A Ukraine Miscellany (V): A Dangerous Moment of Manipulations and Intensifications

In something of a cultural watershed the US government is openly allowing for and promoting crowd-funding for the Ukrainian army. Viewed as a just cause, once again it's clear Washington has no desire for this conflict to end in the near term.

One must ruminate on the nature of just causes, free speech, and how such questions are determined and expressed. If one were to try and raise money for say the Palestinians or the Syrians, one will find that not only will his servers be cut off, and websites shut down, the FBI will probably show up at one's door.

Even attempts to organise a boycott and divestment from Israel are met with hostility and legislation. Sanctioning the Zionist state which has active fascist elements in its political mainstream (on a scale much larger than Ukraine) is unthinkable in the American context.

Facebook and some of the other tech giants have in recent years begun to censor a great deal of speech revealing some of the complicated and contradictory issues surrounding free speech, how it functions, and its dangers. But again, it's a watershed moment when Facebook – clearly one of the most powerful entities in American society is now openly condoning calls for violence against Russians and Putin specifically. If Lindsey Graham's calls for Putin's assassination promoted outrage or even hesitation, that moment has clearly passed.

It has been heartbreaking to watch the images of the bombed hospital in Ukraine. The images of war are truly terrible and one wishes the media would have shown more of the sufferings of the Iraqi people during (for example) the Shock and Awe campaign in 2003 – or any of the many bombing campaigns waged by the United States over the past several decades. No country has killed more civilians through aerial bombing than the United States. In fact no one else even comes close. And then we could talk about the campaigns the US has funded and facilitated like the Saudi air campaign in Yemen, or the bombs sold to countries like Israel. The civilian death toll and degree of suffering is simply staggering. If the American public witnessed the crimes of its military machine and its brutality on a more widespread and regular basis, one hopes there would be more resistance to these wars. But then again, maybe not.

This is not to diminish the suffering of Ukrainians or the criminality of Russian bombing. Not at all. However, one cannot be but offended at the tone of Western media covering these stories. Again, in some cases these are literally the same reporters who covered American bombings of civilians and yes, even multiple hospitals over the past twenty years.

One immediately thinks of the 2015 Kunduz hospital airstrike in which dozens of people at the MSF (Doctors Without Borders) facility were killed. The American media had to cover that one as it was such an outrageous episode and yet ultimately they helped the Pentagon whitewash it.

Like the Russians this last week, the Pentagon insisted fighters were being harboured in the building. In other hospital bombings in Afghanistan and Iraq the Pentagon either denied the destruction was related to US aircraft, argued that fighters or weapons were on the premises, or in some cases denied the incident altogether.

And yet the outrage at Russian statements is palpable. Why? Some of the Russian people trust their government's statements and yet many clearly do not. And yet it seems in the United States the overwhelming majority of people are wont to believe the mouthpieces of the state. Who has the more powerful and effective propaganda machine?

One thinks of other incidents in which the US has bombed hotels – conveniently hotels that journalists were based in, reporters that were not exactly on the Pentagon's preferred list. These were unfortunate 'accidents' we were assured or again, fighters were on the premises.

The reports coming from Ukraine are on the ground and extensive. Where were the reporters during America's bombing campaigns? They weren't with the civilians. They were 'embedded' with the troops, or at headquarters receiving and passing on unquestioned statements from American and NATO brass. The US public was not allowed to empathize with the bombed populations of Iraq and Afghanistan – let alone those who suffered mass death and psychological trauma from the prolonged drone assault campaign on the Afghan-Pakistan border.

The Russians are guilty of atrocities in Ukraine but these are dwarfed by American atrocities in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Pakistan, and elsewhere. And again this is only in reference to the most recent and most public of America's wars.

I will hear of Russian war crimes and condemn them but I will not hear it from Western media. They too are criminals and their hands and microphones are dripping with blood. The song of death is on their lips.

Then a couple of days ago the news took on a surreal edge. State Department mandarin Victoria Nuland, one of the architects of the 2014 Maidan coup in Ukraine sat before a Senate committee and engaged in an orchestrated exchange wherein she revealed that Ukraine has biological weapons labs – though these were couched as research facilities – and since then the claims have been walked back even further. US participation in these projects was acknowledged though in nebulous terms. On the one hand it's admitted the US has been involved for decades but on the other hand in later reports it was being presented as if US involvement is only recent and rooted in trying to secure these 'purely research' facilities in light of the Russian invasion.

And then suddenly there was talk of Russians trying to use biological weapons and it was suggested that any biological attack would necessarily originate with the Russians. It was a bizarre transition and more than a little suspicious as we've seen this sort of talk play out in the past – particularly in Syria.

Right on cue, I was watching France24 later in the day and it was announced that Russia may be planning a 'false flag' attack with biological weapons. In other words Russian troops will utilise them but try to make it look like it was the Ukrainians who used them and base the accusation on the revelations of the Ukrainian bioweapons facility. Or later there were variations – Russians might capture Ukrainian bioweapons and use them while pretending to be Ukrainians. But as the media tried to downplay the acknowledgement of a Ukrainian bioweapons facility the talk shifted to simply Russian use of biological or chemical warfare agents.

It astonishes me but I guess they're counting on the public being that gullible and stupid. It's about as convincing as Jeffrey Epstein's supposed suicide and that of Jean-Luc Brunel, one of the top witnesses in the case.

