, extremism and disinformation worldwide,” the ISD calls for nebulous actions to regulate or otherwise disrupt the spread of “disinformation” that in fact leads to the censorship of dissenting voices and stifling public debate. In its “About” page, the ISD even brags about the number of social media accounts it has helped to ban.

But just as Debord’s spectacle allows for no real response to its actions —“its manner of appearing without allowing any reply”— the ISD often does not respond when asked for comment, debate, or proof that their claims of “disinformation” hold water. Indeed, the ISD even changed its complaint policy to not “engage with complaints made by bad faith actors, or amplify disinformation, extremism or hate” after reporter Aaron Maté challenged their baseless smear attempt, in collaboration with The Guardian, against him. The ISD doesn’t have to provide proof or respond to rebuttals when they make claims about others: in a spectaclist society, their accusations alone can kill careers.

Debord writes on the phenomenon, applicable to anyone who skirts mainstream narratives, in Comments: “A person’s past can be entirely rewritten, radically altered, recreated in the manner of the Moscow trials – and without even having to bother with anything as clumsy as a trial. Killing comes cheaper these days.”

Further crystallizing the spectacle’s refusal of reply and the “killings” it facilitates, fact-checking and corporate-facilitated mass bans and delegitimizations of journalist social media accounts occur en masse, and are especially common for individuals and organizations providing information and content swimming against the current. By late May of 2022, for example, YouTube had removed over 9,000 channels producing materials related to the war in Ukraine.

And Twitter and Facebook continue labeling non-western accounts, often anti-imperialist networks and associated journalists as “state-affiliated” or “state-controlled”, in attempts to discredit them. Smears, demonetizations and deplatforming with respect to journalists and outlets that stray from mainstream narratives, including hit pieces on Kim Iversen and Eva Bartlett as well as PayPal and twitter deplatforming of organizations like Mint Press News and Russia Today, are increasingly common. In many cases, such decisions about bans and deplatforming are based on conclusions made by “independent” fact-checkers who decide particular claims or research conclusions are incorrect or otherwise “harmful,” a nebulous term that can easily be used against dissenters because such an accusation requires no real evidence or proof.

While independent, adversarial sources are left to try to produce work within increasingly prohibitive restraints, mainstream media channels and fact-checkers consistently parrot distorted or false narratives without consequence.

Much of the media coverage of the conflict in Ukraine, for example, obscures basic facts, including the nature and reality of the Ukrainian military’s neo-Nazi elements, and especially the Azov Battalion, widely associated with neo-Nazism before the current conflict. This has led to controversy in places like Greece, where Ukrainian Prime Minister Zelensky’s decision to allow an Azov Battalion member to speak during his virtual address to the country’s Parliament in April 2022 resulted in widespread outrage.

And many mainstream news sources posited the recent missile strike in Poland was Russian in origin with little evidence, bringing international tensions to the brink. As news emerged that the missile was likely Ukrainian, updates were published and articles were rescinded — but not until after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called to further escalate the conflict. While the Associated Press (AP) journalist who broke the story after receiving false information from US intel was fired, an event remarkable enough to make international news headlines, dozens of prominent outlets still uncritically repeated AP’s initial claims that the missile was Russian.

Clearly, disingenuous media portrayals of current events are common. But the current arrangement, where mainstream media spreads disinformation unabated while those telling the truth face reprimanding, is not an accident. Rather, many mainstream journalists and fact-checkers have their jobs because their words serve the state and spectacle alike.

And such a toxic media environment, of course, is self-reinforcing: any “fact checker” or “expert” who strays from their work advancing the spectacle knows they risk the very smears they now spout. In today’s world, likewise, everyone is subconsciously aware of this reality because they too could be “canceled” online or in real life with little chance at defense. And considering the Ukrainian government’s kill list against journalists such as Eva Bartlett and prominent figures including musician Roger Waters, one could say Debord’s “killing” has taken on a literal form, though of course fact checkers find such claims misleading.

Conclusion

At the time of writing, the relative ability of spectacular media narratives to sway or otherwise confuse public opinion, as current and recent events including the war in Syria, the Ukraine conflict, and the coronavirus crisis demonstrate, is unprecedented.

Many are increasingly able to grasp, however, that some kind of deception or misdirection is often ongoing. Namely, the public is learning to understand the deceptive nature of the “experts” adorning their screens, as the flop and subsequent shutting of CNN+, a 100 million USD streaming service that only received about 10,000 subscriptions, shows. And trust in the media is reaching record lows in the US and internationally: a July 2022 Gallup poll revealed only 16% of U.S. adults had “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in the reporting quality of newspapers and 11% in television-based news respectively.

“The current thing” meme surfacing and gaining traction over the past year, furthermore, articulates a collective sense that many news events, or their impacts, are somehow manufactured or sensationalized in ways that aren’t organic.

Many people have come to realize that there's something very strange and unnatural about big corporations all walking lockstep to push the "latest thing."

Real life just doesn't work that way.

There must be some kind of leverage used to create this unnatural situation.

— Ron Paul (@RonPaul) August 27, 2022

This collective, if un-articulated knowledge that the media available for consumption is somehow wrong or misleading coincides with Debord’s claim in Comments that people subconsciously understand that, as the spectacle continues its upending of social relations, something fundamental has changed about life itself.

As Debord writes in Comments:

“The vague feeling that there has been a rapid invasion which has forced people to lead their lives in an entirely different way is now widespread; but this is experienced rather like some inexplicable change in the climate, or in some other natural equilibrium, a change faced with which ignorance knows only that it has nothing to say.”

The spectacle’s totality of domination over our lives is an amazing yet shocking feat that forces those recognizing the phenomenon to reckon with the “un-lives” we live. Thus, while “ignorance knows… it has nothing to say,” overriding and dismantling the spectacle requires finding something to say: as Debord writes, a “practical force must be set in motion.”

This “practical force” needs the meaningful dialogue that spectacle’s creep into our lives has largely eliminated, if not wholly erased, via phenomena including today’s fact-checking and anti-disinformation crazes. And that dialogue and communication cannot be initiated by atomized individuals or by lonely crowds susceptible to spectacle’s influence, but by people who share community and a meaningful connection to what Debord describes as “universal history,” “ where dialogue arms itself to make its own conditions victorious.”

As Debord put it, “We can truly understand this society only by negating it.” If the “experts” lose influence, it will be because the public has rejected them outright, and can articulate that their societal role is to deceive on behalf of the powerful.

Selected References

Debord, Guy. Comments on the Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Malcolm Imrie. London and New York: Verso Books, 1990. https://monoskop.org/images/3/3b/Debord_Guy_Comments_on_the_Society_of_the_Spectacle_1990.pdf.

Debord, Guy. The Society of the Spectacle. Translated by Ken Knabb. Berkeley, California: Bureau of Public Secrets, 2014. https://files.libcom.org/files/The Society of the Spectacle Annotated Edition.pdf.

NewsGuard, the media rating agency, alleges that Consortium News has published “false content” by reporting that there was a U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014 and that ne0-Nazis have significant influence in the country. NewsGuard took issue with a:

“February 2022 article ‘Ukraine: Guides to Reflection,’ [which] asserted, ‘Hence, the inflation of Russian behavior in Ukraine (where Washington organized a coup against a democratically elected government because we disliked its political complexion) … .’

It then wrote:

“The U.S. supported the Maidan revolution that ousted then-Ukraine President Viktor Yanikovych (sic) in 2014 — including a December 2013 visit by John McCain to Kyiv in support of protesters — but there is no evidence that the U.S. ‘organized’ a ‘coup.’ Instead, it has the markings of a popular uprising, precipitated by widely covered protests against Yanukovych’s decision to suspend preparations for the signing of an association and free-trade agreement with the European Union.”

Viktor Yanukovych was democratically elected as president of Ukraine in 2010 in an election certified by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, a fact not mentioned in NewsGuard’s writings on the change of government in Ukraine. Even though Yanukovych agreed to an EU political settlement and early elections, violence forced him to flee from the capital on Feb. 21, 2014. Reporting that the neo-Nazi Right Sector was at the forefront of the violent overthrow, The New York Times (NewsGuard green check) wrote earlier that day:

“Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of Right Sector, a coalition of hard-line nationalist groups, reacted defiantly to news of the settlement, drawing more cheers from the crowd.

‘The agreements that were reached do not correspond to our aspirations,’ he said. ‘Right Sector will not lay down arms. Right Sector will not lift the blockade of a single administrative building until our main demand is met — the resignation of Yanukovych.’ He added that he and his supporters were ‘ready to take responsibility for the further development of the revolution.’ The crowd shouted: ‘Good! Good!’

A study on the violence used to overthrow the government, by Prof. Serhiy Kudelia, a political scientist at Baylor University, says the overthrow succeeded because of “the embeddedness of violent groups” in a non-violent protest. The violence began on Dec. 1, 2013 when these violent groups attacked police with “iron chains, flares, stones and petrol bombs” and tried to ram a bulldozer through police lines. The police viciously fought back that day.

As the International Business Times (IBT) (green check) wrote about these groups at the time:

“According to a member of anti-fascist Union Ukraine, a group that monitors and fights fascism in Ukraine, ‘There are lots of nationalists here [EuroMaidan] including Nazis. They came from all over Ukraine, and they make up about 30% of protesters.

Different groups [of anarchists] came together for a meeting on the Maidan. While they were meeting, a group of Nazis came in a larger group, they had axes and baseball bats and sticks, helmets, they said it was their territory. They called the anarchists things like Jews, blacks, communists. There weren’t even any communists, that was just an insult. The anarchists weren’t expecting this and they left. People with other political views can’t stay in certain places, they aren’t tolerated,’ a member of the group continued.”

The violence by far-right groups was evidently condoned by Sen. John McCain who expressed his support for the uprising by addressing the Maidan crowd later that month. Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and then U.S. ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt visited the square after the violence had broken out.

NewsGuard’s account of the events of Feb. 21, 2014 says that even though Yanukovych agreed to the early elections, “angry protestors demanded Yanukovych’s immediate resignation,” and he fled on that day after “hundreds of police guarding government buildings abandoned their posts.” NewsGuard then says “protestors took control of several government buildings the next day.”

Government Buildings Seized

Protestors occupied Kiev’s City Hall, replete with Confederate flag. (YouTube)

But protestors had already seized government buildings as early as December 2013. On Jan. 24 protestors broke into the Agriculture Ministry building in Kiev and occupied it. On the same day barricades were set up near the presidential headquarters. Government buildings in the west of the country had also been occupied. The Guardian (green check) reported on Jan. 24:

“There were dramatic developments in the west of the country on Thursday as hundreds of people forced their way into the office of the regional governor in the city of Lviv, and forced him to sign a resignation letter. Oleh Salo, a Yanukovych appointee in a city where support for the president is in the low single digits, later said he signed the letter under duress and was rescinding his resignation.

Thousands also stormed regional administration headquarters in Rivne on Thursday, breaking down doors and demanding the release of people detained in the unrest there, Unian news agency reported. In the town of Cherkasy, 125 miles south of Kiev, about 1,000 protesters took over the first two floors of the main administration building and lit fires outside the building.

Similar action took place in Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Khmelnytsky in western and central Ukraine, as well as parts of the north-east, the Party of the Regions said.”

Protestors had begun occupying Kiev City Hall in December, with a portrait of Ukraine’s World War II fascist leader Stepan Bandera hanging from the rafters. On the night of Feb. 21, the leader of the Neo-fascist Right Sector, Andriy Parubiy, announced that the Verkhovna Rada (parliament), the Presidential Administration, the Cabinet of Ministers and the Ministry of Internal Affairs had all come under control of the protestors.

Therefore NewsGuard has published “false content” by reporting that government buildings were occupied the day after Yanukovych fled the capital. It should print a correction.

On the day after Yanukovych fled, the Rada voted without the presence of Yanukovych’s party — the largest in the country — to impeach him after the fact of his violent overthrow. NewsGuard omitted the key fact that the impeachment vote was tainted by the absence of Yanukovych’s party and that the impeachment became largely irrelevant after violence forced him to flee the capital.

Democratically-elected leaders are removed by electoral defeat, impeachment or votes of no confidence, not by violence. NewsGuard writes that “hundreds of police guarding government buildings abandoned their posts” on the day Yanukovych was forced out, but doesn’t say why. As Jacobin (NewsGuard green check) magazine reports:

“Whatever one thinks of the Maidan protests, the increasing violence of those involved was key to their ultimate victory. In response to a brutal police crackdown, protesters began fighting with chains, sticks, stones, petrol bombs, even a bulldozer — and, eventually, firearms, all culminating in what was effectively an armed battle in February, which left thirteen police officers and nearly fifty protesters dead. The police ‘could no longer defend themselves’ from protesters’ attacks,’ writes political scientist Sergiy Kudelia, causing them to retreat, and precipitating Yanukovych’s exit.”

NewsGuard calls the events a “revolution,” yet revolutions in history have typically been against monarchs or dictators, not against democratically-elected leaders. For instance, the 1776 American Revolution, the 1789 French Revolution, the 1917 Russian Revolution, the 1952 Egyptian Revolution, the 1979 Iranian Revolution and countless others were against monarchs. Coups have been against both elected and non-elected leaders. Revolutions change political systems, usually from monarchies to republics. Ukraine’s political system was not changed, only its leader.

As a reader, Adrian E.. commented below on this article:

“When a movement that is supported by about half the population and opposed by about half the population violently overthrows a democratically elected government, this may be given different names (e.g. coup), but it is certainly not a “popular revolution”.

The Maydan movement was never supported by more than about half the Ukrainian population. It was supported by a vast majority in Western Ukraine, by very few people in the East and South of the country, with people more evenly split in the center/North. This clearly was not a case of a government that had lost public support to such a degree that there was a general consensus that it should resign. It was the case of one political camp representing about half the country that had lost the last elections imposing its will with brutal deadly violence.”

By any measure, Yanukovych’s ouster was an unconstitutional change in government. His “impeachment” without his party present for the vote came after government buildings had been seized and after violence drove him from the capital.

Circumstantial Evidence

McCain addressing crowd in Kiev, Dec. 15, 2013. (U.S. Senate/Office of Chris Murphy/Wikimedia Commons)

In its version of these events, NewsGuard only refers to circumstantial evidence of the coup, interpreting it as U.S. “support” for a “revolution” against a democratically-elected president.

NewsGuard fails to point out that McCain, Sen. Christopher Murphy (D-CT) as well as Nuland appeared on stage in the Maidan with Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the Neo-fascist Svoboda Party, formerly known as the Social National Party.

NewsGuard does not consider how such events would be seen in the United States if a senior Russian foreign ministry official, two leading Russian lawmakers and Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. appeared on stage with a far-right American leader to address a crowd on the Washington Mall seeking to oust an elected U.S. president. If that president were overthrown violently, would Americans think it was a Russian-backed coup?

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NewsGuard discusses Nuland’s 2013 speech in which she revealed that since 1991 the U.S. had spent $5 billion to help bring about Ukraine’s “aspirations.” What it fails to point out is that U.S. aspirations were to turn Ukraine towards the West and away from Russia. And the U.S. had work to do.

In a 2008 poll, 17 years after this U.S. effort began, and the year in which the U.S. said Ukraine would one day join NATO, 50 percent of Ukrainians actually opposed NATO membership against just 24.3 percent who favored it. A 2010 Gallup poll showed that 40 percent of Ukrainians viewed NATO as more threat than protector. Just 17 percent had the opposite view. So building up civil society through U.S.-funded NGOs to favor the West was the U.S. challenge.

NewsGuard does not mention that part of the $5 billion the U.S. spent was to help organize protests. There was genuine popular dissatisfaction with Yanukovych that the NED nurtured and trained. Jacobin reported of the 2014 events:

“US officials, unhappy with the scuttled EU deal, saw a similar chance in the Maidan protests. Just two months before they broke out, the NED’s then president, pointing to Yanukovych’s European outreach, wrote that ‘the opportunities are considerable, and there are important ways Washington could help.’

In practice, this meant funding groups like New Citizen, which the Financial Times reported ‘played a big role in getting the protest up and running,’ led by a pro-EU opposition figure. Journalist Mark Ames discovered the organization had received hundreds of thousands of dollars from US democracy promotion initiatives.”

Writing in Consortium News six days after Yanukovych’s ouster, Parry reported that over the previous year, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which funds NGOs in countries the U.S. targets for regime change, had bankrolled 65 projects in Ukraine totaling more than $20 million. Parry called it “a shadow political structure of media and activist groups that could be deployed to stir up unrest when the Ukrainian government didn’t act as desired.”

The NED, on Feb. 25, the day after the Russian invasion, deleted all projects in Ukraine it funded, which are archived here. The NED meddled in Ukrainian politics in 2004 in the so-called Orange Revolution. The Washington Post (green check) wrote in 1991 that what the C.I.A. once did in secret — destabilizing and overthrowing regimes — the NED was now doing openly.

C.I.A. or NED-led coups are never made up out of whole cloth. The U.S. works with genuine opposition movements within a country, sometimes popular uprisings, to finance, train and direct them. The U.S. has a long history of overthrowing foreign governments, the most infamous examples being Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1954, and Chile in 1973.

In September 2013, before the Maidan uprising began, long-time NED head Carl Gerhsman called Ukraine “the biggest prize” in a Washington Post op-ed piece, and warned that “Russians, too, face a choice, and Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself.”

In 2016 he said the NED has been involved in Ukraine since the 1980s and he praised the “overthrow of Yanukovych.”

Nuland-Pyatt Tape Omitted

Most significantly, NewsGuard’s attempt to refute U.S. involvement in the coup omits the 2014 intercepted and leaked telephone call between Nuland and Pyatt, the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine, in which the two discuss who will make up the new government weeks before Yanukovych was overthrown.

On the leaked tape, Nuland and Pyatt talk about “midwifing” a new government; Vice President Joe Biden’s role, and setting up meetings with Ukrainian politicians to make it happen. Nuland says the prime minister should be Arseniy Yatsenyuk, and indeed he became prime minister after the coup.

At the time, the BBC (green check) wrote of the leak: “The US says that it is working with all sides in the crisis to reach a peaceful solution, noting that ‘ultimately it is up to the Ukrainian people to decide their future’. However this transcript suggests that the US has very clear ideas about what the outcome should be and is striving to achieve these goals.”

The U.S. State Department never denied the authenticity of the video, and even issued an apology to the European Union after Nuland is heard on the tape saying, “Fuck the EU.” Mainstream media at the time focused almost exclusively on that off-color remark as a distraction from the greater significance of U.S. interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs.

Why did Nuland say, “Fuck the EU”? At the time she said it, France, Germany and Poland were working for the EU on a political settlement with Russia to the Maidan crisis that would leave Yanukovych in power.

Indeed the E.U. brokered a deal with Yanukovych, who agreed to early elections by December 2014, a restoration of the 2004 Constitution and an amnesty for all protestors, clearing the way for no one to be held responsible for the violent ouster. Yanukovych announced the agreement, with E.U. officials at his side in Kiev, on Feb. 21, 2014. Later that day he was violently driven from power.

Leaving the historic role of the NED and the essential Nuland-Pyatt conversation out of its reporting is an omission of evidence by NewsGuard, typical of corporate media. Omitting crucial elements of a story changes its meaning and in this case undermines NewsGuard’s account of the events of 2014.

This is an excellent example of why Parry started Consortium News: to report on crucial information that corporate media sometimes purposely and deceptively leave out to change the meaning of a story. NewsGuard should correct its story about the coup, not Consortium News. NewsGuard invites readers to request corrections by emailing them at corrections@newsguardtech.com.

Likely Reasons for the Coup

U.S. enabled Yeltsin’s 1996 reelection.

Wall Street and Washington swept in after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 under a pliable Boris Yeltsin (who received direct U.S. help to win re-election in 1996) to asset-strip the formerly state-owned industries, enrich themselves and a new class of oligarchs and impoverish the former Soviet people.

The ascension of Vladimir Putin to power on New Year’s Eve 1999 gradually began to curb U.S. influence in post-Soviet Russia, especially after Putin’s 2007 Munich Security Conference speech, in which he blasted U.S. unilateral aggression, especially in Iraq.

Eventually Putin restored sovereignty over much of the Russian economy, turning Washington and Wall Street against him. (As President Joe Biden has now made clear on more than one occasion, the U.S. aim is to overthrow him.)

In his 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic Imperatives, former U.S. national security adviser ZbigniewBrzezinski wrote:

“Ukraine, a new and important space on the Eurasian chessboard, is a geopolitical pivot because its very existence as an independent country helps to transform Russia. Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be a Eurasian empire. Russia without Ukraine can still strive for imperial status, but it would then become a predominantly Asian imperial state.”

Thus U.S. “primacy,” or world dominance, which still drives Washington, is not possible without control of Eurasia, as Brzezinski argued, and that’s not possible without control of Ukraine by pushing Russia out (U.S. takeover of Ukraine in the 2014 coup) and dominating Moscow as it did when this was written in the 1990s.

Deep Western involvement in Ukrainian politics and economy never ended from those early post-Soviet days. When Yanukovych acted legally (the Rada authorized it) to reject the European Union association agreement in favor of a Russian economic package on better terms, it threatened to curtail Western economic involvement. Yanukovych became a marked man.

Yanukovych had already made Russian an official language, he had rejected NATO membership, and reversed his pro-Western predecessor’s move to glorify Nazi collaborators. Yanukovych’s predecessor, President Viktor Yuschenko, had made Ukraine’s World War II-era fascist leader Stepan Bandera a “Hero of Ukraine.”

There was genuine popular dissatisfaction among mostly Western Ukrainians with Yanukovych, which intensified and became violent after he rejected the EU deal. Within months he was overthrown.

After the Coup

The U.S.-installed government in Kiev outlawed political parties, including the Communist Party, and stripped Russian as an official language. Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions was banned in several oblasts and eventually collapsed. An American citizen became finance minister and Vice President Joe Biden became Barack Obama’s virtual viceroy in Ukraine.

Videos have emerged of Biden giving instructions to the nominal president at the time, Petro Poroshenko. By his own admission, Biden forced the resignation of Viktor Shokin, Ukraine’s prosecutor general.

Shokin testified under oath that he was about to investigate Burisma Holdings, the company on which the vice president’s son was given a lucrative board membership just months after the U.S.-backed coup.

Biden, other U.S. officials, and the media at the time lied that Shokin was removed because he was corrupt. State Dept. memos released this year and published by Just the News (green-check) actually praise Shokin for his anti-corruption work. The question of whether the leader of a foreign nation has the right to remove another country’s prosecutor was buried.

Eight days after nearly 50 anti-coup protestors in Odessa were burned to death on May 2, 2014 by far-right counter-protestors dominated by Right Sector, the coup-resisting provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk in the Donbass region declared independence from Ukraine. Russia began assisting them and, after a visit to Kiev by then C.I.A. Director John Brennan, Poroshenko launched a war against the separatists that lasted eight years, killing thousands of civilians, until Russia intervened in the civil conflict in February.

After the coup, NATO began arming, training and conducting exercises with the Ukrainian military, turning it into a de facto NATO member. These were not just the interests of part of Ukraine that were being served, but those of powerful foreign actors. It was akin to a 19th century-style colonial takeover of a country.

Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers, including The Montreal Gazette and The Star of Johannesburg. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London, a financial reporter for Bloomberg News and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at joelauria@consortiumnews.com and followed on Twitter @unjoe

After the Second World War, modern international law was established with the idea of countering "war propaganda" United Nations General Assembly Resolution 110 of November 3, 1947 and Resolution 381 of November 17, 1950 “Condemnation of propaganda against peace”. International legislators, i.e. sovereign states, soon agreed that war could only be fought against by ensuring the "free flow of ideas" resolution 819 of 11 December 1954 “Strengthening of peace through the removal of barriers to free exchange of ideas".

In recent years, however, we have witnessed an extraordinary backsliding that deprives us of the thoughts of others, exposes us to war propaganda, and ultimately leads us to a global conflict.
This phenomenon began with the private censorship on social networks of the incumbent president of the United States, and continued with the public censorship of Russian media in the West. Now the thoughts of others are no longer seen as a tool to prevent wars, but as a poison that threatens us.

Western states are setting up bodies to "rectify" information that they consider falsified (Fake News)“The West renounces freedom of expression”, by Thierry Meyssan. NATO is considering the creation of a unit, called Information Ramstein, which will be responsible for censoring not Russian information sources, but Russian ideas within the 30 member states of the Atlantic Alliance "A ’Ministry of Truth’ soon to be created within NATO".

This is a complete reversal of the values of the Atlantic Alliance, which was founded in the wake of the Atlantic Charter, which incorporated President Franklin Roosevelt’s "four freedoms". The first of these freedoms was the freedom of expression.

However, before the invention of the Internet, when the United States and the Soviet Union had just guaranteed the "free circulation of ideas" with the Helsinki Agreements, the United Nations and more particularly its agency in this field, UNESCO, were worried about "information imperialism". The technical superiority of the West allowed them to impose their view of the facts on developing countries.

In 1976, during the Nairobi conference, the UN raised the question of the functioning of the media with regard to "the strengthening of peace and international understanding, the promotion of human rights and the fight against racism, apartheid and incitement to war.

Former Irish Foreign Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Seán MacBride formed a 16-member commission at Unesco. It included the Frenchman Hubert Beuve-Mery (founder of Le Monde), the Colombian Gabriel García Márquez (Nobel Prize for Literature) and the Canadian Marshall McLuhan (communication theorist). The United States was represented by Elie Abel, then dean of the Columbia University School of Journalism, and Russia by the director of the Tass agency, Sergei Losev. Only the fifth and final part of the report (Communication Tomorrow) was the subject of a general debate. The MacBride commission discussed the draft of the other parts, but could not question their final wording. In any event, its report, issued in 1978, seemed to be a consensus.

In fact, by pointing out that the same facts can be perceived differently and by opening up the question of the means of the media of the North and those of the South, he was opening a Pandora’s box. At the same time, Unesco was confronted with the propaganda of the South African apartheid regime and the propaganda of Israel, which denies Muslim and Christian cultures. In the end, the United States and the United Kingdom ended the debate by withdrawing from Unesco. We know today that the British Empire had ensured its intellectual domination by creating news agencies. Whitehall closed the Information Research Department (IRD) just before the MacBride report was published "Britain’s secret propaganda war, Paul Lashmar & James Oliver, Sutton". But the war against Syria has shown that the whole system has been reconstituted in another form “The fabrication of the myth of the "Syrian revolution" by the United States. Westerners continue to falsify information at its source.

In forty years, the media landscape has been transformed: the emergence of international television news channels, websites and social networks. At the same time, there has been a huge concentration of media in the hands of a few owners. However, none of the problems listed in 1978 have changed. On the contrary, with the unipolar world, they have become worse.

The journalistic profession today consists of either writing agency reports or contextualizing the news for the media. News agencies are factual and unsourced, while the media offer commentary and analysis by referring to news agencies. Contextualization requires a great deal of historical, economic and other knowledge, which today’s journalists are largely lacking. The immediacy of radio and television does not give them the time to read books and even less to consult archives, except during in-depth investigations. Commentary and analysis have thus become considerably impoverished.

The dominant ideology in the West, which tends to become "global", has become a religion without God. There are now only two camps: that of the Good and that of the apostates. Truth is determined by a consensus among the elites, while the people reject it. Any criticism is considered blasphemous. There is no more room for debate and therefore for democracy.

The alternative press has become just as poor because it relies on the same data as the international media: news agency reports. It is indeed enough to control AFP, AP and Reuters to impose a vision of the facts on us. You can season it according to this or that tendency, Republican or Democrat, conservative or progressive, etc., but it will always be the same dish.

Since the September 11 attacks, those who challenge the official version of events have been called "conspiracy theorists ». Since the election of Donald Trump, those who contest the data of press agencies are accused of distorting reality and imagining Fake News. Journalists, after refraining from relaying the thoughts of "conspiracists", i.e. dissidents, try to correct Fake News with Checked News.

Yet, at the same time, belief in the versions of the mainstream media has collapsed. In the United States, the Gallup Institute has been measuring trust in the print media since 1973 and in the broadcast media since 1993. Trust in newspapers has fallen from 51 percent to 16 percent, and trust in radio and television has fallen from 46 percent to 11 percent.
The only solution is to increase the number of news agencies, i.e. the sources of information. Not to make them numerous, but diverse. Only then will we realize that the way an event is reported determines the way we think about it.

For example, today the three news agencies mentioned above present the conflict in Ukraine as a "Russian invasion". They claim that Moscow has not been able to take Kiev and overthrow President Zelenky, but commits war crimes every day. This is one way of looking at it. We don’t have the means to publish dispatches all the time, but we publish a weekly identical bulletin. Our criterion is different. We refer to "International Law" and not to Western "rules". Therefore, we describe the same conflict as the application of the Security Council resolution 2202 and the "responsibility to protect" the oppressed populations since 2014. The events are the same, but for some the way they tell them leads to think that the Russians are wrong, while ours leads to think that the Russian position is legal. To tell the truth, there is another difference: we interpret the facts over time. For us and for the Security Council, there has been a civil war in Ukraine for eight years with 20,000 deaths, the three major agencies pretend to ignore it. For us, the "integral nationalists" have a long criminal history, having cost the lives of 4 million of their fellow citizens, the Western agencies also pretend to ignore it “Who are the Ukrainian integral nationalists?”.

This difference can be applied to all subjects. For example, the major news agencies tell us that the West has imposed sanctions to punish Russia for invading Ukraine. We do not read events in this way. Once again, referring to "International Law" and not to Western "rules", we note that the decisions of the Anglo-Saxons and the European Union violate the UN Charter. These are not "sanctions", since there has been no judgment, but economic weapons to wage war against Russia, just as castles were besieged in the past to starve those who had taken refuge there.

Each difference in the interpretation of events provokes another. For example, when we point out that the Western pseudo-sanctions have not been endorsed by the Security Council, we are told that this is quite normal since Russia has a veto right in the Council. This is to forget why the UN was organized the way it was. Its purpose is not to say what is right, but to prevent wars. This is precisely what allowed the Council to adopt resolution 2202 to resolve the civil war in Ukraine. However, the West, despite the commitment of Germany and France, did not apply it, forcing Russia to intervene.

We could go on endlessly with this double reading. The important thing to remember is that the presentation of the facts radically changes the way they are perceived. To conclude, I invite you to found news agencies that describe the facts in their own way and not in the way of our leaders. It is in this way and not by glossing over biased information that we will regain our lucidity.

Propaganda makes you stupid. We know that the Ukrainian integral nationalists have committed abominable massacres, especially during the Second World War. But we don’t know what they have been doing on our doorstep for the last thirty years, including the civil war they have been waging for the last eight years. Our own stupidity allows us to endure the war cries of our political leaders on the side of these criminals.

Voltaire Network | Paris (France) | 27 October 2022

Slava Stetsko, the widow of Nazi Prime Minister Yaroslav Stetsko, opened the 1998 and 2002 sessions of the Verkhovna Rada.

When war comes, governments always believe that they must boost the morale of their people by showering them with propaganda. The stakes are so high, life and death, that debates get tougher and extremist positions become popular. This is exactly what we are witnessing, or rather how we are being transformed. In this game, the ideas defended by some and others have nothing to do with their ideological presuppositions, but with their proximity to power

In the etymological sense, propaganda is just the art of convincing, of propagating ideas. But in modern times, it is an art that aims at reconstructing reality in order to denigrate the adversary and magnify one’s own troops.

Contrary to a widespread idea in the West, it was not the Nazis or the Soviets who invented it, but the British and the Americans during the First World War 1.

Today, Nato coordinates efforts in this area from its Strategic Communication Centre in Riga, Latvia 2. It identifies the points on which it wants to act and organizes international programs to carry them out.

For example, NATO has identified Israel as a weak point: while former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a personal friend of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, his successor, Naftali Bennett, recognized the validity of Russian policy. He even advised the return of Crimea and Donbass and, above all, the denazification of Ukraine. The current Prime Minister, Yair Lapid, is more hesitant. He does not want to support the fundamentalist nationalists who massacred a million Jews shortly before and during the Second World War. But he also wants to stay on good terms with the West.

To bring Israel back into line, Nato is trying to persuade Tel Aviv that in case of a Russian victory, Israel would lose its position in the Middle East 3. To this end, it is spreading the lie that Iran is Russia’s military ally as widely as possible. The international press is constantly claiming that Russian drones are Iranian on the battlefield, and soon the medium-range missiles will be too. Yet Moscow knows how to manufacture these weapons and has never asked Tehran for them. Russia and Iran have repeatedly denied these allegations. But Western politicians, relying on the press and not on mere reflection, have already imposed sanctions on Iranian arms dealers. Soon Yair Lapid, son of the president of the Yad Vashem memorial, will be surrounded and forced to side with the criminals.

The British, on the other hand, traditionally excel in activating networked media and enlisting artists. MI6 relies on a group of 150 news agencies working within the PR Network 4. They convince all these companies to take up their imputations and slogans.

The founder of Ukrainian integral nationalism, Dmytro Dontsov, had an obsessive hatred of Jews and Gypsies. During the World War, he left Ukraine to become a director of the Reinhard Heydrich Institute. It was this institution, based in Czechoslovakia, that was responsible for planning the extermination of all Jews and Gypsies at the Wannsee Conference. He ended his days peacefully in the United States.

They are the ones who successively convinced you that President Vladimir Putin was dying, then that he had gone mad, or that he was facing strong opposition at home and that he would be overthrown by a coup. Their work continues today with cross interviews with soldiers in Ukraine. You hear Ukrainian soldiers say they are nationalists and Russian soldiers say they are afraid but must defend Russia. You hear that Ukrainians are not Nazis and that Russians, living under a dictatorship, are forced to fight. In reality, most Ukrainian soldiers are not "nationalists" in the sense of defenders of their homeland, but "integral nationalists" in the sense of two poets, Charles Maurras and Dmytro Dontsov 5. This is not the same thing at all.

It was only in 1925 that Pope Pius XI condemned "integral nationalism". At that time Dontsov had already written his Націоналізм (Nationalism) (1921). Maurras and Dontsov defined the nation as a tradition and thought their nationalism against others (Maurras against Germans and Dontsov against Russians). Both abhorred the French Revolution, the principles of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity and denounced Jews and Freemasons relentlessly. They consider religion as useful for the organization of society, but seem agnostic. These positions lead Maurras to become a Petainist and Dontsov a Hitlerian. The latter will sink into a varègue (Swedish Viking) mystical delirium. The next pope, Pius XII, repealed the condemnation of his predecessor, just before the war broke out. At the liberation, Maurras was condemned for intelligence with the enemy (he was a Germanophobe), but Dontsov was recuperated by the Anglo-Saxon secret services and exiled to Canada, then to the USA.

As for the Russian soldiers we see interviewed on our TV news, they do not tell us that they are forced to fight, but, unlike the integral nationalists, they are not fanatics. For them, war, even when defending their own, is always a horror. It is because we are repeatedly told that Russia is a dictatorship that we understand something else. We do not accept that Russia is a democracy because, for us, a democracy cannot be an authoritarian regime. Yet, for example, the Second French Republic (1848-1852) was both a democracy and an authoritarian regime.

We are easy to convince because we know nothing about Ukrainian history and culture. The most we know is that Novorossia was ruled by a French aristocrat, Armand-Emmanuel du Plessis de Richelieu, a personal friend of Tsar Alexander I. He continued the work of the Prince of Ukraine. He continued the work of Prince Grigori Potemkin who wanted to build this region on the model of Athens and Rome, which explains why today Novorossia is still of Russian culture (and not Ukrainian) without ever having known serfdom.

The Bibi Yar memorial in Kiev. 33 771 Jewish Ukrainians were shot in two days, on September 29 and 30, 1941, by the Ukrainian Waffen SS and Reinhard Heydrich’s Einsatzgruppen. This massacre was celebrated as a victory by the mainstream nationalists. Today, the Ukrainian government has named the main avenue leading to it after the integral nationalist Stepan Bandera, "in honor" of the greatest criminal in its history.

A few months after his election, on May 6, 1995, Leonid Kushma, the second president of the new Ukraine, went to Munich to meet with Slava Stetsko, the widow of the Ukrainian Nazi prime minister. He agreed to the introduction of an explicit reference to Nazism in the new constitution: "preserving the genetic heritage of the Ukrainian people is the responsibility of the state" (sic).

We are unaware of the atrocities in Ukraine of the interwar period and the Second World War, and have a vague idea of the violence of the USSR. We ignore that the theoretician Dontsov and his disciple Stepan Bandera did not hesitate to massacre all those who did not correspond to their "integral nationalism", first the Jews in this Khazar country, then the Russians and the Communists, the anarchists of Nestor Makhno, and many others. The "integral nationalists", who had become admirers of the Führer and deeply racist, returned to the forefront with the dissolution of the USSR 6. On May 6, 1995, President Leonid Kuchma went to Munich (to the CIA offices) to meet with the leader of the integral nationalists, Steva Stesko, the widow of the Nazi prime minister. She had just been elected to the Verkhovna Rada (Parliament), but had not been able to take her seat because she had been stripped of her Ukrainian citizenship. A month later, Ukraine adopted its current constitution, which states in its Article 16 that "preserving the genetic heritage of the Ukrainian people is the responsibility of the state" (sic). Subsequently, the same Steva Stetsko twice opened the session of the Rada, concluding her speeches with the war cry of the integral nationalists: "Glory to Ukraine!

Modern Ukraine has patiently built its Nazi regime. After proclaiming the "genetic heritage of the Ukrainian people", it enacted various laws. The first one grants the benefit of human rights by the state only to Ukrainians, not to foreigners. The second defines who the majority of Ukrainians are, and the third (enacted by President Zelensky) who the minorities are. The trick is that no law speaks about Russian speakers. Therefore, by default, the courts do not recognize them the benefit of human rights.

Since 2014, a civil war has pitted the integral nationalists against the Russian-speaking populations, mainly those of Crimea and Donbass. 20,000 deaths later, the Russian Federation, applying its "responsibility to protect," launched a special military operation to implement Security Council Resolution 2202 (Minsk Agreements) and end the martyrdom of Russian speakers.

President Zelensky and his friend, Benjamin Netanyahu. The latter is now making support for Ukraine his main election campaign theme. Netanyahu is the son of the private secretary of Zeev Jabotinsky, a Ukrainian figure who allied with the mainstream nationalists against the Bolsheviks. He tried to put the Ukrainian Jewish community at the service of these anti-Semites, but was unanimously denounced within the World Zionist Organization, of which he became a director.

Nato propaganda tells us about the real sufferings of the Ukrainians, but it does not mention the eight years of torture, murder and massacres that preceded it. It talks about "our common values with Ukrainian democracy", but what values do we share with the integral nationalists and where is the democracy in Ukraine?

We do not have to choose between one or the other, but only to defend peace and therefore the Minsk Agreements and resolution 2202.

War drives us crazy. There is a reversal of values. The most extremist triumph. Some of our ministers speak of "stifling Russia" (sic). We do not see that we are supporting the very ideas we believe we are fighting against.

Analytics

26/09/2022

I have been telling the story of what is happening in Lugansk for three years. The war I live in, my sorrows and joys. A year ago, the Myrotvorets website put my details in the public domain. I wrote many letters to world leaders and artists in Western countries. I had only two requests: to delete the data of all children from Myrotvorets and to help the children of Donbass to return to a peaceful life, so that we are not killed. When the confrontation with Myrotvorets started, my Ukrainian journalist friends asked me why I had not written to Zelensky, but only mentioned him in my interview. At the time, it was difficult for me to answer. I still naively believed that there could be peace between Ukraine and Donbass, and that UN Secretary General Guterres and UNICEF, as internationally renowned organisations, would help me. But, unfortunately, I was wrong. Everything I asked for was ignored by these organisations, and Ukraine decided that we could be taken back by force. My efforts and dreams remained dreams. The only thing I am glad about is that I did not write to Zelensky at that time. And now I understand why: you cannot write and ask not to kill children to the one who gives orders to bomb Donetsk, Gorlovka, Altchevsk and other cities. You can’t write to the president who sends thousands of his soldiers to their deaths, who doesn’t spare them, who gives orders for terrorist acts and the killing of children. One should not write to the president who started this massacre and who has lost half of his country. You can’t write to a loser. Every day children are dying in Donbass, in Kherson and in the Zaporozhye region. And he has only himself to blame. A president who will lose everything…

What about UNICEF, the UN, Amnesty International? Have they said anything about the children killed by the Ukrainian army? No, of course not. Like in the Myrotvorets story. They know. But they remain silent or express their concern. They are silent, always and everywhere. When children in Yugoslavia, Syria, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya were killed. And if such respected organisations turn a blind eye to the brutal murder of children, do they have anything to say about the story of Myrotvorets? I don’t think so. After all, we are the wrong children, born and living in the wrong place, according to UNICEF and Amnesty International. In one of my essays, it is said that the children of war are silent because the adults do not listen to them. This is so. Unfortunately, we – the children – are uninteresting to them. We are not like them. They seem to think that we can be killed, that we just have to do it quietly, so as not to disturb others with our cries for help. I am sorry that this is happening. I am sorry that the country where I was born is bombing and trying to destroy everything I hold dear and everything I love, under the approving smile of those who can but do not want to stop this war. Unfortunately, all those who help Ukraine do not realise that the war is coming to them.

Ordinary citizens in the United States and Europe are mostly unaware of the atrocities committed by the Ukrainian army, the brutal bombing and killing of civilians. People are told that we are bombing ourselves or that the Russian army has been shooting at us for eight years. Apparently, that’s why we were looking forward to his arrival in 2022, yeah. Another reality.

Traduction de la lettre de réponse du Pape :
Bonjour Faina.
Le Secrétariat d’État a reçu la lettre que tu as récemment adressée au Saint-Père.
Le Pape François n’est pas indifférent à la détresse des gens, en particulier de ceux qui souffrent et qui traversent des moments difficiles.
Sa Sainteté, confiant toute l’humanité au Seigneur, t’invite à te joindre à ses prières pour la paix dans le monde.
Salutations de Pâques
Monseigneur L. Roberto Cona

But I’m sure it won’t always be like this. The truth will always win out. The hardest thing is not to get discouraged when everything you do doesn’t work. You are not being listened to. Just when you think it’s no use, something happens that helps you believe again that you’re not doing it for nothing. That’s what happened with the Pope’s letter. When I was in Moscow, I received a reply from Pope Francis. According to my Italian friends, he rarely replies to anyone, but he suggested to pray for peace with me. I don’t know if he answered himself or if the answer was written for him, but the important thing is that the Pope paid attention for the first time to the request of a child from Donbass and wanted to pray with someone who is considered an enemy in Ukraine. He offered to pray for me, a child who is not considered a human being in Ukraine. And I will certainly pray with him for the hundreds of children killed by Ukraine and for the peaceful life we all need.

Faina Savenkova
Translation by Christelle Néant for Donbass Insider
English translation: Vz. yan for Donbass Insider

The data are now almost definitive and, as you probably already know, it was a historical triumph for the right-wing parties, and in particular for the "Fratelli d'Italia" coalition led by Giorgia Meloni. 

The triumph of the right may make people outside Italy worried, but there is no reason. Elections in the West are now mainly for show. The Italian government has almost zero power, it is all in the hands of the European Commission, in turn controlled by the global powers. To say nothing about the pervasive corruption that affects the West as a whole. No decision can be taken without satisfying the various lobbies and mafias engaged in the feeding frenzy on what is left of the Italian economy. 

In any case, the left-wing parties in power up to now have made such strongly right-wing choices that I doubt that the "real" right can be more rightish than them! 

So, don't worry too much about who is the theoretical leader of the Italian government. Ms. Meloni is, in my opinion, not a bad person, but she can't do much more than rubber-stamp decisions taken elsewhere. Changes are going to come, but not as a result of elections. Right now, it is difficult to divine what's going to happen in the difficult winter that's coming, but something is going to happen. Something big.

Incidentally, the left played the game hard by using the "Putin card," that is, telling Italians not to vote for Putin's friends. Instead, Italians flocked to vote exactly for them. I leave to you the task of interpreting this interesting fact. 

"Do not vote for Putin's friends." La Repubblica, Sep 23, 2022

The Vilification of Healthy People; Especially Children

Throughout the past several years apparently healthy people have been re-defined as being potential asymptomatic spreaders of a disease that can be lethal in high-risk individuals. The disease is known as the novel coronavirus disease that was first identified in 2019 (COVID-19). People around the world have been instilled with near-paralyzing fear that their family member, friend, neighbour and/or colleague who has no signs or symptoms can kill them by spreading severe acute respiratory syndrome-coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2), which is the causative agent of COVID-19.

This paradigm that a person has no way of knowing who is safe to be around has formed the rationale for mass lockdowns, masking, and mandating ‘vaccines’ for which the initial clinical experiments are still ongoing. This has caused massive fracturing of relationships around the globe. Nobody has been spared. Families have split, best friendships that lasted decades ended abruptly, and colleagues lashed out.

We were told that everyone had to do their part to prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed. Those who felt healthy could not be trusted. Unbeknown to them they might have a wicked pathogen oozing out of their body. Healthy children who were at a statistical risk equivalent to zero of dying from COVID-19 would almost certainly kill their grandparents if they were not locked down, masked and ‘vaccinated’. Those who resisted lockdowns, masking, and mandating of so-called vaccines that could neither prevent the disease nor transmission of its causative agent have been treated like uncaring villains that are deserving of segregation. Remember this front page of one of Canada’s best-known newspapers that was published on August 26, 2021?…

The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, has been a classic example of a leader who has vigorously promoted this kind of hatred and division within his own country.

So, how did we get so far off-track with our response to COVID-19?

Why will future history books, if accurate, document this as the most mismanaged crisis of our time?

Most of the blame rests on the scientific and medical community allowing a very elegant scientific test to be chronically misused. This test is known as the ‘reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction’ (RT-PCR).

Did we follow the science?

In court, I have often seen judges puzzled by the apparent contradictions in the scientific evidence being put forward by various experts. These judges often question how scientists can interpret the same data so differently. When it comes to the science underpinning COVID-19, published papers can be placed into two bins:

1. Those that are trustworthy because they are based on sound scientific methods.

2. Those that are untrustworthy because they are based on flawed scientific methods.

In the past several years science in bin 2 has become voluminous and has contributed excessively to the rationale for the so-called prevailing ‘COVID-19 narrative’. The problem is that the science in bin 2 cannot be properly interpreted because it is built on a fundamentally flawed foundation. Too many scientists failed to critically assess the methods used to generate the early COVID-19 data. This has resulted in this junk science to snowball out of control. The RT-PCR test is at the heart of this problem.

