Strategic Culture Foundation

1. UK Minister Says It’s OK for Ukraine to Conduct Air Strikes Inside Russia

What's behind the UK foreign minister's comments and what can we expect from NATO in the longer term? Escalation. Escalation. Escalation.

What's behind the UK foreign minister's comments and what can we expect from NATO in the longer term? Escalation. Escalation. Escalation.

Much has been talked about in recent weeks about the war in Ukraine being taken to the next level. For NATO and western elites, this is a natural progression based on misguided policies and ideas which have been carried out for over a year and have not achieved the goal. Furthermore, it is interesting to examine Jens Stoltenberg's interview with the Washington Post under the microscope where he backpedals away from all the chest-beating rhetoric of destroying Russia and winning the war in Ukraine to merely "we need to prevail in Ukraine". Quite a climbdown. Add to that his extraordinary comment about the war starting back in 2014 and the contradictions and panic starts to pile up, leaving the observer wondering whether there is any consistency at all from the West with its objectives in Ukraine. There's a lot of fake news about it. In fact, at times, it seems that the only news about Ukraine is fake news.

Surely the biggest lie, delivered as fake news, is with this notion that NATO is all about 'de-escalating' the war. What utter codswallop. Is there anyone, even people who work for NATO who actually believe this garbage? Time and time again we see the West push Russia to its limit and time and time again Putin keeps a cool head, appearing at times to be the only one who seems to understand what is at stake by upping the game. What could Zelensky be trying to achieve by sending drones to the Kremlin? Escalation. What could NATO be hoping to achieve by working on a plan to send F-16s to Ukraine? Escalation.

And so, given the context, escalation is now the main focus of attention by western elites although they can't all agree on sending jet fighters. It would also seem that they are taking Zelensky less and less seriously as the Ukrainian president is resorting to more desperate means to get the attention he wants and the level of commitment from the west as close to a full-on war with Russia as is possible.

What to make of UK's foreign minister's comments recently when he indicated that Ukraine had every right to attack Russia, on its own turf?

Answering questions from the media while in Estonia, Mr Cleverly was asked about Tuesday's drone attack on Moscow and whether Ukraine had the right to attack Russian territory.

He said: "I don't have details, and I am not going to speculate about the nature of the drone attacks in Moscow. So what I'm about to say are more general points, rather than on that specific incident.

"Ukraine does have the legitimate right to defend itself. It has the legitimate right to do so within its own borders, of course, but it does also have the right to project force beyond its borders to undermine Russia's ability to project force into Ukraine itself".

This comment by the suave British foreign minister, who has an impressive military pedigree himself, is not an accident or a clumsy off-the-cuff comment. James Cleverly is a smart guy and knows what he's saying. The message is very clear. NATO is preparing for a more comprehensive war with Russia and is relying on Putin constantly staying in this 'non-retaliation' mode. Ironically, NATO's strategy, which is escalation, is based on Putin sticking to his 'non-escalation' position. For Cleverly to make this comment which is aimed both at the cabal in Kiev as well as Putin, is an indicator that Russian military targets outside of Ukraine are fair game. The problem with this position of course is that Russia would be within its rights to retaliate on the same level with the same rationale. If Ukraine hits an army truck on the Russian side of the border, then would it not follow that Putin would be allowed to do the same with the same type of vehicle in Poland loading up on material. In short, it would mean that the convoys of military equipment which comes via Poland would become targets. If this is what the more hardcore hawks in the West like Cleverly want, then such a strike would throw the switch on a full-out war with Russia with no grey areas any more.

Of course, the implications of this are terrifying for Germany, which could easily have its civilian populations slaughtered by Russian attacks under such a scenario. Same goes for Finland and Sweden. Presumably, when Cleverly is in Norway to champion the Swedes' entry into NATO, he won't mention this. But if it's what the UK wants, then you can bet all of Zelensky's stashed billions that it's what the U.S. wants. The irony of course is that just as the West wakes up and realises it's in it for the long run, Joe Biden may not even remember what his first name is by the time the U.S. presidential elections get under way. And so very much a matter of time, but is time on the side of the West if Trump gets re-elected and wants to end the war? This is what Zelensky is thinking, thus explaining his level of panicking. He seems to be the only one in the West who has actually worked out that the scenario of a war of attrition doesn't work for him and by contrast a shorter war with higher stakes, possibly air strikes, is also not so appealing. He has the choice between the boiling oil in the pan, or the inferno of the flames beneath it.

2. Despite U.S. Denials… Kiev Regime Hasn’t Gone Rogue With Strikes on Moscow – It’s an Obedient Cat’s Paw

Moscow's dilemma is how to show its Western aggressor that playing with fire means getting burned – without inciting a catastrophic Third World War.

If the United States and its NATO lackeys really wanted to avoid a direct war with Russia, then they know what to do: stop arming the reactionary Kiev regime and get down to serious diplomacy.

This insanely dangerous conflict could end right now.

This week saw a swarm of military drones attack the Russian capital. The Russian authorities claimed that all of the unmanned aerial vehicles were shot down or electronically disabled, but not without some of the aircraft inflicting damage on civilian apartment blocks.

Nearly four weeks ago, a double drone attack was launched on the Kremlin Senate building close to where President Vladimir Putin has a residence.

Moscow has never been attacked in such a symbolic way since the Great Patriotic War when the Soviet Union was fighting Nazi Germany at the very gates of the capital.

Elsewhere across the Russian Federation, Ukrainian drones have targeted major Russian oil and gas installations, as well as military air bases deep inside its territory. Latest reports say Russian children are being evacuated from the Belgorod and Bryansk westerly regions due to constant heavy shelling by Ukrainian forces. Those regions have also seen commando-style incursions by militants using American-supplied armored vehicles. The CIA media front Radio Free Europe is evidently delighted by the anticipated sapping of Russian morale.

Russia is incrementally being subjected to a tightening aggressive vice, which when viewed in perspective presents a shocking attempted assault on its existential interests. Moscow has warned that its national defense doctrine permits the use of nuclear weapons if its existential interests are threatened. The U.S. and its NATO partners are provocatively shaping the Ukraine conflict into Russia's existential concerns. The aggression is being fully directed and intensified by Washington and its NATO accomplices, in particular Britain.

The nearly 15-month conflict in Ukraine seems to be spiraling uncontrollably toward a direct war between the United States and Russia, the world's two biggest nuclear powers. Russia did not want this conflict. Its proposals for diplomacy and dialogue over geopolitical security concerns due to NATO expansion were dismissed out of hand by Washington and its European minions in the weeks before the Ukraine war erupted on February 24 last year.

We need to be clear: the onus is on Washington to halt the slide toward world catastrophe.

President Joe Biden's administration is brazenly lying to the American public and treating the Russians like fools. Following the latest drone attacks on Moscow, the White House and State Department repeated the dissembling mantra that Washington does not "enable or encourage" Ukrainian strikes inside Russia.

Washington is affecting a seeming frustration with Ukraine over the latter's "incorrigible" use of American weapons to hit targets deep inside pre-war Russian territory. (That is, beyond the Crimea Peninsula and the newly federated Russian territories of Donbass, Zaporozhye and Kherson.)

This has led some commentators to surmise that the Kiev regime "has gone rogue" on its American and NATO sponsors.

Writing for the Libertarian Institute this week, Ted Snider remarked: "Ukraine is now pursuing its own security interests in a way that is extraordinarily dangerous to U.S. security interests. And they seem to be disregarding U.S. restrictions in pursuing them… The United States seems to have lost control of Kiev, and Ukraine is now pursuing its own goals in a way that ignores American goals by increasing the danger that NATO could get drawn into a war with Russia."

In the same article, Snider claimed that the stated American goals were two-fold: to defend Ukraine's sovereignty and to avoid direct war with Russia.

The sad reality is that many Americans who are anti-war and critical of the Biden administration's reckless policy in Ukraine do not seem to fully understand the depth of Washington's nefarious involvement. The goals of the United States are neither to defend Ukraine nor avoid a direct war against Russia. The goal is to defeat Russia by whatever means, to foment regime change, and to subjugate Russia for Western capitalism as in the 1990s under Yeltsin. It's all about hegemonic aggression and dominance, a policy that also is directed at China.

In other words, the root problem is not some misguided policy by the Biden administration in Ukraine. The problem is the fundamental and relentless condition of American global hegemonic ambitions. That in turn stems from the nature of American corporate capitalism and its latest iteration as corporate fascism (albeit with a pseudo-liberal image and lexicon).