If there's a biological or chemical weapons attack it will most likely be the Ukrainians working with the United States and yet the Russians will be blamed. Even the France24 reporter looked a little bewildered by the report as she read it. And again like clockwork, the next day the reports were being echoed in Christian media.

What we're seeing is not just an orchestrated campaign in the US Congress but a coordinated media campaign and frankly it's a moment of clarity – the networks who report it unquestioned can be marked as those who are bought and paid for with Western money or under direct political control. We saw the same thing in Syria and the reporting and whistleblowing surrounding the fraudulent claims of the Assad regime's use of chemical weapons have been actively suppressed.

One has to raise this rather uncomfortable question. Is Biden in full control of these events and the vast machine of the US state and war machine? And the reason this question needs to be asked is that it was clear that Obama did not have full control of his administration and at points was manipulated and misled in the course of the Syrian and Libyan Wars. Clearly Hilary Clinton as Secretary of State was running her own show and at times overwhelmed her boss. What forces are at work within the Biden administration? We can think of several but at this point we need to look at where things stand and the pending danger on the horizon.

Biden has been behind the re-assertion of US power on the NATO frontier. Biden signalled the formal shift to Great Powers Conflict with his final withdrawal from Afghanistan. He has pushed and cajoled the wayward and sometimes dissenting NATO leadership into conformity. He is a driving force behind the tensions that led up to Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

And yet he has also demonstrated restraint. He understands that a No-Fly-Zone is untenable at this stage. He doesn't want direct confrontation between NATO troops and Russia at this stage. I contend the war is meant to drag on and that in time Putin's regime will begin to collapse under the weight of these events, failures, and sanctions. At that point with the Russian withdrawal from Ukraine, NATO troops will move into Ukraine, Moldova and perhaps Georgia and remain there. The necessary legal documents are already written and ready to go. You can count on it.

If Russia descends into post-regime chaos a NATO 'peacekeeping' mission might cross the border – especially if the US is able to install or back a particular faction within Moscow and receive a formal invite. At that point, or even before, NATO troops might move into the Kaliningrad enclave and seize it. This has been the plan for years. This is Biden's plan, the collapse of the Putin regime and further dismantling of Russia – not World War III.

A biological weapons attack will significantly escalate the situation and the calls for NATO to strike Russian targets will become deafening. The hawks are banging not just Biden's war drum but the big kettle drum of world war. This is complicated because Biden also beat the war drum but his goals were limited and yet I'm sure he was warned there's always a danger that the situation can get out of hand. Walking the corridors of the White House will the ghosts of presidents like Johnson and Nixon haunt him? They too played with militaristic fire and got burned. Vietnam played a role in bringing down two presidents – and perhaps three depending on one's take of the Kennedy Assassination.

Given that the propaganda campaign is on a level probably not seen since 1914, the spectre of the Guns of August is starting to loom large. The situation in 1914 degenerated and took on a life of its own and that's the danger here. Biden may not want a biowarfare attack but others might order it and his hands will be tied – just as some of the European leaders were forced to acquiesce and go along with the US-inspired programme. And now some of them are pivoting and using the occasion to their own purposes.

A biological attack will increase the calls for a No-Fly-Zone and it will be hard for Biden to resist them. The effort is bipartisan and while the Anti-Russian campaign faded during the Trump years due to domestic American politics it's now back with a vengeance.  

For Putin's part he would know that a biological attack in Ukraine will mean a full-scale war with NATO. Do you think that's what he wants? And even if he did, as some will still foolishly assert – do you think that's how he would seek to initiate it?

The Neo-Conservative PNAC agenda always looked toward the breaking of Russia and while the think-tank's agenda was officially discredited after the failures in Iraq, the larger agenda has marched on, permutated and now operates on a bipartisan basis. Truly it's like the hydra-head that's been cut off and has grown back in multiplied form. The Democrats have shifted Right on these questions and Biden won't be able to resist an overwhelming bipartisan congressional call to escalate the war. If Biden drags his feet, Congress may simply go over his head.

The über-hawks may yet get their wish and the media is doing all it can to help them. A wider European war will likely have implications across Eurasia. It's hard to tell what could happen. Even now the true effects of Russian sanctions on the economies of Central Asia and the Caucasus are not fully understood. It's going to destabilise these countries as remittances are going to be frozen as well as the possibilities of trade, finance, and transit. Civil war and social chaos may emerge soon, or be triggered by an open NATO-Russian War. China would become involved and given what's happening in East Asia and the growing militaristic posturing on the part of the US and its regional allies, they may make their move on Taiwan.

And thus we will find ourselves in World War III.

At present Putin is moving on Western Ukraine which it would seem was not part of the original plan and as mentioned in previous pieces such a move runs counter to his narratives. However, the situation has changed with talk of bringing in Polish MiG's. You can be sure that the Russians are looking at airstrips and doing what they can to stop the weapons pipeline flowing in from Ukraine's NATO-affiliated Western frontiers.

And in the midst of all this the US has passed an increased record breaking military budget which Biden dare not veto – even though his political opponents are using the occasion to kill funding for any kind of Environmental measures and other points Biden wished to promote. The pressure coming from the fossil fuel industry is overwhelming and the Right has even used the occasion to kill much of what remained of Covid funding – and the Democrats are providing cover, playing a disingenuous game of shifting already appropriated funds, pretending as if they're still engaged on this issue.

At times it's all too much to keep up with.