The House Built on Sand Must be Dismantled

If one goes back to the birth of COVID-19 science and critically assesses it, misusing the RT-PCR test jumps out as a key fundamental flaw that caused substantial overestimation of the number of cases of COVID-19 and erroneous labeling of healthy people as asymptomatic spreaders of a deadly disease. The only way to correct course and stop the avalanche of faulty COVID-19 science is to establish which papers can and cannot be trusted. Importantly, editors of scientific journals cannot allow any more COVID-19 ‘facts’ to be published unless the authors unequivocally demonstrate that their data are based on methods that have been implemented properly. Most notably, authors must demonstrate that their research methodologies have been appropriately calibrated such that their conclusions are justified.

Misuse of An Elegant Scientific Technique Has Plagued COVID-19 Science From the Very Beginning

To properly gauge the scope of an outbreak of an infectious disease, one first needs to accurately diagnose it. Diseases are diagnosed primarily based on two things:

1. Accurately detecting the presence of a pathogen using a laboratory-based test.

2. Detection of signs and/or symptoms consistent with the disease, which is usually done by a physician.

Symptoms are aspects of a disease that a person experiences but cannot be assessed easily by an observer. Examples include general malaise, pain, and a loss of appetite. In contrast, signs of illness can be objectively observed and documented by others, and include coughing, sneezing, or a fever that can measured with a thermometer. Often, symptoms precede the onset of signs of illness.

When it comes to defining what it means to be ‘asymptomatic’, there are three relevant scenarios:

1. A person who is not infected with a pathogen will never be at risk of developing the disease associated with that pathogen. These are healthy individuals who are asymptomatic by virtue of not having been infected. They cannot infect others.

2. A person can be infected with a potential pathogen but never develop symptoms of a disease because the causative agent fails to cause substantial harm in the body. In many cases, this might be because the immune system can respond rapidly and effectively. There have also been examples of people getting infected with SARS-CoV-2 but never apparently experiencing symptoms nor developing signs of COVID-19. Infection does not always result in disease. For example, billions of microbes, including many bacteria and viruses, live on and in our bodies without causing us harm. They have invaded our bodies but do not cause disease, even though some of them can cause serious disease in other people or even ourselves should they get into an inappropriate physiological location (e.g., some fecal bacteria entering a body via the oral route). Infected but asymptomatic (disease-free) people are also healthy (i.e., there is no impairment to their ability to function in their daily activities).

3. People who get infected and then progress to a diseased state always have a period in between when they are ‘asymptomatic’. Technically, these individuals that do eventually get sick are referred to as being ‘pre-symptomatic’. One does not know if a person is truly asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic until the typical incubation period for a pathogen has passed; this is the expected time from infection to the onset of symptoms in a susceptible person. A person who is infected and symptomatic can spread the causative agent of the disease to others.

When people have COVID-19, they experience obvious symptoms and signs also usually become apparent. This is the scenario that has been easy to manage throughout the declared COVID-19 pandemic. People who are sick have been asked to stay home. From a social hygiene perspective, it is my expert opinion that this should be encouraged for all the infectious diseases we live with. This would reduce infectious disease-related morbidities and mortalities.

In the context of COVID-19, most masking, isolation and vaccination policies around the world are predicated on the assumption that transmission of SARS-CoV-2 can be efficiently mediated by asymptomatic people who are transiently infected but never get COVID-19 and/or pre-symptomatic individuals. This is based on the assumption that SARS-CoV-2 can replicate to the point where a person who is not coughing or sneezing can expel a threshold dose required to potentially infect another person. Although this is theoretically possible and likely occurs rarely, it is incorrect to conclude that this is commonplace and a significant driver of the spread of COVID-19. This incorrect concept is based on an array of scientific studies that relied on RT-PCR testing that was inappropriately calibrated.

How to Define a Case of COVID-19

Cases of COVID-19 should only be determined as follows:

1. It should be a physician making the diagnosis.

2. It should be based on the presence of signs and symptoms that are consistent with the clinical definition of COVID-19.

3. The presence of symptoms and/or signs should be supported by laboratory results derived from properly calibrated tests that demonstrate the presence of SARS-CoV-2 virions. A virion is a single virus particle. Virions can be replication-competent; these are the only ones that can potentially infect another person and cause disease. Or they can be replication-incompetent; these ones can never spread to others and cause COVID-19.

Throughout the declared pandemic many so-called ‘cases’ of COVID-19 were incorrectly ‘diagnosed’. Cases, especially early in the declared pandemic, have been defined by individuals other than physicians, assumed based on signs and symptoms only, or exclusively based on a positive laboratory test result. The latter has been extremely common. This contradicts the World Health Organization, which noted that “Most PCR assays are indicated as an aid for diagnosis, therefore, health care providers must consider any result in combination with timing of sampling, specimen type, assay specifics, clinical observations, patient history, confirmed status of any contacts, and epidemiological information”.

The core definition, and all-too-often the sole definition of ‘cases’ of COVID-19 has been based on the use of a laboratory testing method referred to as ‘RT-PCR’. To understand how asymptomatic people were mislabeled as significant sources of transmission of SARS-CoV-2, one must first understand how RT-PCR testing should have been properly calibrated around the world.

A polymerase is a protein that can copy DNA, which is a genetic blueprint. So, the PCR method requires this genetic blueprint known as DNA to be present in order to work. If DNA is in a sample, when a scientist adds a polymerase, a few other ingredients, and then varies the temperature, new copies of tiny portions of the DNA will be made. With each ‘cycle’ that the PCR test is run, more copies of these fragments of the genetic blueprint will be made. Once a threshold number of copies appear in the sample, they can be detected. Think of it like a photocopier. From a great distance, you might not be able to tell if a single copy of a page has been made. However, once you have a stack of five hundred pages sitting on the output tray, you know for sure that the photocopier is churning out copies. In short, PCR is a method that scientists can use to determine whether a particular genetic blueprint is present in a sample.

The genetic blueprint for SARS-CoV-2 is not made of DNA. Instead, it is made of a related structure called ‘RNA’. Therefore, to use the PCR test to determine whether an RNA-based virus is present in a sample requires one additional step at the beginning. Specifically, a ‘reverse transcriptase’ is used to convert the RNA from SARS-CoV-2 into DNA, portions of which can then be detected with the PCR test. This is how the RT-PCR test is used to detect the presence of small pieces of the genetic material from SARS-CoV-2.

The Inappropriate Use of RT-PCR Testing Caused a Disconnect Between Laboratory Studies and ‘Real World’ Data

Laboratory studies suggested that asymptomatic individuals could potentially shed infectious SARS-CoV-2 one to two days before the onset of symptoms of COVID-19. However, the largest ‘real world’ study done to date looked at the prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 in ~10 million people in Wuhan, China and found no evidence of asymptomatic transmission. This typical disconnect in the results of laboratory-based studies and ‘real world’ data is due to the former types of experiments having relied on the use of uncalibrated or incorrectly calibrated RT-PCR tests. An RT-PCR test can only determine if tiny fragments of the genetic material from a virus is present in a sample. It can never indicate, on its own, whether that material is from virus particles that have the potential to infect and cause disease, or from replication-incompetent virions or even portions thereof that cannot cause disease.

Flawed RT-PCR Testing Caused Over-Diagnosis of COVID-19

On its own, a positive result on a RT-PCR test to detect SARS-CoV-2 is insufficient to diagnose COVID-19, yet this became routine in most parts of the world. In addition to the potential for false positive tests, true positive results can also be obtained from genomes of SARS-CoV-2 particles that are no longer infectious. An example of the latter would be an individual who has mounted an effective immune response and may have remnant replication-incompetent viral particles or partially degraded viral genetic material inside relatively long-lived white blood cells that have killed the virus. These cells are known as ‘phagocytes’ and are part of our immune system. Indeed, following clearance of SARS-CoV-2 from the body, full and/or partial genomes of SARS-CoV-2 can remain for up to several weeks. Phagocytosis (or ‘eating’) of SARS-CoV-2 is a mechanism to kill and remove the virus from the body. These phagocytic cells tend to hang on to these ‘killed’ virions so that they can activate other immunological effector cells, including B cells that produce the antibodies we have heard so much about. As such, these phagocytes can be a source of SARS-CoV-2 genomes that could be amplified by a PCR test. However, these genomes would not have the potential to cause COVID-19. Instead it would evidence that the infection has resolved or is resolving. Persistence of whole or partial genomes that are not associated with infectious particles is well-documented for a variety of other viruses, including measles, Middle East respiratory syndrome-coronavirus, and other coronaviruses. A positive RT-PCR test for the presence of SARS-CoV-2 should never be used, on its own, to define cases of COVID-19; and definitely should not be used to claim that someone has the potential to infect another person.

Building a Rock-Solid Foundation for COVID-19 Science:

The Gold Standard Functional Virology Assay that Should Always be Used to Calibrate RT-PCR Tests

A gold standard test for infectivity of a virus is a cell-based functional assay that determines the potential to replicate and cause cell death. The assay works like this: Cells that are stripped of their anti-viral properties are put into a dish and allowed to adhere to the bottom. The cells would typically cover the entire bottom of the dish. A scientist can look under a microscope to confirm the cells are healthy. A sample then gets added to the cells. If the sample contains replication-competent (i.e., potentially disease-causing) virions, these will infect and kill the cells. A day or two later, the scientist can check the cells under a microscope again. If they see what is called a ‘cytopathic effect’, which means the cells have died, this indicates that replication-competent virions were present. If there was no cytopathic effect, there were no replication-competent virions. Here are pictures from my research team that show how this virology test works…

…the cells on the left were not exposed to a replication-competent (infectious) virus. They remain happily adhered to the bottom of the dish. There was no cytopathic effect. The cells on the right were exposed to a replication-competent virus that infected and killed them. As the cells died, they rounded up and lost their ability to remain stuck to the bottom of the plate. This is a classic example of cytopathic effect. You can see how easy it is to use this test to determine whether a sample contains any infectious virions.

To calibrate a RT-PCR test for SARS-Cov-2, samples from nasopharyngeal swabs of a large array of people would be split into two; one for RT-PCR testing and the other for testing in the gold standard virology assay. Scientists would note the cycle threshold values from the RT-PCR test that are associated with evidence of replication-competent virions from the cellular virology assay versus those that did not cause a cytopathic effect. This allows a cycle threshold cut-off to be determined. Above this threshold, there is no evidence of replication-competent virions in samples from the nasopharyngeal swabs. This is the objective and proper way to calibrate a RT-PCR test when studying transmission of a virus. Without doing this, RT-PCR test results cannot be interpreted in a meaningful way, and they would lead to inappropriate conclusions, like asymptomatic people being spreaders of COVID-19.

Early in the declared COVID-19 pandemic the Public Health Agency of Canada appropriately performed this calibration of their RT-PCR test. For the test they were using, they identified a cycle threshold cut-off of 24 for declaring people to have the potential to infect others. If they had subsequently offered this service to support studies of the spread of COVID-19, only samples yielding a signal at 24 or fewer cycles would be declared to have evidence of potentially infectious SARS-CoV-2. However, with no explanation provided, this initial and appropriate way of calibrating the RT-PCR assay was not required for labs around the world that were studying transmission of SARS-CoV-2. In fact, cycle threshold cut-offs were arbitrarily assigned. As such, RT-PCR data used to determine global cases of COVID-19 have been highly unreliable.

Even so-called ‘fact-checkers’ of people who criticized the inappropriate designation of the RT-PCR as a stand-alone gold standard diagnostic test have had to admit that it cannot possibly distinguish between infectious and non-infectious virions or parts thereof. For example, a ‘fact check’ from Reuters concluded “PCR tests are being used widely in England to show that SARS-CoV-2 viral genetic material is present in the patient”. I bolded the relevant text. Indeed, RT-PCR tests are a valuable tool for determining whether portions of a virus’s genetic material are present in a sample. They cannot determine whether that genetic material is from a replication-competent virion that would have the potential to infect someone.

Positive RT-PCR tests for SARS-CoV-2 in asymptomatic people are almost universally based on high cycle threshold values, which raises the question of whether these individuals harbor infectious viral particles. The absence of a functional cell-based assay to prove infectivity renders results of asymptomatic testing impossible to interpret accurately. Indeed, the World Health Organization, agreeing with many health professionals around the world, has emphasized that spreading of SARS-CoV-2 by asymptomatic individuals is rare and an emphasis should be placed, therefore, on testing people with signs or symptoms of illness, not those who are apparently healthy.

In addition to the Canadian study that identified a cycle threshold of 24 as an appropriate cut-off for declaring samples positive for infectious SARS-CoV-2, other studies reported results of similar calibrations of other RT-PCR assays for SARS-CoV-2. They identified cycle threshold cut-offs of 22-27 and 30. Altogether, this suggests that tests with cycle threshold values above 22-30 are likely not indicative of the presence of replication-competent SARS-CoV-2.

The logical conclusion is that it is erroneous to declare samples with high cycle threshold values, especially those above 30, as being positive for infectious SARS-CoV-2. However, in many countries people were assumed to be infectious when their samples were declared positive using RT-PCR assays with cycle threshold cut-offs as high as 45 cycles. Such an unjustifiably high cut-off would have resulted in a substantial overestimation of cases of COVID-19 and would have led to erroneous labeling of asymptomatic people as potential spreaders of COVID-19.

Failure to Calibrate the RT-PCR Test Shows How a Representative Influential Scientific Study Incorrectly Concluded that Asymptomatic People Might be a Risk for Spreading COVID-19

The figure below shows results of a published study that claimed to depict the frequency at which asymptomatic people tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 relative to that observed for people with symptomatic infections. Specifically, graphs are shown from figure 2 of a paper published in the influential Journal of the American Medical Association - Internal Medicine. The argument being made was that the frequency at which asymptomatic people tested positive for SARS-CoV-2 was like that observed for people with symptomatic infections. However, the authors failed to calibrate their RT-PCR assay.

Following is the description the authors of the study provided in the methods section of their paper. The most important portion of this text is the last sentence, which is bolded.

“Specimen Collection and RT-PCR for SARS-CoV-2

The URT specimens were collected from both nasopharyngeal and oropharyngeal swabs obtained by trained medical staffs (physicians and nurses). For LRT specimens, participants were given instructions the night before to collect a first morning sputum (after gargling) in a specimen cup; RT-PCR assays for SARS-CoV-2 were performed using Allplex 2020-nCoV assay (Seegene, Seoul, ROK) to determine the presence of virus through the identification of 3 genetic markers: envelope (env) gene, RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp) gene, and nucleocapsid protein (N) gene. The cycle threshold (Ct) during RT-PCR testing refers to when the detection of viral amplicons occurs, it is inversely correlated with the amount of RNA present. A lower Ct value indicates large quantities of viral RNA. It was considered positive when the Ct values of all genes were less than 40 cycles.”

Remarkably, the authors applied an arbitrary cycle threshold of 40 to define a positive test result. Proper calibration of the test was not performed. I applied a new cycle threshold cut-off of 24, based on the published results of the Canadian study for calibrating a RT-PCR test for SARS-CoV-2. This is shown as a red dotted line on the graphs in the figure above. Symbols appearing in the light red rectangle above this line would be considered negative, in contrast to the positive designation that the authors had assigned. Remarkably, 99.7% of the people the authors declared to be harbouring infectious SARS-CoV-2 likely had no evidence of potentially infectious SARS-CoV-2 virions, had the test been properly calibrated. This represents a fatal flaw in this paper; one that negates its conclusion that “Isolation of asymptomatic patients may be necessary to control the spread of SARS-CoV-2”. It should also precipitate its retraction. Such a paper should never have been allowed to be published in the first place.

This highlights a fatal flaw that has been extremely common in publications throughout the declared pandemic that claimed asymptomatic people could be a significant source of transmission of SARS-CoV-2 that could cause COVID-19 in other people. Every paper making this claim should have the materials and methods section carefully evaluated to determine whether the cycle threshold cut-off for the RT-PCR assay was based on the appropriate calibration method or was selected arbitrarily.

Here is a list of other influential publications of original research studies that erroneously concluded that asymptomatic people might be significant sources of replication-competent SARS-CoV-2 virions. Most are based on fatally flawed RT-PCR testing and the remaining papers fail to disclose how they defined an ‘infection’. All of them should be retracted. None of their conclusions can be trusted…

1. Bai, Y. et al. Presumed Asymptomatic Carrier Transmission of COVID-19. Jama 323, 1406-1407 (2020).

2. Arons, M.M. et al. Presymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infections and Transmission in a Skilled Nursing Facility. The New England journal of medicine 382, 2081-2090 (2020).

3. Stock, A.D. et al. COVID-19 Infection Among Healthcare Workers: Serological Findings Supporting Routine Testing. Front Med (Lausanne) 7, 471 (2020).

4. Bi, Q. et al. Epidemiology and transmission of COVID-19 in 391 cases and 1286 of their close contacts in Shenzhen, China: a retrospective cohort study. The Lancet. Infectious diseases 20, 911-919 (2020).

5. Böhmer, M.M. et al. Investigation of a COVID-19 outbreak in Germany resulting from a single travel-associated primary case: a case series. The Lancet. Infectious diseases 20, 920-928 (2020).

6. Chan, J.F. et al. A familial cluster of pneumonia associated with the 2019 novel coronavirus indicating person-to-person transmission: a study of a family cluster. Lancet (London, England) 395, 514-523 (2020).

7. Van Vinh Chau, N. et al. The Natural History and Transmission Potential of Asymptomatic Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 Infection. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America 71, 2679-2687 (2020).

8. Chaw, L. et al. Analysis of SARS-CoV-2 Transmission in Different Settings, Brunei. Emerging infectious diseases 26, 2598-2606 (2020).

9. Cheng, H.Y. et al. Contact Tracing Assessment of COVID-19 Transmission Dynamics in Taiwan and Risk at Different Exposure Periods Before and After Symptom Onset. JAMA internal medicine 180, 1156-1163 (2020).

10. Gao, M. et al. A study on infectivity of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 carriers. Respiratory medicine 169, 106026 (2020).

11. Gao, Y. et al. A cluster of the Corona Virus Disease 2019 caused by incubation period transmission in Wuxi, China. The Journal of infection 80, 666-670 (2020).

12. Guan, W.J. et al. Clinical Characteristics of Coronavirus Disease 2019 in China. The New England journal of medicine 382, 1708-1720 (2020).

13. He, X. et al. Temporal dynamics in viral shedding and transmissibility of COVID-19. Nat Med 26, 672-675 (2020).

14. Hodcroft, E.B. Preliminary case report on the SARS-CoV-2 cluster in the UK, France, and Spain. Swiss medical weekly 150 (2020).

15. Hoehl, S. et al. Evidence of SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Returning Travelers from Wuhan, China. The New England journal of medicine 382, 1278-1280 (2020).

16. Lauer, S.A. et al. The Incubation Period of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) From Publicly Reported Confirmed Cases: Estimation and Application. Annals of internal medicine 172, 577-582 (2020).

17. Li, R. et al. Substantial undocumented infection facilitates the rapid dissemination of novel coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2). Science (New York, N.Y.) 368, 489-493 (2020).

18. Li, C. et al. Asymptomatic and Human-to-Human Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in a 2-Family Cluster, Xuzhou, China. Emerging infectious diseases 26, 1626-1628 (2020).

19. Liu, Y., Funk, S. & Flasche, S. The contribution of pre-symptomatic infection to the transmission dynamics of COVID-2019. Wellcome open research 5, 58 (2020).

20. Lu, X. et al. SARS-CoV-2 Infection in Children. The New England journal of medicine 382, 1663-1665 (2020).

21. Lu, S. et al. Alert for non-respiratory symptoms of coronavirus disease 2019 patients in epidemic period: A case report of familial cluster with three asymptomatic COVID-19 patients. Journal of medical virology 93, 518-521 (2021).

22. Luo, S.H. et al. A confirmed asymptomatic carrier of 2019 novel coronavirus. Chinese medical journal 133, 1123-1125 (2020).

23. Mizumoto, K., Kagaya, K., Zarebski, A. & Chowell, G. Estimating the asymptomatic proportion of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) cases on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, Yokohama, Japan, 2020. Euro surveillance : bulletin Europeen sur les maladies transmissibles = European communicable disease bulletin 25 (2020).

24. Sun, K. et al. Transmission heterogeneities, kinetics, and controllability of SARS-CoV-2. Science (New York, N.Y.) 371 (2021).

25. Nishiura, H. et al. Estimation of the asymptomatic ratio of novel coronavirus infections (COVID-19). Int J Infect Dis 94, 154-155 (2020).

26. Nishiura, H., Linton, N.M. & Akhmetzhanov, A.R. Serial interval of novel coronavirus (COVID-19) infections. Int J Infect Dis 93, 284-286 (2020).

27. Pan, Y., Zhang, D., Yang, P., Poon, L.L.M. & Wang, Q. Viral load of SARS-CoV-2 in clinical samples. The Lancet. Infectious diseases 20, 411-412 (2020).

28. Pan, X. et al. Asymptomatic cases in a family cluster with SARS-CoV-2 infection. The Lancet. Infectious diseases 20, 410-411 (2020).

29. Park, S.Y. et al. Coronavirus Disease Outbreak in Call Center, South Korea. Emerging infectious diseases 26, 1666-1670 (2020).

30. Payne, D.C. et al. SARS-CoV-2 Infections and Serologic Responses from a Sample of U.S. Navy Service Members - USS Theodore Roosevelt, April 2020. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report 69, 714-721 (2020).

31. Kimball, A. et al. Asymptomatic and Presymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infections in Residents of a Long-Term Care Skilled Nursing Facility - King County, Washington, March 2020. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report 69, 377-381 (2020).

32. Qian, G. et al. COVID-19 Transmission Within a Family Cluster by Presymptomatic Carriers in China. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America 71, 861-862 (2020).

33. Ran, L. et al. Risk Factors of Healthcare Workers With Coronavirus Disease 2019: A Retrospective Cohort Study in a Designated Hospital of Wuhan in China. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America 71, 2218-2221 (2020).

34. Rosenberg, E.S. et al. COVID-19 Testing, Epidemic Features, Hospital Outcomes, and Household Prevalence, New York State-March 2020. Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America 71, 1953-1959 (2020).

35. Sakurai, A. et al. Natural History of Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infection. The New England journal of medicine 383, 885-886 (2020).

36. Samsami, M., Zebarjadi Bagherpour, J., Nematihonar, B. & Tahmasbi, H. COVID-19 Pneumonia in Asymptomatic Trauma Patients; Report of 8 Cases. Archives of academic emergency medicine 8, e46 (2020).

37. Tabata, S. et al. Clinical characteristics of COVID-19 in 104 people with SARS-CoV-2 infection on the Diamond Princess cruise ship: a retrospective analysis. The Lancet. Infectious diseases 20, 1043-1050 (2020).

38. Tong, Z.D. et al. Potential Presymptomatic Transmission of SARS-CoV-2, Zhejiang Province, China, 2020. Emerging infectious diseases 26, 1052-1054 (2020).

39. Treibel, T.A. et al. COVID-19: PCR screening of asymptomatic health-care workers at London hospital. Lancet (London, England) 395, 1608-1610 (2020).

40. Wei, W.E. et al. Presymptomatic Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 - Singapore, January 23-March 16, 2020. MMWR. Morbidity and mortality weekly report 69, 411-415 (2020).

41. Xu, J., Li, Y., Gan, F., Du, Y. & Yao, Y. Salivary Glands: Potential Reservoirs for COVID-19 Asymptomatic Infection. Journal of dental research 99, 989 (2020).

42. Yang, R., Gui, X. & Xiong, Y. Comparison of Clinical Characteristics of Patients with Asymptomatic vs Symptomatic Coronavirus Disease 2019 in Wuhan, China. JAMA network open 3, e2010182 (2020).

43. Yang, N. et al. In-flight transmission cluster of COVID-19: a retrospective case series. Infectious diseases (London, England) 52, 891-901 (2020).

44. Ye, F. et al. Delivery of infection from asymptomatic carriers of COVID-19 in a familial cluster. International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases 94, 133-138 (2020).

45. Yu, P., Zhu, J., Zhang, Z. & Han, Y. A Familial Cluster of Infection Associated With the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Indicating Possible Person-to-Person Transmission During the Incubation Period. The Journal of infectious diseases 221, 1757-1761 (2020).

46. Zhang, J., Tian, S., Lou, J. & Chen, Y. Familial cluster of COVID-19 infection from an asymptomatic. Critical care (London, England) 24, 119 (2020).

47. Almadhi, M.A. et al. The high prevalence of asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection reveals the silent spread of COVID-19. International journal of infectious diseases : IJID : official publication of the International Society for Infectious Diseases 105, 656-661 (2021).

48. Choi, A. et al. Symptomatic and Asymptomatic Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 in K-12 Schools, British Columbia, Canada April to June 2021. Microbiology spectrum, e0062222 (2022).

…these 48 papers represent most, if not all, of the peer-reviewed scientific evidence that has been used by most public health officials to mislabel asymptomatic people as sources of COVID-19-causing SARS-CoV-2. All of it is fatally flawed.

It was even concluded in a study that patients testing ‘positive’ with cycle threshold values above 33 could likely be discharged from hospitals. Such a recommendation would never be made if there was any evidence that these people harboured SARS-CoV-2 virions with the potential to infect others. So one must wonder why testing labs were allowed to arbitrarily pick cycle thresholds ranging from 38 to 45 as upper limits for defining the presence of infectious SARS-CoV-2.

Exclusive reliance on improperly calibrated RT-PCR testing as an indication of ‘infection’ has also led to the erroneous conclusion that post-symptomatic people may also need to be masked and/or isolated.

I have yet to see appropriate scientific evidence to justify the unusually high cycle threshold values being used in studies that label people as asymptomatic sources of COVID-19. In the absence of such data, there is no justification for masking, isolating or mandating experimental vaccine technologies for asymptomatic people.

Others have also criticized the exclusive use of RT-PCR tests in diagnosing COVID-19 and drawing conclusions about transmission in the absence of infectivity testing.

How RT-PCR Testing Should Have Been Used to Support Diagnoses of COVID-19

All labs should have been required to calibrate their RT-PCR test prior to providing any ‘real world’ data to public health officials that would be used to study the transmission of SARS-CoV-2. Use of the gold standard functional virology assay to do this calibration would have provided each lab with a strong objective rationale for their specific cycle threshold cut-off value when determining whether a person could have the potential to infect others. And this should have always been married to a clinical diagnosis rendered by a physician. As mentioned earlier, if this standard is applied retroactively to the COVID-19 scientific literature, it becomes obvious that much of it is untrustworthy.

Much of the Foundational COVID-19 Science is Fundamentally Flawed

RT-PCR testing has generally been misused during the declared COVID-19 pandemic due to failures to calibrate it properly. The result has been mislabeling asymptomatic people as significant potential sources for transmission of COVID-19. This, in turn, has resulted in inappropriate mandating of masking, isolation, and ‘vaccines’ for people who do not represent a genuine health risk to others. It has also taken the diagnostic expertise away from physicians and placed it in the hands of anonymous laboratory technicians.

Now, we are left with a mountain of COVID-19 science that cannot be interpreted properly. Scientists with integrity and the relevant expertise know that a substantial but undefined number of people that tested ‘positive for COVID-19’ never had the potential to spread SARS-CoV-2 to others and many of these also did not actually have the disease known as COVID-19.

Resolving the Apparent Conflicts in Evidence Presented by ‘Experts’

To judges who are puzzled by the differing interpretations of experts in their courts, the explanation is fairly simple. If you remove the fundamentally flawed science from expert reports, you will be left with trustworthy data that generally do not support what has been the prevailing narrative over the past several years. When scientists talk about following the overall weight of the scientific evidence, what we really mean is to follow the weight of the trustworthy scientific evidence. Do not get bedazzled by the numerous reports that have accumulated, often in ‘prestigious’ journals, that were based on flawed scientific methods. Don’t get distracted by the number of health ‘authorities’ that have blindly propagated this flawed science. Truth is not a democracy. It is not defined by a majority vote.

Harm to Public Trust in Science

The global propagation of poorly conducted science over the past several years has caused massive and irreparable harm. Children and teenagers took the brunt of this damage. They were given no choice. They had no voice. They became shields used in a conflict waged by adults who wielded faulty science like it was the gospel truth.

As a scientist with deep expertise in viral immunology, I am incredibly disheartened by the state of my scientific disciplines. My colleagues that sat in their ivory towers allowing junk science to justify crushing constitutional freedoms should be ashamed of themselves. I am proud of the relatively few who stood tall on a foundation of integrity and endured brutal treatment for the past couple of years. I can only hope that the harm done to public trust in the health sciences can be remedied.

We are pleased to bring you this fresh interview with Jacques Baud, in which we cover what is now happening in the geopolitical struggle that is the Ukraine-Russia war. As always, Mr. Baud brings deep insight and clear analysis to the conversation.

The Postil (TP): You have just published your latest book on the war in Ukraine—Operation Z, published by Max Milo. Please tell us a little about it—what led you to write this book and what do you wish to convey to readers?

Jacques Baud (JB): The aim of this book is to show how the misinformation propagated by our media has contributed to push Ukraine in the wrong direction. I wrote it under the motto “from the way we understand crises derives the way we solve them.”

By hiding many aspects of this conflict, the Western media has presented us with a caricatural and artificial image of the situation, which has resulted in the polarization of minds. This has led to a widespread mindset that makes any attempt to negotiate virtually impossible.

The one-sided and biased representation provided by mainstream media is not intended to help us solve the problem, but to promote hatred of Russia. Thus, the exclusion of disabled athletes, cats, even Russian trees from competitions, the dismissal of conductors, the de-platforming of Russian artists, such as Dostoyevsky, or even the renaming of paintings aims at excluding the Russian population from society! In France, bank accounts of individuals with Russian-sounding names were even blocked. Social networks Facebook and Twitter have systematically blocked the disclosure of Ukrainian crimes under the pretext of “hate speech” but allow the call for violence against Russians.

None of these actions had any effect on the conflict, except to stimulate hatred and violence against the Russians in our countries. This manipulation is so bad that we would rather see Ukrainians die than to seek a diplomatic solution. As Republican Senator Lindsey Graham recently said, it is a matter of letting the Ukrainians fight to the last man.

It is commonly assumed that journalists work according to standards of quality and ethics to inform us in the most honest way possible. These standards are set by the Munich Charter of 1971. While writing my book I found out that no French-speaking mainstream media in Europe respects this charter as far as Russia and China are concerned. In fact, they shamelessly support an immoral policy towards Ukraine, described by Andrés Manuel López Obrador, president of Mexico, as “We provide the weapons, you provide the corpses!”

To highlight this misinformation, I wanted to show that information allowing to provide a realistic picture of the situation was available as early as February, but that our media did not relay it to the public. My goal was to show this contradiction.

In order to avoid becoming a propagandist myself in favor of one side or the other, I have relied exclusively on Western, Ukrainian (from Kiev) and Russian opposition sources. I have not taken any information from the Russian media.

TP: It is commonly said in the West that this war has “proven” that the Russian army is feeble and that its equipment is useless. Are these assertions true?

JB: No. After more than six months of war, it can be said that the Russian army is effective and efficient, and that the quality of its command & control far exceeds what we see in the West. But our perception is influenced by a reporting that is focused on the Ukrainian side, and by distortions of reality.

Firstly, there is the reality on the ground. It should be remembered that what the media call “Russians” is in fact a Russian-speaking coalition, composed of professional Russian fighters and soldiers of the popular militias of Donbass. The operations in the Donbass are mainly carried out by these militias, who fight on “their” terrain, in towns and villages they know and where they have friends and family. They are therefore advancing cautiously for themselves, but also to avoid civilian casualties. Thus, despite the claims of western propaganda, the coalition enjoys a very good popular support in the areas it occupies.

Then, just looking at a map, you can see that the Donbass is a region with a lot of built-up and inhabited areas, which means an advantage for the defender and a reduced speed of progress for the attacker in all circumstances.

Secondly, there is the way our media portray the evolution of the conflict. Ukraine is a huge country and small-scale maps hardly show the differences from one day to another. Moreover, each side has its own perception of the progress of the enemy. If we take the example of the situation on March 25, 2022, we can see that the map of the French daily newspaper Ouest-France (a) shows almost no advance of Russia, as does the Swiss RTS site (b). The map of the Russian website RIAFAN (c) may be propaganda, but if we compare it with the map of the [French Military Intelligence Directorate](https://www.defense.gouv.fr/sites/default/files/ministere-armees/Situation Ukraine au 25 mars.pdf) (DRM) (d), we see that the Russian media is probably closer to the truth. All these maps were published on the same day, but the French newspaper and the Swiss state media did not choose to use the DRM map and preferred to use a Ukrainian map. This illustrates that our media work like propaganda outlets.

Figure 1 – Comparison of the maps presented in our media on 25 March 2022. It is this way of presenting the Russian offensive that has led to the assertion that the Russian army is weak. It also shows that the information provided by the Russian media seems closer to reality than that given by Ukraine.

Thirdly, our “experts” have themselves determined the objectives of the Russian offensive. By claiming that Russia wanted to take over Ukraine and its resources, to take over Kiev in two days, etc., our experts have literally invented and attributed to the Russians objectives that Putin never mentioned. In May 2022, Claude Wild, the Swiss ambassador in Kiev, declared on RTS that the Russians had “lost the battle for Kiev.” But in reality, there was never a “battle for Kiev.” It is obviously easy to claim that the Russians did not reach their objectives—if they never tried to reach them!

Fourthly, the West and Ukraine have created a misleading picture of their adversary. In France, Switzerland and Belgium, none of the military experts on television have any knowledge of military operations and how the Russians conduct theirs. Their “expertise” comes from the rumours from the war in Afghanistan or Syria, which are often merely Western propaganda. These experts have literally falsified the presentation of Russian operations.

Thus, the objectives announced as early as February 24 by Russia were the “demilitarization” and “denazification” of the threat to the populations of Donbass. These objectives are related to the neutralization of capabilities, not the seizure of land or resources. To put it bluntly, in theory, to achieve their goals the Russians do not need to advance—it would be enough if Ukrainians themselves would come and get killed.

In other words, our politicians and media have pushed Ukraine to defend the terrain like in France during the First World War. They pushed Ukrainian troops to defend every square meter of ground in “last stand” situations. Ironically, the West has only made the Russians’ job easier.

In fact, as with the war on terror, Westerners see the enemy as they would like him to be, not as he is. As Sun Tzu said 2,500 years ago, this is the best recipe for losing a war.

One example is the so-called “hybrid war” that Russia is allegedly waging against the West. In June 2014, as the West tried to explain Russia’s (imaginary) intervention in the Donbass conflict, Russia expert Mark Galeotti “revealed” the existence of a doctrine that would illustrate the Russian concept of hybrid warfare. Known as the “Gerasimov Doctrine,” it has never really been defined by the West as to what it consists of and how it could ensure military success. But it is used to explain how Russia wages war in Donbass without sending troops there and why Ukraine consistently loses its battles against the rebels. In 2018, realizing that he was wrong, Galeotti apologized—courageously and intelligently—in an article titled, “I’m Sorry for Creating the Gerasimov Doctrine” published in Foreign Policy magazine.

Despite this, and without knowing what it meant, our media and politicians continued to pretend that Russia was waging a hybrid war against Ukraine and the West. In other words, we imagined a type of war that does not exist and we prepared Ukraine for it. This is also what explains the challenge for Ukraine to have a coherent strategy to counter Russian operations.

The West does not want to see the situation as it really is. The Russian-speaking coalition has launched its offensive with an overall strength inferior to that of the Ukrainians in a ratio of 1-2:1. To be successful when you are outnumbered, you must create local and temporary superiorities by quickly moving your forces on the battlefield.

This is what the Russians call “operational art” (operativnoe iskoustvo). This notion is poorly understood in the West. The term “operational” used in NATO has two translations in Russian: “operative” (which refers to a command level) and “operational” (which defines a condition). It is the art of maneuvering military formations, much like a chess game, in order to defeat a superior opponent.

For example, the operation around Kiev was not intended to “deceive” the Ukrainians (and the West) about their intentions, but to force the Ukrainian army to keep large forces around the capital and thus “pin them down.” In technical terms, this is what is called a “shaping operation.” Contrary to the analysis of some “experts,” it was not a “deception operation,” which would have been conceived very differently and would have involved much larger forces. The aim was to prevent a reinforcement of the main body of the Ukrainian forces in the Donbass.

The main lesson of this war at this stage confirms what we know since the Second World War: the Russians master the operational art.

TP: Questions about Russia’s military raises the obvious question—how good is Ukraine’s military today? And more importantly, why do we not hear so much about the Ukrainian army?

JB: The Ukrainian servicemen are certainly brave soldiers who perform their duty conscientiously and courageously. But my personal experience shows that in almost every crisis, the problem is at the head. The inability to understand the opponent and his logic and to have a clear picture of the actual situation is the main reason for failures.

Since the beginning of the Russian offensive, we can distinguish two ways of conducting the war. On the Ukrainian side, the war is waged in the political and informational spaces, while on the Russian side the war is waged in the physical and operational space. The two sides are not fighting in the same spaces. This is a situation that I described in 2003 in my book, La guerre asymétrique ou la défaite du vainqueur (Asymmetric War, or the Defeat of the Winner). The trouble is that at the end of the day, the reality of the terrain prevails.

On the Russian side, decisions are made by the military, while on the Ukrainian side, Zelensky is omnipresent and the central element in the conduct of the war. He makes operational decisions, apparently often against the military’s advice. This explains the rising tensions between Zelensky and the military. According to Ukrainian media, Zelensky could dismiss General Valery Zoluzhny by appointing him Minister of Defence.

The Ukrainian army has been extensively trained by American, British and Canadian officers since 2014. The trouble is that for over 20 years, Westerners have been fighting armed groups and scattered adversaries and engaged entire armies against individuals. They fight wars at the tactical level and somehow have lost the ability to fight at the strategic and operative levels. This explains partly why Ukraine is waging its war at this level.

But there is a more conceptual dimension. Zelensky and the West see war as a numerical and technological balance of forces. This is why, since 2014, the Ukrainians have never tried to seduce the rebels and they now think that the solution will come from the weapons supplied by the West. The West provided Ukraine with a few dozen M777 guns and HIMARS and MLRS missile launchers, while Ukraine had several thousand equivalent artillery pieces in February. The Russian concept of “correlation of forces,” takes into account many more factors and is more holistic than the Western approach. That is why the Russians are winning.

To comply with ill-considered policies, our media have constructed a virtual reality that gives Russia the bad role. For those who observe the course of the crisis carefully, we could almost say they presented Russia as a “mirror image” of the situation in Ukraine. Thus, when the talk about Ukrainian losses began, Western communication turned to Russian losses (with figures given by Ukraine).

The so-called “counter-offensives” proclaimed by Ukraine and the West in Kharkov and Kherson in April-May were merely “counter-attacks.” The difference between the two is that counter-offensive is an operational notion, while counter-attack is a tactical notion, which is much more limited in scope. These counterattacks were possible because the density of Russian troops in these sectors was then 1 Battle Group (BTG) per 20 km of front. By comparison, in the Donbass sector, which was the primary focus, the Russian coalition had 1-3 BTG per km. As for the great August offensive on Kherson, which was supposed to take over the south of the country, it seems to have been nothing but a myth to maintain Western support.

Today, we see that the claimed Ukrainian successes were in fact failures. The human and material losses that were attributed to Russia were in fact more in line with those of Ukraine. In mid-June, David Arakhamia, Zelensky’s chief negotiator and close adviser, spoke of 200 to 500 deaths per day, and he mentioned casualties (dead, wounded, captured, deserters) of 1,000 men per day. If we add to this the renewed demands for arms by Zelensky, we can see that the idea of a victory for Ukraine appears quite an illusion.

Because Russia’s economy was thought to be comparable to Italy’s, it was assumed that it would be equally vulnerable. Thus, the West—and the Ukrainians—thought that economic sanctions and political isolation of Russia would quickly cause its collapse, without passing through a military defeat. Indeed, this is what we understand from the interview of Oleksei Arestovich, Zelensky’s advisor and spokesman, in March 2019. This also explains why Zelensky did not sound the alarm in early 2022, as he says in his interview with the Washington Post. I think he knew that Russia would respond to the offensive Ukraine was preparing in the Donbass (which is why the bulk of his troops were in that area) and thought that sanctions would quickly lead to Russia’s collapse and defeat. This is what Bruno Le Maire, the French Minister of the Economy, had “predicted.” Clearly, the Westerners have made decisions without knowing their opponent.

As Arestovich said, the idea was that the defeat of Russia would be Ukraine’s entry ticket to NATO. So, the Ukrainians were pushed to prepare an offensive in the Donbass in order to make Russia react, and thus obtain an easy defeat through devastating sanctions. This is cynical and shows how much the West—led by the Americans—has misused Ukraine for its own objectives.

The result is that the Ukrainians did not seek Ukraine’s victory, but Russia’s defeat. This is very different and explains the Western narrative from the first days of the Russian offensive, which prophesied this defeat.

But the reality is that the sanctions did not work as expected, and Ukraine found itself dragged into combats that it had provoked, but for which it was not prepared to fight for so long.

This is why, from the outset, the Western narrative presented a mismatch between media reported and the reality on the ground. This had a perverse effect: it encouraged Ukraine to repeat its mistakes and prevented it from improving its conduct of operations. Under the pretext of fighting Vladimir Putin, we pushed Ukraine to sacrifice thousands of human lives unnecessarily.

From the beginning, it was obvious that the Ukrainians were consistently repeating their mistakes (and even the same mistakes as in 2014-2015), and soldiers were dying on the battlefield. For his part, Volodymyr Zelensky called for more and more sanctions, including the most absurd ones, because he was led to believe that they were decisive.

I am not the only one to have noticed these mistakes, and Western countries could certainly have stopped this disaster. But their leaders, excited by the (fanciful) reports of Russian losses and thinking they were paving the way for regime change, added sanctions to sanctions, turning down any possibility of negotiation. As the French Minister of Economy Bruno Le Maire said, the objective was to provoke the collapse of the Russian economy and make the Russian people suffer. This is a form of state terrorism: the idea is to make the population suffer in order to push it into revolting against its leaders (here, Putin). I am not making this up. This mechanism is detailed by Richard Nephew, head of sanctions at the State Department under Obama and currently Coordinator on Global Anti-Corruption, in his book entitled, The Art of Sanctions. Ironically, this is exactly the same logic that the Islamic State invoked to explain its attacks in France in 2015-2016. France probably does not encourage terrorism—but it does practice it.

The mainstream media do not present the war as it is, but as they would like it to be. This is pure wishful thinking. The apparent public support for the Ukrainian authorities, despite huge losses (some mention 70,000-80,000 fatalities), is achieved by banning the opposition, a ruthless hunt for officials who disagree with the government line, and “mirror” propaganda that attributes to the Russians the same failures as the Ukrainians. All this with the conscious support of the West.

TP: What should we make of the explosion at the Saki airbase in the Crimea?

JB: I do not know the details of the current security situation in Crimea. . We know that before February there were cells of volunteer fighters of Praviy Sektor (a neo-Nazi militia) in Crimea, ready to carry out terrorist-type attacks. Have these cells been neutralized? I don’t know; but one can assume so, since there is apparently very little sabotage activity in Crimea. Having said that, let us not forget that Ukrainians and Russians have lived together for many decades and there are certainly pro-Kiev individuals in the areas taken by the Russians. It is therefore realistic to think that there could be sleeper cells in these areas.

More likely it is a campaign conducted by the Ukrainian security service (SBU) in the territories occupied by the Russian-speaking coalition. This is a terrorist campaign targeting pro-Russian Ukrainian personalities and officials. It follows major changes in the leadership of the SBU, in Kiev, and in the regions, including Lvov, Ternopol since July. It is probably in the context of this same campaign that Darya Dugina was assassinated on August 21. The objective of this new campaign could be to convey the illusion that there is an ongoing resistance in the areas taken by the Russians and thus revive Western aid, which is starting to fatigue.

These sabotage activities do not really have an operational impact and seem more related to a psychological operation. It may be that these are actions like the one on Snake Island at the beginning of May, intended to demonstrate to the international public that Ukraine is acting.

What the incidents in Crimea indirectly show is that the popular resistance claimed by the West in February does not exist. It is most likely the action of Ukrainian and Western (probably British) clandestine operatives. Beyond the tactical actions, this shows the inability of the Ukrainians to activate a significant resistance movement in the areas seized by the Russian-speaking coalition.

TP: Zelensky has famously said, “Crimea is Ukrainian and we will never give it up.” Is this rhetoric, or is there a plan to attack Crimea? Are there Ukrainian operatives inside Crimea?

JB: First of all, Zelensky changes his opinion very often. In March 2022, he made a proposal to Russia, stating that he was ready to discuss a recognition of Russian sovereignty over the peninsula. It was upon the intervention of the European Union and Boris Johnson on 2 April and on 9 April that he withdrew his proposal, despite Russia’s favorable interest.

It is necessary to recall some historical facts. The cession of Crimea to Ukraine in 1954 was never formally validated by the parliaments of the USSR, Russia and Ukraine during the communist era. Moreover, the Crimean people agreed to be subject to the authority of Moscow and no longer of Kiev as early as January 1991. In other words, Crimea was independent from Kiev even before Ukraine became independent from Moscow in December 1991.

In July, Aleksei Reznikov, the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, spoke loudly of a major counter-offensive on Kherson involving one million men to restore Ukraine’s territorial integrity. In reality, Ukraine has not managed to gather the troops, armor and air cover needed for this far-fetched offensive. Sabotage actions in Crimea may be a substitute for this “counter-offensive.” They seem to be more of a communication exercise than a real military action. These actions seem to be aimed rather at reassuring Western countries which are questioning the relevance of their unconditional support to Ukraine.

TP: Would you tell us about the situation around the Zaporizhzhia nuclear facility?

JB: In Energodar, the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant (ZNPP), has been the target of several attacks by artillery, which Ukrainians and Russians attribute to the opposing side.

What we know is that the Russian coalition forces have occupied the ZNPP site since the beginning of March. The objective at that time was to secure the ZNPP quickly, in order to prevent it from being caught up in the fighting and thus avoid a nuclear incident. The Ukrainian personnel who were in charge of it have remained on site and continue to work under the supervision of the Ukrainian company Energoatom and the Ukrainian nuclear safety agency (SNRIU). There is therefore no fighting around the plant.

