‘Illusion is the truth that was passed through the filter of self-righteousness.’
— Lubko Deresh
I just saw a picture of a dead civilian. Which means Putin just posted a world-record time for a war criminal speed run, narrowly edging out former record holder, United States President Emeritus Barrack Hussein Obama.
Does Russia deserve a pass? No. Are innocent people dying because of Putin? Technically, yes. See above. However, can the U.S. and its bloc of support to any better? I’m sure we “can” do better, but I highly doubt we “will” do better, given our history. Which is kind of my point:
Why is it that, when shit hits the fan, people immediately forget all of the U.S.’ utterly unforgivable crimes against humanity?
I just can’t forgive and forget some of these things. Maybe it’s because of my spiritual belief that reverence for life is the supreme imperative.
“I have made a basic choice *for life* and *against death* and my whole psychology has changed in the process… all realities are neurological constructs and relative to the observer; I am nonetheless committed now to one reality above all alternatives: the reality of Jesus and Buddha, in which reverence for life is the supreme imperative.”
– Robert Anton Wilson
“But the US needs to engage in armed combat to protect the peace of the people of Ukraine–” really? Do you REALLY think the innocent people in Ukraine really care about anything else besides living their lives and socializing with their loved ones?
“But those same Ukrainian people will benefit in the long run from the West stopping Russia–” yes, I’m sure that they will shed a single tear as they salute the NATO flag over their war-torn landscape and eradication of natural resources.
“Well, no matter which way you slice it, Russia initiated aggression. It’s just and righteous to stop unchecked aggression before it spirals out of control.”
Did they, though? That last statement is what bothers me the most. For so many reasons. I hardly know how to spin a coherent argument while my blood boils and steam whistles out of my ears.
The US-led “West” / “NATO” / “capitalist bloc,” (whatever you want to call it, pick your own term) has been engaged in a propaganda blitz spamming the “Russian aggression” meme because they have decided to sacrifice Ukraine in furtherance of the greater imperialist good.
Nobody screaming “Russian aggression” realizes that the LEGITIMATE GOVERNMENT OF THE UKRAINE voted against joining the EU back in 2013. The United States then BACKED A COUP against this legitimate government. Oh, sure, we put a nice face on it. We sent our war hero teddy bear mascot, John McCain, the classiest of the war hawks, to talk about the angst of the Ukrainian people. There was a lot of handshaking. They even renamed a major street John McCain Boulevard. All very nice.
But, look at the classic US gaslighting playbook. The legitimate Ukraine government decides not to join the EU, a massive bloc of countries with whom we trade and with whom we could negotiate extracting all of Ukraine’s highly valuable resources. Those resources can then be converted into, you guessed it, corporate profits. What is the sudden reaction of the US? “Oh my God, human rights abuses! We need to stop this!”
‘The mind always clings to something, and if it won’t have anything good, it will cling to the bad.’
— G. Skovoroda
(On a side note, I’d like to point out the “human rights abuses” have worsened since after the “revolution” [read: coup] in 2013-2014. The government imposed excessive restrictions on freedom of media. Sexual diversity is neither protected nor respected. There was an attempted ban on the Russian language.)
This is classic gaslighting by the US in furtherance of corporate interests and global imperialism. It is important to recognize that sowing destruction and chaos is the MO of every single conflict led by the US since World War II. All that the imperialists know how to do is destroy. They are good at it. What they can’t do (and indeed, what they have no interest in doing) is to build, develop, or bring prosperity that is not at the expense of others. See also:
– WMDs and chemical weapons against the people of Iraq.
– The selling of weapons to Iranians under the guise of a “hostage negotiation” to fund a violent reactionary group in South America against the explicit mandate of the people and Congress.
– The myriad other conflicts ranging across Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Vietnam, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela, Guatemala, Honduras, Haiti, Cuba, Panama, Nicaragua… in which our intelligence agencies were caught red-handed lying in order to justify aggression.
These weren’t attempts to help people, raise standards of living, or bring about development, democracy, and freedom. These are simply examples of imperialist military and economic violence against those societies that resist our exploitation and domination.
So, yes, I believe the legitimate government of Ukraine suffered a coup backed by the US. We’ve shown our hand too many times to think our government and US intelligence agencies are anything but self-serving cynical jerks. The hope was to turn Sevastopol into a NATO naval base and integrate Ukraine fully into the NATO alliance and the EU. From this advanced beachhead, the subversive war against the self-determination and freedom of the resource-rich Ukrainian people could be launched quietly, with handshakes and business suits, as well as our continued quest for global superpower status over Russia (and China and anybody else.)
Instead, the Russian Federation ended up gaining Crimea and they have guaranteed the sovereignty of the Eastern Donbass. Meanwhile, Ukraine has been reduced to an economic basket case and ungovernable viceroyalty that is sure to do nothing but cause suffering for the people of Ukraine.
The Ukraine represents yet another monumental failure of the U.S.’s own creation. The US empowered an outsider government that represses media and sexual expression, disintegrated the region’s territorial integrity, and purged the region of anyone capable of sane competent leadership. The US now seeks a narrative that will make the prettiest story in furtherance of their anti-Russian agenda.
The strategy is simple. Since Russia has guaranteed the sovereignty of the Donbass region, the West will employ their “democratic proponents of peace and freedom” (read: borderline neo-Nazi militias against freedom of media and sexual expression) to continue to provoke the situation until the Russian Federation decides enough is enough. Meanwhile, the West prepares it’s credulous citizens for the upcoming war by blitzing their minds with nonstop propaganda about how “Russian aggression” and evil Putin will be responsible for the inevitable war.