Ukraine and the conflict therein are merely a temporary means to a bigger end for U.S. imperialism.

Admittedly, most figures in the American power structure no doubt prefer to avoid a direct war with Russia as a matter of pragmatism and self-preservation, not principle. They prefer low-intensity, hybrid warfare and lots of distant violence right down to the "last Ukrainian". But the problem of fomenting aggression no matter how stealthy is that it inevitably runs the risk of spilling into all-out war, as the present dynamic demonstrates.

The Biden administration and the foreign policy establishment, the CIA and Deep State imperial planners cannot pretend to be agnostic about Ukrainian strikes on Russia. The U.S. and its NATO accomplices have every step of the way de facto enabled and encouraged the Kiev regime to escalate hostilities with Russia. That was its mission ever since the CIA-backed coup in Kiev in 2014.

Only a short time ago, it seems, it was controversial to send the NeoNazi military in Ukraine anything beyond helmets and infrared night scopes. Then the supplies went from there to "lethal weapons", longer-range missiles, drones, battlefield tanks, depleted uranium artillery shells, and nuclear-capable F-16 fighter jets.

You can't arm a Russophobic regime to the teeth and then later turn around and coyly maintain that you don't support the regime's military tactics of firing missiles and drones at civilian centers in Russia. It is as insulting as it is duplicitous.

This week following the drone attacks on Moscow, President Biden commented that Washington was now considering supplying the ATACMS long-range missile system to Ukraine. This weapon has a range of 300 kilometers, more than double that of the already U.S.-supplied HIMARS rockets.

Despite the cynical denials and duplicity, Washington is consciously escalating the aggression against Moscow with its policy of doubling down on weaponizing its cat's paw regime in Kiev. The duplicitous Americans know full well that this corrupt and unscrupulous regime will ignore seemingly pious public calls for "not striking inside Russia".

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has warned the U.S. and NATO that they are "playing with fire". Especially considering that the Kiev regime has not gone rogue; on the contrary, it is doing what it is armed to do.

Washington could extinguish the fuse by stopping the arms flowing to Ukraine and by engaging in meaningful diplomacy with Russia to address the long-term security concerns. Not just with Russia, but with China too. Why are the United States and its NATO lackeys so averse to diplomacy and geopolitical engagement? The depraved incessant Western craving for war and conflict, for designating enemies and constant demonizing of others is illuminating.

But Washington is not taking the sane option of peace and diplomacy because it is fixated on hegemonic power interests. That way only leads to war and playing with fire. Moscow's dilemma is how to show its Western aggressor that playing with fire means getting burned – without inciting a catastrophic Third World War.

3. Israel has Failed to Fight Latvia, Lithuania’s Holocaust Distortion – Opinion

By Efraim ZUROFF

During the past half year, three new documentary films devoted to the Holocaust in the Baltics, and especially in Lithuania, have been screened in numerous venues all over the world, except in Lithuania and Latvia, which are the subjects of these films.

One, titled When Did the Holocaust Begin, was produced by the BBC and focuses on the use of new forensic archeological technology to discover unknown mass graves of Holocaust victims in western Lithuania, where indeed the systematic mass murder of European Jewry began following the Nazi invasion of Lithuania, on June 22, 1941.

A second film, J'Accuse, focuses on the mass murder of the Jews of northwest Lithuania and the highly-significant role played by Lithuanian Nazi collaborators, and especially national hero Jonas Noreika, who, during the Holocaust, was the liaison between the Nazis and the Lithuanians, and was responsible for the annihilation of many thousands of Jews. After World War II, he was a leader of the local opposition to the Soviets.

The heroes of this movie, created independently by former BBC journalist Michael Kretchmer, are Noreika's granddaughter, Silvia Foti, and American Litvak Grant Gochin, dozens of whose relatives were murdered in that part of Lithuania and who has unsuccessfully tried to sue the Lithuanian government numerous times to cancel the honors awarded to Noreika.

Silvia Foti's biography of her grandfather, which began as an attempt to glorify him, ultimately exposed his role in Holocaust crimes, shocking Lithuanian society.

The third film, which is called Baltic Truths, deals with the Holocaust in Latvia and Lithuania, and emphasizes the failure of both Baltic republics to admit the highly-significant role played by local Nazi collaborators in the mass murder of their Jewish communities.

Produced by Eugene Levin, a Soviet-Jewish emigrant from Latvia living in Boston, whose grandfather was the sole survivor of the Latvian shtetl of Akniste, it tells a similar story about his country of birth, as well as about Lithuania.

So far, these films, especially J'Accuse, have won many awards at film festivals all over the world, but have not been widely shown in the countries to whom the messages of the films are directed. Nor has there been any official government response to the harsh accusations. Instead, these countries have launched charm offensives, which are directed at potential Israeli tourists.

Lithuania, Latvia fight Holocaust history with a charm offensive against Israelis

Thus two weeks ago, a lengthy article was published in the Dyokan weekend magazine of the staunchly-right wing Israeli weekly Makor Rishon by senior correspondent Ariel Shnebel, about his visit to Lithuania and Latvia at the expense of the Lithuanian and Latvian governments.

HE WAS invited to promote the two countries as wonderful destinations for Orthodox tourists (who are the overwhelming majority of the readers of Makor Rishon), due to the numerous sites connected to the lives of leading renowned Orthodox rabbis, such as the Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Chaim Ozer Grodzenski and Rav Kook, as well as sites of famous yeshivas, such as Slobodka, Panevitch and Telz.

But what about the elephant in the room? Shnebel mentioned to his host, Vilna Deputy Mayor Tomas Gablinas, that Israelis think that the Lithuanians occasionally collaborated too closely with the Nazis, as if this was just an opinion of some and not an established fact.

Gablinas totally ignored it and proceeded, according to Shnebel, to tell his guest about the contemporary efforts of the government to combat anti-Semitism and their success in changing the name of a street previously named for a Lithuanian political leader who supported Hitler. Ever the polite guest, Shnebel dropped the subject and missed an opportunity to deliver an important message.

More recently, this past Friday, The Jerusalem Post devoted two pages of its Magazine to an interview with Latvian deputy chairman of the Riga City Council, Linda Ozola, who had come to Israel to attend the 17th International Conference on Innovation Crisis Management hosted by the Tel Aviv Municipality.

From the interview, we learned important facts about Latvia, all of which were patently false. First of all, the number of Latvian Jews murdered in the Holocaust was not 25,000, but 67,000, out of the 70,000 who lived in Latvia under the Nazis occupation, among the highest percentages of victims.

And that does not include the more than 30,000 Jews deported to Riga from Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia, only 4% of whom survived, and the thousands of Jews murdered in Minsk by the notorious Latvian Arajs Kommando murder squad.

According to the article, Latvia did not fight during World War II, a mistake that Ozola claimed would not be repeated in the future. That was not the reality, however, as there were two divisions of Latvian Waffen-SS created in 1943, which fought alongside the Nazis for a victory of the Third Reich, among whose men were former Latvian police who had actively participated in the mass murders of Latvian Jews.

A few months ago, in fact, Latvian Defense Minister Artis Pabriks claimed that those Latvians "are the pride of the Latvian people and the state," and books praising the Legionnaires are on sale in Riga International Airport. Unfortunately, Ozola was not challenged on any of these facts, or on her assertion that there is no antisemitism in Latvia, or about the rampant Holocaust distortion in Latvia.

Hopefully, the film J'Accuse, which was screened in Israel this past Holocaust Remembrance Day, as well as the other two films, will be shown here again and given wide publicity, to help educate the Israeli public, regarding the truth about what happened in the Holocaust in Lithuania and Latvia.

jpost.com

4. Siria regresa a la Liga Arabe con Arabia Saudita al mando

*/Los Ministros de Relaciones Exteriores de los miembros de la Liga Árabe el domingo pasado votaron en el Cairo el regreso de Siria a la hermandad y la diplomacia de la Liga./*

Siria ha sido reinstaurada como miembro de la Liga Árabe….