It is hard to see why the Russians would shell a nuclear plant that is under their control. This allegation is even more peculiar since the Ukrainians themselves state that there are Russian troops in the premises of the site. According to a French “expert,” the Russians would attack the power plant they control to cut off the electricity flowing to Ukraine. Not only would there be simpler ways to cut off the electricity to Ukraine (a switch, perhaps?), but Russia has not stopped the electricity supply to the Ukrainians since March. Moreover, I remind you that Russia has not stopped the flow of natural gas to Ukraine and has continued to pay Ukraine the transit fees for gas to Europe. It is Zelensky who decided to shut down the Soyuz pipeline in May.

Moreover, it should be remembered that the Russians are in an area where the population is generally favorable to them and it is hard to understand why they would take the risk of a nuclear contamination of the region.

In reality, the Ukrainians have more credible motives than the Russians that may explain such attacks against the ZNPP. , which are not mutually exclusive: an alternative to the big counter-offensive on Kherson, which they are not able to implement, and to prevent the planned referendums in the region. Further, Zelensky’s calls for demilitarizing the area of the power plant and even returning it to Ukraine would be a political and operational success for him. One might even imagine that they seek to deliberately provoke a nuclear incident in order to create a “no man’s land” and thus render the area unusable for the Russians.

By bombing the plant, Ukraine could also be trying to pressure the West to intervene in the conflict, under the pretext that Russia is seeking to disconnect the plant from the Ukrainian power grid before the fall. This suicidal behavior—as stated by UN Secretary General António Guterres—would be in line with the war waged by Ukraine since 2014.

There is strong evidence that the attacks on Energodar are Ukrainian. The fragments of projectiles fired at the site from the other side of the Dnieper are of Western origin. It seems that they come from British BRIMSTONE missiles, which are precision missiles, whose use is monitored by the British. Apparently, the West is aware of the Ukrainian attacks on the ZNPP. This might explain why Ukraine is not very supportive of an international commission of inquiry and why Western countries are putting unrealistic conditions for sending investigators from the IAEA, an agency that has not shown much integrity so far.

TP: It is reported that Zelensky is freeing criminals to fight in this war? Does this mean that Ukraine’s army is not as strong as commonly assumed?

JB: Zelensky faces the same problem as the authorities that emerged from Euromaidan in 2014. At that time, the military did not want to fight because they did not want to confront their Russian-speaking compatriots. According to a report by the British Home Office, reservists overwhelmingly refuse to attend recruitment sessions . In October-November 2017, 70% of conscripts do not show up for recall . Suicide has become a problem. According to the chief Ukrainian military prosecutor Anatoly Matios, after four years of war in the Donbass, 615 servicemen had committed suicide. Desertions have increased and reached up to 30% of the forces in certain operational areas, often in favor of the rebels.

For this reason, it became necessary to integrate more motivated, highly politicized, ultra-nationalistic and fanatical fighters into the armed forces to fight in the Donbass. Many of them are neo-Nazis. It is to eliminate these fanatical fighters that Vladimir Putin has mentioned the objective of “denazification.”

Today, the problem is slightly different. The Russians have attacked Ukraine and the Ukrainian soldiers are not a priori opposed to fighting them. But they realize that the orders they receive are not consistent with the situation on the battlefield. They understood that the decisions affecting them are not linked to military factors, but to political considerations. Ukrainian units are mutinying en masse and are increasingly refusing to fight. They say they feel abandoned by their commanders and that they are given missions without the necessary resources to execute them.

That’s why it becomes necessary to send men who are ready for anything. Because they are condemned, they can be kept under pressure. This is the same principle as Marshal Konstantin Rokossovki, who was sentenced to death by Stalin, but was released from prison in 1941 to fight against the Germans. His death sentence was lifted only after Stalin’s death in 1956.

In order to overshadow the use of criminals in the armed forces, the Russians are accused of doing the same thing. The Ukrainians and the Westerners consistently use “mirror” propaganda. As in all recent conflicts, Western influence has not led to a moralization of the conflict.

TP: Everyone speaks of how corrupt Putin is? But what about Zelensky? Is he the “heroic saint” that we are all told to admire?

JB: In October 2021, the Pandora Papers showed that Ukraine and Zelensky were the most corrupt in Europe and practiced tax evasion on a large scale. Interestingly, these documents were apparently published with the help of an American intelligence agency, and Vladimir Putin is not mentioned. More precisely, the documents mention individuals ” associated ” with him, who are said to have links with undisclosed assets, which could belong to a woman, who is believed to have had a child with him.

Yet, when our media are reporting on these documents, they routinely put a picture of Vladimir Putin, but not of Volodymyr Zelensky.

Figure 2 – Although he is not mentioned in the Pandora Papers, Vladimir Putin is consistently associated with them. Whereas Volodymyr Zelensky is never mentioned in our media, even though he is widely implicated.

I am not in a position to assess how corrupt Zelensky is. But there is no doubt that the Ukrainian society and its governance are. I contributed modestly to a NATO “Building Integrity” program in Ukraine and discovered that none of the contributing countries had any illusions about its effectiveness, and all saw the program as a kind of “window dressing” to justify Western support.

It is unlikely that the billions paid by the West to Ukraine will reach the Ukrainian people. A recent CBS News report stated that only 30-40% of the weapons supplied by the West make it to the battlefield. The rest enriches mafias and other corrupt people. Apparently, some high-tech Western weapons have been sold to the Russians, such as the French CAESAR system and presumably the American HIMARS. The CBS News report was censored to avoid undermining Western aid, but the fact remains that the US refused to supply MQ-1C drones to Ukraine for this reason.

Ukraine is a rich country, yet today it is the only country in the former USSR with a lower GDP than it had at the collapse of the Soviet Union. The problem is therefore not Zelensky himself, but the whole system, which is deeply corrupted, and which the West maintains for the sole purpose of fighting Russia.

Zelensky was elected in April 2019 on the program of reaching an agreement with Russia. But nobody let him carry out his program. The Germans and the French deliberately prevented him from implementing the Minsk agreements. The transcript of the telephone conversation of 20 February 2022 between Emmanuel Macron and Vladimir Putin shows that France deliberately kept Ukraine away from the solution. Moreover, in Ukraine, far right and neo-Nazi political forces have publicly threatened him with death. Dmitry Yarosh, commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, declared in May 2019 that Zelensky would be hanged if he carried out his program. In other words, Zelensky is trapped between his idea of reaching an agreement with Russia and the demands of the West. Moreover, the West realizes that its strategy of war through sanctions has failed. As the economic and social problems increase, the West will find it harder to back down without losing face. A way out for Britain, the US, the EU, or France would be to remove Zelensky. That is why, with the deteriorating situation in Ukraine, I think Zelensky starts to realize that his life is threatened.

At the end of the day, Zelensky is a poor guy, because his best enemies are those on whom he depends: the Western world.

TP: There are many videos (gruesome ones) on social media of Ukrainian soldiers engaging in serious war crimes? Why is there a “blind spot” in the West for such atrocities?

JB: First of all, we must be clear: in every war, every belligerent commit war crimes. Military personnel who deliberately commit such crimes dishonor their uniform and must be punished.

The problem arises when war crimes are part of a plan or result from orders given by the higher command. This was the case when the Netherlands let its military allow the Srebrenica massacre in 1995; the torture in Afghanistan by Canadian and British troops, not to mention the countless violations of international humanitarian law by the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo and elsewhere with the complicity of Poland, Lithuania or Estonia. If these are Western values, then Ukraine is in the right school.

In Ukraine, political crime has become commonplace, with the complicity of the West. Thus, those who are in favor of a negotiation are eliminated. This is the case of Denis Kireyev, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, assassinated on March 5 by the Ukrainian security service (SBU) because he was considered too favorable to Russia and as a traitor. The same thing happened to Dmitry Demyanenko, an officer of the SBU, who was assassinated on March 10, also because he was too favorable to an agreement with Russia. Remember that this is a country that considers that receiving or giving Russian humanitarian aid is “collaborationism.”

On 16 March 2022, a journalist on TV channel Ukraine 24 referred to the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann and called for the massacre of Russian-speaking children. On 21 March, the military doctor Gennadiy Druzenko declared on the same channel that he had ordered his doctors to castrate Russian prisoners of war. On social networks, these statements quickly became propaganda for the Russians and the two Ukrainians apologized for having said so, but not for the substance. Ukrainian crimes were beginning to be revealed on social networks, and on 27 March Zelensky feared that this would jeopardize Western support. This was followed—rather opportunely—by the Bucha massacre on 3 April, the circumstances of which remain unclear.

Britain, which then had the chairmanship of the UN Security Council, refused three times the Russian request to set up an international commission of enquiry into the crimes of Bucha. Ukrainian socialist MP Ilya Kiva revealed on Telegram that the Bucha tragedy was planned by the British MI6 special services and implemented by the SBU.

The fundamental problem is that the Ukrainians have replaced the “operational art” with brutality. Since 2014, in order to fight the autonomists, the Ukrainian government has never tried to apply strategies based on “hearts & minds,” which the British used in the 1950s-1960s in South-East Asia, which were much less brutal but much more effective and long-lasting. Kiev preferred to conduct an Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) in the Donbass and to use the same strategies as the Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan. Fighting terrorists authorizes all kinds of brutality. It is the lack of a holistic approach to the conflict that led to the failure of the West in Afghanistan, Iraq and Mali.

Counter-Insurgency Operation (COIN) requires a more sophisticated and holistic approach. But NATO is incapable of developing such strategies as I have seen first-hand in Afghanistan. The war in Donbass has been brutal for 8 years and has resulted in the death of 10,000 Ukrainian citizens plus 4,000 Ukrainian military personnel. By comparison, in 30 years, the conflict in Northern Ireland resulted in 3,700 deaths. To justify this brutality, the Ukrainians had to invent the myth of a Russian intervention in Donbass.

The problem is that the philosophy of the new Maidan leaders was to have a racially pure Ukraine. In other words, the unity of the Ukrainian people was not to be achieved through the integration of communities, but through the exclusion of communities of “inferior races.” An idea that would no doubt have pleased the grandfathers of Ursula von der Leyen and Chrystia Freeland! This explains why Ukrainians have little empathy for the country’s Russian, Magyar and Romanian-speaking minorities. This in turn explains why Hungary and Romania do not want their territories to be used for the supply of arms to Ukraine.

This is why shooting at their own citizens to intimidate them is not a problem for the Ukrainians. This explains the spraying of thousands of PFM-1 (“butterfly”) anti-personnel mines, which look like toys, on the Russian-speaking city of Donetsk in July 2022. This type of mine is used by a defender, not an attacker in its main area of operation. Moreover, in this area, the Donbass militias are fighting “at home,” with populations they know personally.

I think that war crimes have been committed on both sides, but that their media coverage has been very different. Our media have reported extensively about crimes (true or false) attributed to Russia. On the other hand, they have been extremely silent about Ukrainian crimes. We do not know the whole truth about the Bucha massacre, but the available evidence supports the hypothesis that Ukraine staged the event to cover up its own crimes. By keeping these crimes quiet, our media have been complicit with them and have created a sense of impunity that has encouraged the Ukrainians to commit further crimes.

TP: Latvia wants the West (America) to designate Russia a “terrorist state.” What do you make of this? Does this mean that the war is actually over, and Russia has won?

JB: The Estonian and Latvian demands are in response to Zelensky’s call to designate Russia as a terrorist state. Interestingly, they come at the same time a Ukrainian terrorist campaign is being unleashed in Crimea, the occupied zone of Ukraine and the rest of Russian territory. It is also interesting that Estonia was apparently complicit in the attack on Darya Dugina in August 2022.

It seems that Ukrainians communicate in a mirror image of the crimes they commit or the problems they have, in order to hide them. For example, in late May 2022, as the Azovstal surrender in Mariupol showed neo-Nazi fighters, they began to allege that there are neo-Nazis in the Russian army. In August 2022, when Kiev was carrying out actions of a terrorist nature against the Energodar power plant in Crimea and on Russian territory, Zelensky called for Russia to be considered a terrorist state.

In fact, Zelensky continues to believe that he can only solve his problem by defeating Russia and that this defeat depends on sanctions against Russia. Declaring Russia a terrorist state would lead to further isolation. That is why he is making this appeal. This shows that the label “terrorist” is more political than operational, and that those who make such proposals do not have a very clear vision of the problem. The problem is that it has implications for international relations. This is why the US State Department is concerned that Zelensky’s request will be implemented by Congress.

TP: One of the sadder outcomes of this Ukraine-Russia conflict is how the West has shown the worst of itself. Where do you think we will go from here? More of the same, or will there be changes that will have to be made in regards to NATO, neutral countries which are no longer neutral, and the way the West seeks to “govern” the world?

JB: This crisis reveals several things. First, that NATO and the European Union are only instruments of US foreign policy. These institutions no longer act in the interests of their members, but in the interests of the US. The sanctions adopted under American pressure are backfiring on Europe, which is the big loser in this whole crisis: it suffers its own sanctions and has to deal with the tensions resulting from its own decisions.

The decisions taken by Western governments reveal a generation of leaders who are young and inexperienced (such as Finnish Prime Minister Sanna Marin); ignorant, yet thinking they are smart (such as French President Emmanuel Macron); doctrinaire (such as European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen); and fanatical (such as the leaders of the Baltic States). They all share some of the same weaknesses, not least of which is their inability to manage a complex crisis.

When the head is unable to understand the complexity of a crisis, we respond with guts and dogmatism. This is what we see happening in Europe. The Eastern European countries, especially the Baltic States and Poland, have shown themselves to be loyal servants of American policy. They have also shown immature, confrontational, and short-sighted governance. These are countries that have never integrated Western values, that continue to celebrate the forces of the Third Reich and discriminate against their own Russian-speaking population.

I am not even mentioning the European Union, which has been vehemently opposed to any diplomatic solution and has only added fuel to the fire.

The more you are involved in a conflict, the more you are involved in its outcome. If you win, all is well. But if the conflict is a failure, you will bear the burden. This is what has happened to the United States in recent conflicts and what is happening in Ukraine. The defeat of Ukraine is becoming the defeat of the West.

Another big loser in this conflict is clearly Switzerland. Its neutral status has suddenly lost all credibility. Early August, Switzerland and Ukraine concluded an agreement that would allow the Swiss embassy in Moscow to offer protection to Ukrainian citizens in Russia. However, in order to enter into force, it has to be recognized by Russia. Quite logically, Russia refused and declared that “Switzerland had unfortunately lost its status as a neutral state and could not act as an intermediary or representative.”

This is a very serious development because neutrality is not simply a unilateral declaration. It must be accepted and recognized by all to be effective. Yet Switzerland not only aligned itself with the Western countries but was even more extreme than them. It can be said that in a few weeks, Switzerland has ruined a policy that has been recognized for almost 170 years. This is a problem for Switzerland, but it may also be a problem for other countries. A neutral state can offer a way out of a crisis. Today, Western countries are looking for a way out that would allow them to get closer to Russia in the perspective of an energy crisis without losing face. Turkey has taken on this role, but it is limited, as it is part of NATO.

Figure 3 – Countries and organizations that applied sanctions to Russia. Although Switzerland is a neutral country, it stands on the first place. According to own sources, this was done under pressure and blackmail from the United States. Nevertheless, this is a severe blow to the very principle of neutrality that will have consequences in other future conflicts.

The West has created an Iron Curtain 2.0 that will affect international relations for years to come. The West’s lack of strategic vision is astonishing. While NATO is aligning itself with US foreign policy and reorienting itself towards China, Western strategy has only strengthened the Moscow-Beijing axis.

TP: What do you think this war ultimately means for Europe, the US and China?

JB: In order to answer this question, we first must answer another question: “Why is this conflict more condemnable and sanctionable than previous conflicts started by the West?”

After the disasters of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Mali, the rest of the world expected the West to help resolve this crisis with common sense. The West responded in exactly the opposite way to these expectations. Not only has no one been able to explain why this conflict was more reprehensible than previous ones, but the difference in treatment between Russia and the United States has shown that more importance is attached to the aggressor than to the victims. Efforts to bring about the collapse of Russia contrast with the total impunity of countries that have lied to the UN Security Council, practiced torture, caused the deaths of over a million people and created 37 million refugees.

This difference in treatment went unnoticed in the West. But the “rest of the world” has understood that we have moved from a “law-based international order” to a “rules-based international order” determined by the West.

On a more material level, the confiscation of Venezuelan gold by the British in 2020, of Afghanistan’s sovereign funds in 2021, and then of Russia’s sovereign funds in 2022 by the US, has raised the mistrust of the West’s allies. This shows that the non-Western world is no longer protected by law and depends on the goodwill of the West.

This conflict is probably the starting point for a new world order. The world is not going to change all at once, but the conflict has raised the attention of the rest of the world. For when we say that the “international community” condemns Russia, we are in fact talking about 18% of the world’s population.

Some actors traditionally close to the West are gradually moving away from it. On 15 July 2022, Joe Biden visited Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) with two objectives: to prevent Saudi Arabia from moving closer to Russia and China, and to ask him to increase its oil production. But four days earlier, MbS made an official request to become a member of the BRICS, and a week later, on 21 July, MbS called Vladimir Putin to confirm that he would stand by the OPEC+ decision. In other words: no oil production increase. It was a slap in the face of the West and of its most powerful representative.

Saudi Arabia has now decided to accept Chinese currency as payment for its oil. This is a major event, which tends to indicate a loss of confidence in the dollar. The consequences are potentially huge. The petrodollar was established by the US in the 1970s to finance its deficit. By forcing other countries to buy dollars, it allows the US to print dollars without being caught in an inflationary loop. Thanks to the petrodollar, the US economy—which is essentially a consumer economy—is supported by the economies of other countries around the world. The demise of the petrodollar could have disastrous consequences for the US economy, as former Republican Senator Ron Paul puts it.

In addition, the sanctions have brought China and Russia, both targeted by the West, closer together. This has accelerated the formation of a Eurasian bloc and strengthened the position of both countries in the world. India, which the US has scorned as a “second-class” partner of the “Quad,” has moved closer to Russia and China, despite disputes with the latter.

Today, China is the main provider of infrastructure in the Third World. In particular, its way of interacting with African countries is more in line with the expectations of these countries. Collaboration with former colonial powers such as France and American imperialist paternalism are no longer welcome. For example, the Central African Republic and Mali have asked France to leave their countries and have turned to Russia.

At the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, the US proudly announced a $150 million contribution to “strengthen its position in the broader geopolitical competition with China.” But in November 2021, President Xi Jinping offered $1.5 billion to the same countries to fight the pandemic and promote economic recovery. By using its money to wage war, the US has no money left to forge and consolidate alliances.

The West’s loss of influence stems from the fact that it continues to treat the “rest of the world” like “little children” and neglects the usefulness of good diplomacy.

The war in Ukraine is not the trigger for these phenomena, which started a few years ago, but it is most certainly an eye-opener and accelerator.

TP: The western media has been pushing that Putin may be seriously ill. If Putin suddenly dies, would this make any difference at all to the war?

JB: It seems that Vladimir Putin is a unique medical case in the world: he has stomach cancer, leukemia, an unknown but incurable and terminal phase disease, and is reportedly already dead. Yet in July 2022, at the Aspen Security Forum, CIA Director William Burns said that Putin was “too healthy” and that there was “no information to suggest that he is in poor health.” This shows how those who claim to be journalists work!

This is wishful thinking and, on the higher end of the spectrum, it echoes the calls for terrorism and the physical elimination of Vladimir Putin.

The West has personalized Russian politics through Putin, because he is the one who promoted the reconstruction of Russia after the Yeltsin years. Americans like to be champions when there are no competitors and see others as enemies. This is the case with Germany, Europe, Russia and China.

But our “experts” know little about Russian politics. For in reality, Vladimir Putin is more of a “dove” in the Russian political landscape. Given the climate that we have created with Russia, it would not be impossible that his disappearance would lead to the emergence of more aggressive forces. We should not forget that countries like Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland or Georgia have never developed European democratic values. They still have discriminatory policies towards their ethnic Russians that are far from European values, and they behave like immature agents provocateurs. I think that if Putin were to disappear for some reason, the conflicts with these countries would take on a new dimension.

TP: How unified is Russia presently? Has the war created a more serious opposition than what previously existed within Russia?

JB: No, on the contrary. The American and European leaders have a poor understanding of their enemy: the Russian people are very patriotic and cohesive. Western obsession to ” punish ” the Russian people has only brought them closer to their leaders. In fact, by seeking to divide Russian society in an effort to overthrow the government, Western sanctions—including the dumbest ones—have confirmed what the Kremlin has been saying for years: that the West has a profound hatred of Russians. What was once said to be a lie is now confirmed in Russian opinion. The consequence is that the people’s trust in the government has grown stronger.

The approval ratings given by the Levada Centre (considered by the Russian authorities as a “foreign agent”) show that public opinion has tightened around Vladimir Putin and the Russian government. In January 2022, Vladimir Putin’s approval rating was 69% and the government’s was 53%. Today, Putin’s approval rating has been stable at around 83% since March, and the government’s is at 71%. In January, 29% did not approve of Vladimir Putin’s decisions, in July it was only 15%.

According to the Levada Centre, even the Russian operation in Ukraine enjoys a majority of favorable opinions. In March, 81% of Russians were in favor of the operation; this figure dropped to 74%, probably due to the impact of sanctions at the end of March, and then it went back up. In July 2022, the operation had 76% popular support.

Figure 4 – Not all Russians support the special operation in Ukraine, but three quarters of the population do. Ukrainian war crimes, Western sanctions and the good management of the economy by the Russian authorities explain this support. [Source]

The problem is that our journalists have neither culture nor journalistic discipline and they replace them with their own beliefs. It is a form of conspiracy that aims to create a false reality based on what one believes and not on the facts. For example, few know (or want to know) that Aleksey Navalny said he would not return Crimea to Ukraine. The West’s actions have completely wiped out the opposition, not because of “Putin’s repression,” but because in Russia, resistance to foreign interference and the West’s deep contempt for Russians is a bipartisan cause. Exactly like the hatred of Russians in the West. This is why personalities like Aleksey Navalny, who never had a very high popularity, have completely disappeared from the popular media landscape.

Moreover, even if the sanctions have had a negative impact on the Russian economy, the way the government has handled things since 2014 shows a great mastery of economic mechanisms and a great realism in assessing the situation. There is a rise in prices in Russia, but it is much lower than in Europe, and while Western economies are raising their key interest rates, Russia is lowering its own.

The Russian journalist Marina Ovsyannikova has been exemplified as an expression of the opposition in Russia. Her case is interesting because, as usual, we do not say everything.

On 14 March 2022, she provoked international applause by interrupting the Russian First Channel news program with a poster calling for ending the war in Ukraine. She was arrested and fined $280.

In May, the German newspaper Die Welt offered her a job in Germany, but in Berlin, pro-Ukrainian activists demonstrated to get the newspaper to end its collaboration with her. The media outlet Politico even suggested that she might be an agent of the Kremlin!

As a result, in June 2022, she left Germany to live in Odessa, her hometown. But instead of being grateful, the Ukrainians put her on the Mirotvorets blacklist where she is accused of treason, “participation in the Kremlin’s special information and propaganda operations” and “complicity with the invaders.”

The Mirotvorets website is a “hit list” for politicians, journalists or personalities who do not share the opinion of the Ukrainian government. Several of the people on the list have been murdered. In October 2019, the UN requested the closure of the site, but this was refused by the Rada. It should be noted that none of our mainstream media has condemned this practice, which is very far from the values they claim to defend. In other words, our media support these practices that used to be attributed to South American regimes.

Figure 5 – Darya Dugina marked as “Liquidated.”

Ovsyannikova then returned to Russia, where she demonstrated against the war, calling Putin a “killer,” and was arrested by the police and placed under house arrest for three months. At this point, our media protested.

It is worth noting that Russian journalist Darya Dugina, the victim of a bomb attack in Moscow on 21 August 2022, was on the Mirotvorets list and her file was marked “liquidated.” Of course, no Western media mentioned that she was targeted by the Mirotvorets website, which is considered to be linked to the SBU, as this would tend to support Russia’s accusations.

German journalist Alina Lipp, whose revelations about Ukrainian and Western crimes in the Donbass are disturbing, has been placed on the website Mirotvorets. Moreover, Alina Lipp was sentenced in absentia to three years in prison by a German court for claiming that Russian troops had “liberated” areas in Ukraine and thus “glorified criminal activities.” As can be seen, the German authorities are functioning like the neo-Nazi elements in Ukraine. Today’s politicians are a credit to their grandparents!

One can conclude that even if there are some people who oppose the war, Russian public opinion is overwhelmingly behind its government. Western sanctions have only strengthened the credibility of the Russian president.

Ultimately, my point is not to take the same approach as our media and replace the hatred of Russia with that of Ukraine. On the contrary, it is to show that the world is not either black or white and that Western countries have taken the situation too far. Those who are compassionate about Ukraine should have pushed our governments to implement the agreed political solutions in 2014 and 2015. They haven’t done anything and are now pushing Ukraine to fight. But we are no longer in 2021. Today, we have to accept the consequences of our non-decisions and help Ukraine to recover. But this must not be done at the expense of its Russian-speaking population, as we have done until now, but with the Russian-speaking people, in an inclusive manner. If I look at the media in France, Switzerland and Belgium, we are still very far from the goal.

TP: Thank you so very much, Mr. Baud, for this most enlightening discussion.

I have never considered myself a Marxist. I came to adulthood at the end of the one, forty year long, period in the history of Western civilisation when there was a reduction in the chasm between the rich and ordinary people.

In consequence I believed that a tolerable society might be achieved by simple measures to ameliorate capitalism. I grew up with public ownership of utilities, natural monopolies and strategic industries, with free healthcare and medicines, free university tuition with good maintenance grants, schools under control of elected local councils, controlled fair rents including the private sector, significant public housing.

We thought it would last forever.

In 1973 I joined the Liberal Party. Much of the 1974 Liberal Party manifesto I could still believe in now. The above things like public ownership of utilities and major industries and free education were not in the manifesto, because they did not have to be – they already existed and were the basic structure. The manifesto added things like a basic guaranteed income for everybody in society, compulsory worker shareholdings in those industries not nationalised, workers’ councils, and a rent freeze in both public and private sectors.

I am not claiming it as a great socialist document – there were signs of right-wing thought creeping in, like a shift to indirect taxation. But the truth is that the Liberal Party manifesto of 1974 was at least as left as Corbyn’s manifesto. Some of its ideas were far ahead of their time – like the idea that continuous economic growth and increasing consumption are not sustainable or desirable.

Believing in essentially the same things now, I find myself on the far left – without ever having moved!

Here are a couple of extracts from the 1974 Liberal manifesto which may surprise you. This kind of language you will not hear from Keir Starmer’s Labour Party – indeed it would probably get you thrown out:

That Liberal Party is of course gone, along with the radical, anti-war, anti-unionist traditions of British liberalism. They were diluted by the merger with the SDP and finally killed off by Nick Clegg and the “Orange Bookers” who turned the hybrid party fully neoliberal, a doctrine with almost no resemblance to the liberalism it claims to reassert.

Those hardy souls who follow and support this blog are witnessing the last knockings of the legacy of political thought that was bestowed by John Stuart Mill, William Hazlitt, John Ruskin, John A Hobson, Charles Kingsley, Bertrand Russell, William Beveridge and many others, seasoned by Piotr Kropotkin and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. I don’t imagine any further generation attempting to be active in politics will develop their worldview with those thinkers as their primary motivators.

But the point of this self-absorbed drivel is that I am not a Marxist and do not come from an organised labour or socialist background or mindset.

The key thought towards which I am plodding through this morass of explanation is this: I grew up in the one era when capitalism was sufficiently moderated by palliative measures that it seemed a reasonable way to conduct society. That ended around 1980 when the doctrine of neoliberalism took hold of the Western world. In the UK, that doctrine now firmly controls the Conservative, Lib Dem, Labour and SNP parties and is promoted relentlessly by both state and corporate media.

The result of this neoliberal domination has been a massive and accelerating expansion in the gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of society, to the extent that ordinary, once middle-class people struggle to pay the bills required simply to live. The situation has become unsustainable.

In short, it turns out Marx was right. The crisis of capitalism is now upon us. Neoliberalism (another word for designing state systems deliberately to lead to incredible concentrations of wealth amid general poverty) is coming to the end of its course. There are no palliative measures that will make the situation bearable. A radical change in the ownership of assets is the only thing that will address the situation – starting with public ownership of all energy companies, from hydrocarbon extractors like Shell and BP, through gas, electricity and fuel generators and manufacturers, distributors and retailers.

Nationalisation should be done properly, without compensating shareholders. If I had to choose between compensating the shareholders and imprisoning them, I would imprison them. I suggest we do neither.

That is only one sector and only the start. But it is a good start. I frequently pass the Grangemouth refinery and am amazed that all that land, massive equipment, all those chemicals and processes, go primarily to the benefit of Britain’s richest man, Jim Ratcliffe, who is considering buying Manchester United as his latest toy, while his workers protest at another real-terms pay cut.

This obscenity cannot continue forever.

Wars are not incidental to neoliberalism. They are an essential part of the programme, because untrammelled consumerism requires massive acquisition of natural resources. Constant war has the helpful side-benefit for the global elite of enormous profit to the military industrial complex. The cost in human misery and death is kept at a discreet distance from the Western world save for refugee flows, which meet with a response increasingly founded in the denial of humanity.

The promotion of continual war has led to the acceleration of crisis. Much of the current cost of living explosion can be directly attributed to the provoked, prolonged and pointless war in Ukraine, while neoliberal doctrine forbids control of the horrendous associated profiteering of the energy companies.

There is going to be public anger, come spring, of a strength and reach not seen in my lifetime. The ultra wealthy and their political servants know this, and therefore strong action is being taken to forestall public protest. The new Policing Act is only one of a raft of measures being brought in to clamp down on avenues for free expression of public discontent. Demonstrations can simply be banned if they are “noisy” or an “inconvenience”. The 2 million person march against the Iraq War in London, for example, could have been banned on both grounds.

I met and talked last weekend at the Beautiful Days festival with the admirable Steve Bray; we don’t agree on everything but his public concern is genuine. He is getting used to being removed by police from Parliament Square after being specifically targeted in legislation. I reminded him – and I remind you – that the Blair government had also banned protest near the Westminster parliament, and the Scottish parliament has recently taken powers to do the same. Intolerance of dissent is a feature of modern neoliberalism, as people in Canada and New Zealand are also witnessing – or as Julian Assange might tell you.

But in addition to legislative and state attack on protest, the neoliberal state is also ramping up its more subtle elements of control. The security services are continually being expanded. The media is not only increasingly concentrated, it is increasingly under direct security service influence – the Integrity Initiative, the Paul Mason revelations, and the barely disguised spookery of Luke Harding and Mark Urban all being small elements of a massive web designed to control the popular imagination.

The splitting of the political left by identity politics has been the go-to weapon of the state for several decades now. The replacement of horizontal class solidarity by vertical gender solidarity being the most obvious tool, epitomised by the notion that it was better to elect the multi millionaire, corrupt, neoliberal warmonger Hillary Clinton than the class politics espousing Bernie Sanders, simply because the warmonger was a woman.

A specific use of this tool has been the weaponisation of fake sexual allegations against any individual likely to be a threat to the state. You see this in the cases of Julian Assange, Tommy Sheridan, Scott Ritter and Alex Salmond (they tried it on me when I left the FCO but had to drop it because they could not find – despite massive efforts – any woman who knew me who would say anything bad about me).

Those in power know that the portion of the left who identify as feminist, which is almost all of us, are highly susceptible to support alleged victims due to the extreme difficulties of real victims in obtaining justice. This makes sexual allegations, no matter how fake, very effective in removing the support base of anti-establishment figures.

The propaganda narrative against Assange, Salmond, Ritter and Sheridan depends on the idea that at the very moment that each of these men reached the peak of a lifetime’s endeavour and posed the maximum threat to the state, they lost focus, lost their marbles and acted very wrongly towards women, despite no previous history of such behaviour.

It astonishes me that anybody does not see through it.

Rather quaintly, they use different methods on women. Brigadier Janis Karpinski was the chosen patsy to take the blame for the USA’s Abu Ghraib atrocities (entirely unfairly – she had no role or authority in the CIA controlled portion of the jail where the atrocities took place). Dismissed from her post, she was prepared to testify to a memo personally signed by Donald Rumsfeld authorising torture.

How did the US security services fit up a woman, not a man, who threatened the powers that be? Shoplifting. The day after her enforced resignation, Karpinski was “caught shoplifting”. Because of course, when at the eye of an international storm and under CIA surveillance, you immediately go out and steal some clothes.

The cynical weaponisation of the trans debate has taken the art of using identity politics to split the left to a whole new level, and in particular to alienate the younger generation from traditional left feminists. It has also been used successfully – and remarkably – to neuter the most potent current threat to the UK state, by driving both the non neoliberals and the more ardent Independence supporters out of the SNP.

Similar to the use of gender politics to undermine class solidarity is the weaponisation of accusations of anti-semitism. Just as accusations of misogyny, however false, succeed in alienating left unity, so do allegations of racism.

Here it is not so much that accusations were believed – the conflation of criticism of the crimes of Israel with criticism of Jews per se being all too obvious – as that the attack was so blistering, with the full weight of the establishment political and media class behind it, that people cowered rather than face up to it. The worst example of cowering being Jeremy Corbyn.

One lesson from both the “leaked report” and the Forde report is that Corbyn and his office believed that if they threw enough sacrifices to the wolves, betraying decent people like Tony Greenstein (son of a Rabbi), Mark Wadsworth and Ken Livingstone, then the wolves would be appeased.

Israel is the last large scale project of colonisation by physical occupation of a conquered land by European people. Ukraine and Israel are the two current neo-liberal violence projects, which it is not permitted to criticise. The banning of any nuance of opinion on Ukraine should frighten everybody who is thinking rationally. If you are thinking rationally, try this small antidote to the unremitting propaganda:

The Ukraine war is unusual in the attempt to enforce wartime levels of unanimity of narrative on the population, in western countries which are not only not combatants in the war, but not even formally allied to Ukraine. The United States was a party to the Vietnam War, but it was still possible for Americans to criticise that war without having all media access banned. Today you cannot criticise Ukraine in the state or corporate media at all, and your social media access is likely to be severely restricted unless you follow the official propaganda narrative.

This is the Establishment’s strongest method of control – the labeling of opposing opinion as “misinformation” or “disinformation”, even when there is no genuine evidential base that makes the official “facts” unassailable, as with Douma or the Skripals. To ask questions is stigmatised as traitorous and entirely illegitimate, while official journalists simply regurgitate government “information”.

Yet, despite this interwoven system of dampening all dissent from the neoliberal agenda, the Establishment remains terrified of the public reaction to the crisis that is about to hit. The controlled opposition is therefore used to attack actual opposition. Keir Starmer’s banning of Labour MPs from union picket lines is a clear example of this.

We are seeing for the first time in many years an assertion of the rights of organised labour in the face of the massive attack on workers’ real incomes. This is the first time many adults under thirty will ever have encountered the notion that ordinary people are able to defend themselves against exploitation – that is one reason the impressive Mick Lynch has been such a revelation, and is viewed by the “elite” as such a threat.

The Starmer line is that strikes inconvenience the public, which you will recall is the government excuse for banning protest also. Well, of course they do. So does the spiral of real terms wage cuts. The fractured workers of the gig economy are now showing interest in unionising and organising; this is too little and too late to avert the crisis that is about to hit us, but a useful indication of the will to resist.

Popular resistance terrifies the elite and thus must be demonised. The political class is to be protected from insult or contradiction. You may recall in February it was headline news that Keir Starmer was “mobbed” in Whitehall as he walked down the street, by protestors shouting at him over lockdown and over his role in the non-prosecution of Jimmy Savile (and, less reported, in the extradition of Julian Assange).

In fact, nothing happened. Aerial photographs showed that the protestors numbered about a dozen, that they were heavily outnumbered by Starmer’s handlers and the police. The only, mild, violence was initiated by the police. There was no threat to Starmer other than the threat of being verbally opposed by members of the public on subjects he did not wish to be discussed.

This protection of highly paid politicians from the public, this claim that it is extremely bad behaviour for ordinary people to confront elite politicians with an opposing view, is an extraordinary assertion that the people must not challenge their betters.

We are going to see a great deal more of this in the coming crisis. There is currently the most extraordinary manifestation of it in Scotland where the Chief Constable has announced an investigation into people daring to protest against the Tory leadership hustings in Perth.

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To sum up.

The 2008 banking bailout gave hundreds of billions of dollars straight to the ultra-wealthy, to be paid for by ordinary people through over a decade of austerity cuts to social services, real terms cuts in pay, and increased taxation. In the current crisis the plan is to advance money in some form to ordinary people, for them to pay off by a further decade of the same.

In neither instance was taking money from those with billions in personal wealth even considered.

The neoliberal phase of super-capitalism has run its course. The gap between the wealthy and ordinary people has become so extreme that, even in the West, ordinary people no longer can afford to live decently. Consumerism has desperately depleted natural resources and accelerated climate change. The policy of perpetual war has finally undermined the world economy to a fatal degree.

The situation is not sustainable, but the global elite have no intention to give up sufficient of their massive wealth to make any difference. They seek to control society through the propaganda model and through increasing state repression of dissent, allied to an assault on “incorrect” thought by censorship of the internet and by populist demonisation. “Left” causes such as identity politics and protection from offence have been weaponised to support this suppression.

There is no democratic outlet for popular anger. The “opposition” parties which people can vote for are all under firm neoliberal, warmonger control. Democracy has ceased to present any effective choice that offers any hope of real change. The revival of interest in organised labour and the willingness of young people to engage in direct action in the field of climate change offer some avenues for activism, but it is too little, too late.

Yet this will not hold. Discontent is now so strong, and public anger becoming so widespread, that change is coming. With no available democratic mechanism for change and a firm clampdown on the development of coherent radical programmes and on radical organisation, that change will initially manifest in chaos.

The Establishment response? They clutch at their pearls, twitch at their curtains and condemn the uncouth masses.

Neurosis to a greater or lesser degree is the norm in western industrialized societies. Drawing on this fact is the key to effective propaganda. It is well known that neurotics always return to the place they are running away from. It’s a circle game of frustration in which being frustrated is actually the “solution,” because the real problems cannot be faced. The Donald Trump phenomenon is an example of this on a social level.

Everybody knows that Trump is loved or hated in equal measure. And everyone knows he dominates the minds of those who love or hate him, just as the media endlessly focuses on him in a way that only very obtuse people would fail to analyze. The media made Trump and he is their gold mine and the key to the effective propaganda they run for their masters in high finance and the intelligence agencies. Although his image seems big and bold and brazen, it is like an Impressionist painting that, as the art critic John Berger writes in “The Eyes of Claude Monet,” “… is painted in such a way that you are compelled to recognize that it is no longer there …. You cannot enter an Impressionist painting; instead it extracts your memories. In a sense it is more active than you – the passive viewer is being born; what you receive is taken from what happens between you and it. No more within it.”

Like Trump, the impression is fugitive, here and gone, vague and precise. It’s meaning is fleeting. Mutation and flux and the evanescence of appearances are its essence. As with Trump, nothing is really clear, although many claim it is. Monet was painting at a time (the late 19th and early 20th centuries) when, due to technological and economic changes, an old world was dissolving into the modern. Jump a century or more and we have Trump and the electronic media where vagueness and flux rule perceptions.

Celebrity Culture

For Trump is a product of celebrity culture that has come to dominate our world that reminds you that the world of the past has become a reality television show and all the talk about the good old days is an illusion and that we are now living in a society where experience has been reduced to meaningless and ephemeral gestures. The politicians of all stripes play ghosts.

America will never be great again, for it is corrupted to the core and the mass media present it in images that have no bearing on reality. This is something neurotics cannot face, so they still follow the circle game played by the media and fight political battles that are exercises in frustration. But it keeps them busy. Like a sports fan whose favorite team has just lost a game or had a losing season, there is always tomorrow, next season, or the upcoming election.

Before Donald Trump emerged on the national scene with his 2015 announcement that he was running for the presidency, he was known as a wealthy real estate operator who had often declared bankruptcy and a comical reality-television host with a strange hairdo. In short, he was a wealthy celebrity with huge mansions who cavorted with the rich and famous, including former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, among many others.

How such a billionaire celebrity could ever have become president and have such a large following among the white working class – the “deplorables” in Hillary Clinton’s elitist lingo – has its roots in the transformation of American culture from the late 1950s to today when illusion and performance have replaced any semblance of reality.

Boorstin, Postman, and Gabler

Daniel Boorstin described this transformation in its early days in his brilliant book, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1962). He dissected the radical change taking place whereby images and manufactured pseudo-events – “however planned, contrived, or distorted – have become more vivid, more attractive, more impressive, and more persuasive than reality itself.” What I describe as neurotic circling, Boorstin called tautologies. In this new theatrical world of mirrors, people imitate themselves by looking into the mirror of themselves imitating the famous people of all stripes: actors, politicians (excuse the repetition), celebrities, et al. Boorstin writes:

Our very efforts to debunk celebrities, to prove (whether by critical journalistic biographies or by vulgar ‘confidential’ magazines) that they are unworthy of our admiration, are like efforts to get ‘behind the scenes’ in the making of other pseudo-events. They are self-defeating. They increase our interest in the fabrication …. The hat, the rabbit, and the magician are all equally news.

Thirty years after The Image, Neil Postman added to this critique by showing how the new computer technology was tyrannizing over all human values and ways of knowing. In Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, he showed how the ecology of technology, wherein “One significant change generates total change,” creates a totally new world where cultural and personal coherence become nearly impossible. In a Technopoly where technology and technique rule over all life, any sense of truth dissolves like soap bubbles. “That it why it is possible to say almost anything without contradiction provided you begin your utterance with the words ‘A study has shown … ‘or “Scientists now tell us that … ‘” Scientism and gibberish blend with technological tricks to create an electronic digital society where, in Boorstin’s words, “the news behind the news” – or the creation of the illusions – becomes the most interesting news of all, even as its debunking is a tautology like the definition of a celebrity: Someone who is known for being known.

Finally, in 1998 Neal Gabler put the finishing touches on these developments with his book, Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality. Drawing on Boorstin and Postman, he argued that in the United States life itself had become an ongoing movie in which the manipulation of reality and real life melodramas, the movies and the new information technologies, had melded into a cultural transformation so profound that it marked the end of traditional values and/or the start of a brave new world. When fiction replaced facts and everything became entertainment in a technological kaleidoscope, “life itself was gradually becoming a medium all its own, like television, radio, print, and film, and that all of us were becoming at once performance artists in and audience for a grand, ongoing show…” The traditional media turned from some semblance of reporting actual news to become conveyors of “lifies” (a predecessor of “selfies”) – a flood of entertainments taken from soap-operatic events hyped to the teeth – while theatrical techniques were applied to politics, religion, war, etc., and everything became show business, including the presidency and the national sitcom of political reporting.

Political Theater and Propaganda

This is the context for Trump’s rise to prominence. It makes clear that he is not an aberration but part of a long development that gave us the acting president Ronald Reagan and all the presidential performers who have followed. One could say, if Trump never existed, he would have to be invented, which of course he has been, as was Bush, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, and Biden. Is it surprising that the Ukrainian president Zelensky is a comedic television and movie actor? Performers such as these follow their Director’s orders.

Furthermore, all these developments omit the crucial part played by government propaganda apparatuses in conjunction with the media and technology conglomerates. The growth of such massive propaganda is entwined with all these cultural changes, although it is not the primary focus of the three books mentioned. When all these threads are woven together, we arrive at our current situation – a vast tapestry of lies.

There are various schools of thought on the Trump phenomenon, and most say more about the thinkers than their thoughts. I am referring to Trump’s rise to prominence, his 2016 election, his presidency, and all that continues to transpire around him in 2022 and into the future. (And although Trump will be an old man in 2024 – the same age that Biden is today – you can be assured he will be garnering the headlines then.)

Monet Paints Trump

These diverse impressions of what it all means fall into at least four categories, which I will sketch as I see them.

Trump supporters seemingly came out of nowhere in 2016, but this is false. If anything, they have been smoldering for many decades and their complaints have been mounting for many good reasons. In 1969, Pete Hamill, the New York journalist, wrote an article for New York Magazine called “The Revolt of the White Lower Middle Class.” He said:

They call my people the White Lower Middle Class these days. It is an ugly, ice-cold phrase, the result, I suppose, of the missionary zeal of those sociologists who still think you can place human beings on charts. It most certainly does not sound like a description of people on the edge of open, sustained and possibly violent revolt. And yet, that is the case. All over New York tonight, in places like Inwood, South Brooklyn, Corona, East Flatbush, and Bay Ridge, men are standing around saloons talking of their grievances, and even more darkly about possible remedies. Their grievances are real and deep; their remedies could blow this city apart.

The White Lower Middle Class? Say that magic phrase at a cocktail party on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and monstrous images arise from the American demonology. Here comes the murderous rabble: fat, well-fed, bigoted, ignorant, an army of beer-soaked Irishmen, violence-loving Italians, hate-filled Poles. Lithuanians and Hungarians (they are never referred to as Americans) …. Sometimes these brutes are referred to as ‘the ethnics’ or ‘the blue-collar’ types. But the bureaucratic, sociological phrase is White Lower Middle Class. Nobody calls it the Working Class anymore.

He went on to quote various white working-class New Yorkers, their quiet bitterness, their ignorant racism fueled by a media that emphasizes “the politics of theatre, its seeming inability to ever explain what is happening behind the photographed image,” which results in a superficial understanding of what is really behind their frustrated complaints Neurosis to a greater or lesser degree is the norm in western industrialized societies. Drawing on this fact is the key to effective propaganda. It is well known that neurotics always return to the place they are running away from. It’s a circle game of frustration in which being frustrated is actually the “solution,” because the real problems cannot be faced. The Donald Trump phenomenon is an example of this on a social level.