‘There are hundreds of languages, but only one truth.’
— M.Rylskiy
The corporate-bought government of the US is entirely unconcerned with engaging in the difficult work of facilitating human flourishing and raising living standards. The only thing they care about is maintaining their own global hegemony through brute force and violent destruction while simultaneously using their impressive control over the platforms of mass communication and information to lie about and justify all of the above.
This is the context in which we must analyze and understand the strategic decision by the US. The decision to FORCE a conflict with Russia and sacrifice the Ukraine, which has zero prospect under our control of becoming anything other than a farcical pseudo-state with a ravaged countryside and a generationally traumatized people.
This is the clear and obvious strategy of the US for my entire lifetime. Ultimately, the imperialist corporatocracy that is our country needs to be held responsible for their destructive actions and they should not be allowed to simply destroy entire societies because they believe that doing so will benefit their interests. Is Russia strong enough to make this clear? I don’t know. Are they innocent of crimes themselves? Probably not, although I can’t really say because my entire knowledge of Russia is fed to be by the media propaganda machine that is owned by these very same corporate interests.
I envy my fellow countrymen that have not yet come to the realization that the ruling capitalist-class has motivations and interests that are the opposite of those of the honest majority. Ignorance truly is bliss. But what makes me the most angry is that large swaths of the citizenry, many of whom are my loved ones, are fooled into accepting at face value the pronouncements and self serving lies of the corporate propaganda apparatus. These common folk are all hyped to beat their drums and scream “BLM! ACAB! Down with capitalism!” But the second an armed international conflict goes down, suddenly most of them change their tune. “Well, I don’t like it either, but it has to be done.”
It is a testament to the pervasive and insidious indoctrination that it has resulted in the widespread confusion which defines the status quo.
The most useful paradigm is not liberal vs. conservative, or red vs. blue. These are the paradigms preferred by the monied interests. These conflicts are unthreatening to corporations’ interests, and easy to manipulate in order to successfully achieve profit-driven goals.
But when it comes to questions of war and peace, militarism, imperialism, and the approach of the propaganda apparatus towards the bloc of countries that resist our oppressive hand, there really is no excuse for the credulity and ignorance of the people anymore. We’ve seen this playbook for the past ~70 years, and damning evidence always comes out after-the-fact that our intelligence agencies feed us complete BS as justification for war. Even self-proclaimed “anarchists,” “libertarians,” “Communists,” “Marxists,” “Leninists,” “Maoists,” “voluntaryists,” “99%-ers”, repeat the brazen lies manufactured out of thin air, designed to demonize governments and societies which represent an obstacle to imperialist interests.
The seemingly hopeless backwardness of the mass consiousness is a testament to the insidious power of corporate interests and their propaganda. Ignorance of the scores of regime change operations, the hundreds of rigged elections, the direct and indirect military invasions, the tens of millions of murdered innocents, and the lies and omissions used to justify all of the above, will serve as a very poor foundation upon which one attempts to build one’s conceptual framework. Yet this is precisely the approach taken by our corporate-owned media as they attempt to further propagandize the masses into embracing the “Russian aggression” narrative.
So, to recap:
In 2013, the US instigated a coup in Ukraine. They employed overt fascists to overthrow the legitimate government. US diplomats were recorded pontificating about whom ought to be selected by themselves to run the new government. The new, borderline neo-nazi government quickly purged journalists and politicians, they outlawed the Communist party, Freedom of the Press, sexual expression, and even outlawed the Russian language despite the fact that a large segment of Ukranian citizens were ethnic Russians that spoke Russian.
Unsurprisingly, the vast majority in Crimea and in the Donbass region of Eastern Ukraine wanted nothing to do with the puppet government installed by the US. Crimea held a referendum and requested membership in the Russian Federation. Russia obliged. Russia has also guaranteed the safety of the people in Eastern Ukraine. If the fascist puppet government attempts to violently enforce their sovereignty in the Donbass region, in violation of the Minsk agreement, Russia would undoubtedly protect it. Just like they protected South Ossetia in 2008 from another Western backed puppet.
There is no “Russian aggression”. This is simply a narrative manufactured out of whole cloth designed to obfuscate and justify the coming economic and military imperialism. Russia doesn’t know if it is going to invade Ukraine, because Russia is responding to Western aggression and Western provocations. If there is no more aggression from the West and no more provocations, Russia will have no need to respond. But Russia is a first rate military power with even more powerful allies. They have no interest in being further victimized by US-led aggression. They are making it clear that those days have passed. They are letting US know that material conditions have changed and that the US-led bloc needs to adjust to this new reality, or they will be forced to adjust, one way or another.
Unipolarism (which has existed since at least 1990, and seemingly throughout at least my entire life) has given way to multipolarism. The only question that remains unanswered is how the West will deal with and respond to the reality of their own economic, political, and military displacement. Will they respond in a responsible way and work with the emerging powers to facilitate human flourishing or will they engage in a war they are sure to lose and which will be disastrous for humanity?
‘Під лежачий камінь вода не тече‘
(‘Under the lying stone, water does not flow.’)
— Ukrainian Proverb
These are the questions which the first half of the 21st century will answer. These are the questions anything even pretending to be responsible media would be asking. The fact that such questions are to be found nowhere within the Western echo chamber tells you everything you need to know about what passes for the media in this country.
And I don’t see anybody else talking about it.