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/5/7/arab-league-agrees-to-bring-syria-back-into-its-fold

la cual se reunirá el día 19 de mayo en Riyadh. Luego de doce años de ausencia, Siria se encuentra en medio de la vía árabe de normalización política en la región. El motor regional: Arabia Saudita….

https://english-alarabia.net/News/saudi-arabia/2023/04/20/Saudi-Arabia-s-recent-economic-and-political-development-from-Iran-to-Syria-to-Yemen

y la visión del Príncipe de la Corona Mohammed bin Salman han asumido la posición central en las relaciones diplomáticas ante las persistentes crisis.

Los ministros de relaciones exteriores de los estados miembros de la Liga Árabe votaron en el Cairo el domingo pasado el regreso de Siria a la hermandad diplomática de la Liga.

Damasco ha sido el lugar de los recientes esfuerzos por la normalización. Jordania ha planteado una iniciativa para alcanzar un acuerdo político pacífico al conflicto en Siria. Las sublevaciones respaldadas por Occidente y los conflictos que han plagado el Medio Oriente y continúan haciéndolo. No obstante, existen indicios de cambio presentes a través de las arenas del desierto y los actores regionales están rechazando el status quo.

El ataque de Estados Unidos y la OTAN por cambio de régimen involucró a naciones árabes y occidentales como participantes, pero el plan falló. El conflicto armado planificado y ejecutado por el presidente Obama y el vicepresidente Biden mató a miles de personas y desplazó a millones de personas.

Posteriormente el terremoto del 6 de febrero pasado en Siria y Turquía, la restauración de los lazos con Damasco se inició con una descomunal respuesta árabe, incluyendo a los Emiratos Árabes Unidos y a Arabia Saudita los cuales montaron un puente aéreo para la muy necesitada ayuda para las víctimas del terremoto.

El restablecimiento gestionado por China de los vínculos entre Arabia Saudita e Irán fue un terremoto político en la región y estimuló la razón para que el Príncipe de la Corona, Mohammed bin Salman, que buscaba establecer la paz y la prosperidad en la región y alejarse de la interferencia occidental que ha sido la fuente de la agitación.

El Ministro de Relaciones exteriores saudita, Príncipe Faisal bin Farhan Al Saud visitó Damasco el día 18 de abril por primera vez en más de una década, con ambos países restableciendo embajadas y vuelos entre ellos.

El Ministro de Relaciones Exteriores de Siria, Faisal Mekdad, visitó el Reino justo unos días antes que el Príncipe Faisal visitara Damasco en un primer viaje desde el año 2011.

*Embajadas Extranjeras en Damasco*

Damasco hospeda a 44 embajadas….

https://www.embassypages.com/syria

y además existen 51 consulados. Muchos habían cerrado durante el conflicto en tanto las naciones occidentales y sus aliados árabes se habían alineado en contra de Siria en su fallido esfuerzo por derribar al gobierno secular y poner en su lugar a un miembro de la Hermandad Musulmana como aliado de Estados Unidos en Damasco.

Algunos países europeos nunca cerraron las puertas de sus embajadas en Damasco, tales como Austria, la República Checa, Grecia, la Santa Sede, Rumania, Serbia y Suecia.

Varias embajadas árabes también están abiertas en Damasco tales como los Emiratos Árabes Unidos, Bahrain, Sudán, Yémen y Omán. Arabia Saudita y Túnez declararon que ellos abrirán pronto sus embajadas en Damasco.

Los expertos esperan que pronto más embajadas sacudan el polvo de sus escritorios y reabran en tanto Damasco regrese a la vida, luego de más de una década de aislamiento.

*Siria y Arabia Saudita apoyan la causa palestina.*

Restablecer los derechos y el territorio del pueblo palestino ha sido desde hace mucho un pilar de la posición siria. Arabia Saudita también ha hecho énfasis en los derechos de los palestinos y el presidente palestino, Mahmud Abbas, el pasado 18 de abril visitó y se reunió con el Príncipe de la Corona, Mohammed bin Salman, para discutir los últimos eventos en el conflicto palestino-israelí.

Arabia Saudita denunció el asalto al recinto de la mezquita de al-Aqsa el día 5 de abril y rechazó las acciones que "socavan los esfuerzos de paz y contradicen los principios internacionales en torno al respeto a los recintos religiosos".

*Relaciones de China y Arabia Saudita*

El rey Salman bin Abdulaziz aprobó el Memorándum de Entendimiento que garantiza la condición de socio dialogante de Arabia Saudita en la Organización de Cooperación de Shanghai (SCO sigla en inglés) el pasado 28 de marzo.

La SCO es una organización Euroasiática política, económica de seguridad internacional y defensa. Entre sus miembros está la India, Kazajistán, Kirguistán, Rusia, Tayikistán, Paquistán y Uzbekistán con Irán listo para ingresar.

Arabia Saudita ha dependido durante décadas solo de Estados Unidos, pero ahora está abriendo sus horizontes hacia otros socios en la medida que el Reino marcha hacia el cumplimiento de su Visión 2030.

*Decisiones OPEP Sauditas*

Arabia Saudita y otros miembros productores de petróleo de la OPEP anunciaron recortes voluntarios a su producción el día 2 de abril. Ryhadh declaró que reduciría la producción en 500.000 barriles diarios a partir del mes de Mayo hasta finales del 2023.

Cuando el presidente de Estados Unidos, Joe Biden, visitó al Príncipe de la Corona, Mohammed bin Salman, le solicitó aumentar la producción de petróleo con el propósito de bajar el precio de la gasolina para los consumidores norteamericanos. No obstante, la decisión que se tomó fue la de mantener los niveles decididos durante la anterior reunión de la OPEP. Esta decisión desilusionó a Biden, pero fue luego que Biden hubiera hecho graves y falsas acusaciones contra el Príncipe de la Corona, Mohammed bin Salman en el pasado. Esto no sorprendió a nadie.

Durante los últimos dos meses el Príncipe de la Corona y altos diplomáticos sostuvieron reuniones de alto nivel con funcionarios norteamericanos, de Irán, Holanda, Egipto y China. Estas reuniones contribuyeron a marcar la posición diplomática del Mundo Árabe y solidificar la posición de Riyahd internacionalmente como una potencia en el Medio Oriente.

*Mirando hacia adelante al tiempo que hacia atrás al conflicto Sirio.*

En el mes de diciembre del 2012 la cuarta conferencia de los "Amigos del Pueblo Sirio"….

https://www.aljazeera.com/news//2012/12/12/friends-of-syria-recognise-opposition

inaugurada en Marruecos con la participación de más de cien delegados de gobierno que incluían a países como Estados Unidos, Francia, Gran Bretaña y a países del Golfo.

El ataque de Estados Unidos y la OTAN en contra de Siria a comienzos de marzo del 2011 por un cambio de régimen, creó la "Coalición Nacional Siria" (SNC sigla en inglés) que a través de los años ha sido alojada por Turquía y Qatar bajo la dirección de Estados Unidos. El gobierno sirio en Damasco fue considerado como ilegítimo y a la SNC se le brindó pleno reconocimiento político en la reunión del año 2012 en Marruecos como el único y legítimo representante del pueblo sirio.

La SNC tenía un brazo armado, también creado por Estados Unidos, a través de su programa Timber Sycamor de la CIA, que entrenaba, financiaba y armaba a hombres seguidores de la ideología de la Hermandad Musulmana con el propósito de establecer un Estado Islámico en Damasco, similar al proyecto de Estados Unidos en Egipto que con éxito instaló a Muhammed Mursi antes que fuera rechazado por el pueblo egipcio.

*El Ejército Libre Sirio*

En el año 2021 Daniel Wagner publicó….

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/dark-side-free-syrian_b_2380399

en el Huffpost desde Washington acerca del obscuro y tenebroso lado del FSA (sigla en inglés) apoyado por Estados Unidos. Wagner explicó cómo los medios de prensa occidentales y de Estados Unidos estaban glorificando al FSA como "luchadores por la libertad" mientras hacían la vista gorda a los crímenes de guerra y atrocidades que cometían. Los medios de prensa corporativa jugaron un rol evidente en el lavado cerebral del público europeo y norteamericano.

Aleppo, la capital industrial de Siria fue finalmente convertida en zona de guerra y como lo explica Wagner. "La razón principal por la que Aleppo fue atacada por el FSA es porque fue y sigue siendo apoyo para el gobierno. En respuesta el FSA ha estado actuando más bien como una fuerza opuesta a la ciudadanía de Siria y no una fuerza dedicada a asegurar su libertad. Por ejemplo, en el pasado reciente robó las reservas de trigo supuestamente para los residentes de Aleppo y las vendió a traficantes privados turcos, ha expropiado reservas farmacéuticas y forzosamente las ha revendido bajo presión a sus dueños y ha saqueado escuelas. Estas no son las acciones de una fuerza de liberación."