Everybody knows that Trump is loved or hated in equal measure. And everyone knows he dominates the minds of those who love or hate him, just as the media endlessly focuses on him in a way that only very obtuse people would fail to analyze. The media made Trump and he is their gold mine and the key to the effective propaganda they run for their masters in high finance and the intelligence agencies. Although his image seems big and bold and brazen, it is like an Impressionist painting that, as the art critic John Berger writes in “The Eyes of Claude Monet,” “… is painted in such a way that you are compelled to recognize that it is no longer there …. You cannot enter an Impressionist painting; instead it extracts your memories. In a sense it is more active than you – the passive viewer is being born; what you receive is taken from what happens between you and it. No more within it.”

Like Trump, the impression is fugitive, here and gone, vague and precise. It’s meaning is fleeting. Mutation and flux and the evanescence of appearances are its essence. As with Trump, nothing is really clear, although many claim it is. Monet was painting at a time (the late 19th and early 20th centuries) when, due to technological and economic changes, an old world was dissolving into the modern. Jump a century or more and we have Trump and the electronic media where vagueness and flux rule perceptions.

Celebrity Culture

For Trump is a product of celebrity culture that has come to dominate our world that reminds you that the world of the past has become a reality television show and all the talk about the good old days is an illusion and that we are now living in a society where experience has been reduced to meaningless and ephemeral gestures. The politicians of all stripes play ghosts.

America will never be great again, for it is corrupted to the core and the mass media present it in images that have no bearing on reality. This is something neurotics cannot face, so they still follow the circle game played by the media and fight political battles that are exercises in frustration. But it keeps them busy. Like a sports fan whose favorite team has just lost a game or had a losing season, there is always tomorrow, next season, or the upcoming election.

Before Donald Trump emerged on the national scene with his 2015 announcement that he was running for the presidency, he was known as a wealthy real estate operator who had often declared bankruptcy and a comical reality-television host with a strange hairdo. In short, he was a wealthy celebrity with huge mansions who cavorted with the rich and famous, including former President Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton, among many others.

How such a billionaire celebrity could ever have become president and have such a large following among the white working class – the “deplorables” in Hillary Clinton’s elitist lingo – has its roots in the transformation of American culture from the late 1950s to today when illusion and performance have replaced any semblance of reality.

Boorstin, Postman, and Gabler

Daniel Boorstin described this transformation in its early days in his brilliant book, The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1962). He dissected the radical change taking place whereby images and manufactured pseudo-events – “however planned, contrived, or distorted – have become more vivid, more attractive, more impressive, and more persuasive than reality itself.” What I describe as neurotic circling, Boorstin called tautologies. In this new theatrical world of mirrors, people imitate themselves by looking into the mirror of themselves imitating the famous people of all stripes: actors, politicians (excuse the repetition), celebrities, et al. Boorstin writes:

Our very efforts to debunk celebrities, to prove (whether by critical journalistic biographies or by vulgar ‘confidential’ magazines) that they are unworthy of our admiration, are like efforts to get ‘behind the scenes’ in the making of other pseudo-events. They are self-defeating. They increase our interest in the fabrication …. The hat, the rabbit, and the magician are all equally news.

Thirty years after The Image, Neil Postman added to this critique by showing how the new computer technology was tyrannizing over all human values and ways of knowing. In Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology, he showed how the ecology of technology, wherein “One significant change generates total change,” creates a totally new world where cultural and personal coherence become nearly impossible. In a Technopoly where technology and technique rule over all life, any sense of truth dissolves like soap bubbles. “That it why it is possible to say almost anything without contradiction provided you begin your utterance with the words ‘A study has shown … ‘or “Scientists now tell us that … ‘” Scientism and gibberish blend with technological tricks to create an electronic digital society where, in Boorstin’s words, “the news behind the news” – or the creation of the illusions – becomes the most interesting news of all, even as its debunking is a tautology like the definition of a celebrity: Someone who is known for being known.

Finally, in 1998 Neal Gabler put the finishing touches on these developments with his book, Life: The Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality. Drawing on Boorstin and Postman, he argued that in the United States life itself had become an ongoing movie in which the manipulation of reality and real life melodramas, the movies and the new information technologies, had melded into a cultural transformation so profound that it marked the end of traditional values and/or the start of a brave new world. When fiction replaced facts and everything became entertainment in a technological kaleidoscope, “life itself was gradually becoming a medium all its own, like television, radio, print, and film, and that all of us were becoming at once performance artists in and audience for a grand, ongoing show…” The traditional media turned from some semblance of reporting actual news to become conveyors of “lifies” (a predecessor of “selfies”) – a flood of entertainments taken from soap-operatic events hyped to the teeth – while theatrical techniques were applied to politics, religion, war, etc., and everything became show business, including the presidency and the national sitcom of political reporting.

Political Theater and Propaganda

This is the context for Trump’s rise to prominence. It makes clear that he is not an aberration but part of a long development that gave us the acting president Ronald Reagan and all the presidential performers who have followed. One could say, if Trump never existed, he would have to be invented, which of course he has been, as was Bush, Clinton, Bush II, Obama, and Biden. Is it surprising that the Ukrainian president Zelensky is a comedic television and movie actor? Performers such as these follow their Director’s orders.

Furthermore, all these developments omit the crucial part played by government propaganda apparatuses in conjunction with the media and technology conglomerates. The growth of such massive propaganda is entwined with all these cultural changes, although it is not the primary focus of the three books mentioned. When all these threads are woven together, we arrive at our current situation – a vast tapestry of lies.

There are various schools of thought on the Trump phenomenon, and most say more about the thinkers than their thoughts. I am referring to Trump’s rise to prominence, his 2016 election, his presidency, and all that continues to transpire around him in 2022 and into the future. (And although Trump will be an old man in 2024 – the same age that Biden is today – you can be assured he will be garnering the headlines then.)

Monet Paints Trump

These diverse impressions of what it all means fall into at least four categories, which I will sketch as I see them.

Trump supporters seemingly came out of nowhere in 2016, but this is false. If anything, they have been smoldering for many decades and their complaints have been mounting for many good reasons. In 1969, Pete Hamill, the New York journalist, wrote an article for New York Magazine called “The Revolt of the White Lower Middle Class.” He said:

They call my people the White Lower Middle Class these days. It is an ugly, ice-cold phrase, the result, I suppose, of the missionary zeal of those sociologists who still think you can place human beings on charts. It most certainly does not sound like a description of people on the edge of open, sustained and possibly violent revolt. And yet, that is the case. All over New York tonight, in places like Inwood, South Brooklyn, Corona, East Flatbush, and Bay Ridge, men are standing around saloons talking of their grievances, and even more darkly about possible remedies. Their grievances are real and deep; their remedies could blow this city apart.

The White Lower Middle Class? Say that magic phrase at a cocktail party on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and monstrous images arise from the American demonology. Here comes the murderous rabble: fat, well-fed, bigoted, ignorant, an army of beer-soaked Irishmen, violence-loving Italians, hate-filled Poles. Lithuanians and Hungarians (they are never referred to as Americans) …. Sometimes these brutes are referred to as ‘the ethnics’ or ‘the blue-collar’ types. But the bureaucratic, sociological phrase is White Lower Middle Class. Nobody calls it the Working Class anymore.

He went on to quote various white working-class New Yorkers, their quiet bitterness, their ignorant racism fueled by a media that emphasizes “the politics of theatre, its seeming inability to ever explain what is happening behind the photographed image,” which results in a superficial understanding of what is really behind their frustrated complaints that they too are victims of the system and are not respected. In an article ostensibly about New Yorkers, Hamill explained where such anger came from, not to justify misdirected racism or ignorance of how things actually work in this country. Update his account, and you have a good portion of Trump’s followers today. His description is just as apt today: “The working-class white man is actually in revolt against taxes, joyless work, the double standards and short memories of professional politicians, hypocrisy and what he considers the debasement of the American dream.”

The perplexing thing, only explained by the rise of celebrity culture, the Internet, and the dumbing-down of the general public, is how Trump, a billionaire reality-TV buffoon could garner their devoted allegiance. A man so different from them, many of whom come from states with large rural populations and Trump a quintessential New Yorker who probably never got his hands in the earth. Of course he said many of the things they were desperate to hear about making the U.S.A. great again, no foreign entanglements, etc., many appealing things after they spent so many years hearing the politicians talk the same jive talk about invading this country and that and fighting Russia to the death. His message appealed to many. They bought his spiel as if he would save them; a claim that all politicians use, but he was touching the suppressed underbelly of the American delusion. An upper class politician talking about, among others things, class matters.

Then there is the liberal counterpoint to Trump, which is essentially the Democratic Party’s interpretation that Trump represents a shocking neo-fascist resurrection of the historically racist, isolationist strain in American history. This position is ironically consonant with the extremist 1950s claims of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his ilk – Nixon and Trump’s lawyer friend Roy Cohn, who represented McCarthy – who claimed there were communists under every bed and the Russians (U.S.S.R.) were coming to seize our liberties. The accusations against Trump, being led by The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, etc., are that he is a Russian-connected operative, a stooge, and that he is intent on undermining American democracy and establishing an American totalitarianism; that he stole the 2016 election with the help of Russia; and that he always has been in cahoots with Vladimir Putin. The liberals who hold this assessment of Trump, what some critics call “Trump derangement syndrome,” are as devoted to their assessments as are Trump’s supporters. Both groups look to Trump as an angel or devil; he transfixes both in equal measure.

Aside from those who see Trump as a savior or Satan, there are various other opinions of him that cross ideological divides. Most are equivocal, at best. Some leftists admire him for his less belligerent stance toward Russia and understand the totally debunked Russia-gate accusations against him and the impeachment proceedings as confirmation of his sincerity, although they do not endorse some of his other positions. Others view him as the personification of the rise of neo-fascist, far-right Christian fundamentalism, while also seeing Biden and the Democrats as perfidious fools leading the country to disaster. Some conservatives like aspects of his agenda, as do a small number of libertarians, but they remain very wary. There are many variations on these opinions with most falling somewhere between a rock and a hard place. A sort of pox on both contestants in the electoral game, but most are based on the presupposition that the show must go on, even as both sides claim electoral fraud when their side loses. This is the frame within which impressions of Trump and his opponents are formed.

Rarely is it considered – and this is the take of a tiny minority – that with the rise of celebrity culture, pseudo-events, image-making, and the vast, sophisticated, electronic, intelligence, propaganda apparatus, that Donald Trump is not the impressions he gives off but a creation of hidden forces manipulating reality to an unimaginable extent. That Trump is not the arch-enemy of Biden or Clinton or any Democrat, but that he is a partner in a great game of deception in which the good guys and bad guys play their parts for the Great Director. It is worth remembering what Barbara Honegger, who was present in the West Wing of the White House in February 1981, overheard that day:

We’ll know our disinformation is complete when everything the American public believes is false. – William J. Casey, CIA Director

It is also worth considering a different version of the point the psychologist James Hillman and the writer Michael Ventura raised with their book We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse. People might ask themselves if over the past fifty or five years their lives have gotten better or worse under all the American presidents, including Biden and Trump. The answer is obvious. Therefore, maybe it is time to imagine the most extreme possibility: That Casey’s statement has come to fruition.

It is not just painters and comedians who do impressions.that they too are victims of the system and are not respected. In an article ostensibly about New Yorkers, Hamill explained where such anger came from, not to justify misdirected racism or ignorance of how things actually work in this country. Update his account, and you have a good portion of Trump’s followers today. His description is just as apt today: “The working-class white man is actually in revolt against taxes, joyless work, the double standards and short memories of professional politicians, hypocrisy and what he considers the debasement of the American dream.”

The perplexing thing, only explained by the rise of celebrity culture, the Internet, and the dumbing-down of the general public, is how Trump, a billionaire reality-TV buffoon could garner their devoted allegiance. A man so different from them, many of whom come from states with large rural populations and Trump a quintessential New Yorker who probably never got his hands in the earth. Of course he said many of the things they were desperate to hear about making the U.S.A. great again, no foreign entanglements, etc., many appealing things after they spent so many years hearing the politicians talk the same jive talk about invading this country and that and fighting Russia to the death. His message appealed to many. They bought his spiel as if he would save them; a claim that all politicians use, but he was touching the suppressed underbelly of the American delusion. An upper class politician talking about, among others things, class matters.

Then there is the liberal counterpoint to Trump, which is essentially the Democratic Party’s interpretation that Trump represents a shocking neo-fascist resurrection of the historically racist, isolationist strain in American history. This position is ironically consonant with the extremist 1950s claims of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his ilk – Nixon and Trump’s lawyer friend Roy Cohn, who represented McCarthy – who claimed there were communists under every bed and the Russians (U.S.S.R.) were coming to seize our liberties. The accusations against Trump, being led by The New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, etc., are that he is a Russian-connected operative, a stooge, and that he is intent on undermining American democracy and establishing an American totalitarianism; that he stole the 2016 election with the help of Russia; and that he always has been in cahoots with Vladimir Putin. The liberals who hold this assessment of Trump, what some critics call “Trump derangement syndrome,” are as devoted to their assessments as are Trump’s supporters. Both groups look to Trump as an angel or devil; he transfixes both in equal measure.

Aside from those who see Trump as a savior or Satan, there are various other opinions of him that cross ideological divides. Most are equivocal, at best. Some leftists admire him for his less belligerent stance toward Russia and understand the totally debunked Russia-gate accusations against him and the impeachment proceedings as confirmation of his sincerity, although they do not endorse some of his other positions. Others view him as the personification of the rise of neo-fascist, far-right Christian fundamentalism, while also seeing Biden and the Democrats as perfidious fools leading the country to disaster. Some conservatives like aspects of his agenda, as do a small number of libertarians, but they remain very wary. There are many variations on these opinions with most falling somewhere between a rock and a hard place. A sort of pox on both contestants in the electoral game, but most are based on the presupposition that the show must go on, even as both sides claim electoral fraud when their side loses. This is the frame within which impressions of Trump and his opponents are formed.

Rarely is it considered – and this is the take of a tiny minority – that with the rise of celebrity culture, pseudo-events, image-making, and the vast, sophisticated, electronic, intelligence, propaganda apparatus, that Donald Trump is not the impressions he gives off but a creation of hidden forces manipulating reality to an unimaginable extent. That Trump is not the arch-enemy of Biden or Clinton or any Democrat, but that he is a partner in a great game of deception in which the good guys and bad guys play their parts for the Great Director. It is worth remembering what Barbara Honegger, who was present in the West Wing of the White House in February 1981, overheard that day:

We’ll know our disinformation is complete when everything the American public believes is false. – William J. Casey, CIA Director

It is also worth considering a different version of the point the psychologist James Hillman and the writer Michael Ventura raised with their book We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy and the World’s Getting Worse. People might ask themselves if over the past fifty or five years their lives have gotten better or worse under all the American presidents, including Biden and Trump. The answer is obvious. Therefore, maybe it is time to imagine the most extreme possibility: That Casey’s statement has come to fruition.

It is not just painters and comedians who do impressions.

While the so-called liberal and conservative corporate mainstream media – all stenographers for the intelligence agencies – pour forth the most blatant propaganda about Russia and Ukraine that is so conspicuous that it is comedic if it weren’t so dangerous, the self-depicted cognoscenti also ingest subtler messages, often from the alternative media.

A woman I know and who knows my sociological analyses of propaganda contacted me to tell me there was an excellent article about the war in Ukraine at The Intercept, an on-line publication funded by billionaire Pierre Omidyar I have long considered a leading example of much deceptive reporting wherein truth is mixed with falsehoods to convey a “liberal” narrative that fundamentally supports the ruling elites while seeming to oppose them. This, of course, is nothing new since it’s been the modus operandi of all corporate media in their own ideological and disingenuous ways, such as The New York Times, CBS, the Washington Post, the New York Daily News, Fox News, CNN, NBC, etc. for a very long time.

Nevertheless, out of respect for her judgment and knowing how deeply she feels for all suffering people, I read the article. Written by Alice Speri, its title sounded ambiguous – “The Left in Europe Confronts NATO’s Resurgence After Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine” – until I saw the subtitle that begins with these words: “Russia’s brutal invasion complicates…” But I read on. By the fourth paragraph, it became clear where this article was going. Speri writes that “In Ukraine, by contrast [with Iraq], it was Russia that had staged an illegal, unprovoked invasion, and U.S.-led support to Ukraine was understood by many as crucial to stave off even worse atrocities than those the Russian military had already committed.” [my emphasis]

While ostensibly about European anti-war and anti-NATO activists caught on the horns of a dilemma, the piece goes on to assert that although US/NATO was guilty of wrongful expansion over many years, Russia has been an aggressor in Ukraine and Georgia and is guilty of terrible war crimes, etc.

There is not a word about the U.S. engineered coup in 2014, the CIA and Pentagon backed mercenaries in Ukraine, or its support for the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion and Ukraine’s years of attacks on the Donbass where many thousands have been killed. It is assumed these actions are not criminal or provocative. And there is this:

The uncertain response of Europe’s peace activists is both a reflection of a brutal, unprovoked invasion that stunned the world and of an anti-war movement that has grown smaller and more marginalized over the years. The left in both Europe and the U.S. have struggled to respond to a wave of support for Ukraine that is at cross purposes with a decades long effort to untangle Europe from a U.S.-led military alliance. [my emphasis]

In other words, the article, couched in anti-war rhetoric, was anti-Russia propaganda. When I told my friend my analysis, she refused to discuss it and got angry with me, as if I therefore were a proponent of war. I have found this is a common response.

This got me thinking again about why people so often miss the untruths lying within articles that are in many parts truthful and accurate. I notice this constantly. They are like little seeds slipped in as if no one will notice; they work their magic nearly unconsciously. Few do notice them, for they are often imperceptible. But they have their effects and are cumulative and are far more powerful over time than blatant statements that will turn people off, especially those who think propaganda doesn’t work on them. This is the power of successful propaganda, whether purposeful or not. It particularly works well on “intellectual” and highly schooled people.

For example, in a recent printed interview, Noam Chomsky, after being introduced as a modern day Galileo, Newton, and Descartes rolled into one, talks about propaganda, its history, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippman, etc. What he says is historically accurate and informative for anyone not knowing this history. He speaks wisely of U.S. media propaganda concerning its unprovoked war against Iraq and he accurately calls the war in Ukraine “provoked.” And then, concerning the war in Ukraine, he drops this startling statement:

I don’t think there are ‘significant lies’ in war reporting. The U.S. media are generally doing a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine. That’s valuable, just as it’s valuable that international investigations are underway in preparation for possible war crimes trials.

In the blink of an eye, Chomsky says something so incredibly untrue that unless one thinks of him as a modern day Galileo, which many do, it may pass as true and you will smoothly move on to the next paragraph. Yet it is a statement so false as to be laughable. The media propaganda concerning events in Ukraine has been so blatantly false and ridiculous that a careful reader will stop suddenly and think: Did he just say that?

So now Chomsky views the media, such as The New York Times and its ilk, that he has correctly castigated for propagandizing for the U.S. in Iraq and East Timor, to use two examples, is doing “a highly creditable job in reporting Russian crimes in Ukraine,” as if suddenly they were no longer spokespeople for the CIA and U.S. disinformation. And he says this when we are in the midst of the greatest propaganda blitz since WW I, with its censorship, Disinformation Governance Board, de-platforming of dissidents, etc., that border on a parody of Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Even slicker is his casual assertion that the media are doing a good job reporting Russia’s war crimes after he earlier has said this about propaganda:

So it continues. Particularly in the more free societies, where means of state violence have been constrained by popular activism, it is of great importance to devise methods of manufacturing consent, and to ensure that they are internalized, becoming as invisible as the air we breathe, particularly in articulate educated circles. Imposing war-myths is a regular feature of these enterprises.

This is simply masterful. Explain what propaganda is at its best and how you oppose it and then drop a soupçon of it into your analysis. And while he is at it, Chomsky makes sure to praise Chris Hedges, one of his followers, who has himself recently wrote an article – The Age of Self-Delusion – that also contains valid points appealing to those sick of wars, but which also contains the following words:

Putin’s revanchism is matched by our own.

The disorganization, ineptitude, and low morale of the Russian army conscripts, along with the repeated intelligence failures by the Russian high command, apparently convinced Russia would roll over Ukraine in a few days, exposes the lie that Russia is a global menace.

‘The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself,’ historian Andrew Bacevich writes.

But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public. Russia must be inflated to become a global menace, despite nine weeks of humiliating military failures. [my emphasis]

Russia’s revanchism? Where? Revanchism? What lost territory has the U.S. ever waged war to recover? Iraq, Syria, Cuba, Vietnam, Yugoslavia, etc.? The U.S.’s history is a history not of revanchism but of imperial conquest, of seizing or controlling territory, while Russia’s war in Ukraine is clearly an act of self-defense after years of U.S./NATO/Ukraine provocations and threats, which Hedges recognizes. “Nine weeks of humiliating military failures”? – when they control a large section of eastern and southern Ukraine, including the Donbass. But his false message is subtly woven, like Chomsky’s, into sentences that are true.

“But this is not a truth the war makers impart to the public.” No, it is exactly what the media spokespeople for the war makers – i.e. The New York Times (Hedges former employer, which he never fails to mention and for whom he covered the Clinton administration’s savage destruction of Yugoslavia), CNN, Fox News, The Washington Post, the New York Post, etc. impart to the public every day for their masters. Headlines that read how Russia, while allegedly committing daily war crimes, is failing in its war aims and that the mythic hero Zelensky is leading Ukrainians to victory. Words to the effect that “The Russian bear has effectively defanged itself” presented as fact.

Yes, they do inflate the Russian monster myth, only to then puncture it with the myth of David defeating Goliath.

But being in the business of mind games (too much consistency leads to clarity and gives the game away), one can expect them to scramble their messages on an ongoing basis to serve the U.S. agenda in Ukraine and further NATO expansion in the undeclared war with Russia, for which the Ukrainian people will be sacrificed.

Orwell called it “doublethink”:

Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty.To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient, and then, when it becomes necessary again, to draw it back from oblivion for just so long as it is needed, to deny the existence of objective reality and all the while to take account of the reality one denies – all this is indispensably necessary….with the lie always one step ahead of the truth.

Revealing while concealing and interjecting inoculating shots of untruths that will only get cursory attention from their readers, the writers mentioned here and others have great appeal for the left intelligentsia. For people who basically worship those they have imbued with infallibility and genius, it is very hard to read all sentences carefully and smell a skunk. The subterfuge is often very adroit and appeals to readers’ sense of outrage at what happened in the past – e.g. the George W. Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Chomsky, of course, is the leader of the pack, and his followers are legion, including Hedges. For decades they have been either avoiding or supporting the official versions of the assassinations of JFK and RFK, the attacks of September 11, 2001 that led directly to the war on terror and so many wars of aggression,and the recent Covid-19 propaganda with its devastating lockdowns and crackdowns on civil liberties. They are far from historical amnesiacs, of course, but obviously consider these foundational events of no importance, for otherwise they would have addressed them. If you expect them to explain, you will be waiting a long time.

In a recent article – How the organized Left got Covid wrong, learned to love lockdowns and lost its mind: an autopsy – Christian Parenti writes this about Chomsky:

Almost the entire left intelligentsia has remained psychically stuck in March 2020. Its members have applauded the new biosecurity repression and calumniated as liars, grifters, and fascists any and all who dissented. Typically, they did so without even engaging evidence and while shirking public debate. Among the most visible in this has been Noam Chomsky, the self-described anarcho-syndicalist who called for the unvaccinated to “remove themselves from society,” and suggested that they should be allowed to go hungry if they refuse to submit.

Parenti’s critique of the left’s response (not just Chomsky’s and Hedges’) to Covid also applies to those foundational events mentioned above, which raises deeper questions about the CIA’s and NSA’s penetration of the media in general, a subject beyond the scope of this analysis.

For those, like the liberal woman who referred me to The Intercept article, who would no doubt say of what I have written here: Why are you picking on leftists? my reply is quite simple.

The right-wing and the neocons are obvious in their pernicious agendas; nothing is really hidden; therefore they can and should be opposed. But many leftists serve two masters and are far subtler. Ostensibly on the side of regular people and opposed to imperialism and the predations of the elites at home and abroad, they are often tricksters of beguiling rhetoric that their followers miss. Rhetoric that indirectly fuels the wars they say they oppose.

Smelling skunks is not as obvious as it might seem. Being nocturnal, they come forth when most are sleeping.

The COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most manipulated infectious disease events in history, characterized by official lies in an unending stream lead by government bureaucracies, medical associations, medical boards, the media, and international agencies.[3,6,57] We have witnessed a long list of unprecedented intrusions into medical practice, including attacks on medical experts, destruction of medical careers among doctors refusing to participate in killing their patients and a massive regimentation of health care, led by non-qualified individuals with enormous wealth, power and influence.

For the first time in American history a president, governors, mayors, hospital administrators and federal bureaucrats are determining medical treatments based not on accurate scientifically based or even experience based information, but rather to force the acceptance of special forms of care and “prevention”—including remdesivir, use of respirators and ultimately a series of essentially untested messenger RNA vaccines. For the first time in history medical treatment, protocols are not being formulated based on the experience of the physicians treating the largest number of patients successfully, but rather individuals and bureaucracies that have never treated a single patient—including Anthony Fauci, Bill Gates, EcoHealth Alliance, the CDC, WHO, state public health officers and hospital administrators.[23,38]

The media (TV, newspapers, magazines, etc), medical societies, state medical boards and the owners of social media have appointed themselves to be the sole source of information concerning this so-called “pandemic”. Websites have been removed, highly credentialed and experienced clinical doctors and scientific experts in the field of infectious diseases have been demonized, careers have been destroyed and all dissenting information has been labeled “misinformation” and “dangerous lies”, even when sourced from top experts in the fields of virology, infectious diseases, pulmonary critical care, and epidemiology. These blackouts of truth occur even when this information is backed by extensive scientific citations from some of the most qualified medical specialists in the world.[23] Incredibly, even individuals, such as Dr. Michael Yeadon, a retired ex-Chief Scientist, and vice-president for the science division of Pfizer Pharmaceutical company in the UK, who charged the company with making an extremely dangerous vaccine, is ignored and demonized. Further, he, along with other highly qualified scientists have stated that no one should take this vaccine.

Dr. Peter McCullough, one of the most cited experts in his field, who has successfully treated over 2000 COVID patients by using a protocol of early treatment (which the so-called experts completely ignored), has been the victim of a particularly vicious assault by those benefiting financially from the vaccines. He has published his results in peer reviewed journals, reporting an 80% reduction in hospitalizations and a 75% reduction in deaths by using early treatment.[44] Despite this, he is under an unrelenting series of attacks by the information controllers, none of which have treated a single patient.

Neither Anthony Fauci, the CDC, WHO nor any medical governmental establishment has ever offered any early treatment other than Tylenol, hydration and call an ambulance once you have difficulty breathing. This is unprecedented in the entire history of medical care as early treatment of infections is critical to saving lives and preventing severe complications. Not only have these medical organizations and federal lapdogs not even suggested early treatment, they attacked anyone who attempted to initiate such treatment with all the weapons at their disposal—loss of license, removal of hospital privileges, shaming, destruction of reputations and even arrest.[2]

A good example of this outrage against freedom of speech and providing informed consent information is the recent suspension by the medical board in Maine of Dr. Meryl Nass’ medical license and the ordering of her to undergo a psychiatric evaluation for prescribing Ivermectin and sharing her expertise in this field.[9,65] I know Dr, Nass personally and can vouch for her integrity, brilliance and dedication to truth. Her scientific credentials are impeccable. This behavior by a medical licensing board is reminiscent of the methodology of the Soviet KGB during the period when dissidents were incarcerated in psychiatric gulags to silence their dissent.

OTHER UNPRECEDENTED ATTACKS

Another unprecedented tactic is to remove dissenting doctors from their positions as journal editors, reviewers and retracting of their scientific papers from journals, even after these papers have been in print. Until this pandemic event, I have never seen so many journal papers being retracted— the vast majority promoting alternatives to official dogma, especially if the papers question vaccine safety. Normally a submitted paper or study is reviewed by experts in the field, called peer review. These reviews can be quite intense and nit picking in detail, insisting that all errors within the paper be corrected before publication. So, unless fraud or some other major hidden problem is discovered after the paper is in print, the paper remains in the scientific literature.

We are now witnessing a growing number of excellent scientific papers, written by top experts in the field, being retracted from major medical and scientific journals weeks, months and even years after publication. A careful review indicates that in far too many instances the authors dared question accepted dogma by the controllers of scientific publications—especially concerning the safety, alternative treatments or efficacy of vaccines.[12,63] These journals rely on extensive adverting by pharmaceutical companies for their revenue. Several instances have occurred where powerful pharmaceutical companies exerted their influence on owners of these journals to remove articles that in any way question these companies’ products.[13,34,35]

Worse still is the actual designing of medical articles for promoting drugs and pharmaceutical products that involve fake studies, so-called ghostwritten articles.[49,64] Richard Horton is quoted by the Guardian as saying “journals have devolved into information laundering operations for the pharmaceutical industry.”[13,63] Proven fraudulent “ghostwritten” articles sponsored by pharmaceutical giants have appeared regularly in top clinical journals, such as JAMA, and New England Journal of Medicine—never to be removed despite proven scientific abuse and manipulation of data.[49,63]

Ghostwritten articles involve using planning companies whose job it is to design articles containing manipulated data to support a pharmaceutical product and then have these articles accepted by high-impact clinical journals, that is, the journals most likely to affect clinical decision making of doctors. Further, they supply doctors in clinical practice with free reprints of these manipulated articles. The Guardian found 250 companies engaged in this ghostwriting business. The final step in designing these articles for publication in the most prestigious journals is to recruit well recognized medical experts from prestigious institutions, to add their name to these articles. These recruited medical authors are either paid upon agreeing to add their name to these pre- written articles or they do so for the prestige of having their name on an article in a prestigious medical journal.[11]

Of vital importance is the observation by experts in the field of medical publishing that nothing has been done to stop this abuse. Medical ethicists have lamented that because of this widespread practice “you can’t trust anything.” While some journals insist on disclosure information, most doctors reading these articles ignore this information or excuse it and several journals make disclosure more difficult by requiring the reader to find the disclosure statements at another location. Many journals do not police such statements and omissions by authors are common and without punishment.

As concerns the information made available to the public, virtually all the media is under the control of these pharmaceutical giants or others who are benefitting from this “pandemic”. Their stories are all the same, both in content and even wording. Orchestrated coverups occur daily and massive data exposing the lies being generated by these information controllers are hidden from the public. All data coming over the national media (TV, newspaper and magazines), as well as the local news you watch every day, comes only from “official” sources—most of which are lies, distortions or completely manufactured out of whole cloth—all aimed to deceive the public.

Television media receives the majority of its advertising budget from the international pharmaceutical companies—this creates an irresistible influence to report all concocted studies supporting their vaccines and other so-called treatments.[14] In 2020 alone the pharmaceutical industries spent 6.56 billion dollars on such advertising.[13,14] Pharma TV advertising amounted to 4.58 billion, an incredible 75% of their budget. That buys a lot of influence and control over the media. World famous experts within all fields of infectious diseases are excluded from media exposure and from social media should they in any way deviate against the concocted lies and distortions by the makers of these vaccines. In addition, these pharmaceutical companies spend tens of millions on social media advertising, with Pfizer leading the pack with $55 million in 2020.[14]

While these attacks on free speech are terrifying enough, even worse is the virtually universal control hospital administrators have exercised over the details of medical care in hospitals. These hirelings are now instructing doctors which treatment protocols they will adhere to and which treatments they will not use, no matter how harmful the “approved” treatments are or how beneficial the “unapproved” treatments are.[33,57]

Never in the history of American medicine have hospital administrators dictated to its physicians how they will practice medicine and what medications they can use. The CDC has no authority to dictate to hospitals or doctors concerning medical treatments. Yet, most physicians complied without the slightest resistance.

The federal Care Act encouraged this human disaster by offering all US hospitals up to 39,000 dollars for each ICU patient they put on respirators, despite the fact that early on it was obvious that the respirators were a major cause of death among these unsuspecting, trusting patients. In addition, the hospitals received 12,000 dollars for each patient that was admitted to the ICU—explaining, in my opinion and others, why all federal medical bureaucracies (CDC, FDA, NIAID, NIH, etc) did all in their power to prevent life- saving early treatments.[46] Letting patients deteriorate to the point they needed hospitalization, meant big money for all hospitals. A growing number of hospitals are in danger of bankruptcy, and many have closed their doors, even before this “pandemic”.[50] Most of these hospitals are now owned by national or international corporations, including teaching hospitals.[10]

It is also interesting to note that with the arrival of this “pandemic” we have witnessed a surge in hospital corporate chains buying up a number of these financially at-risk hospitals.[1,54] It has been noted that billions in Federal Covid aid is being used by these hospital giants to acquire these financially endangered hospitals, further increasing the power of corporate medicine over physician independence. Physicians expelled from their hospitals are finding it difficult to find other hospitals staffs to join since they too may be owned by the same corporate giant. As a result, vaccine mandate policies include far larger numbers of hospital employees. For example, Mayo Clinic fired 700 employees for exercising their right to refuse a dangerous, essentially untested experimental vaccine.[51,57] Mayo Clinic did this despite the fact that many of these employees worked during the worst of the epidemic and are being fired when the Omicron variant is the dominant strain of the virus, has the pathogenicity of a common cold for most and the vaccines are ineffective in preventing the infection.

In addition, it has been proven that the vaccinated asymptomatic person has a nasopharyngeal titer of the virus as high as an infected unvaccinated person. If the purpose of the vaccine mandate is to prevent viral spread among the hospital staff and patients, then it is the vaccinated who present the greatest risk of transmission, not the unvaccinated. The difference is that a sick unvaccinated person would not go to work, the asymptomatic vaccinated spreader will.

What we do know is that major medical centers, such as Mayo Clinic, receive tens of millions of dollars in NIH grants each year as well as monies from the pharmaceutical makers of these experimental “vaccines”. In my view, that is the real consideration driving these policies. If this could be proven in a court of law the administrators making these mandates should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and sued by all injured parties.

The hospital bankruptcy problem has grown increasingly acute due to hospitals vaccine mandates and resulting large number of hospitals staff, especially nurses, refusing to be forcibly vaccinated.[17,51] This is all unprecedented in the history of medical care. Doctors within hospitals are responsible for the treatment of their individual patients and work directly with these patients and their families to initiate these treatments. Outside organizations, such as the CDC, have no authority to intervene in these treatments and to do so exposes the patients to grave errors by an organization that has never treated a single COVID-19 patient.

When this pandemic started, hospitals were ordered by the CDC to follow a treatment protocol that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of patients, most of whom would have recovered had proper treatments been allowed.[43,44] The majority of these deaths could have been prevented had doctors been allowed to use early treatment with such products as Ivermectin, hydroxy-chloroquine and a number of other safe drugs and natural compounds. It has been estimated, based on results by physicians treating the most covid patients successfully, that of the 800,000 people that we are told died from Covid, 640,000 could have not only been saved, but could have, in many cases, returned to their pre-infection health status had mandated early treatment with these proven methods been used. This neglect of early treatment constitutes mass murder. That means 160,000 would have actually died, far less than the number dying at the hands of bureaucracies, medical associations and medical boards that refused to stand up for their patients. According to studies of early treatment of thousands of patients by brave, caring doctors, seventy-five to eighty percent of the deaths could have been prevented.[43,44]

Incredibly, these knowledgeable doctors were prevented from saving these Covid-19 infected people. It should be an embarrassment to the medical profession that so many doctors mindlessly followed the deadly protocols established by the controllers of medicine.

One must also keep in mind that this event never satisfied the criteria for a pandemic. The World Health Organization changed the criteria to make this a pandemic. To qualify for a pandemic status the virus must have a high mortality rate for the vast majority of people, which it didn’t (with a 99.98% survival rate), and it must have no known existing treatments—which this virus had—in fact, a growing number of very successful treatments.

The draconian measures established to contain this contrived “pandemic” have never been shown to be successful, such as masking the public, lockdowns, and social distancing. A number of carefully done studies during previous flu seasons demonstrated that masks, of any kind, had never prevented the spread of the virus among the public.[60]

In fact, some very good studies suggested that the masks actually spread the virus by giving people a false sense of security and other factors, such as the observation that people were constantly breaking sterile technique by touching their mask, improper removal and by leakage of infectious aerosols around the edges of the mask. In addition masks were being disposed of in parking lots, walking trails, laid on tabletops in restaurants and placed in pockets and purses.

Within a few minutes of putting on the mask, a number of pathogenic bacteria can be cultured from the masks, putting the immune suppressed person at a high risk of bacterial pneumonia and children at a higher risk of meningitis.[16] A study by researchers at the University of Florida cultured over 11 pathogenic bacteria from the inside of the mask worn by children in schools.[40]

It was also known that children were at essentially no risk of either getting sick from the virus or transmitting it.

In addition, it was also known that wearing a mask for over 4 hours (as occurs in all schools) results in significant hypoxia (low blood oxygen levels) and hypercapnia (high CO2 levels), which have a number of deleterious effects on health, including impairing the development of the child’s brain.[4,72,52]

We have known that brain development continues long after the grade school years. A recent study found that children born during the “pandemic” have significantly lower IQs—yet school boards, school principals and other educational bureaucrats are obviously unconcerned.[18]

TOOLS OF THE INDOCTRINATION TRADE

The designers of this pandemic anticipated a pushback by the public and that major embarrassing questions would be asked. To prevent this, the controllers fed the media a number of tactics, one of the most commonly used was and is the “fact check” scam. With each confrontation with carefully documented evidence, the media “fact checkers” countered with the charge of “misinformation”, and an unfounded “conspiracy theory” charge that was, in their lexicon, “debunked”. Never were we told who the fact checkers were or the source of their “debunking” information—we were just to believe the “fact checkers”. A recent court case established under oath that facebook “fact checkers” used their own staff opinion and not real experts to check “facts”.[59] When sources are in fact revealed they are invariably the corrupt CDC, WHO or Anthony Fauci or just their opinion. Here is a list of things that were labeled as “myths” and “misinformation” that were later proven to be true.

• The asymptomatic vaccinated are spreading the virus equally as with unvaccinated symptomatic infected.

• The vaccines cannot protect adequately against new variants, such as Delta and Omicron.

• Natural immunity is far superior to vaccine immunity and is most likely lifelong.

• Vaccine immunity not only wanes after several months, but all immune cells are impaired for prolonged periods, putting the vaccinated at a high risk of all infections and cancer.

• COVID vaccines can cause a significant incidence of blood clots and other serious side effects

• The vaccine proponents will demand numerous boosters as each variant appears on the scene.

• Fauci will insist on the covid vaccine for small children and even babies.

• Vaccine passports will be required to enter a business, fly in a plane, and use public transportation

• There will be internment camps for the unvaccinated (as in Australia, Austria and Canada)

• The unvaccinated will be denied employment.

• There are secret agreements between the government, elitist institutions, and vaccine makers

• Many hospitals were either empty or had low occupancy during the pandemic.

• The spike protein from the vaccine enters the nucleus of the cell, altering cell DNA repair function.

• Hundreds of thousands have been killed by the vaccines and many times more have been permanently damaged.

• Early treatment could have saved the lives of most of the 700,000 who died.

• Vaccine-induced myocarditis (which was denied initially) is a significant problem and clears over a short period.

• Special deadly lots (batches) of these vaccines are mixed with the mass of other Covid-19 vaccines

Several of these claims by those opposing these vaccines now appear on the CDC website—most still identified as “myths”. Today, extensive evidence has confirmed that each of these so-called “myths” were in fact true. Many are even admitted by the “saint of vaccines”, Anthony Fauci. For example, we were told, even by our cognitively impaired President, that once the vaccine was released all the vaccinated people could take off their masks. Oops! We were told shortly afterward— the vaccinated have high concentrations (titers) of the virus in their noses and mouths (nasopharynx) and can transmit the virus to others in which they come into contact—especially their own family members. On go the masks once again— in fact double masking is recommended. The vaccinated are now known to be the main superspreaders of the virus and hospitals are filled with the sick vaccinated and people suffering from serious vaccine complications.[27,42,45]

Another tactic by the vaccine proponents is to demonize those who reject being vaccinated for a variety of reasons. The media refers to these critically thinking individuals as “anti-vaxxers”, “vaccine deniers”, “Vaccine resisters”, “murders”, “enemies of the greater good” and as being the ones prolonging the pandemic. I have been appalled by the vicious, often heartless attacks by some of the people on social media when a parent or loved one relates a story of the terrible suffering and eventual death, they or their loved one suffered as a result of the vaccines. Some psychopaths tweet that they are glad that the loved one died or that the dead vaccinated person was an enemy of good for telling of the event and should be banned. This is hard to conceptualize. This level of cruelty is terrifying, and signifies the collapse of a moral, decent, and compassionate society.

It is bad enough for the public to sink this low, but the media, political leaders, hospital administrators, medical associations and medical licensing boards are acting in a similar morally dysfunctional and cruel way.

LOGIC, REASONING, AND SCIENTIFIC EVIDENCE HAS DISAPPEARED IN THIS EVENT

Has scientific evidence, carefully done studies, clinical experience and medical logic had any effect on stopping these ineffective and dangerous vaccines? Absolutely not! The draconian efforts to vaccinate everyone on the planet continues (except the elite, postal workers, members of Congress and other insiders).[31,62]

In the case of all other drugs and previous conventional vaccines under review by the FDA, the otherwise unexplained deaths of 50 or less individuals would result in a halt in further distribution of the product, as happened on 1976 with the swine flu vaccine. With over 18,000 deaths being reported by the VAERS system for the period December 14, 2020 and December 31st, 2021 as well as 139,126 serious injuries (including deaths) for the same period there is still no interest in stopping this deadly vaccine program.[61] Worse, there is no serious investigation by any government agency to determine why these people are dying and being seriously and permanently injured by these vaccines.[15,67] What we do see is a continuous series of coverups and evasions by the vaccine makers and their promoters.

The war against effective cheap and very safe repurposed drugs and natural compounds, that have proven beyond all doubt to have saved millions of lives all over the world, has not only continued but has stepped up in intensity.[32,34,43]

Doctors are told they cannot provide these life-saving compounds for their patients and if they do, they will be removed from the hospital, have their medical license removed or be punished in many other ways. A great many pharmacies have refused to fill prescriptions for lvermectin or hydroxy- chloroquine, despite the fact that millions of people have taken these drugs safely for over 60 years in the case of hydroxy chloroquine and decades for Ivermectin.[33,36] This refusal to fill prescriptions is unprecedented and has been engineered by those wanting to prevent alternative methods of treatment, all based on protecting vaccine expansion to all. Several companies that make hydroxy chloroquine agreed to empty their stocks of the drug by donating them to the Strategic National Stockpile, making this drug far more difficult to get.[33] Why would the government do that when over 30 well-done studies have shown that this drug reduced deaths anywhere from 66% to 92% in other countries, such as India, Egypt, Argentina, France, Nigeria, Spain, Peru, Mexico, and others?[23]

The critics of these two life-saving drugs are most often funded by Bill Gates and Anthony Fauci, both of which are making millions from these vaccines.[48,15]

To further stop the use of these drugs, the pharmaceutical industry and Bill Gates/Anthony Fauci funded fake research to make the case that hydroxy chloroquine was a dangerous drug and could damage the heart.[34] To make this fraudulent case the researchers administered the sickest of covid patients a near lethal dose of the drug, in a dose far higher than used on any covid patient by Dr. Kory, McCullough and other “real”, and compassionate doctors, physicians who were actually treating covid patients.[23]

The controlled, lap-dog media, of course, hammered the public with stories of the deadly effect of hydroxy- chloroquine, all with a terrified look of fake panic. All these stories of ivermectin dangers were shown to be untrue and some of the stories were incredibly preposterous.[37,43]

The attack on Ivermectin was even more vicious than against hydroxy-chloroquine. All of this, and a great deal more is meticulously chronicled in Robert Kennedy, Jr’s excellent new book—The Real Anthony Fauci. Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health.[32] If you are truly concerned with the truth and with all that has occurred since this atrocity started, you must not only read, but study this book carefully. It is fully referenced and covers all topics in great detail. This is a designed human tragedy of Biblical proportions by some of the most vile, heartless, psychopaths in history.

Millions have been deliberately killed and crippled, not only by this engineered virus, but by the vaccine itself and by the draconian measures used by these governments to “control the pandemic spread”. We must not ignore the “deaths by despair” caused by these draconian measures, which can exceed hundreds of thousands. Millions have starved in third world countries as a result. In the United States alone, of the 800,000 who died, claimed by the medical bureaucracies, well over 600,000 of these deaths were the result of the purposeful neglect of early treatment, blocking the use of highly effective and safe repurposed drugs, such as hydroxy-chloroquine and Ivermectin, and the forced use of deadly treatments such as remdesivir and use of ventilators. This does not count the deaths of despair and neglected medical care caused by the lockdown and hospital measures forced on healthcare systems.

To compound all this, because of vaccine mandates among all hospital personnel, thousands of nurses and other hospital workers have resigned or been fired.[17,30,51] This has resulted in critical shortages of these vital healthcare workers and dangerous reductions of ICU beds in many hospitals. In addition, as occurred in the Lewis County Healthcare System, a specialty-hospital system in Lowville, N.Y., closed its maternity unit following the resignation of 30 hospital staff over the state’s disastrous vaccine mandate orders. The irony in all these cases of resignations is that the administrators unhesitatingly accepted these mass staffing losses despite rantings about suffering from short staffing during a “crisis”. This is especially puzzling when we learned that the vaccines did not prevent viral transmission and the present predominant variant is of extremely low pathogenicity.

DANGERS OF THE VACCINES ARE INCREASINGLY REVEALED BY SCIENCE

While most researchers, virologists, infectious disease researchers and epidemiologists have been intimidated into silence, a growing number of high integrity individuals with tremendous expertise have come forward to tell the truth—that is, that these vaccines are deadly.

Most new vaccines must go through extensive safety testing for years before they are approved. New technologies, such as the mRNA and DNA vaccines, require a minimum of 10 years of careful testing and extensive follow-up. These new so-called vaccines were “tested” for only 2 months and then the results of these safety test were and continue to be kept secret. Testimony before Senator Ron Johnson by several who participated in the 2 months study indicates that virtually no follow-up of the participants of the pre-release study was ever done.[67] Complains of complications were ignored and despite promises by Pfizer that all medical expenses caused by the “vaccines” would be paid by Pfizer, these individuals stated that none were paid.[66] Some medical expenses exceed 100,000 dollars.

As an example of the deception by Pfizer, and the other makers of mRNA vaccines, is the case of 12-year-old Maddie de Garay, who participated in the Pfizer vaccine pre-release safety study. At Sen. Johnson’s presentation with the families of the vaccine injured, her mother told of her child’s recurrent seizures, that she is now confined to a wheelchair, must be tube fed and suffers permanent brain damage. On the Pfizer safety evaluation submitted to the FDA her only side effect is listed as having a “stomachache”. Each person submitted similar horrifying stories.

The Japanese resorted to a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) lawsuit to force Pfizer to release its secret biodistribution study. The reason Pfizer wanted it kept secret is that it demonstrated that Pfizer lied to the public and the regulatory agencies about the fate of the injected vaccine contents (the mRNA enclosed nano-lipid carrier). They claimed that it remained at the site of the injection (the shoulder), when in fact their own study found that it rapidly spread throughout the entire body by the bloodstream within 48 hours.

The study also found that these deadly nano-lipid carriers collected in very high concentrations in several organs, including the reproductive organs of males and females, the heart, the liver, the bone marrow, and the spleen (a major immune organ). The highest concentration was in the ovaries and the bone marrow. These nano-lipid carriers also were deposited in the brain.

Dr. Ryan Cole, a pathologist from Idaho reported a dramatic spike in highly aggressive cancers among vaccinated individuals, (not reported in the Media). He found a frighteningly high incidence of highly aggressive cancers in vaccinated individuals, especially highly invasive melanomas in young people and uterine cancers in women.[26] Other reports of activation of previously controlled cancers are also appearing among vaccinated cancer patients.[47] Thus far, no studies have been done to confirm these reports, but it is unlikely such studies will be done, at least studies funded by grants from the NIH.

The high concentration of spike proteins found in the ovaries in the biodistribution study could very well impair fertility in young women, alter menstruation, and could put them at an increased risk of ovarian cancer. The high concentration in the bone marrow, could also put the vaccinated at a high risk of leukemia and lymphoma. The leukemia risk is very worrisome now that they have started vaccinating children as young as 5 years of age. No long-term studies have been conducted by any of these makers of Covid-19 vaccines, especially as regards the risk of cancer induction. Chronic inflammation is intimately linked to cancer induction, growth and invasion and vaccines stimulate inflammation.

Cancer patients are being told they should get vaccinated with these deadly vaccines. This, in my opinion, is insane. Newer studies have shown that this type of vaccine inserts the spike protein within the nucleus of the immune cells (and most likely many cell types) and once there, inhibits two very important DNA repair enzymes, BRCA1 and 53BP1, whose duty it is to repair damage to the cell’s DNA.[29] Unrepaired DNA damage plays a major role in cancer.

There is a hereditary disease called xeroderma pigmentosum in which the DNA repair enzymes are defective. These ill-fated individuals develop multiple skin cancers and a very high incidence of organ cancer as a result. Here we have a vaccine that does the same thing, but to a less extensive degree.

One of the defective repair enzymes caused by these vaccines is called BRCA1, which is associated with a significantly higher incidence of breast cancer in women and prostate cancer in men.

It should be noted that no studies were ever done on several critical aspects of this type of vaccine.

• They have never been tested for long term effects

• They have never been tested for induction of autoimmunity

• They have never been properly tested for safety during any stage of pregnancy

• No follow-up studies have been done on the babies of vaccinated women

• There are no long-term studies on the children of vaccinated pregnant women after their birth (Especially as neurodevelopmental milestone occur).

• It has never been tested for effects on a long list of medical conditions:

  • Diabetes

  • Heart disease

  • Atherosclerosis

  • Neurodegenerative diseases

  • Neuropsychiatric effects

  • Induction of autism spectrum disorders and schizophrenia

  • Long term immune function

  • Vertical transmission of defects and disorders

  • Cancer

  • Autoimmune disorders

Previous experience with the flu vaccines clearly demonstrates that the safety studies done by researchers and clinical doctors with ties to pharmaceutical companies were essentially all either poorly done or purposefully designed to falsely show safety and coverup side effects and complications. This was dramatically demonstrated with the previously mentioned phony studies designed to indicate that hydroxy Chloroquine and Ivermectin were ineffective and too dangerous to use.[34,36,37] These fake studies resulted in millions of deaths and severe health disasters worldwide. As stated, 80% of all deaths were unnecessary and could have been prevented with inexpensive, safe repurposed medications with a very long safety history among millions who have taken them for decades or even a lifetime.[43,44]

It is beyond ironic that those claiming that they are responsible for protecting our health approved a poorly tested set of vaccines that has resulted in more deaths in less than a year of use than all the other vaccines combined given over the past 30 years. Their excuse when confronted was—“we had to overlook some safety measures because this was a deadly pandemic”.[28,46]

In 1986 President Reagan signed the National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act, which gave blanket protection to pharmaceutical makers of vaccines against injury litigation by families of vaccine injured individuals. The Supreme Court, in a 57-page opinion, ruled in favor of the vaccine companies, effectively allowing vaccine makers to manufacture and distribute dangerous, often ineffective vaccines to the population without fear of legal consequences. The court did insist on a vaccine injury compensation system which has paid out only a very small number of rewards to a large number of severely injured individuals. It is known that it is very difficult to receive these awards. According to the Health Resources and Services Administration, since 1988 the Vaccine Injury Compensation Program (VICP) has agreed to pay 3,597 awards among 19,098 vaccine injured individuals applying amounting to a total sum of $3.8 billion. This was prior to the introduction of the Covid-19 vaccines, in which the deaths alone exceed all deaths related to all the vaccines combined over a thirty-year period.

In 2018 President Trump signed into law the “right-to-try” law which allowed the use of experimental drugs and all unconventional treatments to be used in cases of extreme medical conditions. As we have seen with the refusal of many hospitals and even blanket refusal by states to allow Ivermectin, hydroxy-chloroquine or any other unapproved “official” methods to treat even terminal Covid-19 cases, these nefarious individuals have ignored this law.

Strangely, they did not use this same logic or the law when it came to Ivermectin and Hydroxy Chloroquine, both of which had undergone extensive safety testing by over 30 clinical studies of a high quality and given glowing reports on both efficacy and safety in numerous countries. In addition, we had a record of use for up to 60 years by millions of people, using these drugs worldwide, with an excellent safety record. It was obvious that a group of very powerful people in conjunction with pharmaceutical conglomerates didn’t want the pandemic to end and wanted vaccines as the only treatment option. Kennedy’s book makes this case using extensive evidence and citations.[14,32]

Dr. James Thorpe, an expert in maternal-fetal medicine, demonstrates that these covoid-19 vaccines given during pregnancy have resulted in a 50-fold higher incidence of miscarriage than reported with all other vaccines combined.[28] When we examine his graph on fetal malformations there was a 144-fold higher incidence of fetal malformation with the Covid-19 vaccines given during pregnancy as compared to all other vaccines combined. Yet, the American Academy of Obstetrics and Gynecology and the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology endorse the safety of these vaccines for all stages of pregnancy and among women breast feeding their babies.

It is noteworthy that these medical specialty groups have received significant funding from Pfizer pharmaceutical company. The American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology, just in the 4th quarter of 2010, received a total of $11,000 from Pfizer Pharmaceutical company alone.[70] Funding from NIH grants are much higher.[20] The best way to lose these grants is to criticize the source of the funds, their products or pet programs. Peter Duesberg, because of his daring to question Fauci’s pet theory of AIDS caused by HIV virus, was no longer awarded any of the 30 grant applications he submitted after going public. Prior to this episode, as the leading authority on retroviruses in the world, he had never been turned down for an NIH grant.[39] This is how the “corrupted” system works, even though much of the grant money comes from our taxes.

HOT LOTS—DEADLY BATCHES OF THE VACCINES

A new study has now surfaced, the results of which are terrifying.[25] A researcher at Kingston University in London, has completed an extensive analysis of the VAERs data (a subdepartment of the CDC which collects voluntary vaccine complication data), in which he grouped reported deaths following the vaccines according to the manufacturer’s lot numbers of the vaccines. Vaccines are manufactured in large batches called lots. What he discovered was that the vaccines are divided into over 20,000 lots and that one out of every 200 of these batches (lots) is demonstrably deadly to anyone who receives a vaccine from that lot, which includes thousands of vaccine doses.

He examined all manufactured vaccines—Pfizer, Moderna, Johnson and Johnson (Janssen), etc. He found that among every 200 batches of the vaccine from Pfizer and other makers, one batch of the 200 was found to be over 50x more deadly than vaccines batches from other lots. The other vaccine lots (batches) were also causing deaths and disabilities, but nowhere near to this extent. These deadly batches should have appeared randomly among all “vaccines” if it was an unintentional event. However, he found that 5% of the vaccines were responsible for 90% of the serious adverse events, including deaths. The incidence of deaths and serious complications among these “hot lots” varied from over 1000% to several thousand percent higher than comparable safer lots. If you think this was by accident—think again. This is not the first time “hot lots” were, in my opinion, purposefully manufactured and sent across the nation—usually vaccines designed for children. In one such scandal, “hot lots” of a vaccine ended up all in one state and the damage immediately became evident. What was the manufacture’s response? It wasn’t to remove the deadly batches of the vaccine. He ordered his company to scatter the hot lots across the nation so that authorities would not see the obvious deadly effect.

All lots of a vaccine are numbered—for example Modera labels them with such codes as 013M20A. It was noted that the batch numbers ended in either 20A or 21A. Batches ending in 20A were much more toxic than the ones ending in 21A. The batches ending in 20A had about 1700 adverse events, versus a few hundred to twenty or thirty events for the 21A batches. This example explains why some people had few or no adverse events after taking the vaccine while others are either killed or severely and permanently harmed. To see the researcher’s explanation, go to https://www.bitchute.com/video/6xIYPZBkydsu/ In my opinion these examples strongly suggest an intentional alteration of the production of the “vaccine” to include deadly batches.

I have met and worked with a number of people concerned with vaccine safety and I can tell you they are not the evil anti-vaxxers you are told they are. They are highly principled, moral, compassionate people, many of which are top researchers and people who have studied the issue extensively. Robert Kennedy, Jr, Barbara Lou Fisher, Dr. Meryl Nass, Professor Christopher Shaw, Megan Redshaw, Dr. Sherri Tenpenny, Dr. Joseph Mercola, Neil Z. Miller, Dr. Lucija Tomjinovic, Dr. Stephanie Seneff, Dr. Steve Kirsch and Dr. Peter McCullough just to name a few. These people have nothing to gain and a lot to lose. They are attacked viciously by the media, government agencies, and elite billionaires who think they should control the world and everyone in it.

WHY DID FAUCI WANT NO AUTOPSIES OF THOSE WHO DIED AFTER VACCINATION?

There are many things about this “pandemic” that are unprecedented in medical history. One of the most startling is that at the height of the pandemic so few autopsies, especially total autopsies, were being done. A mysterious virus was rapidly spreading around the world, a selected group of people with weakened immune systems were getting seriously ill and many were dying and the one way we could rapidly gain the most knowledge about this virus—an autopsy, was being discouraged.

Guerriero noted that by the end of April, 2020 approximately 150,000 people had died, yet there were only 16 autopsies performed and reported in the medical literature.[24] Among these, only seven were complete autopsies, the remaining 9 being partial or by needle biopsy or incisional biopsy. Only after 170,000 deaths by Covid-19 and four months into the pandemic were the first series of autopsies actually done, that is, more than ten. And only after 280,000 deaths and another month, were the first large series of autopsies performed, some 80 in number.[22] Sperhake, in a call for autopsies to be done without question, noted that the first full autopsy reported in the literature along with photomicrographs appeared in a medico-legal journal from China in February 2020.[41,68] Sperhake expressed confusion as to why there was a reluctance to perform autopsies during the crisis, but he knew it was not coming from the pathologists. The medical literature was littered with appeals by pathologist for more autopsies to be performed.[58] Sperhake further noted that the Robert Koch Institute (The German health monitoring system) at least initially advised against doing autopsies. He also knew that at the time 200 participating autopsy institutions in the United States had done at least 225 autopsies among 14 states.

Some have claimed that this dearth of autopsies was based on the government’s fear of infection among the pathologists, but a study of 225 autopsies on Covid-19 cases demonstrated only one case of infection among the pathologist and this was concluded to have been an infection contracted elsewhere.[19] Guerriero ends his article calling for more autopsies with this observation: “Shoulder to shoulder, clinical and forensic pathologists overcame the obstructions of autopsy studies in Covid-19 victims and hereby generated valuable knowledge on the pathophysiology of the interaction between the SARS-CoV-2 and the human body, thus contributing to our understanding of the disease.”[24]

Suspicion concerning the worldwide reluctance of nations to allow full post mortem studies of Covid-19 victims may be based on the idea that it was more than by chance. There are at least two possibilities that stand out. First, those leading the progression of this “non-pandemic” event into a perceived worldwide “deadly pandemic”, were hiding an important secret that autopsies could document. Namely, just how many of the deaths were actually caused by the virus? To implement draconian measures, such as mandated mask wearing, lockdowns, destruction of businesses, and eventually mandated forced vaccination, they needed very large numbers of covid-19 infected dead. Fear would be the driving force for all these destructive pandemic control programs.

Elder et al in his study classified the autopsy findings into four groups.[22]

1. Certain Covid-19 death
2. Probably Covid-19 death
3. Possible Covid-19 death
4. Not associated with Covid-19, despite the positive test.

What possibly concerned or even terrified the engineers of this pandemic was that autopsies just might, and did, show that a number of these so-called Covid-19 deaths in truth died of their comorbid diseases. In the vast majority of autopsy studies reported, pathologists noted multiple comorbid conditions, most of which at the extremes of life could alone be fatal. Previously it was known that common cold viruses had an 8% mortality in nursing homes.

In addition, valuable evidence could be obtained from the autopsies that would improve clinical treatments and could possibly demonstrate the deadly effect of the CDC mandated protocols all hospitals were required to follow, such as the use of respirators and the deadly, kidney-destroying drug remdesivir. The autopsies also demonstrated accumulating medical errors and poor-quality care, as the shielding of doctors in intensive care units from the eyes of family members inevitably leads to poorer quality care as reported by several nurses working in these areas.[53-55]

As bad as all this was, the very same thing is being done in the case of Covid vaccine deaths—very few complete autopsies have been done to understand why these people died, that is, until recently. Two highly qualified researchers, Dr. Sucharit Bhakdi a microbiologist and highly qualified expert in infectious disease and Dr. Arne Burkhardt, a pathologist who is a widely published authority having been a professor of pathology at several prestigious institutions, recently performed autopsies on 15 people having died after vaccination. What they found explains why so many are dying and experiencing organ damage and deadly blood clots.[5]

They determined that 14 of the fifteen people died as a result of the vaccines and not of other causes. Dr. Burkhardt, the pathologist, observed widespread evidence of an immune attack on the autopsied individuals’ organs and tissues— especially their heart. This evidence included extensive invasion of small blood vessels with massive numbers of lymphocytes, which cause extensive cell destruction when unleashed. Other organs, such as the lungs and liver, were observed to have extensive damage as well. These findings indicate the vaccines were causing the body to attack itself with deadly consequences. One can easily see why Anthony Fauci, as well as public health officers and all who are heavily promoting these vaccines, publicly discouraged autopsies on the vaccinated who subsequently died. One can also see that in the case of vaccines, that were essentially untested prior to being approved for the general public, at least the regulatory agencies should have been required to carefully monitor and analyze all serious complications, and certainly deaths, linked to these vaccines. The best way to do that is with complete autopsies.

While we learned important information from these autopsies what is really needed are special studies of the tissues of those who have died after vaccination for the presence of spike protein infiltration throughout the organs and tissues. This would be critical information, as such infiltration would result in severe damage to all tissues and organs involved—especially the heart, the brain, and the immune system. Animal studies have demonstrated this. In these vaccinated individuals the source of these spike proteins would be the injected nanolipid carriers of the spike protein producing mRNA. It is obvious that the government health authorities and pharmaceutical manufacturers of these “vaccines” do not want these critical studies done as the public would be outraged and demand an end to the vaccination program and prosecution of the involved individuals who covered this up.

CONCLUSIONS

We are all living through one of the most drastic changes in our culture, economic system, as well as political system in our nation’s history as well as the rest of the world. We have been told that we will never return to “normal” and that a great reset has been designed to create a “new world order”. This has all been outlined by Klaus Schwab, head of the World Economic Forum, in his book on the “Great Reset”.[66] This book gives a great deal of insight as to the thinking of the utopians who are proud to claim this pandemic “crisis” as their way to usher in a new world. This new world order has been on the drawing boards of the elite manipulators for over a century.[73,74] In this paper I have concentrated on the devastating effects this has had on the medical care system in the United States, but also includes much of the Western world. In past papers I have discussed the slow erosion of traditional medical care in the United States and how this system has become increasingly bureaucratized and regimented.[7,8] This process was rapidly accelerating, but the appearance of this, in my opinion, manufactured “pandemic” has transformed our health care system over night.

As you have seen, an unprecedented series of events have taken place within this system. Hospital administrators, for example, assumed the position of medical dictators, ordering doctors to follow protocols derived not from those having extensive experience in treating this virus, but rather from a medical bureaucracy that has never treated a single COVID-19 patient. The mandated use of respirators on ICU Covid-19 patients, for example, was imposed in all medical systems and dissenting physicians were rapidly removed from their positions as caregivers, despite their demonstration of markedly improved treatment methods. Further, doctors were told to use the drug remdesivir despite its proven toxicity, lack of effectiveness and high complication rate. They were told to use drugs that impaired respiration and mask every patient, despite the patient’s impaired breathing. In each case, those who refused to abuse their patients were removed from the hospital and even faced a loss of license—or worse.

For the first time in modern medical history, early medical treatment of these infected patients was ignored nationwide. Studies have shown that early medical treatment was saving 80% of higher number of these infected people when initiated by independent doctors.[43,44] Early treatment could have saved over 640,000 lives over the course of this “pandemic”. Despite the demonstration of the power of these early treatments, the forces controlling medical care continued this destructive policy.

Families were not allowed to see their loved ones, forcing these very sick individuals in the hospitals to face their deaths alone. To add insult to injury, funerals were limited to a few grieving family members, who were not allowed to even sit together. All the while large stores, such as Walmart and Cosco were allowed to operate with minimal restrictions. Nursing home patients were also not allowed to have family visitations, again being forced to die a lonely death. All the while, in a number of states, the most transparent being in New York state, infected elderly were purposefully transferred from hospitals into nursing homes, resulting in a very high death rates of these nursing home residents. At the beginning of this “pandemic” over 50% of all death were occurring in nursing homes.

Throughout this “pandemic” we have been fed an unending series of lies, distortions and disinformation by the media, the public health officials, medical bureaucracies (CDC, FDA and WHO) and medical associations. Physicians, scientists, and experts in infectious treatments who formed associations designed to develop more effective and safer treatments, were regularly demonized, harassed, shamed, humiliated, and experience a loss of licensure, loss of hospital privileges and, in at least one case, ordered to have a psychiatric examination.[2,65,71]

Anthony Fauci was given essentially absolute control of all forms of medical care during this event, including insisting that drugs he profited from be used by all treating physicians. He ordered the use of masks, despite at first laughing at the use of masks to filter a virus. Governors, mayors, and many businesses followed his orders without question.

The draconian measures being used, masking, lockdowns, testing of the uninfected, use of the inaccurate PCR test, social distancing, and contact tracing had been shown previously to be of little or no use during previous pandemics, yet all attempts to reject these methods were to no avail. Some states ignored these draconian orders and had either the same or fewer cases, as well as deaths, as the states with the most strictly enforced measures. Again, no amount of evidence or obvious demonstration along these lines had any effect on ending these socially destructive measures. Even when entire countries, such as Sweden, which avoided all these measures, demonstrated equal rates of infections and hospitalization as nations with the strictest, very draconian measures, no policy change by the controlling institutions occurred. No amount of evidence changed anything.

Experts in the psychology of destructive events, such as economic collapses, major disasters and previous pandemics demonstrated that draconian measures come with an enormous cost in the form of “deaths of despair” and in a dramatic increase in serious psychological disorders. The effects of these pandemic measures on children’s neurodevelopment is catastrophic and to a large extent irreversible.

Over time tens of thousands could die as a result of this damage. Even when these predictions began to appear, the controllers of this “pandemic” continued full steam ahead. Drastic increases in suicides, a rise in obesity, a rise in drug and alcohol use, a worsening of many health measures and a terrifying rise in psychiatric disorders, especially depression and anxiety, were ignored by the officials controlling this event.

We eventually learned that many of the deaths were a result of medical neglect. Individuals with chronic medical conditions, diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurological diseases were no longer being followed properly in their clinics and doctor’s offices. Non-emergency surgeries were put on hold. Many of these patients chose to die at home rather than risk going to the hospitals and many considered hospitals “death houses”.

Records of deaths have shown that there was a rise in deaths among those aged 75 and older, mostly explained by Covid-19 infections, but for those between the ages of 65 to 74, deaths had been increasing well before the pandemic onset.[69] Between ages of 18 and aged 65 years, records demonstrate a shocking hike in non-Covid-19 deaths. Some of these deaths were explained by a dramatic increase in drug-related deaths, some 20,000 more than 2019. Alcohol related deaths also increased substantially, and homicides increased almost 30% in the 18 to 65-year group.

The head of the insurance company OneAmerica stated that their data indicated that the death rate for individuals aged 18 to 64 had increased 40% over the pre-pandemic period.[21] Scott Davidson, the company’s CEO, stated that this represented the highest death rate in the history of insurance records, which does extensive data collections on death rates each year. Davidson also noted that this high of a death rate increase has never been seen in the history of death data collection. Previous catastrophes of monumental extent increased death rates no more than 10 percent, 40% is unprecedented.

Dr. Lindsay Weaver, Indiana’s chief medical officer, stated that hospitalizations in Indiana are higher than at any point in the past five years. This is of critical importance since the vaccines were supposed to significantly reduce deaths, but the opposite has happened. Hospitals are being flooded with vaccine complications and people in critical condition from medical neglect caused by the lockdowns and other pandemic measures.[46,56]

A dramatic number of these people are now dying, with the spike occurring after the vaccines were introduced. The lies flowing from those who have appointed themselves as medical dictators are endless. First, we were told that the lockdown would last only two weeks, they lasted over a year. Then we were told that masks were ineffective and did not need to be worn. Quickly that was reversed. Then we were told the cloth mask was very effective, now it’s not and everyone should be wearing an N95 mask and before that that they should double mask. We were told there was a severe shortage of respirators, then we discover they are sitting unused in warehouses and in city dumps, still in their packing crates. We were informed that the hospitals were filled mostly with the unvaccinated and later found the exact opposite was true the world over. We were told that the vaccine was 95% effective, only to learn that in fact the vaccines cause a progressive erosion of innate immunity.

Upon release of the vaccines, women were told the vaccines were safe during all states of pregnancy, only to find out no studies had been done on safety during pregnancy during the “safety tests” prior to release of the vaccine. We were told that careful testing on volunteers before the EUA approval for public use demonstrated extreme safety of the vaccines, only to learn that these unfortunate subjects were not followed, medical complications caused by the vaccines were not paid for and the media covered this all up.[67] We also learned that the pharmaceutical makers of the vaccines were told by the FDA that further animal testing was unnecessary (the general public would be the Guinea pigs.) Incredibly, we were told that the Pfizer’s new mRNA vaccines had been approved by the FDA, which was a cleaver deception, in that another vaccine had approval (comirnaty) and not the one being used, the BioNTech vaccine. The approved comirnaty vaccine was not available in the United States. The national media told the public that the Pfizer vaccine had been approved and was no longer classed as experimental, a blatant lie. These deadly lies continue. It is time to stop this insanity and bring these people to justice.

Footnotes

How to cite this article: Blaylock RL. COVID UPDATE: What is the truth? Surg Neurol Int 2022;13:167.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Journal or its management.

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Articles from Surgical Neurology International are provided here courtesy of Scientific Scholar

Mike Yeadon

In this comprehensive review, Dr. Yeadon argues that all the main narratives about SARS-CoV-2 and imposed “measures” are lies.

Given the foregoing, it is no longer possible to view the last two years as well- intentioned errors. Instead, the objectives of the perpetrators are most likely to be totalitarian control over the population by means of mandatory digital IDs and cashless central bank digital currencies (CBDCs).

Download The-Covid-Lies-updated

In the first part of the article (The Covid Lies), Dr. Yeadon counters the 12 widespread Covid narratives with the following arguments:

1. The infection fatality rate of SARS-CoV-2 is 0.1 – 0.3%, which is not significantly different from some seasonal influenza epidemics.
2. Based on the peer-reviewed articles, at least 30 to 50% of the population has prior cross-immunity.
3. SARS-CoV-2 does discriminate. “_The lethality of this virus, as is common with respiratory viruses, is 1000X less in young, healthy people than in elderly people wi_th multiple comorbidities.”
4. Asymptomatic transmission is the “central conceptual deceit” used to “underscore almost every intrusion: masking, mass testing, lockdowns, border restrictions, school closures, even vaccine passports.”
5. PCR test is “the central operational deceit.”
6. Neither cloth nor surgical masks prevent respiratory virus transmission.
7. Lockdown is “epidemiologically irrelevant” and never works. “Only “stay home if you’re sick” works.“
8. “Covid-19 is the most treatable respiratory viral illness ever”. Safe and effective early treatments are available.
9. Based on the peer-reviewed articles, very few clinically significant reinfections of SARS-Cov-2 have ever been confirmed.
10. SARS-CoV-2 mutates slowly, and no variant is even close to escaping naturally-acquired immunity. However, there is the possibility that the so-called vaccines prevent the establishment of immune memory, leading to the repeated infections, which would be a form of acquired immune deficiency.
11. Safety is the top priority in a public health mass intervention, even more than effectiveness. “It was NEVER appropriate to attempt to “end the pandemic” with a novel technology vaccine.”
12. The four gene-based “vaccines” are toxic. The basic rules of selecting vaccine candidates are: 1) the agent has no inherent biological action (non-toxic); 2) the agent should be the genetically most stable part of the virus; 3) the agent should be most different from human proteins. Spike protein as the vaccine does not fit any of the above criteria.

In the second part of the article (How Much of the Covid-19 Narrative Was True? Additional Reflections), Dr. Yeadon further stresses his contention on the Covid-19 narratives on:

• Unprecedented Pronouncements by the senior scientific and medical advisers, such as “Everyone is vulnerable.”
• Instigating Fear
• Using Mass Testing to Promote Fear
• One Dominant Narrative
• More Vaccine Lies
• The Question of Motive

At the end of the article, Dr. Yeadon also provides a list of extra supplemental points to support his conclusions.

About the author:

Dr. Michael YEADON PhD was Formerly Vice President & Chief Scientific Officer Allergy & Respiratory at Pfizer Global R&D. He holds Joint Honours in Biochemistry and Toxicology and a PhD in Respiratory Pharmacology. He is an Independent Consultant and Co-founder & CEO of Ziarco Pharma Ltd.

Some images removed or replaced by links. See original

While claiming to defend democracy, Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky has outlawed his opposition, ordered his rivals’ arrest, and presided over the disappearance and assassination of dissidents across the country.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has framed his country’s war against Russia as a battle for democracy itself. In a carefully choreographed address to US Congress on March 16, Zelensky stated, “Right now, the destiny of our country is being decided. The destiny of our people, whether Ukrainians will be free, whether they will be able to preserve their democracy.”

US corporate media has responded by showering Zelensky with fawning press, driving a campaign for his nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize and inspiring a flamboyant musical tribute to himself and the Ukrainian military during the 2022 Grammy awards ceremony on April 3.

Western media has looked the other way, however, as Zelensky and top officials in his administration have sanctioned a campaign of kidnapping, torture, and assassination of local Ukrainian lawmakers accused of collaborating with Russia. Several mayors and other Ukrainian officials have been killed since the outbreak of war, many reportedly by Ukrainian state agents after engaging in de-escalation talks with Russia.

“There is one less traitor in Ukraine,” Internal Affairs Ministry advisor Anton Geraschenko stated in endorsement of the murder of a Ukrainian mayor accused of collaborating with Russia.

Zelensky has further exploited the atmosphere of war to outlaw an array of opposition parties and order the arrest of his leading rivals. His authoritarian decrees have triggered the disappearance, torture and even murder of an array of human rights activists, communist and leftist organizers, journalists and government officials accused of “pro-Russian” sympathies.

The Ukrainian SBU security services has served as the enforcement arm of the officially authorized campaign of repression. With training from the CIA and close coordination with Ukraine’s state-backed neo-Nazi paramilitaries, the SBU has spent the past weeks filling its vast archipelago of torture dungeons with political dissidents.

On the battlefield, meanwhile, the Ukrainian military has engaged in a series of atrocities against captured Russian troops and proudly exhibited its sadistic acts on social media. Here too, the perpetrators of human rights abuses appear to have received approval from the upper echelons of Ukrainian leadership.

While Zelensky spouts bromides about the defense of democracy before worshipful Western audiences, he is using the war as a theater for enacting a blood-drenched purge of political rivals, dissidents and critics.

“The war is being used to kidnap, imprison and even kill opposition members who express themselves critical of the government,” a left-wing activist beaten and persecuted by Ukraine’s security services commented this April. “We must all fear for our freedom and our lives.”

Torture and enforced disappearances “common practices” of Ukraine’s SBU

When a US-backed government seized power in Kiev following the Euromaidan regime change operation of 2013-14, Ukraine’s government embarked on a nationwide purge of political elements deemed pro-Russian or insufficiently nationalistic. The passage of “decommunization” laws by the Ukrainian parliament further eased the persecution of leftist elements and the prosecution of activists for political speech.

The post-Maidan regime has focused its wrath on Ukrainians who have advocated a peace settlement with pro-Russian separatists in the country’s east, those who have documented human rights abuses by the Ukrainian military, and members of communist organizations. Dissident elements have faced the constant threat of ultra-nationalist violence, imprisonment, and even murder.

The Ukrainian security service known as the SBU has served as the main enforcer of the post-Maidan government’s campaign of domestic political repression. Pro-Western monitors including the United Nations Office of the High Commission (UN OHCR) and Human Rights Watch have accused the SBU of systematically torturing political opponents and Ukrainian dissidents with near-total impunity.

The UN OHCR found in 2016 that “arbitrary detention, enforced disappearances, torture and ill-treatment of such conflict-related detainees were common practice of SBU… A former Kharkiv SBU officer explained, ‘For the SBU, the law virtually does not exist as everything that is illegal can be either classified or explained by referring to state necessity.”

Yevhen Karas, the founder of the infamous neo-Nazi C14 unit, has detailed the close relationship his gang and other extreme right factions have enjoyed with the SBU. The SBU “informs not only us, but also Azov, the Right Sector, and so on,” Karas boasted in a 2017 interview.

Kiev officially endorses assassinating Ukrainian mayors for negotiating with Russia

Since Russia launched its military operation inside Ukraine, the SBU has hunted down local officials that decided to accept humanitarian supplies from Russia or negotiated with Russian forces to arrange corridors for civilian evacuations.

On March 1, for example, Volodymyr Strok, the mayor of the eastern city of Kreminna in the Ukrainian-controlled side of Lugansk, was kidnapped by men in military uniform, according to his wife, and shot in the heart.

On March 3, pictures of Strok’s visibly tortured body appeared. A day before his murder, Struk had reportedly urged his Ukrainian colleagues to negotiate with pro-Russian officials.

Anton Gerashchenko, an advisor to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, celebrated the mayor’s murder, declaring on his Telegram page (see below): “There is one less traitor in Ukraine. The mayor of Kreminna in Luhansk region, former deputy of Luhansk parliament was found killed.”

According to Geraschenko, Strok had been judged by the “court of the people’s tribunal.”

Telegram post

Telegram post by Anton Gerashchenko, advisor to the Ukrainian Ministry of Internal Affairs, celebrating the assassination of “traitor” and Kreminna Mayor Volodymyr Struk

The Ukrainian official therefore delivered a chilling message to anyone choosing to seek cooperation with Russia: do so and lose your life.

On March 7, the mayor of Gostomel, Yuri Prylipko, was found murdered. Prylipko had reportedly entered into negotiations with the Russian military to organize a humanitarian corridor for the evacuation of his city’s residents – a red line for Ukrainian ultra-nationalists who had long been in conflict with the mayor’s office.

Next, on March 24, Gennady Matsegora, the mayor of Kupyansk in northeastern Ukraine, released a video (below) appealing to President Volodymyr Zelensky and his administration for the release of his daughter, who had been held hostage by agents of the Ukrainian SBU intelligence agency.

Then there was the murder of Denis Kireev, a top member of the Ukrainian negotiating team, who was killed in broad daylight in Kiev after the first round of talks with Russia. Kireev was subsequently accused in local Ukrainian media of “treason.”

President Volodymyr Zelensky’s statement that “there would be consequences for collaborators” indicates that these atrocities have been sanctioned by the highest levels of government.

As of today, eleven mayors from various towns in Ukraine are missing. Western media outlets have been following the Kiev line without exception, claiming that all mayors been arrested by the Russian military. The Russian Ministry of Defense has denied the charge, however, and little evidence exists to corroborate Kiev’s line about the missing mayors.

Zelensky outlaws political opposition, authorizes arrest of rivals and war propaganda blitz

When war erupted with Russia this February, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky issued a series of decrees formalizing Kiev’s campaign against political opposition and dissident speech.

In a March 19 executive order, Zelensky invoked martial law to ban 11 opposition parties. The outlawed parties consisted of the entire left-wing, socialist or anti-NATO spectrum in Ukraine. They included the For Life Party, the Left Opposition, the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, the Socialist Party of Ukraine, Union of Left Forces, Socialists, the Party of Shariy, Ours, State, Opposition Bloc and the Volodymyr Saldo Bloc.

Openly fascist and pro-Nazi parties like the Azov National Corps were left untouched by the presidential decree, however.

“The activities of those politicians aimed at division or collusion will not succeed, but will receive a harsh response,” President Zelensky stated.

As he wiped out his opposition, Zelensky ordered an unprecedented domestic propaganda initiative to nationalize all television news broadcasting and combine all channels into a single 24 hour channel called “United News” to “tell the truth about war.”

Next, on April 12, Zelensky announced the arrest of his principal political rival, Viktor Medvedchuk, by Ukraine’s SBU security services.

Medvedchuk’s face is clearly bruised, apparently a result of beatings from Zelensky’s SBU goons. Don’t expect any questions about this image to appear in the pages of the NYT or in CNN’s 24 hour media circus. Can’t allow anything to undermine the pro-war narrative. pic.twitter.com/A0qhhmeaj8

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) April 12, 2022

The founder of the second largest party in Ukraine, the now-illegal Patriots for Life, Medvedchuk is the de facto representative of the country’s ethnic Russian population. Though Patriots for Life is regarded as “pro-Russia,” in part because of his close relations with Vladimir Putin, the new chairman of the party has condemned Russia’s “aggression” against Ukraine.

Members of the state-sponsored neo-Nazi Azov Battalion’s National Corps attacked Medvedchuk’s home in March 2019, accusing him of treason and demanding his arrest.

In August 2020, Azov’s National Corps opened fire on a bus carrying representatives of Medvedchuk’s party, wounding several with rubber-coated steel bullets.

Zelensky’s administration escalated the assault on his top opponent in February 2021 when he shuttered several media outlets controlled by Medvedchuk. The US State Department openly endorsed the president’s move, declaring that the United States “supports Ukrainian efforts to counter Russia’s malign influence…”

Three months later, Kiev jailed Medvedchuk and charged him with treason. Zelensky justified locking away his leading rival on the grounds that he needed to “fight against the danger of Russian aggression in the information arena.”

Medvedchuk escaped house arrest at the onset of the war between Russia and Ukraine, but is a captive once again, and may be used as collateral for a post-war prisoner swap with Russia.

Under Zelensky’s watch, “the war is being used to kidnap, imprison and even kill opposition members”

Since Russian troops entered Ukraine on February 24, Ukraine’s SBU security service had been on a rampage against any and all iterations of internal political opposition. Leftist Ukrainian activists have faced particularly harsh treatment, including kidnapping and torture.

This March 3 in the city of Dnipro, SBU officers accompanied by Azov ultra-nationalists raided the home of activists with the Livizja (Left) organization, which has organized against social spending cuts and right-wing media propaganda. While one activist said the Azov member “cut my hair off with a knife,” the state security agents proceeded to torture her husband, Alexander Matjuschenko, pressing a gun barrel to his head and forcing him to repeatedly belt out the nationalist salute, “Slava Ukraini!”

“Then they put bags over our heads, tied our hands with tape and took us to the SBU building in a car. There they continued to interrogate us and threatened to cut off our ears,” Matjuschenko’s wife told the leftist German publication Junge Welt.

The torture of left-wing activist Alexander Matjuschenko on March 3 in Dnipro, recorded by Azov members and SBU agents, posted on Telegram by the city of Dnipro.

Matjuschenko was jailed on the grounds that he was “conducting an aggressive war or military operation,” and now faces 10 to 15 years in prison. Despite enduring several broken ribs from the beating by state-backed ultra-nationalists, he has been denied bail. Meanwhile, dozens of other leftists have been jailed on similar charges in Dnipro.

Among those targeted by the SBU were Mikhail and Aleksander Kononovich, members of the outlawed Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine. Both were arrested and jailed on March 6 and accused of “spreading pro-Russian and pro-Belarusian views.”

In the following days, the SBU arrested broadcast journalist Yan Taksyur and charged him with treason; human rights activist Elena Berezhnaya; Elena Viacheslavova, a human rights advocate whose father, Mikhail, was burned to death during the May 2, 2014 ultra-nationalist mob attack on anti-Maidan protesters outside the Odessa House of Trade Unions; independent journalist Yuri Tkachev, who was charged with treason, and an untold number of others; disabled rights activist Oleg Novikov, who was jailed for three years this April on the grounds that he supported “separatism.”

The list of those imprisoned by Ukraine’s security services since the outbreak of war grows by the day, and is too extensive to reproduce here.

Oleg Novikov—opposition activist from my city, Kharkov, persecuted in the past by the Zelensky regime—was kidnapped 5/04/22 at 6am by the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) and taken to an unknown place. Oleg is disabled and has 3 young children. (Pic is from a previous arrest) pic.twitter.com/KSeHYC7DWJ

— Gonzalo Lira (@realGonzaloLira) April 9, 2022

Perhaps the most ghastly incident of repression took place when neo-Nazis backed by the Ukrainian government kidnapped Maxim Ryndovskiy, a professional MMA fighter, and brutally tortured him for the crime of training with Russian fighters at a gym in Chechnya. Ryndovskiy also happened to be Jewish, with a Star of David tattooed on his leg, and had spoken out on social media against the war in eastern Ukraine.

In Kyiv, local [I don’t know to fucking call them] extremists caught and brutally torture a famous Ukrainian athlete, MMA fighter, Maxim Ryndovsky. All his fault is that he trained with the Chechen club "Akhmat". pic.twitter.com/og1Psly7SE

— Maria Dubovikova (@politblogme) March 5, 2022

Ukraine’s SBU has even hunted opposition figures outside the country’s borders. As journalist Dan Cohen reported, Anatoly Shariy of the recently banned Party of Shariy said he was the target of a recent SBU assassination attempt. Shariy has been an outspoken opponent of the US-backed Maidan regime, and has been forced to flee into exile after enduring years of harassment from nationalists.

This March, the libertarian politician and online pundit received an email from a friend, “Igor,” seeking to arrange a meeting. He subsequently learned that Igor was held by the SBU at the time and being used to bait Shariy into disclosing his location.

For his part, Shariy has been placed on the notorious Myrotvorets public blacklist of “enemies of the state” founded by Anton Geraschenko – the Ministry of Internal Affairs advisor who endorsed the assassination of Ukrainian lawmakers accused of Russian sympathies. Several journalists and Ukrainian dissidents, including the prominent columnist Oles Buzina, were murdered by state-backed death squads after their names appeared on the list.

Common Ukrainian citizens have also been subjected to torture since the start of the war this February. Seemingly countless videos have appeared on social media showing civilians tied to lamp posts, often with their genitals exposed or their faces painted green. Carried out by Territorial Defense volunteers tasked with enforcing law and order during wartime, these acts of humiliation and torture have targeted everyone from accused Russian sympathizers to Roma people to alleged thieves.

Roma people (“gypsies”) left Kiev as refugees and went to border town, Lviv, where they are facing discrimination by Ukrainians. Like here, tied to poles. A popular Ukrainian Telegram channel celebrates this action and mocks the victims.#Kyiv #Ukraine #Russia #Nazi pic.twitter.com/3cWZ9a78uA

— Global Politics (@Geopol2030) March 21, 2022

This is the human rights that Zelensky brought to Ukrainian civilians#Mariupol #StandWithUkraine #RussiaUkraineWar pic.twitter.com/EWFC048M2q

— UN voice of Justice (@TheUN_voice) April 3, 2022

Ukraine’s SBU studies torture and assassination from the CIA

Vassily Prozorov, a former SBU officer who defected to Russia following the Euromaidan coup, detailed the post-Maidan security services’ systemic reliance on torture to crush political opposition and intimidate citizens accused of Russian sympathies.

According to Prozorov, the ex-SBU officer, the Ukrainian security services have been directly advised by the CIA since 2014. “CIA employees have been present in Kiev since 2014. They are residing in clandestine apartments and suburban houses,” he said. “However, they frequently come to the SBU’s central office for holding, for example, specific meetings or plotting secret operations.”

Below, Russia’s RIA Novosti profiled Prozorov and covered his disclosures in a 2019 special.

Journalist Dan Cohen interviewed a Ukrainian businessman named Igor who was arrested by the SBU for his financial ties with Russian companies and detained this March in the security service’s notorious headquarters in downtown Kiev. Igor said he overheard Russian POWs being beaten with pipes by Territorial Defense volunteers being coached by SBU officers. Pummeled to the sound of the Ukrainian national anthem, the Russian prisoners were brutalized until they confessed their hatred for Putin.

Then came Igor’s turn. “They used a lighter to heat up a needle, then put it under my fingernails,” he told Cohen. “The worst was when they put a plastic bag over my head and suffocated me and when they held the muzzle of a Kalashnikov rifle to my head and forced me to answer their questions.”

Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, the first head of the SBU after the Euromaidan regime change operation of 2013-14, nurtured close ties to Washington when he served as general consul to the Ukrainian embassy to the US during the George W. Bush administration. During that time, Nalyvaichenko was recruited by the CIA, according to his predecessor at the SBU, Alexander Yakimenko, who served under the Russian-oriented government of deposed President Viktor Yanukovych.

In 2021, Zelensky appointed one of Ukraine’s most notorious intelligence figures, Oleksander Poklad, to lead SBU’s counterintelligence division. Poklad is nicknamed “The Strangler,” a reference to his reputation for using torture and assorted dirty tricks to set-up his bosses’ political rivals on treason charges.

This April, a vivid illustration of the SBU’s brutality emerged in the form of video (below) showing its agents pummeling a group of men accused of Russian sympathies in the city of Dnipro.

Ukrainian SBU is arresting civilians in Dnipropetrovsk.

pic.twitter.com/bbHFeADnqg

— Vera Van Horne (@VeraVanHorne) April 5, 2022

“We will never take Russian soldiers prisoner”: Ukraine’s military flaunts its war crimes

While the Western media has focused squarely on alleged Russian human rights abuses since the outbreak of war, Ukrainian soldiers and pro-Ukrainian social media accounts have proudly exhibited sadistic war crimes, from field executions to the torture of captive soldiers.

This March, a pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel called White Lives Matter released a video of a Ukrainian soldier calling the fiancee of a Russian prisoner of war, seen below, and taunting her with promises to castrate the captive.

Ukrainian soldiers’ use of the cellphones of dead Russian soldiers to mock and hector their relatives appears to be a common practice. In fact, the Ukrainian government has begun using notoriously invasive facial recognition technology from Clearview AI, a US tech company, to identify Russian casualties and taunt their relatives on social media.

#ukraine soldiers calling family of deceased to mock and swear at them. Knowing modern phones – the soldier in question must’ve been alive before they unlocked his device. That’s another POW #warCrime to their repertoire. pic.twitter.com/D55T6Hu0se

— Lukasz Raczylo 🐭 🅨 (@raczylo) March 27, 2022

This April, a pro-Ukrainian Telegram channel called fckrussia2022 posted a video depicting a Russian soldier with one of his eyes bandaged, suggesting it had been gouged during torture, and mocked him as a “one-eyed” pig.

Perhaps the most gruesome image to have appeared on social media in recent weeks is the photo of a tortured Russian soldier who had one of his eyes gouged before he was killed. The accompanying post was captioned, “looking for Nazis.”

Video has also emerged this April showing Ukrainian soldiers shooting defenseless Russian POWs in the legs outside the city of Kharkov. A separate video published by Ukrainian and US-backed Georgian Legion soldiers showed the fighters carrying out field executions of wounded Russian captives near a village outside Kiev.

Ukrainian and Georgian Legion fighters celebrate after executing captive Russian soldiers on video

It is likely that these soldiers had been emboldened by their superiors’ blessings. Mamula Mamulashvili, the commander of the Georgian Legion, which participated in the field executions of wounded Russian POW’s, boasted this April that his unit freely engages in war crimes: “Yes, we tie their hands and feet sometimes. I speak for the Georgian Legion, we will never take Russian soldiers prisoner. Not a single one of them will be taken prisoner.”

Similarly, Gennadiy Druzenko, the head of the Ukrainian military medical service, stated in an interview with Ukraine 24 that he “issued an order to castrate all Russian men because they were subhuman and worse than cockroaches.”

Ukrainian officials present woman tortured and killed by Azov as victim of Russia

While Western media homes in on Russian human rights violations at home and inside Ukraine, the Ukrainian government has authorized a propaganda campaign known as “Total War” that includes the planting of bogus images and false stories to further implicate Russia.

In one especially cynical example of the strategy, Ukraine 24 – a TV channel where guests have called for the genocidal extermination of Russian children – published a photo this April depicting a female corpse branded with a bloody swastika on her stomach. Ukraine 24 claimed that it found this woman in Gostumel, one of the regions in the Kiev Oblast that the Russians vacated on March 29.

Lesia Vasylenko, a Ukrainian member of parliament, and Oleksiy Arestovych, the top advisor to President Zelensky, published the photo of the defiled female corpse on social media. While Vasylenko left the photo online, Arestovych deleted it eight hours after posting when confronted with the fact that he had published a fake.