Al paso de los años la FSA llegó a su extinción y su socio Al Qaida finalmente se convirtió en ISIS. Estados Unidos y la OTAN quedaron apoyando a terroristas fuera de la ley, quienes además sostienen que estuvieron combatiendo en Irak y Afganistán, pero no en Siria.

Idlib sigue siendo la última provincia controlada por los terroristas dirigida por Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, anteriormente denominada Jibhat al-Nusra, anteriormente denominada Al Qaeda, dirigida por Mohammad al-Julani anteriormente ISIS. Este es el hombre que Estados Unidos continúa apoyando.

*Estados Unidos a un lado en el Medio Oriente*

Bill Burns, jefe de la CIA viajó a Arabia Saudita en el mes de abril en medio de gestiones que colocaron el Príncipe de la Corona, Mohammed bin Salman en el puesto de mando de los desarrollos políticos en el Medio Oriente. Ya no más dispuesto a ser un actor pasivo asumiendo directivas desde Washington sino ahora ocupando el sillón del director.

Estados Unidos ha rechazado el voto de la Liga Árabe para reinstalar a Siria y ha declarado que ellos siguen oponiéndose a cualquier reconstrucción de viviendas en Siria y que también se oponen al retorno del pueblo sirio viviendo en el exterior de regreso a sus propios hogares.

Estados Unidos y la OTAN exitosamente derribaron al líder libio Muammar Gadafi, quien será por siempre recordado mientras ocupaba un puesto en la mesa redonda de la Liga Árabe denunciando las directivas que cada participante recibió de parte de Washington DC., y emitiendo una profética advertencia en que un día Estados Unidos intentaría derribar a cada uno de los líderes participantes en la mesa redonda. Su discurso fue recibido con una carcajada. Pero ahora nadie se ríe.

Nota.- Sus comentarios y opiniones acerca de este artículo serán bienvenidos en

Traducción desde el inglés por Sergio R. Anacona

5. Far-Right Ukrainian Canadian Congress Urges Trudeau Government to Censor Anti-war Meetings and Activists

By James CLAYTON

The International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) is holding a meeting in Montreal this Thursday evening titled "The war in Ukraine and how to stop it." The meeting details are as follows:

Montreal: Thursday, April 13, at 6:30 p.m.

Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM)
Pavillon Hubert-Aquin, local A-2835 (2e étage)
400 Sainte-Catherine Est, H2L 2C5  (Near Métro Berri-UQAM)

* * *

The far-right nationalist Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) is pressing the federal government to censor and suppress anti-war meetings and actions on the basis of the fraudulent smear they constitute "anti-Ukrainian hate."

In recent weeks, the UCC has been meeting with and otherwise lobbying federal Public Safety Minister Marco Mendocino to demand the Liberal government "address" what it calls "the rising tide of anti-Ukrainian hate and violence targeting the Ukrainian Canadian community."

An 11-page "briefing" document handed over to Mendocino on March 13 outlines a series of demands for a state-led McCarthyite campaign aimed at silencing and effectively criminalizing any organization or individual who speaks out against the Ukraine war or challenges the pro-imperialist narrative justifying the US, Canada and their NATO allies waging war on Russia.

Specific UCC demands include that the government: "issue a public statement unequivocally condemning the rising pattern of hate-motivated attacks against the Ukrainian Canadian community and supporters of Ukraine" and "counter" any "disinformation" which "incites hatred against Ukrainians." The UCC also wants the government to mount a propaganda campaign to "educate" Canadians to recognize "state-sponsored" narratives and "online information that is intended to mislead," and is urging police give special attention to the supposed "rising incidence" of anti-Ukrainian "hatred" on university campuses, and that "hate crime training" be supplied to university security personnel.

Under Liberal and Conservative governments alike, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) has long had ready access to the corridors of power. Here Canadian Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland and Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal pose with a delegation of UCC leaders after meeting with them April 11, 2023. [Photo: UCC]

In a press release accompanying its briefing note, the UCC boasted that "the UCC leadership" has met with Mendicino "several times." In other words, the close partnership between the Canadian state and the far-right Ukrainian nationalists, which stretches back to the aftermath of World War II, is already working out ways to censor opposition to the war.

Despite its best efforts, the UCC could list in its briefing paper only 24 alleged "hate crimes" since the war's outbreak in February 2022. That the list includes public meetings opposing the US-NATO war on Russia not only points to its concocted character. It lays bare the sinister, anti-democratic purpose of the entire UCC campaign.

The real crime against the Ukrainian people is being perpetrated by the imperialist powers in Washington, Ottawa and the European capitals, ably assisted by their far-right nationalist accomplices, who are forcing tens of thousands of young Ukrainians to be massacred in a conflict aimed at subordinating Russia to the status of a semi-colony and seizing control of its rich natural resources. The imperialists have no interest in "democracy" or "sovereignty" in Ukraine, which the banks and major corporations intend to plunder no less ruthlessly after its population has been bled white by the war.

Two incidents among the UCC's alleged "hate crimes" involved anti-Nazi graffiti which sought to protest against, and draw attention to, the roots of the virulently anti-Russian and anti-communist Ukrainian nationalism espoused by the UCC and the western-aligned Ukrainian government in 20th century fascist movements. The graffiti protests also sought to point to the collaboration of Ukrainian nationalist leaders like Stepan Bandera and Roman Shukhevych, celebrated by the UCC and affiliated groups, in the crimes of the Third Reich.

Two additional incidents described as constituting "hate" were an anti-war political meeting at Carleton University in Ottawa and a Facebook post by a group at the University of Victoria in British Columbia that drew attention to the fascist pedigree of contemporary Ukrainian nationalist groups, including the Ukrainian military's Azov Battalion. The Carleton meeting was focused on pressuring the Trudeau Liberal government to press for peace talks with Russia to end the conflict.

Nine incidents involved expressions of support for the Russian side in the war, mostly by Canadians of Russian origin and often involving graffiti using the letter "Z," which has appeared on Russian military vehicles in Ukraine. A further six incidents described other acts of vandalism directed against Ukrainian nationalist symbols, such as Ukrainian flags being ripped down. Some allegations were based entirely on hearsay.

There were only three alleged violent incidents, including a suspected arson attempt against a Ukrainian priest in Victoria (double-counted in the UCC's list), threats of violence allegedly made in an online chatroom by a deranged individual, and a physical altercation between Ukrainian-Canadians and Russian-speaking immigrants in Edmonton.

Contrary to the UCC's portrayal of Canada facing a "rising tide" of "anti-Ukrainian hate," the reality in recent months has been that far-right Ukrainian nationalists, led by the UCC, have waged a systematic campaign of intimidation against any opposition to the war. At the Carleton University meeting cited by the UCC in its briefing document, the only threats were made by Ukrainian nationalists, who repeatedly sought to disrupt the event. In the days leading up to the meeting, they appealed to the university administration to ban it, based on the trumped up claim that Ukrainian and Ukrainian-Canadian students felt unsafe. During the meeting, repeated attempts were made to interrupt speakers and intimidate them. One of the speakers, the radical journalist Yves Engler, was accused of being a Russian puppet because he has been interviewed by the RT television network.

A similar experience was made by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE), the youth movement of the International Committee of the Fourth International, at the University of Waterloo. After coming under pressure from far-right Ukrainian nationalists, the university tried to cancel the IYSSE's room booking. The IYSSE responded with an open letter to the university published on the World Socialist Web Site and a public campaign that forced the administration to back down. At the event, a team of UCC affiliated activists sought to physically hinder participants from entering and tried unsuccessfully to disrupt the meeting once it was underway.

This record makes clear that if the UCC's recommendations were to be adopted, the systematic suppression of anti-war voices and actions would become quasi-official state policy—as it is in Ukraine, where all opposition political speech is banned and opponents of the war regularly confront physical violence and worse.

The UCC's censorship campaign closely resembles the attempts of the Zionist political establishment in Israel, their imperialist sponsors, and much of the western media to label any expressions of support for the oppressed Palestinians under Israeli occupation as "antisemitic hate speech." The political representatives of the Canadian ruling class have embraced this reactionary campaign with the adoption of the fraudulent IHRA definition of antisemitism. It has been used to attack left-wing critics of the Israeli regime, while ignoring and covering up both the growth of a fascist far-right in Israel and a resurgence internationally of antisemitism among the so-called MAGA Republicans and other far-right forces.

The UCC campaign gives expression to anxiety within the Canadian state and ruling class that political opposition to its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine is mounting in the working class, and that any public debate over the causes of the war and the aims being pursued by the NATO powers will quickly expose the western imperialist narrative of the war as a pack of distortions and lies.

As we extensively documented in our series "Canadian Imperialism's Fascist Friends," the UCC has long served, in a subordinate role, to advance the political imperatives of Canadian imperialism. Founded in 1940 as the "Ukrainian Canadian Committee" under the direct supervision of the Canadian state to support its aims in the Second World War, the UCC merged all of the right-wing, backward and reactionary elements of the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora. During the Cold War, the Canadian state cultivated the UCC as a right-wing political instrument in its fight against socialist influence in the Canadian working class at home.

Report from Oct 17, 1949, Winnipeg Tribune on how Ukrainian Nazi collaborators, recently arrived in Canada, attacked a public meeting of Ukrainian socialists in Winnipeg, while police stood by. [Photo: Winnipeg Tribune]

After World War II, in which Ukrainian nationalists collaborated extensively with Nazi Germany, including in the crimes of the Holocaust, the Canadian state admitted tens of thousands of Nazi collaborators, former members of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and of the Waffen SS Galizien Division, at the urging of the UCC, and over the loudly voiced objection of anti-fascist Ukrainian Canadians.

Following the Stalinist dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Canadian ruling elite redeployed the political descendants of the Ukrainian nationalist Nazi collaborators to assist in capitalist restoration. The nexus between far-right Ukrainian nationalists and the Canadian state grew ever stronger as Ukraine's geostrategic importance for the imperialist powers in their drive to subjugate Russia grew. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, the granddaughter of World War II Nazi collaborator Mikhailo Chomiak, editor of the fascist newspaper Krakivski Visti, personifies the political influence of the UCC within the Canadian state. This influence has expanded with the recent appointment of former UCC CEO Taras Zalusky to the position of Chief of Staff to Defense Minister Anita Anand. The UCC's most recent demands were doubtless coordinated with these officials, as they reinforce the Canadian state's war campaign.

The politically fraudulent campaign currently being waged by the UCC and the Canadian state is an attempt to smear all opposition to NATO's war as necessarily expressing support for the reactionary nationalist Putin regime, which represents the interests of the Russian oligarchy. The principled intervention of the World Socialist Web Site and the ICFI, which fights for the independent political mobilization of the working class in irreconcilable opposition to both sides in the war, demonstrates that the UCC's campaign is a filthy smear.

However, it is a filthy smear that is being readily embraced by Canada's universities and pro-war sections of the middle class. One example of this was a recent "study" of allegedly "pro-Russian" social media posts in which the notorious pro-war nationalist and apologist for Ukrainian and Estonian fascists, Marcus Kolga participated. The report, "Enemy of my Enemy" released by the Orwellian-named "Centre for Artificial Intelligence, Data and Conflict" and bearing the imprimatur of the universities of Regina and Maryland, seeks to label any and all critics of the war as Russian stooges.

These attempts by Canadian imperialism, and its openly declared stooges such as Kolga and the UCC, to smear and suppress opposition to the war must be vigorously opposed by the working class. This is possible only through the development of an international anti-war movement based upon an understanding of the historical origins of the present conflict and armed with a socialist program to put an end to the war and the capitalist system that has given rise to it.

wsws.org

6. The Final Durham Report: Democracy’s Horror Show

By Peter Van BUREN

Hillary knew. She knew her campaign paid for Russian disinformation (including the alleged pee tape accusations) to be washed through a report by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele. She knew the information was false but could potentially allow her to win the election. Hillary lied to the FBI about all this, and lied to the American public. Such was her appetite.

The FBI knew. They knew none of the information in the Steele Report could be corroborated, and they knew most of it was false. They turned a blind eye, purposefully and with the intent to defeat Donald Trump in the 2016 election, to basic investigative and tradecraft rules to use the corrupt information to surveil the Trump campaign via the FISA court. When Trump won the election anyway, the FBI continued to use this information to assault the loyalty and viability of President Trump and ultimately tried to use the information via the Robert Mueller investigation to impeach or indict Trump.

Only one person went to jail for all this, a minor player named Kevin Clinesmith for provided false info to the FISA court. No changes are planned for the FBI. No charges are to be brought against Hillary Clinton. The Deep State came within an eyelash of bringing down an unwanted president as surely as they are believed to have done in Dallas '63. Words were the weapon this time, not bullets.

These are the conclusions of the final Durham Report released last week.  The report was written by former Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who was chosen in 2019 to examine the FBI probe known as "Operation Crossfire Hurricane."  Durham provides the only comprehensive review of what came to be called Russiagate, and shows how close to the edge our democracy came to falling into the abyss at the hands of the Deep State. It all sounds dramatic, as those terms have been bandied about so often and in so many contexts they may have lost some of their meaning. But make no mistake about it — the FBI tried to shape the 2016 election and failing, tried to run Trump out of office. If you thought the "Hunter Biden Letter," the one signed by dozens of intelligence professionals calling the Biden Diaries potential Russian disinformation was just wrong, you should find the conclusions of the Durham report a horror show.

There was nothing true in the Steele Report, for example, this key paragraph: "Speaking in confidence to a compatriot in late July 2016, Source E, an ethnic Russian close associate of Republican US presidential candidate Donald TRUMP, admitted that there was a well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between them and the Russian leadership. This was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate's campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT, who was using foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries. The two sides had a mutual interest in defeating Democratic presidential candidate Hillary CLINTON, whom President PUTIN apparently both hated and feared."

The FBI had no intelligence about Trump or others associated with the Trump campaign being in contact with Russian intelligence beyond Steele. Despite being unvetted and uncorroborated and coming from a single source with direct political ties to Trump's opponent, the FBI used such accusations to justify a full-spectrum surveillance operation against the Trump campaign, the first known such operation in American history. The FBI omitted the fact from its FISA application that Carter Page was in fact not a Russian agent but a paid source for the CIA who had been vetted by the Agency as loyal and reliable. They just lied and even when the lie could not be ignored the FBI lied more times to keep the surveillance application alive before the FISA court.

Durham found investigators "ignored exculpatory evidence, put too much stock in information provided by Trump's political opponents, and carried out surveillance without genuinely believing there was probable cause to do so." "Throughout the duration of Crossfire Hurricane, facts and circumstances that were inconsistent with the premise that Trump and/or persons associated with the Trump campaign were involved in a collusive or conspiratorial relationship with the Russian government were ignored or simply assessed away," Durham wrote. The FBI acted "without appropriate objectivity or restraint in pursuing allegations of collusion or conspiracy between a U.S. political campaign and a foreign power."

It could not be more clear. The FBI knew what it was doing was wrong and did it anyway because the ends, defeating Trump, appeared to justify the means. No surprise, that has been the slogan behind every democratic election U.S. intelligence agencies have overthrown overseas, so why not follow the same logic when the tools of war came home to attempt to drive the 2016 election to Hillary Clinton.

We now know that almost all of the disinformation in the Steele Report came from one man, Igor Danchenko (whom the FBI had until 2011 investigated as a Russian spy.) Danchenko also fed disinfo to a Clinton supporter and registered foreign agent for Russia, Charles Dolan (who was known to but never interviewed by the FBI) to pass on the Steele to further obscure its origin. But according to the Durham report "The failure to identify the primary sub-source [Danchenko] early in the investigation's pursuit of FISA authority prevented the FBI from properly examining the possibility that some or much of the non-open source information contained in Steele's reporting was Russian disinformation (that wittingly or unwittingly was passed along to Steele), or that the reporting was otherwise not credible."

Everyone knew. The Durham Report confirms on August 3, 2016, the Russiagate allegations were briefed to President Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, and FBI Director James Comey by CIA Director John Brennan at an Oval Office meeting. None of the men briefed, and none of the agencies involved, did anything to intercede in the FBI's efforts alongside the Clinton Campaign to manufacture collusion between Trump and Russia. Indeed, everyone allowed the falsehoods to linger into the Mueller Report and when that document concluded publicly there was no collusion between Trump and the Kremlin, pivot the same pile of falsehoods to claim Trump somehow obstructed an investigation which actually exonerated him, concluding without indictment as it did.