In fact, the image was pulled from footage originally recorded by Patrick Lancaster, a Donetsk-based US journalist who had filmed the corpse of a woman tortured and murdered by members of the Ukrainian Azov Battalion in a Mariupol school basement they had converted into a base.

At 2:31 in Lancaster’s video, the woman’s corpse can be seen clearly.

Ukrainian political operative @lesiavasylenko is spreading an especially cynical fake:

The original image was captured by @PLnewstoday and showed the corpse of a woman tortured and murdered in a Mariupol school basement by Ukrainian Nazis – the allies of Vasylenko. pic.twitter.com/gRnURAAaQ9

— Max Blumenthal (@MaxBlumenthal) April 4, 2022

As weapons pour into Ukraine from NATO states and the war intensifies, the atrocities are almost certain to pile up – and with the blessing of leadership in Kiev. As Zelensky proclaimed during a visit to the city of Bucha this April, “if we do not find a civilized way out, you know our people – they will find an uncivilized way out.”

Introducing the Grand Jury

For those of you who have no clue what this is about, you would benefit from this twitter thread breaking the players down:

International Grand Jury investigating Crimes Against Humanity has begun!

Supported by the Berlin Corona Committee @CoronaAusschuss, Day 1 Opening Statements were made on February 5th, 2022

Brief 🧵 on crucial background information pic.twitter.com/2ostsnbCZH

— Remnant | MD (@RemnantMd) February 6, 2022

In brief, four German lawyers with experience in consumer protection and medical legal cases formed an investigative committee in July 2020, with the goal of understanding what events had transpired surrounding the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. They witnessed and broadcast testimony from experts across the globe with a diverse set of knowledge concerned with microbiology, outbreaks, and global interventions.

For a summary of the people interviewed, I discuss in a prior article everyone from Assistant Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Catherine Austin Fitts to infamous professor of psychology Mattias Desmet and his discussion of Mass Formation.

After the legal team gathered this information, the Corona Investigative Committee collaborated with lawyers around the world in prosecuting governments for violating their constitutional rights. Unfortunately, they met great resistance.

Most recently, they created a sort of Peoples’ Court, in which they have lawyers from several countries collaborating in a model grand jury.

From Wikipedia:

A grand jury is a jury—a group of citizens—empowered by law to conduct legal proceedings, investigate potential criminal conduct, and determine whether criminal charges should be brought. A grand jury may subpoena physical evidence or a person to testify. A grand jury is separate from the courts, which do not preside over its functioning.

The purpose of a grand jury is to accuse persons who may be guilty of a crime. It is a means for lay citizens to participate in the administration of justice. Watergate, for example, had involvement of grand juries. More recently, the prosecution of Purdue Pharma also developed from grand jury investigations.

The juries are ‘grand’ because they are larger than typical jury trials, about 23 jurors. In this case, however, the jurors are the world. Today, tens of thousands of people watched the livestream.

This is what they heard.

Day 2: Historical Background

Before these proceedings began, my goal was to provide highlights of the Day for people to digest. Lo and behold, the first day was about 6 hours long.

So, I shifted to a less unwieldy approach. I’ll be discussing what I believe to be the most valuable pieces of information presented.

You can watch the full proceedings here.

Alex Thomson

Alex Thomson was an officer in Britain’s national intelligence agency, GCHQ. In one of his roles, he served as the transcriber of Russian and German intel. He also has a decorated upbringing, including boarding school and Oxford University. He is also a journalist and writer.

The perspective Alex provides completely floored me. This account is the ultimate historical backdrop to all that has taken place in recent years, and in decades past.

According to Alex, there is a history that lies behind the post-WWII era of health crises which we find ourselves in. Furthermore, the City of London has readied itself for this very moment with efforts that began in the 1870s. From this time, the consuming cartelization of the world began.

Everything that we see unfolding in modern history, points back to the period of 1870. At this time, the British elite instantiated several revolutions concerning the containment of productivity, and prevention of the growth of intellectual property among the native people of the Empire, and its competing nations.

These include revolutions in:

• Education
• Intellectual Property
• Healthcare
• …and Governance

The City of London - the Square Mile

The central node of the Commonwealth is the City of London - henceforth referred to as The City. This square mile at the heart of Greater London, is home to about 9000 people. It also happens to be home to the families of the British Elite.

The City and the Church of England are the only two institutions that have endured every constitutional revolution in the British Isles with their wealth and privileges intact.

The City still has legal status independent of all the boroughs of London. Its privileges date back to the Magna Carta, approximately 1215. Its self-government has never been challenged. Its power has varied across time, but peaked at around the 17th century, during which it challenged the Crown for absolute dominance - thereby having power over a huge portion of the Earth. The City went as far as abolishing the Crown for about a decade.

The British Cabinet Office is the repository of Crown prerogatives. When lay people think of the Crown, they think of the Monarch. In practice, however, this is merely a front. Since 1870, the financiers of political parties are those who pull the levers of the “Crown.”

The City even has a designated seat in Parliament, entitled the Remembrancer. The sitting Monarch of Britain does not have such a privilege.

The model of government which Britain has exported to the Commonwealth includes a Privy Council which governs in the name of the Crown. For example, here is Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau swearing an oath to the Crown & Privy Council:

In Britain, however, Parliament and government departments are merely consulted. There is a veneer of separation between the executive, legislative and judiciary branches of government. As concerns the new Crown and The City, this is merely a show - well documented in the 1873 book entitled The English Constitution.

the dignified parts of government - the show - the attractive parts do have a purpose, but only to attract national support to the working parts behind the scenes.

The City, thus, can be likened to a deep state.

A New Britain

The modern era of Cartelization began around 1870. Up until this point the might of the British Empire and navy was largely unchallenged. The British elite realized they would rapidly face competition from foreign entities.

Starting from the mid-19th century, British foreign policy was primarily concerned with making allies with rivals of the past (France & the Ottomans) in an effort to prevent the future rise of a Russio-German alliance.

Unfortunately for Britian, there was another threat to the West. Namely, the rise of intellectual productivity and the democratization of innovation called the United States.

These changes in the global landscape brought about an existential crisis for Britain. Thus, The City’s trade model had to adjust.

The City adopted a model in which true wealth was to be found in ownership of the mind and body. This model of the world provided the added benefit of preventing the productive class from outproducing and overthrowing their bosses.

Thomson adds:

It is the consistent finding of allied researchers and commentators, that The City and its soft power institutions (BBC, Academia, & Church) continue to regard the battle for the mind as their top priority. Health is regarded merely as a subset of that broader battle.

MINDSPACE

Mindspace is a termed used by The City. It was formalized in the British Cabinet Office’s 2010 publication: Mindspace: Influencing behavior through public policy

MINDSPACE is actually a mnemonic for a checklist. The purpose of this checklist is to guide development of policy to influence behavior.

…we set out nine of the most robust (non-coercive) influences on our behavior, captured in a simple mnemonic - MINDSPACE

• Messenger --| we are heavily influenced by who communicates information
• Incentives -- our responses to incentives are shaped by predictable mental shortcuts such as strongly avoiding losses
• Norms -- we are strongly influenced by what others do
• Defaults -- we „go with the flow‟ of pre-set options
• Salience -- our attention is drawn to what is novel and seems relevant to us
• Priming -- our acts are often influenced by sub-conscious cues
• Affect -- our emotional associations can powerfully shape our actions
• Commitments -- we seek to be consistent with our public promises, and
  reciprocate acts
• Ego -- we act in ways that make us feel better about ourselves

The British elite regard themselves as the world’s leading power in Mindspace.

The purposes of Mindspace are particularly interesting abroad. The City influences other countries by tricking its own population and the elites of other nations to assume the perspective and narrative of The City in place of their own sovereign interests.

It is not a strategy that is formally taught, but is the credo of leading elite families that run The City, and the modus operandi of the Anglo-American tax-exempt foundations & think-tanks (NGOs) that push the agenda of these families upon Western governments.

All this suggests that our political discourse has veered astray. This perspective of forming public policy is a betrayal of the governmental enterprise, in my estimation.

Here are the Elite in question, at the World Economic Forum, opining on the loss of trust…

The World Economic Forum's Great Narrative Conference: "The good news is the elite across the world trust each other more and more... the bad news is that the majority of people trusted that elite less..." pic.twitter.com/c4I4zlew1p

— James Lindsay, fun (@ConceptualJames) January 21, 2022

On the one hand, culture evolves by the interaction of humans in enterprise. The evolving culture, then, influences legislation.

On the other, you have a governance structure which aims to mold culture by the inaction of public policy. These approaches to governance can be at odds.

As Alex Thomson put it:

If your mindspace is controlled by the Anglosaxon liberal democratic model, then you are going to find a club with self-interest will run the world, even in areas such as healthcare. People will wrongly assume that their best interests are kept at heart.

These MINDSPACE tactics, however, must appear to be legitimate. Otherwise, people get suspicious and resist.

Even if people agree with the behaviour goal, they may object to the means of accomplishing it. The different MINDSPACE effects will attract different levels of controversy.254 There are several factors that determine controversy:

Degree of conscious control. As noted, MINDSPACE effects depend at least partly on the Automatic System. This means that citizens may not fully realise that their behaviour is being changed – or, at least, how it is being changed. Clearly, this opens government up to charges of manipulation. People tend to think that attempts to change their behaviour will be effective if they are simply provided information in an “above board” way - people have a strong dislike of being “tricked”. This dislike has a psychological grounding, but fundamentally it is an issue of trust in government. A lack of conscious control also has implications for consent and freedom of choice. First, it creates a greater need for citizens to approve the use of the behaviour change – perhaps using new forms of democratic engagement. Second, if the effect operates automatically, it may offer little opportunity for citizens to opt- out or choose otherwise; the concept of “choice architecture” is less use here. Any action that may reduce the “right to be wrong” will be very controversial. Of course, some traditional attempts to change behaviour are not explicit (as noted in the „Salience‟ section, some incentives are effectively invisible), and these have attracted controversy. But they rarely attract the charge of „manipulation‟ because they are based on conscious actions to supply and register information, rather than relying on unconscious reactions.

By influencing the cultural institutions of authority, they can capture the peoples’ mind.

Implications for Western Democracy

In the Commonwealth & coastal jurisdictions (e.g. NYC), we are trained by the soft power institutions of The City to think we are in control of our destiny. The strength of The City’s model is the ability to operate at arm's length. To persuade people that what they wanted before, is not what they want now.

Consequently, the MINDSPACE is the most powerful weapon that Britain can wield. The British establishment has not fought fairly since about 1870. Most of the revolutions it hoped to bring about, were all in place by the post-WW2 era.

Thomson continues:

The sovereign power of The City is learned by most by the time they are in boarding school, let alone matriculants of Oxford & Cambrdige. According to this understanding, the rest of the British empire does not have self-determination.

The City owns the population’s body, mind, & soul.

From The City’s perspective, its livestock are not performing in a manner which they deem competitive on the world stage.

Usage of the term livestock is explicit. Up until the 1990s, boarding schools used it to describe the British population. This revolved around the idea that people were cattle, and that their place in the world was under the direction of the Elite.

In effect, the City of London (and its US hub, Wall Street) is battling with the American experiment of self-determination, intellectual productivity and the democratization of innovation. Whilst simultaneously competing with the East.

We are witnessing the evolution of a meta Civil War. Not within a country, but within the western hemisphere. A war which will determine which ethos within the West will rise to contend against the slavish productivity of the East.

I, for one, believe in the American experiment.

Freedom is good for the Soul.

Photos from site of Ukraine’s March 14 missile attack on Donetsk. Photo: Eva Bartlett, March 24, 2022.

-by Eva K Bartlett, April 5, 2022

Following is a lengthy overview of my recent re-visit to the Donbass, on a two day media delegation, with a brief critique of some of the media’s slanted reporting. It is also a follow up from my 2019 visit to hard hit areas of the Donetsk People’s Republic. It is now 8 years of Ukraine’s war on the people of the Donetsk & Lugansk Republics.

Point of impact of March 14 Ukrainian missile attack on Donetsk. Photo: Eva Bartlett, March 24, 2022.

In the last week of March, I stood on a central Donetsk main street next to two of the impact points of a Ukrainian missile attack that had killed 21 civilians and injured nearly 40 more on March 14. The Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) maintains that their military intercepted Ukraine’s Tochka-U ballistic missile, and that not all of the cluster munitions inside had exploded in the city streets, thereby lessening the already terrible bloodshed it caused. Indeed, if all of the munitions had exploded, it would have been a bloodbath more horrific than the 21 killed.

. . .

Read the whole article)

. . .

I could add paragraphs of examples of how Western media did this in Syria, but for the sake of brevity will state simply that this is one of many deceitful and deliberate propaganda tactics used to both downplay the hell civilians are suffering under Ukraine’s bombing, and instead to pretend Ukraine is the victim. How the journalists that propagate such lies live with themselves, I’ll never understand.

Finally, a word to some in independent media who feel the need to denigrate Russia’s denazification operation in Ukraine by snidely putting “special operation” in quotation marks, or others who took to social media to tell the world they don’t like war, and denounced Russia for its military operation (to stop a war): The people of the Donbass don’t like war, they didn’t ask for Ukraine to unleash hell upon them. Such posturing disrespects the at least 14,000 killed by Ukraine’s war.

As journalist Roman Kosarev, who has covered the war eightyears, said: “Russia isn’t starting a war, Russia is ending one.“

The linked article, in French published by Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement, is translated to English below.

The Military Situation In Ukraine Documentation Bulletin N°27 / March 2022 Jacques Baud

Former colonel of the General Staff, former member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist in Eastern European countries.

Part One: On The Road To War

For years, from Mali to Afghanistan, I have worked for peace and risked my life for it. It is not a question of justifying war, but of understanding what led us to it. I notice that the "experts" who take turns on the television sets analyze the situation on the basis of dubious information, most often hypotheses erected as facts, and then we no longer manage to understand what is happening. This is how panics are created.

The problem is not so much to know who is right in this conflict, but to question the way our leadersmake their decisions.

Let us try to examine the roots of the conflict. It starts with those who for the last eight years have been talking about "separatists" or "independentists" from Donbass. This is not true. The referendums conducted by the two self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in May 2014,were not referendums of "independence" (независимость), as some unscrupulous journalists have claimed, but referendums of "self-determination" or "autonomy" (самостоятельность). The qualifier"pro-Russian" suggests that Russia was a party to the conflict, which was not the case, and the term"Russian speakers" would have been more honest. Moreover, these referendums were conducted against the advice of Vladimir Putin.

In fact, these republics were not seeking to separate from Ukraine, but to have an autonomous status guaranteeing them the use of the Russian language as an official language. For the first legislative act of the new government resulting from the overthrow of President Yanukovych, was the abolition, on February 23, 2014, of the Kivalov-Kolesnichenko law of 2012 that made Russian an official language. A bit like if putschists decided that French and Italian would no longer be official languages in Switzerland.

This decision causes a storm in the Russian-speaking population. The result is a fierce repression against the Russian-speaking regions (Odessa, Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Lugansk and Donetsk),which is exercised from February 2014 and leads to a militarization of the situation and some massacres (in Odessa and Marioupol, for the most important). At the end of summer 2014, only the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk remain.

At this stage, the Ukrainian staffs are too rigid and stuck in a doctrinaire approach to the art of operations, and they are subjected to the enemy without being able to impose themselves. The examination of the course of the fighting in 2014-2016 in the Donbass shows that the Ukrainian general staff systematically and mechanically applied the same operative schemes. However, the war waged by the autonomists is very similar to what we observe in the Sahel: highly mobile operations conducted with light means. With a more flexible and less doctrinaire approach, the rebels were able to exploit the inertia of Ukrainian forces to repeatedly "trap" them.

In 2014, I was at NATO, responsible for the fight against the proliferation of small arms, and we were trying to detect Russian arms deliveries to the rebels to see if Moscow was involved. The information we received then came almost entirely from Polish intelligence services and did not "fit"with the information coming from the OSCE: despite some rather crude allegations, there were no deliveries of weapons and military equipment from Russia.The rebels are armed thanks to the defections of Russian-speaking Ukrainian units that have gone over to the rebel side. As Ukrainian failures continue, tank, artillery and anti-aircraft battalions swell the ranks of the autonomists. This is what pushes the Ukrainians to commit themselves to the Minsk Agreements.

But just after signing the Minsk 1 Agreements, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko launches a massive anti-terrorist operation (ATO/Антитерористична операція) against the Donbass. Bis repetita placent: poorly advised by NATO officers, the Ukrainians suffer a crushing defeat in Debaltsevo that forces them to engage in the Minsk 2 Agreements...

It is essential to recall here that the Minsk 1 (September 2014) and Minsk 2 (February 2015)Agreements, did not provide for the separation or independence of the Republics, but their autonomy within the framework of Ukraine. Those who have read the Agreements (there are very,very, very few of them) will note that it is written in all letters that the status of the republics was to be negotiated between Kiev and the representatives of the republics, for a solution internal to Ukraine.

This is why, since 2014, Russia has systematically demanded their application while refusing to be a party to the negotiations, because it was an internal matter for Ukraine. On the other side, the West -led by France - has systematically tried to replace the Minsk Agreements with the "Normandy format", which put Russians and Ukrainians face to face. However, let us remember that there were never any Russian troops in the Donbass before 23-24 February 2022. Moreover, OSCE observers have never observed the slightest trace of Russian units operating in the Donbass. For example, the U.S. intelligence map published by the Washington Post on December 3, 2021 does not show Russian troops in the Donbass.

In October 2015, Vasyl Hrytsak, director of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU), confessed that only 56 Russian fighters had been observed in the Donbass. It was comparable to the Swiss going to fight in Bosnia during the weekends in the 1990s, or the French going to fight in Ukraine today.

The Ukrainian army was then in a deplorable state. In October 2018, after four years of war, the chief Ukrainian military prosecutor Anatoly Matios said that Ukraine had lost 2,700 men in the Donbass: 891 from diseases, 318 from traffic accidents, 177 from other accidents, 175 from poisoning (alcohol, drugs), 172 from careless handling of weapons, 101 from breaches of safety regulations, 228 from murder and 615 from suicide.

In fact, the army is undermined by the corruption of its cadres and no longer enjoys the support of the population. According to a British Home Office report, in the March-April 2014 recall of reservists, 70 percent did not show up for the first session, 80 percent for the second, 90% by the third and 95% by the fourth. In October/November 2017, 70% of conscripts did not show up for the "Fall 2017" recall campaign. This is not counting suicides and desertions (often to the autonomists), which reach up to 30% of the workforce in the ATO area. Young Ukrainians refuse to go to fight in the Donbass and prefer emigration, which also explains, at least partially, the demographic deficit of the country.

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defense approached NATO to help make its armed forces more"attractive. Having already worked on similar projects within the framework of the United Nations, I was asked by NATO to participate in a program to restore the image of the Ukrainian armed forces.But this is a long process and the Ukrainians want to move quickly.

Thus, to compensate for the lack of soldiers, the Ukrainian government resorted to paramilitary militias. They are essentially made up of foreign mercenaries, often extreme right-wing militants. In 2020, they constitute about 40% of the Ukrainian forces and number about 102,000 men according to Reuters. They are armed, financed and trained by the United States, Great Britain, Canada and France. There are more than 19 nationalities - including Swiss.

Western countries have thus clearly created and supported Ukrainian far-right militias. In October 2021, the Jerusalem Post sounded the alarm by denouncing the Centuria project. These militias have been operating in the Donbass since 2014, with Western support. Even if one can argue about the term "Nazi," the fact remains that these militias are violent, convey a nauseating ideology and are virulently anti-Semitic. Their anti-Semitism is more cultural than political, which is why the term "Nazi" is not really appropriate. Their hatred of the Jew stems from the great famines of the 1920s and 1930s in Ukraine, resulting from Stalin's confiscation of crops to finance the modernization of the Red Army. This genocide - known in Ukraine as the Holodomor - was perpetrated by the NKVD (the forerunner of the KGB), whose upper echelons of leadership were mainly composed of Jews.This is why, today, Ukrainian extremists are asking Israel to apologize for the crimes of communism,as the Jerusalem Post notes. This is a far cry from Vladimir Putin's "rewriting of history".

These militias, originating from the far-right groups that animated the Euromaidan revolution in 2014, are composed of fanatical and brutal individuals. The best known of these is the Azov Regiment, whose emblem is reminiscent of the 2nd SS Das Reich Panzer Division, which is revered in Ukraine for liberating Kharkov from the Soviets in 1943, before carrying out the Oradour-sur-Glanemassacre in 1944 in France.

Among the famous figures of the Azov regiment was the opponent Roman Protassevitch, who was arrested in 2021 by the Belarusian authorities following the case of RyanAir flight FR4978. On May 23, 2021, there was talk of the deliberate hijacking of an airliner by a MiG-29 - with Putin's approval, of course - to arrest Protassevitch, although the information available at the time) does not confirm this scenario at all.

But then it must be shown that President Lukashenko is a thug and Protassevich is a democracy-loving "journalist". However, a rather edifying investigation produced by an American NGO in 2020, highlighted Protassevitch's militant right-wing activities. Western conspiracy theory was then set in motion and unscrupulous media

They "groomed" his biography. Finally, in January 2022, the ICAO report is published and shows that despite some procedural errors, Belarus acted in accordance with the rules in force and that the MiG-29 took off 15 minutes after the RyanAir pilot decided to land in Minsk. So no Belarusian plot and even less with Putin. Ah!... Another detail: Protassevitch, cruelly tortured by the Belarusian police, is now free. Those who would like to correspond with him, can go on his Twitter account.The characterization of Ukrainian paramilitaries as "Nazis" or "neo-Nazis" is considered Russian propaganda. Perhaps; but that's not the view of the Times of Israel, the Simon Wiesenthal Center or the West Point Academy's Center for Counterterrorism. But that's still debatable, because in 2014, Newsweek magazine seemed to associate them more with... the Islamic State. Take your pick!

So the West supports and continues to arm militias that have been guilty of numerous crimes against civilian populations since 2014: rape, torture and massacres. But while the Swiss government has been very quick to take sanctions against Russia, it has not adopted any against Ukraine, which has been massacring its own population since 2014. In fact, those who defend human rights in Ukraine have long condemned the actions of these groups, but have not been followed by our governments. Because, in reality, we are not trying to help Ukraine, but to fight Russia.

The integration of these paramilitary forces into the National Guard was not at all accompanied by a "denazification", as some claim. Among the many examples, that of the Azov Regiment's insignia is edifying:

In 2022, very schematically, the Ukrainian armed forces fighting the Russian offensive are articulated in :

– Army, subordinated to the Ministry of Defense: it is divided into 3 army corps and composed of maneuver formations (tanks, heavy artillery, missiles, etc.).
– National Guard, which depends on the Ministry of Interior and is articulated in 5 territorial commands.

The National Guard is thus a territorial defense force that is not part of the Ukrainian army. It includes paramilitary militias, called "volunteer battalions" (добровольчі батальйоні), also known by the evocative name of "reprisal battalions", composed of infantry. Primarily trained for urban combat, they now defend cities such as Kharkov, Mariupol, Odessa, Kiev, etc.

Part One: On The Road To War

As a former head of the Warsaw Pact forces in the Swiss strategic intelligence service, I observe with sadness - but not astonishment - that our services are no longer able to understand the military situation in Ukraine. The self-proclaimed "experts" who parade on our screens tirelessly relay the same information modulated by the claim that Russia - and Vladimir Putin - is irrational. Let's take a step back.

The Outbreak Of The War

Since November 2021, the Americans have been constantly raising the threat o f a Russian invasion of Ukraine. However, the Ukrainians do not seem to share this view. Why not? We must go back to March 24, 2021. On that day, Volodymyr Zelensky issued a decree for the recapture of Crimea and began to deploy his forces to the south of the country. At the same time, several NATO exercises were conducted between the Black Sea and the Baltic Sea, accompanied by a significant increase in reconnaissance flights along the Russian border. Russia is conducting a number of exercises to test the operational readiness of its troops and to show that it is monitoring the situation.

Things calm down until October-November with the end of the ZAPAD 21 exercises, whose troop movements are interpreted as a reinforcement for an offensive against Ukraine. However, even the Ukrainian authorities refute the idea of Russian preparations for a war and Oleksiy Reznikov, the Ukrainian Minister of Defense, declares that there is no change on his border since the spring.

In violation of the Minsk Agreements, Ukraine conducts air operations in the Donbass using drones, including at least executing a strike against a fuel depot in Donetsk in October 2021. The American press notes this, but not the Europeans and no one condemns these violations.

In February 2022, events are accelerating. On February 7, during his visit to Moscow, Emmanuel Macron reaffirmed to Vladimir Putin his commitment to the Minsk Agreements, a commitment he would repeat at the end of his meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky the following day. But on February 11, in Berlin, after nine hours of work, the meeting of political advisors of the leaders of the "Normandy format" ended, without any concrete result: the Ukrainians still refuse to apply the Minsk Agreements, apparently under pressure from the United States. Vladimir Putin noted that Macron had made empty promises and that the West was not ready to enforce the agreements, as it had been doing for eight years.

Ukrainian preparations in the contact zone continue. The Russian Parliament was alarmed and on February 15 asked Vladimir Putin to recognize the independence of the republics, which he refused.

On February 17, President Joe Biden announces that Russia will attack Ukraine in the coming days. How does he know this? It is a mystery... But since the 16th, the artillery shelling on the populations of Donbass has increased dramatically, as the daily reports of the OSCE observers show. Naturally, neither the media, nor the European Union, nor NATO, nor any Western government reacts or intervenes. It will be said later that this is Russian disinformation. In fact, it seems that the European Union and some countries have deliberately kept silent about the massacre of the Donbass population, knowing that this would provoke a Russian intervention.

At the same time, there are reports of sabotage in the Donbass. On 18 January, Donbass fighters intercepted saboteurs equipped with Western and Polish-speaking equipment seeking to create chemical incidents in Gorlivka. They could be CIA mercenaries, led or "advised" by Americans and composed of Ukrainian or European fighters, to carry out sabotage actions in the Donbass republics.

In fact, as early as February 16, Joe Biden knew that the Ukrainians had begun shelling the civilian population of Donbass, putting Vladimir Putin in a difficult choice: to help Donbass militarily and create an international problem or to stand by and watch the Russian-speaking people of Donbass being crushed.

If he decides to intervene, Vladimir Putin can invoke the international obligation to "Responsibility To Protect" (R2P). But it knows that whatever its nature or scale, intervention will trigger a rain of sanctions. Therefore, whether his intervention is limited to the Donbass or goes further to put pressure on the West for the status of Ukraine, the price to pay will be the same. This is what he explained in his speech on February 21. That day, he acceded to the request of the Duma and recognized the independence of the two republics of Donbass and, in the wake, he signed treaties of friendship and assistance with them.

The Ukrainian artillery bombardment of the Donbass population continued and, on February 23, the two republics asked for military assistance from Russia. On 24 February, Vladimir Putin invoked Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, which provides for mutual military assistance in the framework of a defensive alliance.

In order to make the Russian intervention totally illegal in the eyes of the public we deliberately hide the fact that the war actually started on February 16. The Ukrainian army was preparing to attack the Donbass as early as 2021, as some Russian and European intelligence services were well aware... Jurists will judge.

In his speech on February 24, Vladimir Putin stated the two objectives of his operation:The aim is to "demilitarize" and "denazify" Ukraine. So it i s not a question of taking over Ukraine, nor even, presumably, of occupying it and certainly not of destroying it.

From that point on, our visibility on the course of the operation is limited: the Russians have excellent security of operations (OPSEC) and the details of their planning are not known. But quite quickly, the course of the operation allows us to understand how the strategic objectives were translated on the operational level.

• Demilitarization:

  • ground destruction of Ukrainian aviation, air defense systems and reconnaissance assets ;
  • neutralization of command and intelligence structures (C3I), as well as the main logistical routes in the depth of the territory ;
  • encirclement of the bulk of the Ukrainian army massed in the southeast of the country.

• Denazification:

  • destruction or neutralization of volunteer battalions operating in the cities of Odessa, Kharkov and Mariupol, as well as in various facilities on the territory.

DEMILITARIZATION

The Russian offensive took place in a very "classic" manner. Initially - as the Israelis had done in 1967 - with the destruction of air forces on the ground in the very first hours. Then, we witnessed a simultaneous progression along several axes according to the principle of "flowing water": advancing everywhere where resistance was weak and left the cities (which were very voracious in terms of troops) for later. In the north, the Chernobyl power plant was occupied immediately to prevent acts of sabotage. The images of Ukrainian and Russian soldiers guarding the plant together are of course not shown...

The idea that Russia is trying to take over Kiev, the capital to eliminate Zelensky, comes typically from the West: this is what they did in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and what they wanted to do in Syria with the help of the Islamic State. But Vladimir Putin never intended to shoot or topple Zelensky.Instead, Russia seeks to keep him in power by pushing him to negotiate by surrounding Kiev. He had refused to do so far to implement the Minsk Agreements, but now the Russians want to obtain the neutrality of Ukraine.

Many Western commentators have been surprised that the Russians have continued to seek a negotiated solution while conducting military operations. The explanation lies in the Russian strategic conception, since the Soviet era. For the West, war begins when politics ends. However,the Russian approach follows a Clausewitzian inspiration: war is the continuity of politics and one can move fluidly from one to the other, even during combat. This creates pressure on the opponent and pushes him to negotiate.

From an operational point of view, the Russian offensive was an example of its kind: in six days, the Russians seized a territory as large as the United Kingdom, with a speed of advance greater than what the Wehrmacht had achieved in 1940.

The bulk of the Ukrainian army was deployed in the south of the country in preparation for a major operation against the Donbass. This is why Russian forces were able to surround it in early March in the “cauldron” between Slavyansk, Kramatorsk and Severodonetsk, with a thrust from the East through Kharkov and another from the South from Crimea. Troops from the Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) Republics are complementing the Russian forces with a push from the East. Troops from the Republics of Donetsk (DPR) and Lugansk (LPR) are complementing the action of the Russian forces with a push from the east.

At this point, Russian forces are slowly tightening the noose, but are no longer under time pressure.Their demilitarization goal is all but achieved and the remaining Ukrainian forces no longer have an operational and strategic command structure.

The "slowdown" that our "experts" attribute to bad logistics is only the consequence of having reached the set objectives. Russia does not seem to want to engage in an occupation of the entire Ukrainian territory. In fact, it seems rather that Russia is seeking to limit its advance to the linguistic border of the country.

Our media talk about indiscriminate bombings against the civilian population, especially in Kharkov,and Dantean images are broadcast in a loop. However, Gonzalo Lira, a Latin American who lives there, shows us a calm city on March 10 and March 11. It is true that it is a large city and we do not see everything, but this seems to indicate that we are not in the total war that we are served continuously on our screens.

As for the Donbass republics, they have "liberated" their own territories and are fighting in the city of Mariupol.

The "Denazification"

In cities like Kharkov, Mariupol and Odessa, the defense is provided by paramilitary militias. They know that the objective of "denazification" is aimed primarily at them.

For an attacker in an urbanized area, civilians are a problem. This is why Russia is seeking to create humanitarian corridors to empty cities of civilians and leave only the militias to fight them more easily.

Conversely, these militias seek to keep civilians in the cities in order to dissuade the Russian army from coming to fight there. This is why they are reluctant to implement these corridors and do everything to ensure that Russian efforts are futile: they can use the civilian population as "human shields. Videos showing civilians trying to leave Mariupol and being beaten up by fighters of the Azov regiment are of course carefully censored here.

On Facebook, the Azov group was considered in the same category as the Islamic State and subject to the platform's "policy on dangerous individuals and organizations. It was therefore forbidden to glorify it, and "posts" that were favourable to it were systematically banned. But on February 24, Facebook changed its policy and allowed posts favourable to the militia. In the same spirit, in March, the platform authorized, in the former Eastern countries, calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire our leaders, as we shall see.

Our media propagates a romantic image of popular resistance. It is this image that led the European Union to finance the distribution of arms to the civilian population. This is a criminal act. In my capacity as head of peacekeeping doctrine at the UN, I worked on the issue of civilian protection. We found that violence against civilians occurred in very specific contexts. In particular, when weapons are abundant and there are no command structures.

But these leadership structures are the essence of armies: their function is to channel the use of force towards an objective. By arming citizens in a haphazard manner, as is currently the case, the EU is turning them into combatants, with the consequential effect of making them potential targets. Moreover, without command, without operational goals, the distribution of arms leads inevitably to settling of scores, banditry and actions that are more deadly than effective. War becomes a matter of emotions. Force becomes violence. This is what happened in Tawarga (Libya) from 11 to 13August 2011, where 30,000 black Africans were massacred with weapons parachuted (illegally) by France. By the way, the British Royal Institute for Strategic Studies (RUSI) does not see any added value in these arms deliveries.

Moreover, by delivering weapons to a country at war, one exposes oneself to being considered a belligerent. The Russian strikes on March 13, 2022, against the Mykolayev air base followed Russian warnings that arms shipments would be treated as hostile targets.

The EU is repeating the disastrous experience of the Third Reich in the final hours of the Battle of Berlin. War must be left to the military and when one side has lost, it must be admitted. And if there is to be resistance, it must be led and structured. But we are doing exactly the opposite: we are pushing citizens to go and fight and at the same time Facebook is allowing calls for the murder of Russian soldiers and leaders. So much for the values that inspire us.

Some intelligence services see this irresponsible decision as a way to use the Ukrainian population as cannon fodder to fight Vladimir Putin's Russia. This kind of murderous decision should have been left to the colleagues of Ursula von der Leyen's grandfather. It would have been better to engage in negotiations and thus obtain guarantees for the civilian population than to add fuel to the fire. It is easy to be combative with the blood of others...

The Maternity Hospital Of Marioupol

It is important to understand beforehand that it is not the Ukrainian army that is defending Mariupol, but the Azov militia, composed of foreign mercenaries.

In its March 7, 2022 summary of the situation, the Russian UN mission in New York states that "Residents report that Ukrainian armed forces expelled staff from the Mariupol city's No. 1 birth hospital and set up a firing post inside the facility."

On March 8, the independent Russian media Lenta.ru published the testimony of civilians from Marioupol who said that the maternity hospital had been taken over by the militia of the Azov regiment, and that they had driven out the civilian occupants by threatening them with their weapons. They confirm the statements of the Russian ambassador a few hours earlier.

The hospital in Mariupol occupies a dominant position, perfectly suited for the installation of anti-tank weapons and for observation. On 9 March, Russian forces struck the building. According to CNN, 17 people were wounded, but the images do not show any casualties in the building and there is no evidence that the victims mentioned are related to this strike. There is talk of children, but in reality, there is nothing. This may be true, but it may not be true... This does not prevent the leaders of the EU from seeing it as a war crime... This allows Zelensky to call for a no-fly zone over Ukraine...

In reality, it is not known exactly what happened. But the sequence of events tends to confirm that Russian forces struck a position of the Azov regiment and that the maternity hospital was then free of civilians.

The problem is that the paramilitary militias that defend the cities are encouraged by the international community not to respect the customs of war. It seems that the Ukrainians have replayed the scenario of the Kuwait City maternity ward in 1990, which was totally staged by the Hill & Knowlton firm for an amount of 10.7 million dollars in order to convince the United Nations Security Council to intervene in Iraq for Operation Desert Shield/Storm. Western politicians have accepted the strikes against civilians in the Donbass for eight years, without adopting any sanctions against the Ukrainian government. We have long since entered a dynamic where Western politicians have agreed to sacrifice international law to their goal of weakening Russia.

Part Three: Conclusions

As an ex-intelligence professional, the first thing that strikes me is the total absence of Western intelligence services in the representation of the situation for the past year. In Switzerland, the services have been criticized for not having provided a correct picture of the situation. In fact, it seems that throughout the Western world, the services have been overwhelmed by the politicians.

The problem is that it is the politicians who decide: the best intelligence service in the world is useless if the decision-maker does not listen. That is what happened in this crisis.

That said, while some intelligence services had a very accurate and rational picture of the situation,others clearly had the same picture as that propagated by our media. In this crisis, the services of the "new Europe" countries played an important role. The problem is that, from experience, I have found them to be extremely bad at the analytical level: doctrinaire, they lack the intellectual and political independence necessary to assess a situation with military "quality. It is better to have them as enemies than as friends.

Secondly, it seems that in some European countries, politicians have deliberately ignored their services in order to respond ideologically to the situation. This is why this crisis was irrational from the beginning. It should be noted that all the documents that have been presented to the public during this crisis have been presented by politicians on the basis of commercial sources... Some Western politicians clearly wanted a conflict. In the United States, the attack scenarios presented by Anthony Blinken to the Security Council were just a figment of the imagination of a Tiger Team working for him: he did exactly as Donald Rumsfeld did in 2002, who had thus "bypassed" the CIA and other intelligence services that were much less assertive about Iraqi chemical weapons.

The dramatic developments we are witnessing today have causes we knew about, but refused to see:
– on the strategic level, the expansion of NATO (which we have not dealt with here);

• on the political level, the Western refusal to implement the Minsk Agreements;
  – and on the operative level, the continuous and repeated attacks on the civilian population of
  Donbass for years and the dramatic increase in late February 2022.

In other words, we can naturally deplore and condemn the Russian attack. But WE (that is: the United States, France and the European Union in the lead) have created the conditions for a conflict to break out. We show compassion for the Ukrainian people and the two million refugees. That is fine. But if we had had a modicum of compassion for the same number of refugees from the Ukrainian populations of Donbass massacred by their own government and accumulated in Russia for eight years, none of this would probably have happened.

Whether the term "genocide" applies to the abuses suffered by the people of Donbass is an open question. The term is generally reserved for cases of greater magnitude (Holocaust, etc.), but the definition given by the Genocide Convention is probably broad enough to apply to this case. Legal scholars will appreciate this. Clearly, this conflict has led us into hysteria. Sanctions seem to have become the preferred tool of our foreign policies. If we had insisted that Ukraine respect the Minsk Agreements, which we had negotiated and endorsed, all this would not have happened. Vladimir Putin's condemnation is also ours. There is no point in whining after the fact, —we should have acted earlier. However, neither Emmanuel Macron (as guarantor and member of the UN Security Council), nor Olaf Scholz, nor Volodymyr Zelensky have respected their commitments. In the end, the real defeat is that of those who have no voice.

The European Union was unable to promote the implementation of the Minsk agreements, on the contrary, it did not react when Ukraine was bombing its own population in the Donbass. Had it done so, Vladimir Putin would not have needed to react. Absent from the diplomatic phase, the EU distinguished itself by fuelling the conflict. On February 27, the Ukrainian government agreed to enter into negotiations with Russia. But a few hours later, the European Union voted a budget of 450 million euros to supply arms to Ukraine, adding fuel to the fire. From then on, the Ukrainians felt that they did not need to reach an agreement. The resistance of the Azov militia in Mariupol will even led to a boost of 500 million euros for weapons.

In Ukraine, with the blessing of Western countries, those who are in favour of negotiation are eliminated. This is the case of Denis Kireyev, one of the Ukrainian negotiators, assassinated on March 5 by the Ukrainian secret service (SBU) because he was too favourable to Russia and was considered a traitor. The same fate befell Dmitry Demyanenko, former deputy head of the SBU'smain directorate for Kiev and its region, who was assassinated on March 10 because he was too favourable to an agreement with Russia: he was shot by the Mirotvorets ("Peacemaker") militia.

This militia is associated with the Mirotvorets website, which lists the "enemies of Ukraine", with their personal data, addresses and telephone numbers, so that they can be harassed or even eliminated; a practice that is punishable in many countries, but not in Ukraine. The UN and some European countries have demanded the closure of this site but that demand was refused by the Rada.

In the end, the price will be high, but Vladimir Putin will likely achieve the goals he set for himself.His ties with Beijing have solidified. China is emerging as a mediator in the conflict, while Switzerland is joining the list of Russia's enemies. The Americans have to ask Venezuela and Iran for oil to get out of the energy impasse they have put themselves in: Juan Guaido leaves the scene for good and the United States has to piteously backtrack on the sanctions imposed on its enemies.

Western ministers who seek to make the Russian economy collapse and make the Russian people suffer, or even call for Putin's assassination, show (even if they have partially changed the form of their words, but not the substance!) that our leaders are no better than those we hate. Because sanctioning Russian athletes in the Para-Olympic Games or Russian artists has nothing to do with a fight against Putin.

Thus, we recognize that Russia is a democracy since we consider that the Russian people are responsible for the war. If this is not the case, then why do we seek to punish a whole population for the fault of one? Let us remember that collective punishment is forbidden by the Geneva Conventions...

The lesson to be learned from this conflict is our sense of variable geometry humanity. If we cared so much about peace and Ukraine, why didn't we encourage it more to respect the agreements it had signed and that the members of the Security Council had approved?

The integrity of the media is measured by their willingness to work within the terms of the Munich Charter. They succeeded in propagating hatred of the Chinese during the Covid crisis and their polarized message leads to the same effects against the Russians. Journalism is increasingly stripping itself of professionalism and becoming militant...

As Goethe said: "The greater the light, the darker the shadow". The more the sanctions against Russia are disproportionate, the more the cases where we have done nothing highlight our racism and servility. Why have no Western politicians reacted to the strikes against the civilian population of Donbass for eight years?

For in the end, what makes the conflict in Ukraine more blameworthy than the war in Iraq,Afghanistan or Libya? What sanctions have we adopted against those who deliberately lied to the international community in order to wage unjust, unjustified and murderous wars? Have we sought to "make the American people suffer" for lying to us (because they are a democracy!) before the war in Iraq? Have we adopted a single sanction against the countries, companies or politicians who are supplying weapons to the conflict in Yemen, considered to be the "worst humanitarian disaster in the world"? Have we sanctioned the countries of the European Union that practice the most abject torture on their territory for the benefit of the United States?

To ask the question is to answer it, and the answer is not pretty.

Jacques Baud is a former colonel of the General Staff, ex-member of the Swiss strategic intelligence, specialist in Eastern Europe. He was trained in the American and British intelligence services. He has served as Chief of Doctrine for United Nations Peace Operations. As a UN expert on rule of law and security institutions, he designed and led the first multidimensional UN intelligence unit in Sudan. He has worked for the African Union and was for 5 years responsible for the fight against the proliferation of small arms at NATO.

He was involved in discussions with the highest Russian military and intelligence officials just after the fall of the USSR. Within NATO, he followed the 2014 Ukrainian crisis and later participated in programs to assist Ukraine. He is the author of several books on intelligence,war and terrorism, and in particular Le Détournement published by SIGEST, Gouverner par les Fake News, L'affaire Navalny. His latest book Poutine, Maître du Jeu? (Putin, Master of the Game?), published by Max Milo, was released on March 16, 2022.

Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine has been presented to us, in the West, as unprovoked and unjustified. We have not been told about Russia’s legitimate security concerns in the face of NATO expansionism. Nor has Ukraine’s significant Nazi problem been honestly reported, with some Western propagandist even promoting them.

The Russian government claims that its recognition and defence of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) are born from “compassion” for the people who have been under siege for eight years. However, Russia also needs the new republics as satellite states, providing a foothold for its own national security as it opposes NATO’s advance.

It should be noted that Russia’s military actions, in trying to oust Nazis from their strongholds in Mariupol, Kharkiv and elsewhere, has led to the near destruction of many cities and towns in Eastern Ukraine. As of the 19th March the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCR) estimate that 847 civilians were killed in three weeks, primarily as a result of shelling.

The OHCR noted that the “actual figures are considerably higher” but could not be verified. Credible eye witness reports and video evidence indicate that the Nazis in Mariupol and other besieged areas had stopped civilians leaving through humanitarian corridors opened by Russia. There are many reports of Nazi (Asov) atrocities, including the murder of fleeing civilians.

NATO has courted Ukraine as a future alliance member for decades, taking firm steps to admit Ukraine along the way. This has never been acceptable to Russia, whose national security concerns have been consistently ignored.

Only days prior to the Russian attack, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, delivered a speech at the Munich Security Conference threatening Russia, not only with a nuclear armed Ukraine, but a NATO nuclear power on Russia’s south-western border.

Ukraine is a pinch-point for Russia’s natural gas trade with the European Union. The purpose of the Nord Stream pipelines, constructed in partnership with Germany, was to circumnavigate that problem. It raised the potential for greater EU independence from the US and, with an EU commitment to defence union, presented a possible threat to the US dominance of NATO.

Consequently, the US applied unrelenting pressure on the EU, including enforcing sanctions on German companies, to halt the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. In response to Russia’s official recognition of the DPR & LPR, German Chancellor Olaf Sholtz immediately announced that Germany would not certify Nord Stream 2 for operational use. Russia began it’s military operation in Ukraine three days later.

Please read Parts 1-3 of this series for an exploration of the evidence informing this analysis. This provides us with what we might call the “official-unofficial” explanation for Russia’s aggression. It is an appraisal founded upon the established, accepted concept of international relations.

However, any such investigation is necessarily incomplete. It fails even to describe the globalist forces that are both ripping Ukraine apart and propelling Russia to act. We will explore these in Parts 5 – 6.

Before we do it is important to appreciate just how far we, as supposed democratic societies, have strayed from democratic ideals. This can be understood if we consider the extreme propaganda and censorship our governments are using, hobbling our ability to discern reality.

The Propaganda Environment

There is little chance that the issues we have already discussed will receive fair coverage in the Western mainstream media (MSM) and none at all that it will cover what we are about to consider. The West’s propaganda, in a rapidly evolving conflict, has at times been absurd.

Immediately following the launch of Russia’s military operation the Western MSM reported the unbelievable bravery of the Ukrainian border guards defending Snake Island in the Black Sea. They stated that 13 died in their valiant defence against a Russian “air and sea bombardment.” Ukrainian President Zelenskyy said he would award the guards posthumous medals for gallantry. It soon emerged that this was a fabrication. None of them died and Russia took the Island without harming anyone.

The MSM reported that Russian forces deliberately targeted a Mosque in Mariupol where civilian woman and children were said to be sheltering. The Turkish media later revealed that the Mosque had not been struck by anything.

The BBC were among a wide number of Western MSM outlets that reported an alleged Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol. This apparent outrage, deliberately targeting pregnant women and their babies, led the BBC to report the comments of the Deputy Mayor who said:

We don’t understand how it’s possible in modern life to bomb a children’s hospital. People cannot believe that it’s true.

Indeed not, because there is considerable evidence to suggest it isn’t. When the claimed airstrike occurred the Russian state officials engaged in some ham-fisted disinformation themselves, alleging that the whole thing was staged using “crisis actors.” They also noted that the hospital had been occupied by the Ukrainian forces, thus presumably making it a military target and undermining their own propaganda.

A subsequent account from the most famous eyewitness, Mariana Vishegirskaya, who Associated Press (AP) publicised as the face of the alleged Russian war-crime, paints a very different picture. There were certainly explosions but no evidence of an airstrike, as no one heard or saw any planes. The hospital had been occupied by the Asov regiment three days earlier. Tellingly, Mariana stated that the Asov Nazis wouldn’t allow people to leave the city through the humanitarian corridors agreed by Russia.

There have been widespread Western reports of destruction of Mariupol and other cities by Russian forces. However, civilian witness testimony from Mariupol notes that Ukrainian forces also shelled Mariupol, causing much of the destruction. Mariupol civilians reported that Ukrainian forces placed their defences in civilian areas, occupied their homes and other municipal locations including kindergartens, hospitals and office buildings, and even blew up buildings with tanks.

Even the Western MSM acknowledged that the Ukrainian military (including the Nazis) were effectively using the civilian population as a human shields by placing their assets in civilian areas. The Washington Post noted:

Increasingly, Ukrainians are confronting an uncomfortable truth: [. . .] Virtually every neighbourhood in most cities has become militarized, some more than others, making them potential targets for Russian forces trying to take out Ukrainian defenses.

French Military – Map 27th of March 2022

Analysis by French military observers clearly showed that Russia had secured significant military control in eastern and north-eastern Ukraine. On March 29th 2022, during ongoing peace talks between the Russian and Ukrainian authorities in Turkey, Russia announced that it would withdraw its forces from around Kyiv as a sign of “good faith.”

A few days later video evidence emerged from town of Bucha, lying west of Kyiv, appearing to show the aftermath of a Russian war-crime. The horrific footage showed apparent carnage in the body strewn streets of Bucha. The Ukrainian government blamed this butchery on the retreating Russian forces. The Western MSM immediately reported everything that they were told, accusing Russia of the Bucha massacre.

There were some suspicious anomalies in the footage that required explanation. An unusually high percentage of the bodies were lying face down, ruling out identification, and there was an inexplicable lack of blood or other signs of obvious injury on the corpses. Most of the corpses appeared with hands bound behind their backs and many were wearing the white arm bands which Russia gave to civilians in order for them not to be confused with combatants.

In one of the four main videos, unquestioningly accepted as evidence of the Russian atrocity, an alleged corpse appears to get to its feet, observed in the wing mirror of one of the filming vehicles. It is possible that mirror distortion accounts for this. However, these unexplained inconsistencies weren’t the primary reason to doubt the Western MSM’s account.

The Mayor of Bucha gave a video interview which aired on April 1st where he appeared happy, praising the Ukrainian forces for the liberation of the town. He noted that the Russian forces had vacated Bucha prior to March 31st. As of the 31st there were no Russian troops left in Bucha. The Mayor said:

March 31st will go down in the history of our settlement, the entire territorial community as a day of liberation from the Russian orcs [. . .] a great victory in the Kyiv region.

Reporting his statement, the local media claimed that Russian forces had left unexploded mines in a local factory. Neither the Mayor nor the local news reports said anything about a massacre. Two days later Reuters reported the same mayor, Anatoly Fidoruk, this time alleging that Russia had engaged in the mass slaughter of civilians. Something he was either unaware of or forgot to mention two days earlier.

This unfathomable oversight by the entire population of Bucha, none of whom posted anything on social media even hinting at the supposed mass slaughter during the Russian occupation, casts significant doubt upon the story presented by the Western MSM. The “Bucha-Live” Telegram channel didn’t mention the massacre until the story broke internationally.

Initially it was reported across the West that 400 bodies were scattered throughout the streets and basements of Bucha. We know that Russian forces completed their withdrawal on the 30th of March. Yet the Western reports of the killing spree didn’t emerge for a further four days.

Following the agreed Russian exit, on the 31st of March it was reported in Ukraine that the first Ukrainian forces to enter Bucha were Ukrainian special forces (the SAFARIS.) They posted a video of their operation on the 1st of April. One body was observed in the video, no executions sites or any evidence of mass killings were filmed.

These “specialist units” were said to be tasked with clearing Bucha of “saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces.” Again there was no mention of any massacre in the further reports published on the 2nd of April.

On the same day, the 2nd of April, the New York Times reported:

Ukrainian soldiers from the Azov battalion walked through the remnants of a Russian military convoy in the recently liberated town of Bucha. [. . .] For the past five weeks, photographers with The New York Times and other news organizations throughout Ukraine have chronicled the invasion.

Yet none of these reporters or photographers “chronicled” the Bucha massacre that allegedly occurred at least three days before they arrived in the town. The New York Times (NYT) then tried to double-down on their incomprehensible failure to spot the biggest story in the World, by changing it. They published purported US satelite images that allegedly pinpointed the position of the bodies. The NYT claimed they had lain there for more than three weeks.

It seems extremely unlikely that this story is true. The bodies had supposedly been lying in the streets, undisturbed for three weeks, and yet there was no sign of decomposition. The NYT article implied that neither human nor animal activity had disturbed the location of a single body for the best part of a month. It also required readers to believe that US officials and military personnel knowingly ignored an alleged Russian massacre, without saying a word, not just for 4 days but for weeks.

Regardless of which version of the story people may choose to believe, there is another incongruous aspect. The Russian military, having committed a war-crime either four days or more than three weeks earlier, left the scene without trying to hide any of the evidence. If the NYT’s second version of events is to be believed, they also exposed their own troops to the severe risk of disease for practically the entire period of their occupation of Bucha.

While there is no evidence that the Asov Nazis staged the alleged bloodbath, circumstantial evidence suggests that possibility. It is notable that no one reported the massacre prior to their arrival in Bucha.

On the 3rd April the world was suddenly regaled with fresh tales of Russian barbarity. It would be good to know what happened to the suspected “saboteurs and accomplices of Russian forces” that were “cleared” from Bucha by SAFARI and Asov troops.

Russian military actions have included heavy bombardment of cities like Mariupol and Kharkiv. There is no doubt that they have killed many Ukrainian citizens. However, if we discard the NYT’s rather silly claims, unless Russia commanders lost control of their troops in Bucha, the indiscriminate slaughter of unarmed civilians, following an agreed withdrawal and their identification as non-combatants, makes no sense either from a military or propaganda perspective.

It served only to undermine the peace negotiations. As we will discuss in Part 5, prolonging the conflict is in the US-led NATO alliance’s interests, not Russia’s.

This does not rule out the possibility that Russian troops were responsible, but further investigation is certainly necessary. This appeared to be the position of the Russian government who, having strenuously denied the Bucha allegations, requested an emergency session of the UN Security Council (UNSC) to discuss the matter. For some reason, the UK government blocked Russia’s request.

Initially it appeared that the US-led NATO alliance were less eager to discuss the evidence. However, acting as the president nation of the Security Council, the UK’s UN ambassador, Barbara Woodward, then announced that the UK would convene a session to discuss Bucha on the 5th. Woodward changed the story yet again. This time 800 people had been murdered.

Prior to examining any of the evidence, and relying solely upon videos provided by the Ukrainians, Woodward stated that the footage was evidence of war-crimes. This had in no way been established. No one knew what they were evidence of. Woodward clearly implicated Russia and predetermined the outcome of the discussions, so there wasn’t really any point in holding them.

This illustrates the problem we have discussed previously. The institutions, mechanisms and rulings that combine to form so-called international law are worthless. There is no justice to be found anywhere within a system that is shaped by nothing but hard-nosed realpolitik. It is just another weapon to be used in a global power struggle. International law, as it stands, is no law at all.

The US Bio-lab Conspiracy Theory

Initially the Western MSM furiously denied Russian reports of US controlled bio-labs and chemical warfare research facilities discovered in Ukraine. They said that this was part of an elaborate plot by Russia to stage a biological “false-flag” attack, to be blamed on the Kyiv government by Putin.

The presence of the labs was then ostensibly admitted by the US Under Secretary for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, in a Senate committee hearing. The 2005 signed treaty between the US Department of Defense (DoD) and the Ukrainian Ministry of Health, establishing the labs, is a public document. These are, or were, US funded labs conducting secret experiments. The 2005 treaty decrees:

Information marked or designated by the U.S. Department of Defense as “sensitive” should be withheld from public disclosure by the Government of Ukraine.

These labs were managed by the DoD’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA). Obviously a partnership between a US defence agency and a Ukrainian public health agency appears, on its face, to be an unusual arrangement. The DTRA’s own training material states that they are “a combat support agency.” They add that their role includes:

Developing, testing and fielding [using] offensive and defensive technologies

Other documents have exposed years of U.S. led biological and chemical warfare experiments on Ukrainian soldiers. Yet we are supposed to believe that US and Ukrainian documents, statements confirming the presence of the labs, their funding, their clandestine nature and the objectives of the Pentagon directorate overseeing them, is somehow evidence of Russian “disinformation.”

Perhaps so, but Occam’s Razor would suggest a different conclusion: the Russian’s have exposed US funded Ukrainian bio-labs engaged in secret bio-weapons research. If this claim by Russia is true then the US and Ukraine have broken so-called international law. Not that it matters.

As we have already discussed, Nazis control Ukrainian national security infrastructure and, as we will discuss, The US-led NATO alliance have a history of working with Nazis to run false-flag terrorist attacks in Europe. If the unthinkable happens and there is a biological or chemical weapons attack in Ukraine, which is then automatically blamed upon Russia, all of us should insist upon a thorough investigation before we believe anything we are told about it.

In a fairly typical example of the Western MSM response to this evidence, the UK based Guardian published How ‘Ukrainian bioweapons labs’ myth went from QAnon fringe to Fox News. Alleging the claims were Russian disinformation, or part of “far-right” conspiracy theories, the Guardian opined:

The Russian propaganda machine is so engaged in sowing disinformation [. . .] The conspiracy theory began in seeming obscurity. [. . .] [T]his theory was just a remix of an allegation that Moscow has made for years. [. . .] This disinformation laid the groundwork for the QAnon-linked conspiracy theory about Ukrainian bio-labs.

It may be the case that the evidence substantiating the presence of US funded illegal weapons programs in Ukraine (and elsewhere) is all just the product of Russian disinformation or so-called “conspiracy theory.” However, the only way to find out is to examine that evidence and investigate it further.

Nuland Acknowledges Presence of Labs

The Guardian chose not to report any of the facts we have just discussed. Instead it dismissed all of it as a Russian “propaganda effort.” In an attempt to deal with all of the documents, freely available in the public domain, the Guardian added:

The very core of the story is true: the Department of Defense funds biological research and laboratories in Ukraine. [. . .] Washington insists that it does not fund biological weapons research anywhere.

That was enough for the Guardian to conclude its investigation and claim that the whole story was just Russian nonsense. Sadly, this is the standard of journalism that epitomises the Western “free press.” Simply repeating a denial from the Pentagon is not journalism and nor is failing to honestly report the facts to your readers while covering them up with a slew of unsubstantiated allegations and innuendo.

Certainly China weren’t convinced by the Guardian’s argument. Seemingly taking a more deliberative approach, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, said:

[W]e call on relevant sides to ensure the safety of these labs. The US, in particular, as the party that knows the labs the best, should disclose specific information as soon as possible, including which viruses are stored and what research has been conducted. [. . .] The US has 336 biological labs in 30 countries under its control. [. . .] What is the true intention of the US? [. . .] [T]he US has kept stonewalling, and even dismissing the international community’s doubts as spreading disinformation. Besides, the US has been standing alone in obstructing the establishment of a Biological Weapons Convention (BWC) verification mechanism and refusing verification of its biological facilities [. . .] This has led to deeper concern of the international community. Once again we urge the US to give a full account of its biological military activities at home and abroad and subject itself to multilateral verification.

The US has declined to engage with the any UN-led BWC verification mechanism. For example, the US government blocked attempts to establish one in 2001. The US has continued to delay the development of an independent, UN oversight for more than 20 years. Rather than allow international investigators to rule out the existence of the suspected US bio-weapons programme, the US has established its own verification process and has found itself to be in full compliance:

There are processes and controls within the U.S. Executive Branch [. . .] that operate to ensure that plans and programs under those departments’ and agencies’ purview remain consistent with U.S. international obligations. [. . .] All U.S. activities during the reporting period were consistent with the obligations set forth in the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). [. . .] Russian accusations are groundless.

While this public statement is more than enough to convince the “journalists” at the Guardian, it is perhaps understandable that the international community, outside of the US-led NATO alliance, still has its doubts. The US government’s behaviour is suspicious, to say the least.

In an amusing irony, the Guardian stated that the Russian news agency, Tass, was “a mouthpiece for the Kremlin.” It’s true, Tass often is a mouthpiece for the Kremlin, just as the Guardian is often a mouthpiece for the White House, Brussels and Downing Street.

The propaganda in the Western MSM, spread by the likes of the CNN, CBC, the BBC, the Times and the Guardian, is just as thick as anything disseminated by Pravda or the Xinhua News Agency. The key advantage the Western MSM had previously enjoyed, over its Eastern propaganda counterparts, was that western populations were “educated” to believe they had a free and pluralistic media. However, that advantage is diminishing rapidly.

The frankly bizarre attempt by Western leaders, and their MSM propagandists, to turn Russia’s probable exposure of US bio-labs into a suggested Russian plot to justify a false-flag attack, was encapsulated by UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Speaking to Sky News on 10th March he said:

The stuff that you’re hearing about chemical weapons, this is straight out of their [Russia’s] playbook.

Johnson’s claim followed a previous statement by UK Defence Minister Ben Wallace who said that he was seeing “elements of the Russian playbook;” Jens Stoltenberg, the General Secretary of NATO, also preceded Johnson’s comment by saying that he too could “foresee the playbook of Russia;” Josep Borrel, the EU’s High Representative (effectively the EU Defence Minister), similarly preempted Johnson by noting that developments in the Ukraine were part of “the Kremlin’s playbook.”

These remarkably similar comments indicate a coordinated, scripted narrative. It could be a coincidence, but there are other reasons why we might suspect that Western politicians are working to a pre-approved script.

The Rapid Response Mechanism & the Trusted News Initiative

The rhetoric about Russia’s military operation in Ukraine, pouring out of the western establishment, is a product of the G7’s (including the EU) Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM). It is designed to ensure that designated hostile state and non-state “actors” face a rapid and unified response. The purpose of the RRM was outlined in the 2018 Charlevoix G7 Summit Communique:

“We commit to take concerted action in responding to foreign actors who seek to undermine our democratic societies [. . .] We recognize that such threats, particularly those originating from state actors, are not just threats to G7 nations, but to international peace and security and the rules-based international order.”

Announcing the RRM, the UK Government added:

Hostile state activity will be met with a rapid and unified G7 response. [. . .] The move will also see hostile states publicly ‘called out’ for their egregious behaviour – with coordinated international attribution of cyber and other attacks.

The purpose of the RRM is to defend the current, US-led international rules-based order (IRBO). It has nothing to do with protecting democracy. Quite the opposite, the RRM works to undermine democratic principles.

The RRM is an agreement to respond to global events with a fixed narrative designed to promote the interests of the G7’s unipolar world order. Through the RRM, Western governments attribute blame to state or non-state actors and, where there is insufficient evidence to support their proclamations, they work with their MSM “partners” to produce the necessary propaganda and disinformation.

Commercial media is owned by a small handful of global corporations. For example, a 2021 report from the Media Reform Coalition found that just three companies (News UK, the Daily Mail Group and Reach) owned and controlled 90% of the UK national newspaper and 80% of the online news market. Similarly, the US media landscape is controlled by just five media corporations. Often local and state news readers, across the US, deliver the same, single script, word for word.

In 2019 The UK’s state broadcaster, the BBC, launched the Trusted News Initiative (TNI). This represented a further consolidation of Western media. The BBC joined AP, AFP, CBC/Radio-Canada, European Broadcasting Union (EBU), Financial Times, First Draft, Google/YouTube, The Hindu, The Nation Media Group, Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Reuters, Twitter and The Washington Post to form the TNI.

The TNI demands that readers and audiences trust its members. They say that they are “a unique global partnership” and that their role is to “tackle the harmful spread of disinformation.” The TNI have essentially claimed to be the arbiters of all truth. Were he alive today, George Orwell would almost certainly have called them the “Ministry of Truth.”

The TNI is a partnership between the Western MSM and the social media giants whose aim is to remove free speech and silence dissent. They state:

The partnership focuses on moments of potential jeopardy. [. . .] Partners alert each other to high risk disinformation so that content can be reviewed promptly by platforms, whilst publishers ensure they don’t unwittingly share dangerous falsehoods.

In July 2020, the UK government’s Select Committee for Culture Media and Sport noted:

Resources developed by public service broadcasters such as the Trusted News Initiative show huge potential as a framework in which public and private sector can come together to ensure verified, quality news provision. [. . .] The Government and online harms regulator should use the TNI to ‘join up’ approaches to public media literacy and benefit from shared learning regarding misinformation and disinformation. It should do this in a way that respects the independence from Government.

The TNI has no independence from government. All of its leading members are partner organisations of government.

The TNI: Neither trustworthy nor independent

The BBC are funded by the UK government and receives further money, for its international charity BBC Media Action, directly from the UK, US, Swedish, Canadian, Norwegian, EU governments and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Google, another TNI core member, was a start up funded by the CIA’s venture capital company In-Q-tel and is a UK government precurement partner. Another, Microsoft, proudly announces how it is a “partner with government,” helping them to protect democracy .

Reuters has a long history of working directly with institutions of the state. For example, during the 1960’s and 70’s it was paid to spread anti-Soviet propaganda by the UK government. The Washington Post is owned by Geoff Bazos (Nash Holdings) and his AWS (Amazon Web Services) competency partnership works with governments around the world.

The RRM denies the most essential of all democratic principles, namely questioning government authority. There is no room in the RRM for the foundational democratic conventions of free speech and expression. It is an anti-democratic project and a commitment, by G7 and EU governments, to destroy democracy and establish totalitarian rule.

Totalitarianism can be defined as:

A political system in which those in power have complete control and do not allow people freedom to oppose them.

The RRM and the TNI are totalitarian. Combined with censorship legislation, the existence of this nexus demontrates that the G7 political establishment is pursuing policies of intolerance and despotism. It is opposed to democratic accountability.

The TNI are providing the “verified, quality news provision” that supports Rapid Response Mechanism declarations. When Russia stated that “denazification” was one of the goals of its military operation, the UK Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, called Russia’s claim a “grotesque lie;” US President Joe Biden said, in regard to the same, that “it’s a lie” and Emmanuel Macron, the President of France, again in reference to Russian denazification claims, said “it’s a lie.”

The RRM narrative was set. Russia’s stated concerns were totally groundless and nothing more than an excuse for unprovoked, naked aggression. Therefore, it was the role of the TNI to push this disinformation. This necessitated the whitewashing the Nazis and the downplaying their control of the of Ukraine’s national security.

Among many examples of the TNI doing precisely this, the Financial Times (FT) published Don’t Confuse Patriotism With Naziasm: Ukraine’s Asov Forces Face Scrutiny. The FT claimed that the Azov Regiment were a “diverse” crowd who had gone “mainstream.” Engaging in Holocaust revisionism, the FT added that Stepan Bandera was a “nationalist figure” who had only been “accused” of collaborating with Nazis.

The BBC depolyed the baseless argument that Nazi influence was impossible without electoral success. They highlighted that the election of a Jewish President was “proof” that the Ukrainian Nazis had no power. The BBC then wheeled out some “experts” who were willing to claim that the Nazis were an inconsequential minority within the Ukrainian military and that their ideology had been “watered down” by new recruits.

Fellow TNI founding member, the Guardian, produced Is There Any Justification for Putin’s War? They also exploited the Nazis lack of electoral success, in a country that voted for a Jewish President, to deny that they had any real power. The Guardian added commentary suggesting that the Nazis were suffering from a reputation problem and that the OUM and UPA were simply “nationalists” who came to be “seen as aligned with the Nazis.”

In order to “protect democracy,” other founding members of the TNI are seemingly happy to promote Nazis. Meta (formerly Facebook) banned the Azov Regiment from their platform in 2019 because they are Nazis who publicly incite appalling crimes, such as genocide, on social media. However Meta has now changed its policy to allow its users to show their support for Nazis. Meta condones calls for violence against Russians, including advocating assassination of Russian officials and promoting the killing of Russian soldiers.

While Google, another TNI founder, have censored leading scientists and doctors for questioning COVID-19 policies, Nazis are welcome to host their propaganda channels on YouTube. The Asov Regiments, who murder Ukrainian citizens and use them as human shields, can post as many videos as they like.

This is not to suggest that lawful content, that does not directly incite a crime, should be censored. It merely illustrates that the founding members of the TNI are hypocrites who have no moral compass. The TNI is a propaganda and surveillance cartel whose role is to sell Rapid Response Mechanism “truth” to Western populations. It is undeserving of anyone’s “trust.”

Rampant Censorship And the End of Representative Democracy

Democracy is the best form of government ever devised. Unfortunately, it is not a system of government any of us are familiar with. The word “democracy” (demokratia) derives from “demos” (people) and “kratos” (power). Literally translated as “people power,” democracy means government by trial by jury.

Instead we have something else called “representative democracy,” which is not democracy at all. Representative democracy is a so-called “democratic system” where the people are permitted, by the state, to select their political leaders once every 4 or 5 years.

In the intervening period this tiny group of “special people” exercise executive power and rule over everyone else. This is called an oligarchy and it is the antithesis of democracy. However, as the vast majority call this oligarchical system “democracy” that is how we shall reference it here.

People in the West have been told to believe in, what they call, democracy and have consequently become attached to the idea. The Western oligarchy supposedly maintains some foundational principles which are, in and of themselves, valuable and worth protecting. These are often referred to as democratic ideals.

Democratic ideals have been shaped over thousands of years by political leaders and philosophers. The British sociologist T. H. Marshall, in his 1949 essay Citizenship and Social Class, described democratic ideals as a functioning system of civil, political and social rights.

Civil rights include the right to individual freedom (liberty), exercised through freedom of speech, of thought and faith, etc; political rights enable all the opportunity to participate in and exercise political power, from standing for election to universal suffrage, and social rights afford every citizen basic economic security (welfare) and opportunities (healthcare, employment and education).

To erode any of these rights is to undermine representative democracy (nominally democracy). Both the Western hegemony and the Eurasian alliance between Russia and China, which we will cover in some depth, lay claim to models of democracy.

Neither practice democracy in any recognisable form. Both operate oligarchical political structures and both rule be force. Neither have any commitment to democratic ideals.

Russia is a representative democracy of sorts, but it is certainly not a democracy. In 2019 the Russian state Duma passed its initial “disrespect” and “fake-news” laws. This legislation means that Russians could face a large fine or up to 15 days in prison for showing “blatant disrespect” to the Russian state or its leaders. The “fake-news” laws empower the Roskomnadzor (the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media) to act as Russia’s “Ministry of Truth.”

These anti-democratic censorship laws, information control systems and suppression of Russian’s inalienable rights to free speech and expression, have progressed. The 2020 law, effectively outlawing public dissent against Russia’s draconian COVID-19 measures and, more recently, the 2022 law silencing opposition to Russia’s military actions in Ukraine, are typical examples.

The Russian government’s opposition to free speech, freedom of thought and expression includes the blocking of social media companies and the expulsion of foreign journalists. It’s harsh penalties, of up to 15 years in prison for inconvenient journalists, effectively made it impossible for many foreign new outlets to operate in Russia.

In one of the most stunning examples of rank hypocrisy written in recent years, the NYT wrote that Russia had taken censorship to “new extremes.” Perhaps Russian government disdain for democratic ideals could be considered “extreme,” but it is no more so than the equal disregard exhibited by western governments.

Through the totalitarian RRM and TNI the West operates a propaganda operation unparalleled in human history. While the Soviet Union, Communist China, North Korea and other tyrannies have deployed overwhelming propaganda campaigns, nothing compares to the scale of the RRM/TNI. It is trans-continental, covers print, broadcast and online media and is led by private corporations, working in collaboration with government, who exercise their control through the Global Public-Private Partnership (G3P).

Censorship in the West is just as severe, if not more so, than anything seen in Russia. In 2021 the US Department of State shut down a number of US-based middle-eastern news outlets. Emphasising the propaganda strangle hold, in response to this attack upon the 1st Amendment of the US Constitution by the US government, the US so-called free press didn’t even mention the constitutional implications.

In 2017, to be able to continue its broadcasting and online publishing operation in the US, serving a Russian community of around 3 million US citizens, the Russian Media outlet RT was compelled to register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). In March 2022 US and Canadian cable providers effectively banned Russian media in their respective countries.

Mel Dawes

The censorship in Europe, in both the EU and especially in the UK, is even more oppressive. The EU has banned a number of Russian outlets outright. They are also surging ahead with their plans to censor the Internet. The Digital Services Act (DSA) will see the EU work with their social media “partners” to remove whatever Brussels’ bureaucrats identify as “disinformation.”

The most anti-democratic countries among the former western liberal democracies is the UK. It has gone further than any other to create a dictatorship.

Having already passed legislation to give itself unlimited authority to commit any crime, the UK government is pushing through with laws to end the right of protest, it is removing the defence of “in the national interests” from whistleblowers and investigative journalists, and it is planning a new Bill of Rights that will enshrine the authority of the state over and above everything else, including citizen’s inalienable rights.

Like the EU the UK has banned Russian media. Justifying the decision the chief executive of the Ofcom (the UK’s broadcast regulator) Dame Melanie Dawes, said:

Freedom of expression is something we guard fiercely in this country [. . .] [W]e have today found that RT is not fit and proper to hold a licence in the UK. As a result we have revoked RT’s UK broadcasting licence.

Vacuous platitudes from the nobility are meaningless. This becomes even more evident when we consider the UK government’s plan to completely shut down freedom of speech online.

Ofcom has been appointed as the regulator for the UK’s Internet under the imminent Online Safety Act. It is nothing less than a government plan to control our ability to communicate and freely share information and ideas online. The UK state’s equivocation about protecting freedom of speech is a damnable lie.

The Western political establishment has no intention to uphold democratic ideals. Freedom of speech and expression, and the liberty that representative democracy is supposedly based upon, means nothing to the ruling class. It is no longer convenient and now they are simply casting it aside.

Representative democracy is itself a sham, but at least there was some vague promise to uphold democratic ideals. We, in the West, can now put aside any lingering, childish notion that we live in democratic societies.

The Ukrainian government have not only banned all Russian media but also outlawed political parties. Ukraine is no democracy either. The absurd suggestion, propagated by the likes of Ursula Von der Leyen, that the West is defending democracy from autocracy, is pure disinformation. There is no such thing as democracy to be found in any nation-state.

We are seeing a struggle for supremacy between global power blocs in Ukraine. The political structure they each hope to rule is a single, cohesive system of global governance. No matter who wins, it’s implementation is assured, unless we act on a population wide scale to stop it.

Ukraine is the current focal point for this struggle. World War III started in 2001 and 2030 is the first waypoint along the path to true global governance.

The West is exploiting the conflict to deliberately speed up the planned destruction of its own economy, a process that began in earnest with the policy response to the pseudopandemic. The East is seeking to establish itself as the driver for the New World Order.

The globalist forces overseeing this struggle care little for the outcome. What matters is that the war is fought, because it is the conflict itself that will deliver the global governance they desire. It is this global confrontation that we will explore in Part 5.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is technically illegal under international law. In Part 2 we discussed why international law means virtually nothing: it does not apply equally to all states and is therefore no law at all. We also talked about why Russia also had legitimate security concerns and yet the United Nations did nothing to alleviate them.

Russia’s position in the global and specifically the European energy market gave it the leverage it is using to counter NATO expansionism. This is contrary to US interests, since the European Union could potentially threaten US dominance of the NATO alliance. Ukraine, as the main transit hub for Russian gas supplies to Europe, was a choke point.

The US and Russia engaged in a diplomatic mini-Cold War. As NATO raced eastward, Russia and Germany constructed the Nord Stream pipelines with a view to ending their mutual over-exposure in a politically unstable Ukraine. By circumnavigating Ukraine, both EU aspirations and Russia’s security vulnerabilities could be addressed. Those goals were unacceptable to the US.

Going back further, in Part 1 we looked at Ukraine’s turbulent history and the deep divisions in its political landscape. Despite Ukrainian people consistently voting for socialism, we noted that it was the National Socialists who, due to their willingness to use extreme violence, seized disproportionate political power as a result of the Euromaidan coup.

The National Socialists (Nazis), did not achieve this power without international support. The US, seeking to scupper Russia’s bid to have a closer relationship with the EU, was willing to work with the Nazis to facilitate their planned coup. The ramifications for Ukraine were disastrous.

Ukrainain Nazis Rise To Power With Western Support

The far-right political movement, predominantly constructed from Svoboda, the Right Sector (RS) and affiliated groups, does not enjoy widespread popular support in Ukraine. In the 2019 parliamentary elections, the people overwhelmingly voted for the Servant of the People (SN) and the Opposition Platform (OP) parties.

The SN is a centrist party in Ukrainian politics and, on the surface, appears to be similar to other European neoliberal, progressive parties. Meanwhile, the pro-Russian OP formed the official opposition in the Verkhovna Rada.

The far-right was practically wiped out in the election. The Russian allegation that the Ukraine is practically a Nazi state is propaganda. Sadly, this does not mean that the Russian military objective of “denazification” of Ukraine is groundless.

Unfortunately for the Ukrainian people, the far-right, largely through SN, remains a powerful force in the nation’s politics. To understand how this is possible in the absence of any Nazi electoral support, we must look at the influence of foreign governments and globalist oligarchs. We’ll consider the oligarch capture of SN in Part 4.

After the Euromaidan coup of 2014, Russia completed its so-called “annexation” of Crimea without firing a shot. The move angered some Ukrainians, who viewed their security services as next to useless. But when volunteer battalions of the RS went to the front in the Donbas war, with the assistance of the Ukrainian media, they were praised for being defenders of the state.

Most Ukrainians remained opposed to the RS. Nonetheless, the increasing support the RS received further emboldened all the neo-Nazi groups. In 2015, they held a Torchlight march in Kyiv, which was well-attended and well-received.

We must remember that the RS, Svoboda, C14, White Hammer, the National Corps and other neo-Nazi incarnations would not have been able to pull off their power grab without the support of the US-led NATO alliance.

Victoria Nuland, acting first as US special envoy on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (2010–2011) then as a State Department spokesperson, was a key figure in the US support for the Euromaidan coup and for the neo-Nazis who led it.

She liaised with the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey R. Pyatt, to orchestrate the neo-Nazi takeover. By 2013, the US had established so-called TechCamps in Ukraine. Speaking in the Rada on 20 November 2013, the day before the Euromaidan protests began, pro-Russian MP Oleg Tsaryov revealed that US TechCamps had been established in Ukraine to foment revolution.

Tsaryov claimed that these TechCamps schooled activists on how to use information warfare techniques to undermine government institutions. His revelations could perhaps be dismissed as uncorroborated and partisan were it not for the fact that the revolution he was predicting took place a couple of months after he delivered his warning.

The now-infamous phone call between Nuland and Pyatt has largely been reported in the West with a focus upon Nuland’s “fuck the EU” comment. But that was perhaps the least interesting aspect of the call.

Their bugged conversation was leaked on 4 February 2014, more than two weeks before the Maidan square massacre and the formal transition of power. It revealed that the form of the new government had already been drawn up by the US and that the plan was sanctioned at the very highest level of the US administration.

Victoria Nuland and Geoffrey R. Pyatt visit the Maidan protesters

It also showed that the US State Department knew it was working in partnership with the neo-Nazis—the very groups who slaughtered fellow citizens to give the coup its final push. Their conversation made it clear that Nuland and Pyatt had absolutely no respect for Ukrainian democracy or for democratic principles in general. Thus, the current US-led Western alliance’s reprimand of Russia for ignoring democratic values is nothing but rank hypocrisy.

There are some notable excerpts from the transcript of the conversation. Nuland asked Pyatt, “What do you think?” His reply, “I think we’re in play,” clearly indicates that the US administration had a preconceived plan. Pyatt then acknowledged that the US had already decided that Vitali Klitschko wouldn’t “be in the government,” despite his being a prominent Maidan leader and the proposed Deputy Prime Minister.

Prior to the completion of the coup, Klitschko announced he was going to run for president. But having been offered no government role after the coup, he withdrew his presidential candidacy and suddenly announced he was running for Mayor of Kyiv instead. He was elected in June 2014. All as ordained by Nuland.

When Nuland stated, “I think Yats is the guy,” she was referring to Arseniy Yatsenyuk. Sure enough, following the coup, he was appointed as the Prime Minister of the Maidan government, exactly as planned. Pyatt advised Nuland that “the problem is gonna be with Tyahnybok and his guys.” This was a reference to Svoboda, the Right Sector, White Hammer, C14 and the other neo-Nazis.

Although Nuland didn’t want Tyahnybok to be in the government, she clearly envisioned the neo-Nazis remaining a powerful political force in Ukraine. In order for the Maidan government to operate as required, Nuland advised Pyatt that the chosen Prime Minister, Yatsenyuk, needed:

Klitsch and Tyahnybok on the outside. He needs to be talking to them four times a week.

The new US-appointed Maidan government would go on to work closely with the neo-Nazis. This relationship provided the neo-Nazis with the power and authority they could not hope to gain from the Ukrainian ballot box.

The White House was undoubtedly behind the plan for the new government. Though there is no direct evidence that the US-led NATO alliance actually directed the Maidan massacre, we can see it served the US agenda precisely. It is no surprise that after the coup the Maidan neo-Nazis were rewarded [with what?] by the newly imposed Yatsenyuk government.

Pyatt indicated he was eager to employ some political heavyweights to make the undemocratic overthrow of an elected government “stick.” Nuland suggested Joe Biden, who was then the Vice President of the United States, as someone who would do the job. “Biden’s willing,” she added. Indeed, Biden’s numerous subsequent visits to Ukraine in the early years of the Maidan government underscore the reason for Nuland’s confidence.

McCain & Tyahnybok

It wasn’t just Democrats, like Biden, who supported the neo-Nazi led coup. Republican Sen. John McCain was an avid proponent, too. Like Nuland, who literally gave bread to the Maidan protesters, McCain visited the scene of the crime. So did then-US Secretary of State Sen. John Kerry, a Democrat. Both sides of the US political establishment were pushing for revolution.

Oleh Tyahnybok was a well-known neo-Nazi. In 2004, he was thrown out of then-President Viktor Yushchenko’s parliamentary faction after delivering a ranting speech in which he called upon Ukrainians to fight the “Muscovite-Jewish mafia”—a racist slur against both Russians and Jews.

He followed this up in 2005 by signing an open letter to the Rada urging the government to tackle the corruption of “organised Jewry.” These are just two examples of his many anti-Semitic, Russophobic and generally racist statements.

From a PR perspective, the many photographs of McCain meeting with or standing on stage with Tyahnybok were problematic. Addressing the Maidan crowd in December 2013, McCain said:

We are here because your peaceful process and peaceful protest is inspiring your country and inspiring the world. [. . .] We are here to support your just cause, the sovereign right of Ukraine to determine its own destiny freely and independently. And the destiny you seek lies in Europe. [. . .] Ukraine will make Europe better and Europe will make Ukraine better.

According to Reuters, US officials dealt with the PR problem by brushing aside the fact that Nuland, Kerry, Biden and McCain were working with or supporting Nazis like Tyahnybok. They made it sound as if the only reason McCain met him was that he just happened to be one of the Maidan leaders.

An unnamed US official claimed Svoboda was heading towards becoming a “European mainstream political party.” That was not true.

It is highly likely the US administration struck a deal with the neo-Nazis through Tyahnybok. Just as Nuland suggested, he was not given a position in the Yatsenyuk’s Maidan government. Nonetheless, the National Socialist Svoboda was handsomely rewarded, and Tyahnybok became a kingmaker.

Prior to the coup, Svoboda could not have dreamt of the political power it would achieve. Oleksandr Sych was named Vice Prime Minister, Ihor Tenyukh was made Defence Minister, Ihor Shvaika was appointed as Minister for Food and Agriculture and Andriy Mokhnyk became the Minister for Ecology and Natural Resources.

R-L: Yatsenyuk, Tyahnybok, McCain

Tyahnybok remained Svoboda leader. Thus Yatsenyuk, with so many Svoboda ultras in his cabinet and in other key state positions, had no choice but to consult with Tyahnybok and other influential far-right leaders on a regular basis. The Western-backed Euromaidan coup may not have created Ukraine’s Nazi problem, but the US-led NATO alliance was, at the very least, exploiting their violent fanaticism.

Ukrainian party politics is not as clearly defined or stable as elsewhere in Europe. Parties frequently change their names and split or merge as politicians shift their allegiance. It is easier to think of Ukraine parties as blocks (blocs) formed from various factions.

The Maidan-appointed interim President was Oleksandr Turchynov, and the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine (MVS) was Arsen Avakov. Andriy Parubiy, in another win for the neo-Nazis, was given the role of Secretary of the National Security and Defence Council of Ukraine. Together with Yatsenyuk, the three formed the People’s Front (originally People’s Action) in March 2014.

The People’s Front fully emerged in September 2014, when Arsen Avakov and Andriy Parubiy split from Yatsenyuk and Tuchynov. Yatsenyuk then joined the Petro Poroshenko bloc (subsequently named the European Solidarity party).

The game of musical chairs and the eventual 2014 presidential and parliamentary elections left Poroshenko as the elected President and Yatsenyuk as Prime Minister. Tellingly, it also left Avakov and Parubiy, the “commandant of Euromaidan,” with a firm grip on Ukrainian national security.

The Maidan government, established by Nuland, Pyatt, Kerry, Biden, Obama, McCain and others, empowered the far-right politically. After the coup, President Obama made a speech that reaffirmed his administration’s treachery. Echoing McCain’s words, he said:

Throughout this crisis, we have been very clear about one fundamental principle: The Ukrainian people deserve the opportunity to determine their own future.

Nothing could have been more deceitful. The Ukrainian people were being manipulated and robbed of the chance to “determine their own future”—to live “freely and independently.”

The Re-emergence Nazi Military Power In Europe

Given its experience during WWII, Russia’s hatred for Nazis is natural. That being said, the Russian Federation has its own far-right problem which, initially, the government tried to shape and control for its own purposes. The most well known of these groups was Russian National Unity who were banned in 1999. However, that attempt didn’t work. Thus, much like every other state in the global north, Russia has necessarily suppressed its domestic far-right groups.

The Russian Federation has been more amenable to foreign far-right and nationalist groups. For example, following the “annexation” of Crimea, Putin wooed Marine Le Penn, the leader of Rassemblement National, in exchange for political support and promotion of Russian foreign policy objectives. Le Penn is notably opposed to both the EU and NATO.

Russia uses these foreign far-right groups for its own ends. In 2015, it permitted the International Russian Conservative Forum in St. Petersburg to convene. Far-right and even extreme-right groups from across Europe met to discuss strategy. Putin’s government has also provided military training to overseas neo-Nazi groups. The Russian oligarchy is not averse to supporting any group that could potentially cause problems for it foreign adversaries.

Many nation-states use Nazis in this way. They are violent fanatics and therefore useful. For example, America House Kyiv hosted C14, where its young spokesperson, Serhiy Bandar, explained how C14 had been working with Kyiv police to carry out pogroms against the capital’s Roma community.

The Russian government does not support the Ukrainian neo-Nazis, though, because it is not in its interest to do so. How ironic, therefore, that perhaps the most extreme of all neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine are Russian.

One such group is Wotanjugend. Led by Alexei Levkin, these so-called “esoteric Nazis” worship Hitler as a deity. They are the sworn enemies of Putin. Having been exiled from Russia to Ukraine, they fight against the Russian separatists in Donbas. Members of Wotanjugend are part of Ukraine’s Azov Regiment, which has been trained, armed and equipped by the NATO/EU alliance.

Alexei Levkin (front) marches with other RS members

Ukraine’s Nazi problem is unique. It is the only post WWII European state to have incorporated neo-Nazis into its national security infrastructure. It is also the only state where neo-Nazis hold the balance of power. Their position is not a result of the minority popular support they have among some Ukrainians but is, rather, the product of other factors: Ukraine’s political history, oligarch support for the Ukrainian far-right, and outside interference.

In the immediate aftermath of the Euromaidan coup, Yatsenyuk offered the leader of the Right Sector (RS), Dymitro Yarosh, a number of positions, all of which he declined. Though Svoboda was well rewarded by the new government, the RS, perceived as more militant, wasn’t afforded the same degree of political power.

This probably explains why the RS continued to occupy Kyiv streets and government buildings after the Yatsenyuk Maidan government was installed. With the RS militias under his command, Yarosh still had considerable power in Kyiv. Consequently, in the 2014 parliamentary elections, Yatsenyuk’s bloc stood aside in Dnipropetrovsk, giving Yarosh and other RS candidates a free run into the Verkhovna Rada.

In response to the Euromaidan, the eastern Ukraine oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk rapidly tilted towards separatism. Interior Minister Arsen Avakov referred to the separatists as “terrorists.” By categorising millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians with this inflammatory term, he set the tone for the Donbas war that followed. He also lent faux legitimacy to the neo-Nazis, who would be instrumental in perpetuating the war.

Avakov also immediately set about supporting a fascist group called Patriot of Ukraine. As the former paramilitary wing of the Social-National Party of Ukraine (SNPU), Patriot had been co-founded by Andriy Parubiy in 1996 and was led by him between 1998 and 2004.

Arsen Avakov

Avakov released Patriot leader Andriy Biletsky from prison and gave him a role in the Interior Ministry. Biletsky had previously been the leader of the Kharkiv branch of the Tryzub, founded by Dmytro Yarosh. Avakov had been the governor in Kharkiv during this period, and Biletsky’s volunteer militia had worked closely with the Kharkiv police and security services.

Biletsky had opposed the 2003 renaming of the SNPU to Svoboda and [when?] had reformed Patriot of Ukraine as an independent volunteer militia. In 2013, Patriot joined with Tryzub to form the Right Sector. During the Euromaidan protests, [Patriot? RS?] operated as the core component of the Maidan Self-Defence, led by Andriy Parubiy.

In April 2014, three months after the coup [?], Avakov formed the Special Task Patrol Police to protect “public order” in the Donbas and elsewhere. In May he granted official status to Patriot of Ukraine as a “specialist” volunteer battalion under the auspices of the MVU. Biletsky took command of the new unit, called the Azov Battalion. In 2016, Biletsky formed the National Corps party as a political front for the Azov Regiment.

A number of such specialist militias, such as the Aydar and the Dnepr Battalions, were brought together at that time. They were effectively controlled by oligarchs, such as Avakov and Ihor Kolomoyskyi, rather than by the Kyiv government. Supposedly, they received their orders from the MVU, although it seems that the oligarchs had more influence on them than did the ministry.

The regular regiments of the Ukrainian army (ZSU) were acting under the direction of the Ukraine Ministry of Defence, but the newly formed specialists were not. With oligarch money behind them and better training and equipment than the ZSU, the neo-Nazis made an effective fighting force. They were used as shock troops in forward positions as soon as the separatist uprising began.

Biletskey, who once wrote that Ukraine should “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade [. . .] against the Semite-led Untermenschen,” led the Azov Battalion when it took Mariupol from the separatists. Avakov and Andriy Paruby consequently issued the order to establish the Azov Regiment.

In October, the pair was also behind the regulation of the Azov Regiment as part of the Ukrainian National Guard (NGU). The NGU was also nominally under the command of the MVU, but, in reality, oligarchs were pulling the strings.

From this point onwards, the RS and the far-right coalition were no longer a militant political movement seeking to revive Nazi ideology. They were armed combatants in a conflict in which they intended to enforce that ideology. Under Avakov’s and Parubiy’s guidance, they had been transformed from mere neo-Nazis to outright Nazis.

The Wolfsangel symbol had been adopted by numerous Nazi regiments and units, including the SS, during WWII. Its public display is now illegal in Germany. In Ukraine, even though the SNPU dropped the Wolfsangel when it transitioned to Svoboda in order to improve its public appeal, it did not abandon the National Socialist ideology.

The original Azov Regiment emblem was constructed from pure Nazi iconography. It shows a Wolfsangel standing before Himmler’s quasi-mystical Nazi black sun. The new version has dropped the black sun but retains the Wolfsangel.

It must be stressed that the Nazis are primarily concentrated in the Azov Regiment. Biletsky said of them:

I am sure, the majority of the lads see themselves as nationalists. The same goes for the Aydar, but they do not have such monolithity as in Azov where 90% of the fighters call themselves, with certainty, Ukrainian nationalists.

It is difficult to know precisely how many Nazis are currently active within Ukrainian forces. Though concentrated in Azov, they’re also present, to varying degrees, in the other “specialist” regiments and in units such as Aydar, Dnepr, Kyiv-2, etc. National socialism is unusually popular in Ukraine, and there are certainly Nazis dispersed throughout the military. However, they only act as a united military or security force in the specialist battalions of the National Guard and selected MVU police units.

In 2014, the Ukrainian political analyst Mykhaylo Minakov stated that there were 38 such battalions, drawn predominantly from the RS militias, with approximately 13,500 military personnel in total. Of these, not all were hardcore Nazis. Now, as regiments and specialist police forces, the Nazis have increased in strength. But it seems unlikely that they account for more than 10,000–15,000 of the estimated 260,000 Ukrainian military personnel across all services.

Regrettably, their ideological fervour and willingness to die for the cause makes them formidable soldiers eager to be deployed on the front lines. This point was highlighted by Yevhen Karas, a former leader of C14 and a member of the Kyiv-2 Battalion:

We perform the tasks set by the West because we are the only ones who are ready to do them. Because we have fun, we have fun killing and we have fun fighting. [. . .] [T]hat’s the reason for the new alliance: Turkey, Poland, Britain and Ukraine. [. . .] We have the most Javelins (anti-tank missiles) on the continent, maybe only the UK has more. [. . .] We (Ukraine) are a huge, powerful state and if we come to power it will be both a joy and a problem for the whole world. [. . .] [T]his is about new political alliances on the global level.