As for the FBI, the Durham report brutally tells us "the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law." That they "displayed, at best, a cavalier attitude towards accuracy and completeness." That the Bureau "disregarded significant exculpatory information that should have prompted investigative restraint and re-examination… there were clear opportunities to have avoided the mistakes and to have prevented the damage resulting from their embrace of seriously flawed information that they failed to analyze and assess properly." And that "senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically affiliated persons and entities." That "important aspects of the Crossfire Hurricane matter were seriously deficient." The Report concludes "although recognizing that in hindsight much is clearer, much of this also seems to have been clear at the time." As for recommendations, the Report states "more training sessions would likely prove to be a fruitless exercise if the FBI's guiding principles of Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity are not engrained in the hearts and minds of those sworn to meet the FBI's mission of "Protect[ing]the American People and Uphold[ing] the Constitution of the United States."

Without the help of the FBI Russiagate would have been nothing but a flimsy Clinton campaign scam. Thus the Durham Report offers one over-arching implied conclusion: Be skeptical of the FBI and watch accusations of collusion and foreign interference closely around the 2024 election. Treason is indeed a twisty path.

wemeantwell.com

7. Taiwan’s Quest to Upgrade Its Battle Readiness Continues to Evolve

By John P. RUEHL

In early May 2023, a U.S. delegation consisting of 25 defense contractors arrived in Taiwan for a security summit, aimed to increase interoperability between the U.S. and Taiwanese militaries. It marks the latest step toward Taiwan's years-long efforts to strengthen its defense capabilities and pose credible deterrence to the Chinese military.

The military relationship between Taiwan and the U.S. expanded significantly during the Trump administration. Washington approved major arms sales, increased cooperation with the Taiwanese military, and conducted more naval patrols in the Taiwan Strait to emphasize the U.S. position on Taiwan. During the Biden administration, it was revealed that dozens of U.S. military personnel were training Taiwanese forces on the island since at least 2020, numbers which have increased since.

And while conscription was previously considered an outdated military policy characteristic of the Cold War, the war in Ukraine has reversed this notion. Taiwan's attempted transition to Western-style volunteer force in previous years now appears far less credible in being able to realistically oppose the Chinese military, and Taiwan's government has since reverted to upholding its military reserve system.

But though Taiwan's 1.7 million reservists appear to form a formidable challenge to China's roughly 2 million active military personnel, Taiwan's forces largely exist only on paper. Its military currently only has 169,000active military members and an estimated 300,000 combat-ready reservists, according to Wang Ting-yu of Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

The Taiwanese government was therefore quick to explore increasing training times for reservists after the outbreak of war in Ukraine, and in December 2022 lengthened conscription from four months to one year, bringing praise from the U.S. By boosting pay and training, the Taiwanese government hopes to bolster its forces and bring it closer to South Korea's 18-month compulsory military service.

But China's population of 1.4 billion dwarfs Taiwan's mere 23 million, meaning additional Taiwanese conscription initiatives are futile if China resorts to additional conscription as well. Taiwan's $19 billion defense budget also pales in comparison to the $230 billion spent by Beijing.

Washington's hypothetical efforts to resupply the relatively isolated island of Taiwan during a conflict would meanwhile prove far more difficult than the ongoing Western effort to assist Ukraine. While stockpiling weapons could partially negate this issue, a prolonged conflict or blockade of Taiwan by China would steadily diminish Taiwan's ability to continue fighting.

With the inherent disadvantages of the Taiwanese armed forces and the unwillingness of even the U.S. to officially commit to the island's defense, Taiwan's government has explored increasing engagement with the private sphere to ensure its security. The May 2023 U.S. contractors' visit was just part of Taiwan's recent efforts to increase engagement with both domestic and foreign private military firms.

Before the breakout of conflict in Ukraine in 2022, Taiwan had taken incremental steps toward greater privatization in its defense sector, such as privatizing the state aircraft manufacturer Aerospace Industrial Development Corporation in 2014.

However, the war in Ukraine completely altered the Taiwanese government's view of private war. Russian private military and security companies (PMSCs) have been active in Ukraine since 2014, while the Russian PMSC known as Wagner has played an essential part in the war and in Russian propaganda. Various Western and Russian PMSCs are also fighting in Ukraine, while Chinese civilian drones have been used to great effect by both sides.

The Taiwanese government has since taken significant steps in engaging with Taiwan's private sector to increase drone production. But more notable are the proposed changes to the Private Security Services Act, which regulates PMSCs operating in Taiwan, early into the war. Taipei has various types of private services to consider, such as those providing security, consulting, and training services, intelligence gathering, logistics support, and cyber and maritime security.

Enoch Wu, a politician from Taiwan's Democratic Progressive Party and a former special operations soldier, founded the security and civilian defense organization Forward Alliance in 2020. Alongside programs to treat injuries and respond to crises, Forward Alliance's combat training programs expanded significantly following the outbreak of war in Ukraine. The number of Taiwanese private programs run by various companies "specializing in urban warfare and firearms training" has also increased since the start of the war, according to Voice of America.

In September 2022, Taiwanese entrepreneur Robert Tsao pledged to spend $100 million training 3 million soldiers over three years in the Kuma Academy (also known as the Black Bear Academy). While his claims are ambitious, Russian billionaire Yevgeny Prigozhin's financing of Wagner has already played an integral role in the war in Ukraine, at the same time drastically increasing his stature in Russia and notoriety abroad.

Due to its own limited industry, any Taiwanese effort to promote greater military cooperation with the private sphere would require Western assistance. The U.S. scrapped its mutual defense treaty with Taiwan in 1979 to normalize relations with China but the Taiwan Relations Act enables the U.S. to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself, and privatization could make it easier for the West to support the Taiwanese military. Alongside weapons deals, Western PMSCs like G4S have been active in Taiwan for more than two decades and could quickly expand their operations on the island.

Greater cooperation with Western PMSCs may not be able to help Taiwan repel a Chinese assault. But they could complement Taiwanese military efforts to create a volunteer force modeled on Ukraine's Territorial Defense Force and advocated by former Taiwanese defense chief Admiral Lee Hsi-min. The U.S. has explored developing guerilla forces in the Baltic Statesto harass Russian forces if they were to invade, and growing the multiple private initiatives already underway in Taiwan could form a powerful guerilla network that could remain active even if Taiwan's military is forced to stand down.

But committing to privatization has its own consequences for Taiwan. The role of Chinese PMSCs abroad has grown significantly over the last few years, with an estimated 20 to 40 Chinese active largely to guard Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure projects. However, China's 7,000-plus PSMCs operating domestically "suggests ample opportunity for the future growth of internationally active" Chinese firms according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. And, while Chinese law prohibits them from using force abroad except for defense, Beijing's assertion that Taiwan is part of China's territory could erode legal and political barriers to using them.

In recent years, China has also deputized maritime militias of fishing boats to swarm parts of the South China Sea and establish control over certain areas. By collaborating with Chinese PMSCs, these militias could even avoid Taiwan and surround the Kinmen, Matsu, or uninhabited Pratas islands. Although these islands are claimed by Taiwan, they are geographically closer to China. This could be justified on the grounds of economic interests or security concerns. The use of these fishing militias to harass Taiwan could make up for significant underdevelopment in Chinese PMSC capabilities and help China to avoid using its official military forces.

The scale of cooperation between the Taiwanese government and private military actors is so far limited. But Taiwan's manpower shortages and lack of official military and diplomatic ties have made the prospect of private military assistance far more attractive. The lack of international regulationssustaining Taiwan's recent increased engagement with the private military sphere, however, will further encourage China to respond in kind.

Ukrainian oligarchs had turned to PMSCs to protect their assets in Ukraine after 2014, while Ukraine has come to heavily lean on foreign PMSCs to supplement the war effort. Wagner and other Russian PMSCs have meanwhile grown in importance to Russian military efforts in Ukraine as well. The growing power of PMSCs in Ukraine, as well as worldwide, suggests further military privatization of the dispute over Taiwan may be inevitable.

Globetrotter via counterpunch.org

8. Let the Sunshine in With the Age of the Post-Truth

The pseudo-democratic doctrine undoubtedly will bear some part of the blame for the moral and cultural demise facing the US, which will most probably take the whole Western world down with it.

According to the dictionary, post-truth refers to a situation in which people are more likely to accept an argument based on their emotions and beliefs, rather than one based on facts.

I myself remember when only a few years ago in 2016 the word was selected to be the word of the year by Oxford English Dictionary. 'After much discussion, debate, and research, the Oxford Dictionaries Word of the Year 2016 is… post-truth. Why was this chosen? The concept of post-truth has been in existence for the past decade, but Oxford Dictionaries has seen a spike in frequency this year in the context of the EU referendum in the United Kingdom and the presidential election in the United States. It has also become associated with a particular noun, in the phrase post-truth politics.' Cambridge English Dictionary says that the post-truth is an adjective defined as 'relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief'.

And who would have thought that it has taken just a few years, if any, to come to the situation of having to deal with an avalanche of disinformation, fake news and 'cancel culture' in its wake.

I shall endeavour to paraphrase a paragraph from the book Disinformation by Vladimir Volkov (Volkov, 2001) 'Disinformation is the manipulation of public opinion for political gains, by way of the information processed in a 'roundabout' way . The definition of disinformation by Merriam Webster Dictionary is : 'false information deliberately and often covertly spread (as by planting rumors) in order to influence public opinion or obscure the truth. They include false information which are spread with the intention of deceiving others. Paradoxically, they also include the false information with the intention to be used as propaganda which the government and/or non- government organizations aim at their rivals and bitter opponents or media.

The issue of disinformation and misinformation are worrying indeed. It is so much so that UNESCO published a handbook, in which it naively (whilst turning a blind eye to the real issue at hand) endeavours to 'educate' journalists how to find their way in the 'sea' of disinformation. This UNESCO manual appears to be trying to instil the 'right' values into the minds of the journalists given that the social media are slowly turning into the biggest source of disinformation per se. They go on to relay that the reporters will most definitely turn into the unsung heroes of our time, the jobs of whom will be to be trained (by the UNESCO 'experts' apparently) and bring much sought-after order into the utter chaos of the social media. (and all of us 'lucky mortals' are supposed to extol them to eternity, are we not?). In reality, we do need some reality check though, since 'denial is a dangerous thing', psychologists warn.

Dr Slobodan Reljic, a Serbian sociologist and a media critique expert, recommends that we get back to Robert W. MacChesny, notable for his book Farewell to Journalism. In his writings, Derick Jensen said in his discussion with MacChesny 'Upon the collapse of the USSR I read in the papers that Russia was going through the process of leaving Communism behind and opting for democracy. I thought at that moment that the journalists were routinely substituting the word democracy for capitalism' Robert MacChesny replied: 'To use these two words in correlation is construction ridden with ideology, because if we put them at the same footing, it renders the debate on anti- democratic implications of our capitalist society impossible. And if one cannot discuss these implications, they cannot move to the next logical step: 'taking action to preserve democracy' Jensen then asked: 'How do capitalism and democracy coexist?' MacChesny responded : 'Societies can evidently be both capitalistic and democratic, but there will always be a huge tension between them and the limitations of one or the other, or both. The stronger the capitalistic values are, the less democratic they become.'

A society needs three things to have a sustainable, functional democracy:

a) People should have certain level of equality. One has to believe, regardless of the level of poverty a person lives in, that they have the same level of decision-making available even the same as anybody up the societal ladder. If you do not find this credible or you do not believe that, you do not live in a democracy.

b) People have to be informed about the issues which means they have to be provided a series of high-quality information and opinions together with relentless accountability of the people and institutions in power there is. These are the tools which enable people to join the public debate, to make well-grounded decisions and manage their private and professional lives accordingly. If one does not have any access to such tools i.e. if your media systems do not make them easily available – your ability to have genuine functional democracy declines.

c) For each society to function and indeed for democracy to function – there should be belief that your happiness, your destiny and your role in society are interdependent with that of your neighbours. The whole societal fabric would disentangle unless you do not place trust in your immediate community. Democracy is based on such beliefs, whereas capitalism promotes inequality and the struggle for survival of an individual.

Jensen goes on to argue that everybody knows that but journalists cannot get themselves to admit this because it would not be in their employers' interests.

The West used to and still consider themselves as individualistic societies and an epitome of the free world. Though, I firmly believe that we fail to fully understand that we, the alleged free individuals of the democratic West, are all subject to manipulation of the business and/or commercial decisions of 'business tycoons and media moguls'. Aldous Huxley's babbling machines come to mind whenever we get snowed under with ubiquitous TV commercials and billboards all around with their profoundly subliminal messaging to be propagated ad nauseam.

Jacques Ellul argued that the reckless consumerism and endless spending sprees of the Western society will sound its death knell. And while the modern man floats in this imposed opulence of material resources, he/she becomes aware that ubiquitous media advertising with its devious manipulations is not deprived of the hidden political agenda at all. It has the same role as the political slogans elsewhere in what some perceive as the 'undemocratic' world of the said 'odious Communism'.

Vance Packard famously wrote in his Hidden Persuaders that many allegedly scientific institutes exclusively carry out research of this extremely useless cyclical process of overspending and extreme consumption which have the frighteningly staggering increase in human needs as a consequence.

When Timothy Garton Ash who was such a 'passionate' advocate of 'democratization' of the Eastern Bloc in the wake of the Downfall of the Berlin Wall, flew all the way to Gdansk, Poland, to see the remains of the aftermath of the Fall of the Iron Curtain in 2019, the sight there was a profound disappointment. The East that fell headlong into the open arms of the Western slavery was in fact utter and complete misery in material terms and degrading in humane terms. And of course, the mainstream media in charge of the massive hypnosis called Western disinformation to keep the gullible masses at a safe distance from the truth, by way of false statistics, endless (bogus) political games under the guise of democracy, the terror perpetrated by the human rights pressure groups etc. Ash stated that when he arrived in Gdansk, Poland in 2019, where the hard-working shipyard labourers won their victories against the raging machine of the 'evil' Communism, he found neither the shipyards nor those gleefully triumphant winners.'

Everything was a big lie from the very beginning of the total destruction of the previous (Communism) societal order. The myth of 'a kind and generous invader' was sold to the desperate masses at this end of the Iron Curtain. This reminds me of a somewhat sad though humorously sarcastic observation by Igor Ivanovic, a Serbian thinker and an entrepreneur in his book 'The West and the Occupation' : 'A modern, revolutionary Man, aided by modern-day technology and by way of the spoon-fed mainstream media lies won his/her liberty and in so doing proclaimed it by an official decree! Thus, the modern Man demands the life of luxury as the fruit of his/her revolution already hard won (against the Communism) on the platter packed with plentiful privileges!

'I would assume that the contours of the post-truth age of today began even then, the alleged paradigm shift in the role of the media in the Eastern Bloc in Europe was normally referred to as 'the political transition' and it involved the national media as well, ended up in the privatization which sadly has not brought about any greater freedoms on the part of the state/government which were brutally stripped of their own ( state, national) media, but it brutally cancelled and demolished all the room for manoeuvre in between for the potential protection of journalists themselves and the independence of the media which did exist during the time when the media were in effect owned by the state. The state/ the government back in the day in the allegedly 'notorious' Communism/ Socialism Era did represent the public interest at least to some decent extent.

Paradoxically, Reljic argues, a high number of privatized media is funded from the national budgets but the funds are allocated to the private owners so as to relinquish themselves from any sort of mutiny among the journalists. This is the final stage of brutal culling any freedom of speech on the part of the journalist and an introduction into the process of total disinformation.

These arguments somehow naturally lead me to another journalist. This time it is about the late Udo Ulfkotte and his 'true to the bone' book Journalists for hire in which he writes:

'In such a case, one is expected to deliver a certain kind of reporting. Which one? Forget about my news agency. This is to do with all of them in general. At the outset of the journey, a reporter is given a set of directions as to what to ask, how to communicate. Normally, you are not told what to say and ask, to write something in this way or that way but you are painfully aware that if you do not do that in such and such a way, you will not be invited next time. Your media company will be called to tell them that you are not wanted. And then you are out! Those in charge of the cooperation with the media are the non-government "think thanks," those foundations and organizations which arguably are "independent" in the same way that independent journalists supposedly are.'