There was probably a considerable amount of hubris in his statement. Nonetheless, the West’s arming and equipping of these maniacs presents, first and foremost, an incredible danger to the Ukrainian people as well as to Europe and thus to the world.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine is equally dangerous. If idiots like US Sen. Lindsay Graham, who openly called for Putin’s assassination, convince enough members of NATO to try to impose no-fly zones or to get involved in the war in some other way, things could get worse very quickly.

Regardless of Russia’s aggression, it is seems insane of the West to have once again encouraged the rise of a Nazi military power in Europe. Worryingly, there is a mendacious motive to this apparent madness, which we’ll cover in Part 4.

In 2015, a powerful Washingtion lobby led by Sen. McCain pressed the Obama administration to send offensive weapons to Ukraine. NATO senior command also advocated lethal military assistance, but the Obama administration officially stood firm, refusing to give “lethal aid” to Ukraine. Instead, the US claimed it would only “train” Ukranian troops.

A 2021 Congressional Research report revealed that the US had been providing $2.5 billion in “security assistance” to Ukraine since 2014. Part of that sum was the Trump administration’s 2018 approval of the sale of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine. Prior to that permit, the State Department had already facilitated US armaments exports to Ukraine, according to the Atlantic Council, an American think tank that is NATO’s de facto lobbyist in Washington. A researcher for the Council said that “the US Embassy did absolutely help facilitate this transfer, and I’m not sure if they were aware that Azov would be the first to train with them.”

No one knows how much military support came from the Pentagon’s “black budget.” However, it appears funds were used to train of Ukrainian “paramilitaries” in secret CIA training camps.

This “assistance” also seemed to include standing by while the US private mercenary outfit Blackwater sent men to fight in the Donbas. This remains unconfirmed, but Eric Prince, the founder of Blackwater (renamed Academi), reportedly had extensive plans to profit from the war.

According to open-source intelligence (OSINT) investigators at Bellingcat, US mercenaries weren’t the only ones working with so-called Ukrainian paramilitaries. They reported that the European Security Academy had trained numerous far-right paramilitaries, including the Azov Regiment, which thanked them for their support.

British military assistance for the Ukrainian Nazis is also evident. Operational Orbital, the UK’s training mission to Ukraine, began in early 2015. While denying the training of the Ukrainian NGU, the NGU’s own website reported a 2021 meeting between British Army and Ukrainian NGU commanders and said “the purpose of the meeting was to discuss the expansion of further military cooperation.”

The Canadian-led Operation Unifier, which brought together trainers from a number of European militaries, began in 2015. Training has been provided to around 33,000 regular Ukrainian military personnel and nearly 2,000 members of NGU. A June 2018 meeting between Canadian officials and Azov commanders led to some embarrassment and a “review” of the Operation, but it continued anyway.

As early as December 2021 it was confirmed that the US had been providing weaponry to Ukrainian forces. It is clear that between 2014 and today there has been a steady build-up of foreign arms, military expertise and independent contractors in Ukraine. All this aid contributed toward fuelling the war in the Donbas. It was implicitly understood that some of the recipients of this “lethal aid” were Nazis.

In response to the recent Russian attack, the US has passed the 2022 Ukraine Supplemental Appropriations Act. The $13.6 billion package includes $3.65 billion in weapons transfers. Likewise, the UK government has said it will not stop sending arms to Ukraine. And the EU has made the same commitment, as have a number of member states, including France and the Netherlands, which had already independently pledged to arms shipments.

For many observers, it is Germany’s decision provide the Ukrainians with weapons that presents the most unsavoury prospect. Every Western nation has a far-right problem to some extent, and Germany is no different. Yet few nation-states have done more, in the post WWII era, to thoroughly reject the twisted ideology of National Socialism.

Notwithstanding, the arms that Germany is currently supplying to Ukraine will be used by Nazis. Despite the promised safeguards, once weapons are in Ukraine, it is the “specialist” NGU operators who have their pick of them.

The Azov Regiment receives training from what appears to be British forces instructors

Nazi Denialism

The Western propaganda machine has sought to downplay the Nazi influence in Ukraine. Often it points to the fact that many leading Ukrainian politicians, such as Yatsenyuk and the current president Volodymyr Zelenskyy, are Jewish.

The MSM insist that Nazis could never support Jewish leaders and nor could Jewish leaders tolerate Nazis. Therefore the Western public can safely discount “Putin’s denazification propaganda.”

The election of Jews as national leaders shows that the majority of Ukrainians are not antisemitic. It does not signify, as many in the West have claimed, that the Nazis have no influence or power in Ukraine.

The two dimensional narrative, suggesting the impossible contradiction of Jews leading a country with a significant Nazi problem, conceals the complexities of the political situation in Ukraine. The antisemitic statements by Tyahnybok, Biletsky and others are public record. There is no doubt about their views.

Nazis with political aspirations, such as Dmytro Yorash, have been very careful to distance themselves from antisemitism. However, the Right Sector (RS) he co-founded and led are openly antisemitic. They have even adopted the flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).

The UPA

In 2018 at a rally celebrating the 2014 Odessa massacre, where the RS burned pro-Russian separatists alive and beat others to death, the leader of their Odessa chapter, Tatyana Soykina, said “We will restore order in Ukraine, Ukraine will belong to Ukrainians, not Zhids and oligarchs.” Using the term “Zhid” for Jews couldn’t be more antisemitic.

As we will discuss shortly, Jewish political leaders, like Zelenskyy, have to work with the Nazis whether they like it or not. Thanks to the support they have received from the U.S. led NATO alliance, Nazis are embedded in the heart of the Ukrainian establishment.

The Ukrainian Nazis’ cultural and political icon, Stepan Bandera, was an instrumental figure in the Holocaust in Ukraine. He oversaw the Lvov pogroms and pledged his support to the 4th Reich.

Yet the world now finds itself in the preposterous position where, in the midst of an increasingly ludicrous propaganda war, even the international Jewish NGO the Anti-Defamation-League (ADL) are seemingly engaged in Holocaust revisionism. The ADL published an interview where Dr David Fishman reportedly claimed:

[S]ome members of these ultra-nationalist groups have used Nazi insignia, made Hitler salutes, and used antisemitic rhetoric, but they are politically insignificant and in no way representative of Ukraine. [. . .] For Ukrainian nationalists, UPA and Bandera are symbols of the Ukrainian fight for Ukrainian independence. The UPA allied with Nazi Germany against the Soviet Union for tactical – not ideological – reasons.

The historian Prof. John-Paul-Himka was able to access 1800 testimonies of Holocaust survivors from the Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute and cross referenced those with official documents from the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Himka’s painstaking research, published in 2009, catalogued the UPA’s war crimes. He concluded:

[The] UPA participated actively in the destruction of the Jewish population of Western Ukraine. It had reasons of its own to kill Jews, and did so even when in open revolt against the Germans. [The] UPA had clear ideas about what the Ukraine they were building should be like. As the song they sung said: “We slaughtered the Jews, we’ll slaughter the Poles, old and young, every one; we’ll slaughter the Poles, we’ll build Ukraine.” [. . .] Although what UPA did to the Jews may not have been, in the larger scheme of things, a major contribution to the Holocaust, it remains a large and inexpungible stain on the record of the Ukrainian national insurgency.

Zelenskyy has recently been on a virtual global tour addressing national legislatures, drumming up support for Ukraine’s struggle. In the UK he evoked Churchill, in the US Martin Luther King jr. and in Germany the collapse of the Berlin Wall. He has successfully used emotionally resonant moments in the subject nation’s history to build parallels with the current Ukrainian plight.

When Zelenskyy addressed the Knesset, seeking Israeli support, he utilised the same approach and compared Ukraine’s plight to the Holocaust. This did not work as intended.

For Israelis the Holocaust is fundamental to their sense of national identity. Many Israeli Jews possess an extensive and thorough knowledge of Holocaust history. This includes a clear understanding of what happened in Ukraine. The Knesset did not react well when Zelenskyy suggested that they should save Ukrainians today as Ukrainians had saved Jews during the Holocaust.

The attempted revisionism did not endear him to his audience whose thoughts were seemingly summed up by the former Israeli cabinet minister, Yuval Steinitz, who said:

If Zelensky’s speech was given [. . .] in normal times, we would have said it bordered on Holocaust denial [. . .] Every comparison between a regular war, as difficult as it may be, and the extermination of millions of Jews [. . .] is a total distortion of history. The same is true for the claim that Ukrainians helped Jews in the Holocaust [. . .] The historic truth is that the Ukrainian people cannot be proud of its behaviour in the Holocaust of the Jews.

The Western propagandists’ argument that the election of Jewish leaders somehow nullifies the disproportionate political and military power of Ukrainian based Nazis is total nonsense. The related attempts to whitewash the history of the OUN, UPA and other Ukrainian WWII Nazis, who are revered by the current crop, are a disgrace.

Fishman was correct when he said that the Nazis don’t represent Ukraine, but he was conspicuously incorrect about everything else. His alleged “conclusions” about the UPA, and the publication of his opinion, appears to be politically motivated. Unimaginable though it may be, some are now seriously suggesting that Nazis aren’t really antisemites.

The War In The Donbas

During the Euromaidan coup (November 2013–February 2014) anti-Maidan protests in the Ukrainian oblasts of Donetsk and Luhansk were widespread. Collectively referred to as the Donbas (Donetskyi Basein), it was a thriving industrial region and mass producer of steel, coal and other vital resources from the late 19th through the 20th centuries. Many Russians settled in the Donbas following WWII.

After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, a lack of investment saw the industrial economy of the Donbas wane. Wages collapsed and industrial unrest grew, notably with the coal miners’ strike in 1993.

The sense of unease for the Russian-speaking populations of eastern and southern Ukraine was heightened when one of the first acts of the new Maidan-controlled Verkhovna Rada was to repeal the 2012 language law that permitted Russian to be an officially recognised language of Ukraine. Fearing what the coup would mean for them and encouraged by the apparent success of the Crimean Self-Defence Force (SDF), a popular uprising followed.

The oblasts where the anti-Maidan protests occurred closely mirrored the electoral divisions in Ukrainian politics. The pro-Russian, anti-Maidan activists always stood against the Euromaidan coup. In Donetsk, Luhansk and elsewhere, protesters stormed Ukrainian government buildings and called upon Russia to come to their defence.

Less than two weeks after the Svoboda-and-RS-led the uprising to take the presidential offices in Kyiv, on the 5th March 2014 anti-Maidan protestors seized the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) building in the Luhansk. What followed was a period of escalating violence across the oblasts during which local Russian-backed militias and protesters clashed with Ukrainian security forces. Government buildings changed hands back and forth as the situation deteriorated.

On 21st April, a large protest group gathered outside the regional state administration (RSA) building in Luhansk. They demanded the creation of a people’s government and independence from the Kyiv regime with a view to becoming a republic of the Russian Federation.

As tensions increased, Russia promised to hold its forces on the Ukrainian border. It also requested that Kyiv halt its military operation against the separatists and that representatives of Luhansk who supported federalization of the country suspend their planned referendum. However, Luhansk leaders ignored the entreaty and on 11 May 2014 held the referendum. After the votes were counted, they declared that the Luhansk People’s Republic a sovereign entity. While there were no international observers to verify the result, even the displaced Luhansk regional council acknowledged:

An absolute majority of people voted for the right to make their own decisions about how to live.

Similarly, in early April 2014, protestors in Donetsk occupied their RSA building and other government premises across the oblast. Like their Luhansk neighbors, they ignored Russian requests and held their referendum on the same day, 11th May. The result was the same, and the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) was declared. The DPR immediately requested to become a member of the Russian Federation. Both the LPR and DPR insisted they would not participate in the forthcoming Ukrainian national elections.

These referendums were followed five days later with elections and the appointment of interim governments in the two newborn republics. Full elections were held in both oblasts in November 2014.

NATO-and-EU-aligned politicians in Ukraine and internationally refused to acknowledge either the referendums or the new states. The US State Department, the EU and political spokespersons across the West condemned the referendums and the subsequent elections. The EU’s High Representative, Federica Mogherini, said:

I consider today’s ‘presidential and parliamentary elections’ in Donetsk and Luhansk ‘People’s Republics’ a new obstacle on the path towards peace in Ukraine. The vote is illegal and illegitimate, and the European Union will not recognise it

Considering the unconstitutional and violent Euromaidan coup that brought the Western-backed Maidan government into power in Kyiv, the hypocrisy of the Western representatives was off the charts.

Following Avakov’s lead, on the 7th April then-acting President of Ukraine, Oleksander Turchyov, designated the DPR and LPR terrorist movements. Speaking on Ukrainian national TV, he said:

We will carry out anti-terrorist activities against armed secessionists[.]

Turchyov formally announced the “anti-terrorism-operation” creating the Ukrainian Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone (ATO zone). Casting the people of the LPR and DPR as terrorists allowed the small contingent of Nazis within the Ukrainian forces to claim justification for their atrocities.

The war in the Donbas is no less subject to international propaganda than any other violent incident. In the West, the shooting down of Malaysian Airways Flight MH17 was firmly blamed on Russian-backed separatists and Putin. This led to the imposition of further sanctions against Russia.

The evidence does not support the conclusions of the seriously flawed investigation carried out by the Dutch-based Joint Investigation Team (JIT). The then-Malaysian Prime Minister, Dr. Mahathir Mohamad, wasn’t convinced. He asserted that the NATO alliance-led JIT investigation was “politically motivated.”

Andriy Biletsky

On 2 June 2014, a Ukrainian Air Force airstrike hit the Luhansk Regional Administration Building, killing at least eight civilians. Though it was clearly an attack on the civilian population, the BBC maintained Kyiv’s lie that the strike was justified as part of an operation against a military target.

The eight-year war was punctuated with sporadic ceasefires, followed by periods of sustained fighting. Throughout, the degree to which the Kyiv government either controlled or wished to control the Azov and other Nazi units is debatable. There have been two internationally brokered ceasefire agreements: the June 2014 Minsk Protocol and the February 2015 Minsk II—collectively known as the Minsk Agreements.

The sides came to the table after Ukrainian forces lost to Russian-backed separatists forces in the city of Debaltseve. The protocol was established by Ukrainian, Russian and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) negotiators and was brokered by France and Germany (the Normandy Format).

The initial agreement called for a bilateral ceasefire, prisoner exchanges and a general amnesty for all combatants. The OSCE was made the monitors for the ceasefire and eventually for the Ukrainian/Russian border. It also established a 30km-wide de-militarised buffer zone along the agreed borders of the DPR and LPR.

The Minsk Protocol also provided, within Ukrainian law, further decentralised autonomy for the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Under the “Temporary Order of Local Self-Governance in Particular Districts of Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts,” elections would be held. The DPR and LPR held elections in November 2014, but OSCE representative Didier Burkhalter, who refused to recognise the legitimacy of the Crimean referendum, also refused to recognise those two elections, claiming they breached the protocol. Russia disputed this.

The ceasefire never happened, and although the ferocity and extent of the fighting reduced for a few months, skirmishes continued. The conflict re-escalated, and, after the separatists inflicted a defeat of Ukrainian forces at Donetsk International Airport, the sides returned to negotiations.

Minsk II was facilitated under pressure from the US, which had proposed, but not formally agreed, to send arms to the Kyiv government. Building upon the Minsk Protocol, the DPR and LPR elections were to be permitted in Ukrainian law. Constitutional reform, guaranteeing decentralisation, was required. The DPR and LPR would be free to maintain their own security through the People’s Militia and locally controlled law enforcement.

Minsk II coincided with both sides withdrawing from the area around Debaltseve. However, heavy artillery exchanges continued, and the fighting was intense in and around Mariupol, as the Russian backed separatists fought the Azov Nazis.

In March 2015, the Kyiv parliament approved a law granting “special status” to the DPR and LPR. This afforded the separatists three years of relative autonomy. But, crucially, the elections would be overseen by Kyiv. And the special status also came with a statement that the regions were “under occupation.”

Parliamentary Nazi Oleh Lyachenko, an Azov commander, said that it was a vote for Russian occupation. His fellow Nazi, Andriy Parubiy, then vice-speaker of the Verkhovna Rada, insisted that the law was opposed to the “occupiers.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said the so-called “special status” was not in keeping with the Minsk agreements. Alexander Zakharchenko, the elected Prime Minister of the DPR, said that before any status could be agreed to, the DPR and the LPR must have full control (occupation) of their territory and enter discussions with Kyiv as equal partners. That meant removing the Azov Regiment from Mariupol.

Despite periods of relative calm and 29 ceasefires, the Donbas War has continued. The fiercest fighting occurred earlier in the war, prior to 2017. There have been months when fighting has subsided. Yet the conflict has never ceased, and heavier exchanges have frequently occurred.

Both sides—the Ukrainian forces armed, trained and equipped by the NATO alliance and the separatists of the DPR and LPR, armed trained and equipped by the Russians—have broken the numerous ceasefire agreements. While the Minsk Agreements were seen as the way forward by both sides they were never implemented by the Kyiv government, who were the only side with the authority to do so.

Russia has considerable influence over the DPR and LPR. They are, to a great extent, satellite states of the Russian Federation. However, as shown by both regions’ refusal to follow Moscow’s request to withhold elections, both are also independent in their own right.

According to a January 2022 UN report, from 14 April 2014 to 31 December 2021, based upon OHCHR figures, between 14,200 and 14,400 people were killed, including at least 3,404 civilians. This was widely reported in the West.

What was less well reported was the UN’s finding that, since 2018, more than 81% of the casualties have been in the separatist regions and only 16.3% in Ukrainian-held territory, with the remaining few were in the demilitarised zone. The OHCR’s 2015 report found that more than 62% of civilian casualties were in separatist territory.

Even Human Rights Watch (HRW), which is in no way pro-Russian, has highlighted numerous atrocities carried out by the “Ukrainian government.” This has included the use of cluster bombs in civilian areas and the use of unguided rockets against civilians. HRW noted that the Kyiv was “treating its human rights obligation as though they were optional.”

HRW also found the separatists, too, were using unguided rockets and had placed their artillery and other positions in civilian areas. HRW found that the separatists violently beat and intimidated anyone they suspected of collaborating with Kyiv. It is clear, nonetheless, that the Ukrainian forces, including and most particularly the “specialist” Nazi regiments, have inflicted considerably greater civilian losses than have the separatists.

U.S. troops working with Azov troops

The practical occupation of Kyiv by the RS following the Euromadan coup demonstrates that the Nazis have their own agenda. Atakov, Parubiy, Lyachenko and others are vehemently Russophobic and anti-Semitic, and it is they, not Kyiv, who, with oligarch backing, have had a controlling influence over the Nazi “specialists.”

The Nazis have consistently been a destabilising force. When Amnesty International reported that the Aydar Regiment had committed war-crimes, it noted:

Our findings indicate that, while formally operating under the command of the Ukrainian security forces combined headquarters in the region, members of the Aydar battalion act with virtually no oversight or control.

In 2019, newly elected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the Azov Regiment front lines near the Donbas town of Zolote. Zelenskyy had made an election promise to deescalate the situation in eastern Ukraine and was pursuing a policy of reinstigating Minsk-style OSCE-monitored elections in the DPR and LPR (the Steinmeier Formula). The response from the Azov Regiments and its National Corps was to instigate a “No to Capitulation” campaign.

Zelenskyy was confronted by a hostile reception of Azov commanders who refused to end their assault, despite the President’s request. In an embarrassing, petulant moment, Zelenskyy cried:

I’m the president of this country. I’m 41 years old. I’m not a loser. I came to you and told you: remove the weapons[.]

Biletsky responded by threatening to send thousands of fighters to Zolote and warned Zelenskyy to back off. While the Azov Regiment initially complied, within a matter of a few weeks its members had restarted their military campaign.

Zelenskyy’s problem is that he is merely the puppet of his billionnaire backer, Igor Kolomoisky. In turn, Kolomoisky is one of the main sources of funding for the Azov, Aydar and Dnepre regiments. Consequently, Zelenskyy was forced, or ordered, to negotiate his plans with the far-right.

In November 2021, Dymitro Yarosh announced that he had accepted a position as advisor to the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. This move epitomised Ukraine’s real Nazi problem.

Senior positions within the Ukrainian political establishment are held by committed Nazis. They have, to a large extent, captured pivotal government roles despite having virtually no electoral mandate. Zelenskyy’s SA government cannot function without their approval.

Despite their relatively small numbers, the Nazis are also the best trained, best equipped and most highly motivated ground troops in the Ukrainian armed forces. Its military could not operate without them.

They are not supporters of the Kyiv government. They are Ukrainian ultranationalists, loyal to private backers, whose dream is an ethnically pure Ukraine. In short, they have the Ukrainian state over a barrel. What’s worse, as evidenced by the comments of Karas and others, they have global ambitions and, as we shall see, have already been assisted in forming a global network.

Vladimir Putin has been ridiculed in the West for calling the attacks upon the separatist populations a “genocide.” The 1948 UN Genocide Convention describes genocide as any aggressive act which is intended “to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Under this definition, “genocide” is not an inappropriate description of the war in the Donbas.

The Nauseating Unofficial-Offical Story

The phone conversation between Nuland and Pyatt was preceded, in December 2013, by Nuland’s address to an International Business Conference, sponsored by US oil and gas companies. In her speech, Nuland claimed that the US had invested $5 billion over two decades to help Ukraine achieve its dream of joining the EU. There is no clear record of this spending nor is there any record of the US Congress ever approving it for the purposes claimed by Nuland.

This isn’t surprising, because the US operates at least two separate economies. There is the money raised through taxation and borrowing (future taxation), where spending is officially approved by legislatures, and then there is the black economy, operated off the books.

The Pentagon, home of the US Department of Defense, has never completed a successful audit. In 2020, the black hole in its accounts amounted to $35 trillion. This is more than five times the total “official” amount spent by the federal government in 2021.

Nuland was simply plucking that $5 billion figure out of the air to impress her audience. We have no way of knowing how much money the US has actually spent in pursuit of its foreign policy objectives in Ukraine. But we can guess it is practically limitless.

In 2012, the US enacted the so-called Magnitsky Act. This was based upon the unverifiable and highly suspicious claims of just one man: American-born British financier Bill Browder.

The Magnitsky Act enables the US to seize Russian assets, ban Russians from entry to the US and sanction Russian business as it chooses. It serves as a clear signal to the Russian government that the US represents a distinctly hostile state, committed to undermining its interests.

In light of what we know about US support for an undemocratic, unconstitutional coup to depose an elected government in Ukraine, Nuland’s words, spoken at that 2013 business conference, are nauseating:

The Euromaidan movement has come to embody principles and the values that are the cornerstones for all free democracies. [. . .] Since Ukraine’s independence in 1991 the United States has supported Ukrainians, as they build democratic skills and institutions, as they promote civic participation and good governance, all of which are preconditions for Ukraine to achieve its European aspirations. We’ve invested over $5 billion to assist Ukraine in these and other goals that will ensure a secure and prosperous and democratic Ukraine.

The Ukrainian population as a whole did not have a clear European dream. And nothing could contradict the “principles and the values” of free democracies more than the Western-backed Euromaidan coup.

Sadly not the Revolution of Dignity

Ukraine, left to develop unhindered by the US, EU and Russia, would not necessarily have elected to join the EU or aspire to become a NATO member state. The divisions in Ukraine are so deep that it is difficult to know if it would have remained peaceful or would have collapsed into civil war.

What is certain is that the Ukrainian people have been played by two “great powers” engaged in a long-standing global confrontation. Neither has any respect for democratic principles, international law or the welfare of the Ukrainian people, regardless of their ethnicity or international allegiance.

In their power struggle, both have exploited Nazis. The US/NATO alliance has trained, armed and equipped those Nazis, and elements within the Ukrainian government have deployed them to foment revolution and fight a bloody war.

On 16 December 2021, the 53rd meeting of the 76th session of the UN General Assembly adopted the draft resolution on “combating glorification of Nazism.” There were just two nations that voted against: The United States and Ukraine.

The Russian Federation has exploited the same Nazis as a means of justifying, in part, its attack on another sovereign nation. It is thus illegitimate for Russia to castigate Ukraine for being a Nazi regime.

Parts 1–3 have hopefully provided you with what we could call the “official-unofficial” explanations of Russia’s military operations in Ukraine. It is a perfunctory, nationalist analysis which, if taken as a full account, maintains our belief in the primacy of nation-states.

In truth, the forces that are currently ripping Ukraine apart see nations, and the governments that rule them, as junior partners in their internecine feud, as they position themselves to rule the world. It is this more thorough appraisal that we will discuss in Part 4: Ukraine War! What Is It Good For? The Globalist Reset

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Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine has been reported by the Western establishment and its mainstream media (MSM) as an unprovoked act of naked aggression. Writing in The New York Times the UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said:

Never in my life have I seen an international crisis where the dividing line between right and wrong has been so stark.

This story has been presented to us in order to maintain our trust in the institutions of our government. The Russian people have been given a different story, but for the same reason.

As discussed in Part 1, what we are told about the social, political and ethnic tensions in Ukraine by the Western hegemony isn’t accurate. This article will explore the wider geopolitical context within which Russia’s military action military action can be at least understood, even if we regard then as illegitimate.

Some of the terms used in this article, such as “Euromaidan coup,” directly contradict the Western MSM narrative. Please read Part 1 to familiarise yourself with some of the historical background and the named individuals and organisations.

Only Fools Rush In

In the West, the public is expected to accept the given narrativ without question. Anyone who challenges it is accused of being a Putin apologist or a far-right conspiracy theorist. Most Brits appear to have gone along with Johnson’s proffered fairy tale. This is unfortunate, because the reality is far more complex than he would have us believe.

To see celebrities and social media influencers uniformly demonstrating their compassion for the Ukrainian people is touching. But when reports of these virtue-signalling displays are used as propaganda to convince the public that they, too, should jump on the West-approved bandwagon, swaths of the population are at risk of forming a potentially dangerous opinion based upon nothing but pretension.

Currently the UK government, with celebrity assistance, is encouraging us to welcome Ukrainian refugees with open arms via its Homes For Ukraine scheme. The government has said that the Ukrainian applicants “will be vetted and will undergo security checks.”

Most of the people applying for refugee status will be in desperate need, and we certainly should do everything we can to assist them. However, there is also good reason for very careful vetting and security checks.

Stephen Fry has “open arms”

Ukraine does have a Nazi problem, and it is the Nazis who have most to fear from the Russian forces. In 2013, five days after his arrival in the UK, Ukrainian Nazi Pavlo Lapshyn murdered by an 82-year-old man before embarking upon a bombing campaign of British mosques. It was only thanks to sheer luck that he didn’t murder many more British people.

Lapshyn is only one man out of approximately 44 million people living in Ukraine. Unfortunately, he is also one among hundreds of thousands who share his extremist views. Then there’s the small minority of Ukrainians—which can nonetheless be measured in the millions—who have a degree of sympathy with those views.

For reasons we will discuss in Part 4, the UK government’s commitment to security checks is highly questionable. We are being asked to trust the UK government, but doing so is unwise, given its record. Of course we should act compassionately and help suffering people, but only fools rush in.

For those who believe the propaganda of the Western establishment, Russian president Vladimir Putin is a comic book villain whose evil intentions will stop at nothing short of creating a new Russian empire. The West’s propagandists depict Ukraine as the victim of Putin’s allegedly insane bloodlust and portray Russian military actions as unjustified and unlawful.

Swallowing their story leads us to believe that the US-led NATO alliance and the Kyiv government are the defenders of democracy. Russian actions, perceived as an attack on Ukrainian democracy, are therefore an assault upon the principle of democracy. This view is essentially the single version of the truth being peddled in the West.

The alternative view of Putin as some sort of bogatyr (heroic warrior) is equally callow. It wrongly assumes that Putin embodies Russia, thus ignoring a nation of 146 million people and the globalist forces that maintain Putin’s power for their benefit.

Initially, currently, and most acutely, it is the people in Ukraine who suffer as a result of this conflict. Ultimately however, we all will.

NATO Expansionism

When the President of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Putin, listed Russia’s claimed reasons for the invasion of Ukraine, he stressed NATO expansionism. Russia has repeatedly warned that Ukrainian membership in NATO, which would almost certainly see US troops and offensive weapons deployed on Russia’s southwestern border, was a redline that Russia would not allow NATO to cross. Putin said:

I spoke about our biggest concerns and worries, and about the fundamental threats which irresponsible Western politicians created for Russia consistently, rudely and unceremoniously from year to year. I am referring to the eastward expansion of NATO, which is moving its military infrastructure ever closer to the Russian border. [. . .] [T]he North Atlantic alliance continued to expand despite our protests and concerns. Its military machine is moving and, as I said, is approaching our very border.

Russia has warned repeatedly that it would “react” if Ukraine joined NATO. As yet, Ukraine has not done so. Russia’s attack is preemptive, and, despite Putin’s claimed “compassion” for the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR & LPR), Russia’s primary concern is for its own security and that of its ruling class. Even prior to Russian recognition, the DPR and LPR were de jure Russian satellite states and pawns in a greater game seemingly played out between Russia and NATO.

Equally, there has been a genuine humanitarian crisis in the DPR and LPR for eight years. Russia’s military operation has come as a relief to the people of the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Regrettably, Russia has also escalated the conflict beyond Donbas borders, killing more innocent people.

In February 1990, during the “perestroika” reformation of the USSR, then-US Secretary of State James Baker met with the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev. He famously gave Russia assurances that NATO would not expand “one inch eastward.” At the time, that meant no eastward expansion—except for by Turkey—in mainland Europe beyond Germany’s border.

Baker’s words weren’t the only reassurances the Russians received. In 1990, then-West German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher gave a keynote speech with regard to German reunification, during which he said:

[T]he changes in Eastern Europe and the German unification process must not lead to an ‘impairment of Soviet security interests.’ Therefore, NATO should rule out an ‘expansion of its territory towards the east, i.e. moving it closer to the Soviet borders.’

Prior to signing the Two-Plus-Four Treaty reunifying Germany, the Russians sought and were given explicit commitments regarding NATO expansionism. In the rounds of diplomacy leading up to the agreement, Russia was offered assurances by political leaders from the US, France, the UK, Germany and other NATO aligned states. Russia agreed to German reunification only after German Chancellor Helmut Kohl convinced Gorbachev that NATO would not expand toward Russian borders.

This was an opportunity for the US, Europe and Russia to capitalise on the new, relatively open and transparent (glasnost) USSR as it transitioned to become the Russian Federation. In retrospect, it is now clear that the US-led NATO alliance took a triumphalist view. It embraced its own unipolar world order as the bipolar Cold War order evaporated.

From 1991 onwards NATO completely ignored both the assurances it had given and Russia’s security concerns. It systematically rolled eastward, and by 2005 Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovenia, Romania and Bulgaria had become members of NATO.

In 2007, in response to NATO’s obvious expansionism, Vladimir Putin delivered a cutting speech at the Munich Security Conference:

[W]hat is a unipolar world? However one might embellish this term, at the end of the day it refers to one type of situation, namely one centre of authority, one centre of force, one centre of decision-making. It is world in which there is one master, one sovereign. [. . .] And this certainly has nothing in common with democracy. [. . .] I consider that the unipolar model is not only unacceptable but also impossible in today’s world. [. . .] [T]he model itself is flawed because at its basis there is and can be no moral foundations for modern civilisation. [. . .] We are seeing a greater and greater disdain for the basic principles of international law. [. . .] [F]irst and foremost the United States has overstepped its national borders in every way. [. . .] [O]f course this is extremely dangerous. It results in the fact that no one feels safe. I want to emphasise this – no one feels safe! [. . .] I understood that the use of force can only be legitimate when the decision is taken by NATO, the EU, or the UN. [. . .] [W]e have different points of view. [. . .] The use of force can only be considered legitimate if the decision is sanctioned by the UN. And we do not need to substitute NATO or the EU for the UN. [. . .] I think it is obvious that NATO expansion does not have any relation with the modernisation of the Alliance itself or with ensuring security in Europe. [. . .] [W]e have the right to ask: against whom is this expansion intended? And what happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? [. . .] I would like to quote the speech of NATO General Secretary Mr Woerner in Brussels on 17 May 1990. He said at the time that: “the fact that we are ready not to place a NATO army outside of German territory gives the Soviet Union a firm security guarantee”. Where are these guarantees?

In response, the NATO Council, as if to validate everything Putin said, issued a statement at the 2008 NATO Bucharest Summit. Clause 23 of the statement read:

NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.

In the decade-long lead-up to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, NATO had been pushing for Ukrainian membership. Indeed, in 2018 NATO added Ukraine to its list of so-called aspiring nations. In 2019, then-President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko signed a constitutional amendment committing Ukraine to membership in both the EU and NATO. This was swiftly followed in 2020 with the decision by NATO and Ukraine to enhance their partnership.

The current invasion of Ukraine by Russia has been presented by Western governments to their respective electorates in disingenuous and puerile terms. The West’s narrative was encapsulated by Johnson in his New York Times piece:

This is not a NATO conflict, and it will not become one. [. . .] The truth is that Ukraine had no serious prospect of NATO membership in the near future. [. . .] I and many other Western leaders have spoken to Mr. Putin to understand his perspective. [. . .] It is now clear diplomacy never had a chance. [. . .] Mr. Putin is attempting the destruction of the very foundation of international relations and the United Nations Charter: the right of nations to decide their own future, free from aggression and fear of invasion.

Contrary to Johnson’s deception, NATO and its member states have not only enticed, cajoled and encouraged Ukraine’s “aspirations” to join, they have taken firm steps to make it a reality. They did so in the certain knowledge that Russia could never countenance the move. This fact in no way excuses Russia’s actions, but it goes some way in explaining them.

From an official military perspective, NATO has seemingly abandoned Ukraine to its fate. We will discuss in Part 4 why what NATO is doing is not quite as it seems.

Thus far, NATO has ruled out any attempt to establish a no-fly zone (NFZ). As pointed out by 80 foreign policy experts who have written to advise the Biden administration, any attempt to impose an NFZ would necessitate NATO or US forces shooting down Russian military planes. This would almost certainly trigger a global war.

It is mind-blowing that this letter was written in response to a similar endeavour from 27 foreign policy experts who advocated the physically impossible concept of a “limited” NFZ. Judging the risk to be worth it, they suggested the West should call Russia’s bluff. This pro- NFZ lobby has close financial ties to the military-industrial complex. What these lunatics imagine they will spend their money on in the smouldering rubble of a post-nuclear holocaust is difficult to say.

Johnson’s point that the Ukraine has the right to determine its own future with regard to NATO membership is childish—and, from an international law perspective, wrong. Nation-states are not free to do whatever they like if their actions threaten the security of neighbouring states.

Article 2.3 of the United Nation’s Charter states:

All Members shall settle their international disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security, and justice, are not endangered.

With NATO membership distinctly possible, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, speaking at the 2022 Munich Security Conference just before the Russian invasion, said:

Ukraine has received security guarantees for abandoning the world’s third nuclear capability. We don’t have that weapon. We also have no security. [. . .] Therefore, we have something. The right to demand a shift from a policy of appeasement to ensuring security and peace guarantees. Since 2014, Ukraine has tried three times to convene consultations with the guarantor states of the Budapest Memorandum. [. . .] I am initiating consultations in the framework of the Budapest Memorandum. [. . .] If they do not happen again or their results do not guarantee security for our country, Ukraine will have every right to believe that the Budapest Memorandum is not working and all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy

The 1994 Budapest Memorandum was a security assurance given to the Ukraine (and others) by the existing nuclear powers, including the Russian Federation, that their integrity and sovereignty would not be threatened in exchange for them giving up their nuclear arsenals. In Ukraine’s case, theirs was potentially the third largest in the world as they were left with more than 2000 strategic nuclear warheads after the dissolution of the USSR.

Zelenskyy was claiming that Russia had already breached the Budapest Memorandum when it “annexed” Crimea and supported the separatists in the Donbas. Therefore, he was threatening Russia, not only with a nuclear armed Ukraine, but a nuclear armed NATO power on its border.

Regardless of the intricacies of the Budapest deal, this was a clear threat to Russian security and an obvious provocation. One has to ask why Zelenskyy thought this wise.

Ukraine and Russia had been in international dispute for at least eight years but realistically for more than thirty. From both the Russian and the Ukrainian side, the manner of that dispute had consistently endangered international peace and security. Zelesnkyy’s threat appeared to take that risk to a new level.

In addition, NATO member states have been in dispute with Russia since 1991. Their total disregard for Russia’s security concerns also endangered international peace. Moreover, NATO expansionism was not in keeping with the principles of the UN Charter.

The Secretary-General of the UN, Antonio Guterres, has unequivocally condemned the Russian invasion. This appears to be a reflection of the UN’s partisan bias toward the US-led NATO military alliance and the EU rather than any genuine attempt to faithfully interpret the UN Charter. Guterres said:

The use of force by one country against another is the repudiation of the principles that every country has committed to uphold. This applies to the present military offensive. It is wrong. It is against the Charter. It is unacceptable.

Yet when the US decided it had the right to launch preemptive wars in the “war on terror,” the UN did not condemn that claim of right. For example, when the US-led coalition launched a “preemptive” invasion of Iraq in March 2003, in contravention of the UN Charter, the UN said little and did nothing.

In 2004, then-UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan acknowledged that the invasion and subsequent war in Iraq was illegal. Yet the UN has consistently ignored Article 39 of the UN Charter that would allow it to rule on the legality of the Iraq war. No one has ever imposed sanctions on the US or its allies for the war crimes they have committed.

Who Cares About International Law?

Lex iniusta non est lex is a fundamental principle of law. Translation: unjust law is not law. If we are going to suffer the violence of governments, then the concept of international law is certainly welcome. Unfortunately, that’s all it is: a concept.

The UN’s formal and public condemnation of preemptive wars is reserved for the actions of some nations but not others. Consequently, international law, partly encapsulated by the UN Charter, is practically meaningless.

Because it is applied neither equally nor reasonably, it has become little more than a big stick, currently in the hands the Western-led international rules-based order, used to beat opponents. This is what happens when juries are excluded from alleged justice. There is no “law.”

Prior to the Secretary-General’s statement, the globalist foreign policy think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, had already ruled that Russia’s military action in Ukraine violates international law. The CFR pointed out that the action contravenes Article 2.4 of the United Nations Charter, which states:

All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.

Russia has certainly breached Article 2.4. Its war in Ukraine is therefore “illegal.”

However, Article 1.1 of the UN Charter also places an onus on the UN “to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace, and for the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace.” Persistent NATO expansionism and the threat of a NATO nuclear power on Russia’s border are breaches of the peace and a direct threat, from a Russian perspective. The UN has done nothing either to prevent or remove this threat.

US President Joseph Biden, upon announcing sanctions in response to Russia’s military action, said:

Who in the Lord’s name does Putin think gives him the right to declare new so-called countries on territory that belonged to his neighbours? This is a flagrant violation of international law, and it demands a firm response from the international community.

But Russia did not “declare” DPR and LPR territorial legitimacy. Biden was deceiving his international audience.

In his speech on the 21st February, Putin said that the Russian Federation had decided to “immediately recognize the independence and sovereignty of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the Luhansk People’s Republic.” Under international law, recognition is distinct from declaration.

Vladimir Putin

There are two schools of legal thought on statehood. The “constitutive” approach suggests that a state can only be a state if it is recognised as such by other sovereign nations. In that case, with Russian recognition, the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) are now “legal” states.

However, the “declaratory” notion of a state usually takes precedence in international law. It defines a state as any autonomous territory that meets the criteria necessary for the formation of said state.

As defined by the 1933 Montevideo Convention on the Rights and Duties of a State, a sovereign state must have a population, a defined territory and a government able to engage in dialogue with other states. This makes the state a “sole person” in international law, and its existence is independent of recognition by other states. Such a state has the right to defend itself, irrespective of recognition.

On 7th April 2014 the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) declared itself a state. Its territory, within the Donetsk Oblast, extends for just under 9,000 square kilometres. Its capital is Donetsk. At the time, its population was approximately 2.4 million. The Donetsk People’s Militia is the military force that defends it. In 2018 the people of the DPR elected Denis Pushilin as the DPR’s head of state and 100 delegates were elected to form a government in the People’s Council in Donetsk.

Similarly, the Luhansk (or Lugansk) People’s Republic (LPR) consists of 17 administrative regions and encompasses just under 8,400 square kilometres inside the Luhansk Oblast. Its capital is Luhansk (Lugansk), and in 2014 the population was approximately 1.6 million. Leonid Pasechnik is the head of state, and 50 delegates form the government of the People’s Council in Luhansk.

Following the LPR independence referendum, held on 11th May 2014, Pasechik and the People’s Council were subsequently elected to form a government in November 2018. The Luhansk Peoples Militia defends the LPR.

Today approximately 1 million people have fled the region to escape the war. As a result, the combined population of both oblasts is probably closer to 5 million, down from 6.2 million. The populations of the DPR and LPR combined represent a percentage of the total population of the Donbas.

Recognition of a nation-state is ostensibly a political act that clarifies the official view of the nation-state (or nation-states) that are conferring that recognition. In this case, Russia was stating to the international community that it supported the right to independence of the DPR and LPR. Both new states have met the criteria for recognition under international law. Of course, the decision to not recognise them is equally a political act.

In 1992, the United States and the European Community “recognised” the independence of Bosnia and Herzegovina without declaring Bosnia-Herzegovina an independent state. What followed was US—and later NATO—bombing as well as the training, arming and equipping of Islamist extremists—all part of a concerted effort to balkanise the entire European region previously called Yugoslavia.

Similarly, Russia acknowledges the independence of the new unitary republics of DPR and LPR but has not declared them independent states. Following recognition of their status, Russia launched a military attack on Ukraine. Truth be told, neither the Russian nor the US/NATO actions show any particular respect for international law.

Biden’s words were nothing more than propaganda. His legal interpretation was, at best, incomplete. So was Putin’s when he claimed that Russian military action was in keeping with Article 51 of the UN Charter, which states:

Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations.

An armed attack had not been launched against Russia, and the DPR and LPR are not members of the United Nations. Putin’s citation of Article 51 doesn’t legitimise Russian military actions under international law. So what?

Claims and counterclaims concerning international law are merely attempts by global military powers to gain public support for their wars. Combined with propaganda and censorship, these claims convince some of the people some of the time.

The supposedly binding bilateral agreements between nation-states, the UN Charter, and the decisions of international courts and treaties form so-called international law. Unless this alleged “law” is applied equally and fairly, it is not law.

Nation-states like the US, UK, EU member states and Russia use international law merely as weapon of convenience to justify the killing and maiming of human beings or to berate other states when carnage doesn’t suit their objectives. This is the reality of nominal “international law.” It is no law at all.

Exactly the same can be said for the “morality” on display from most of those who now pontificate about welcoming Ukrainian refugees “with open arms.” This appears to be due either to ignorance or acceptance of the unconscionable concept of moral relativism.

While they proudly signal their moral virtue in regard to Ukraine they have said nothing about the horror that continues to unfold in Yemen, which is wholeheartedly backed by the US-led western alliance they continue to support. Just as law applied unfairly is no law at all, so morality that chooses a cause, while ignoring suffering elsewhere, has no value at all.

Gas, Gas, Gas

When Barack Obama became the 44th US President in 2009, Russia had been using its economic influence as the world’s largest crude oil and second largest dry gas producer to push back against NATO expansionism. Ukraine was the main transit hub for Russian gas pipelines to Europe, but it was politically unstable.

The political divisions in Ukraine, broadly pro-EU and anti-Russian on one side and pro-Russian and anti-EU on the other, became the focus of a tug of war for European influence between the US and Russia. The Obama administration wanted to maintain the transatlantic alliance, affording U.S. dominance and NATO cohesion in Europe, while Putin’s clique aimed to enhance Russian control of the European energy market to strengthen Russian security and weaken NATO.

For its part, the EU hierarchy was eager to establish its bloc as an independent military superpower. The 2007 Treaty of Lisbon came into force in December 2009, effectively creating the European Union and its Common Security and Defence Policy. The EU were then able pursue military defence union, potentially undermining US control and bolstering the EU’s hold on NATO.

Russia openly declared its support for Yanukovich in the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election. Its access to the Ukrainian pipelines and retention of its Sevastopol naval base were crucial to its—and, to a large extent, the EU’s—interests. In exchange for below- market, subsidised Russian gas, the Yanukovich government extended Russia’s Sevastopol lease until 2042, resulting in physical fights breaking out in the Verkhovna Rada.

In 2011, Russia and Germany opened the first Nord Stream gas pipeline, which runs under the Baltic Sea and supplies Russian gas to Germany. Nord Stream 1 runs from Vyborg to Greifswald. The proposed Nord Stream 2 will run from Ust-Luga. The purpose of Nord Stream pipelines was to enable Russia to sell much cheaper gas to the EU, via Germany, while eliminating both the EU’s and Russia’s 80% reliance upon the precarious Ukrainian pipelines. For obvious reasons, this aim had wide support among other EU member states.

The Nord Stream pipelines were not in the interest of the US, however. Consequently, its foreign policy objectives were to stop Nord Stream 2 (which would double the pipelines’ gas flow to Europe from Russia) and install a Ukrainian government amenable to Washington’s demands.

If the US could break the EU’s blossoming trade relationship with Russia, it would not only secure US dominance over Europe, both in economic and collective defence terms, but would also open up the EU market to the US’ pricier Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) exports—an added bonus.

Initially, the US feted the Yanukovich government in hopes of convincing Ukraine to join NATO and the EU. Then-US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was dispatched to Kyiv, where she held discussions with Yanukovich. Among her comments:

We discussed ways that Ukraine and the United States can deepen and expand our strategic partnership. [. . .] [We hope] Ukraine will pursue close, constructive relationships with the United States and countries of the European Union. [. . .] We discussed energy reform and its potential to transform Ukraine into an energy producer and becoming more energy efficient. [. . .] We also discussed the importance of protecting Ukraine’s democracy. [. . .] [W]e thank Ukraine and the Ukrainian people for your important contributions to NATO and other international security operations.

The diplomacy failed. Despite fluffy rhetoric about “protecting Ukraine’s democracy,” the US turned to distinctly undemocratic methods when it decided to back a Ukrainian coup. In order to achieve this goal, the US empowered the darkest forces in Ukrainian politics: the neo-Nazis.

Something we will explore in Part 3: Ukraine War! What is It Good For? The Ukrainian Nazi Agenda

Please Note: The PDF (Book) will be available following publication of Part 4