To get back to Timothy Garton Ash, it all began with the alluring political slogans and it ended up in the suicidal quicksand of not being given any choice. If you disregard the moaning by Ash, one can still remember the vivid image of the misery of the transition in the Eastern bloc. Let me paraphrase what Ash writes: 'In Central Europe, they have developed not only market economy but the 'market (orientated) society' in which a superior spirit of individualism and competition reign supreme'.

As a notable scholar famously responded when he was confronted by a mainstream media journalist that there is freedom of speech and freedom of opinion in the U.S., because 'you are speaking your mind and I am, too', the other one replied: 'Yes, but you are speaking out loud what your corporate bosses want you to tell. I am telling out loud what I truly believe'.

A rational, well-balanced observer in the very same Western world comes to realise one particular paradox. After the Downfall of the Berlin Wall (1989) and the massive 'spill over' effect of the 'Western' values to the East(ern Bloc), the paradox becomes universal. The danger for the mankind to become indoctrinated with the false system of values in which one cunningly invented system of manipulation impedes an individual to create and fulfil their potential is reasonably certain and self-evident. And never before have the huge masses of people been so divided into such miniature ethnic groups and never before has the hypnotic effects of suggestive manipulation been so effective and never before have the media manipulators had such good advertising techniques created by scientific experimentation and never before have they possessed such powerfully 'suggestive' mass media as today.

In such a deeply altered society the moral and professional duty to say, write or present the truth would melt into a loose structure beyond recognition in line with the shrewdly invented systems of manipulation in accordance to the requests (diktats) of the media moguls.

And what seems to be the paradox? – another thinker, Konrad Lorenz, wondered in his Civilized Man's Eight Deadly Sins as early as 1972. That pseudo-democratic doctrine undoubtedly will bear some part of the blame for the moral and cultural demise facing the US, which will most probably take the whole Western world down with it.

9. EU’s Voluntary Disinformation Code Is Compulsory: Obey or Die

Though Musk is still playing at being NATO's token non-conformist, the EU is essentially telling him and all of us that any dissent from its Russophobic, Slavophobic and Sinophobic narratives will be severely punished.

The European Union's enforcers have told Twitter owner Elon Musk that the EU's voluntary information code is not voluntary and that the EU will fine the pants off Twitter if Musk does not play by NATO's self-serving rules. Though Musk is still playing at being NATO's token non-conformist, the EU is essentially telling him and all of us that any dissent from its Russophobic, Slavophobic and Sinophobic narratives will be severely punished.

From the point of view of von der Leyen and NATO's other EU puppets, that makes absolutely perfect sense. As legacy media's active shelf life is fast expiring, that just leaves the EU with alternative media to kill off with massive fines in Twitter's case or, more generally, by crowding out and muzzling any and all truth tellers.

Look at the treatment being meted out to Pink Floyd's Roger Waters, a life-long anti-fascist, whose father was killed in action fighting the Nazis but which the usual suspects, led as always by the BBC and the Guardian, are trying to ban for supposedly being a Jew-hating Nazi simply because of his support for Palestinian rights, for Julian Assange and for being stupid enough to still be doing live concerts with those unreconstructed views, as he touches 80 years of age.

The EU's code Waters and Musk are falling foul of "aims to prevent profiteering from disinformation and fake news, as well as increasing transparency and curbing the spread of bots and fake accounts".

By disinformation, in addition to Waters, von der Leyen's thugs mean the work of folk like our own excellent Stephen Karganovic, who is not only a quality thinker and writer, but is on every EU and NATO hit list imaginable because he speaks his truths to their power. And others like Fyodor Lukyanov and Timur Fomenko, who file excellent analytical copy for Russia Today which, with this site, is subject to a string of sanctions and name-calling that are as libellous and ignorant as those these EU and NATO morons throw at Waters or any other of their betters.

The objective in labelling SCF, Russia Today, Waters and even Masha and Mishka as dis-information is to control the common space and not to give the ideas of heretics like Jeremy Corbyn, Robert F Kennedy Junior or their type space to survive.

With fake news, the EU is primarily concerned with folk who expose their crimes, family folk like Roger Waters and Julian Assange, who has now done the equivalent of a life tariff for exposing the tiniest fracton of the war crimes the Yanks committed in Iraq, crimes which, remember, included the gang rape of little girls by these harbingers of US-style democracy.

And then there is Gonzalo Lira, who is in the worst of all places, in Ukraine, whose soldiers rape corpses, and whose politicians ban all opposition parties, all opposition media and all religions that do not worship their utterly corrupt system but yet, as the corpse rapists do God knows what to Gonzalo Lira in God knows where, Ukraine has seen its ranking in NATO's Press Freedom and Transparency Indexes soar like an American bald eagle that is oblivious to the stench below. The Nazi rump Reich is, the EU's disinformation experts proclaim, the land of the free and the land of the brave, even as it is hell on earth for Lira and millions of Zelensky's other victims.

The torture of Assange and Lira has silenced countless others and thereby made way for NATO's own quack journalists to fill the void with their own fake news, which was presented to us up till recently by sexual predators like Philip Schofield, ITV's equivalent of the BBC's Jimmy Savile.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but corrupt countries and institutions that elevate Jimmy Saville, Philip Schofield, Ghislaine Maxwell, Lord Boothby, Tom Driberg MP, Jeffrey Epstein, Sir Ted Heath, Cyril Smith, Karim Ahmad Khan, Imran Ahmad Khan and Prince Andrew to positions of power and authority are not in a position to lecture to anyone on transparency or to spin their fake news line on their own terrorist attack on Nordstream.

As regards bots and fake accounts, that smear should have died a death with the end of Russiagate, one of a number of massive CIA/EU efforts to disseminate fake news and opaqueness through their own bots and fake accounts.

But why, the Clinton, Biden, Obama and other organised crime families would ask, re-invent the wheel, when the old smears NATO's media spin work as well as ever?

What we have with all these rafts of EU laws, fines, sanctions, bluster and bluff is a sort of NATO Cosplay, where von der Leyen and her fellow Cosplay conspirators get to moralise, whilst the Biden, Kerry and Pelosi families get to sprinkle Ukraine with enough bio labs to take out half of Europe's population, and the New York Post, the only media outlet that reported on the crimes Hunter Biden's laptop revealed, gets banned and harassed by the FBI goon squads.

Von der Leyen's Digital Services Act will further criminalise offensive humour such as comparing French dictator Macron to Hitler (though Waters will remain fair game). Some 19 companies, including Alphabet's Google Maps, Google Play, Google Search, Google Shopping, YouTube, Meta's Facebook and Instagram, Amazon's Marketplace, Apple's App Store, Twitter, Microsoft's two units LinkedIn and Bing, booking.com, Pinterest, Snap Inc's Snapchat, TikTok, Wikipedia, Zalando, and Alibaba's AliExpress will all have to obey von der Leyen's diktats "to make the internet safer" by erasing so-called disinformation in whatever way von der Leyen and her fellow plagiarists decide to define it from one moment to the next.

Not that war is their only earner needing the censor's protection. Over 3,400 peer-reviewed papers questioning NATO's Covid narrative have also been sidelined and ignored. Fake news, Russian propaganda, dis-information or some such stuff. I am one of many who did not take the vaccine von der Leyen's husband made a fortune pimping. And I am glad I didn't fall for their dancing nurses and their relentless marketing, irrespective of whether they were peddling fake news with their fake vaccines or not. I have no idea whether those vaccines are effective or not. I am not qualified to opine.

But what I do know is this. There are large groups of American and European politicians, like American fugitive Lindsey Graham who have been promoted because, thick as bricks though they are, they are sufficiently spineless to pimp the wars, vaccines and other societal wrecking balls those who fund and control them are selling.

Speaking of war, NATO and KFOR mercenaries have just slaughtered a bunch of Serbs in Zvecan (northern Kosovo). Though I look forward with interest to getting a proper analysis of this latest NATO war crime from Fyodor Lukyanov, Timur Fomenko and our own excellent Stephen Karganovic, I do know that not only will their take be totally at odds with that of the EU's semi-literate fact-checkers but that Russia Today and Karganovic will be much nearer to the truth than any of von der Leyen's minions could ever be because those EU yellow packs are groomed to paint over and hide the crimes against Serbs and Palestinians this article and a thousand others on this site draw attention to.

10. NATO: Naval Strength

This infographic shows NATO countries' naval strength.

(Click on the image to enlarge)