US will smash your windows and burn your house down for no reason except to show you who’s boss. “Omerta in the Gangster War”-Diana Johnstone…(Will someone please stop US?)

 .

“The vanity of US misleadership is the most deadly force on the planet. Most of the world is painfully aware. The foolish Europeans seem incapable of learning.”…“Let the Americans experience a war on their own territory-let them experience all the suffering that comes with war.”…March 16, 2022, commenters to another Diana Johnstone article

9/22/22, “DIANA JOHNSTONE: Omerta in the Gangster War,” Special to Consortium News

[Omerta: “a code of silence about criminal activity and a refusal to give evidence to authorities.”]

“The sabotage of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline has virtually announced that the war in Ukraine can only intensify with no end in sight.”

Image: "Crew from the LVNS Talivaldis performing mine countermeasures training in the Baltic Sea during during the annual BALTOPS maritime exercise in June 2020. (NATO)"

 ..........

“Imperialist wars are waged to conquer lands, peoples, territories. Gangster wars are waged to remove competitors. In gangster wars you issue an obscure warning, then you smash the windows or burn the place down.

Gangster war is what you wage when you already are the boss

and won’t let any outsider

muscle in on your territory. 

For the dons in Washington, the territory can be just about everywhere, but

its core is occupied Europe. 

By an uncanny coincidence, Joe Biden just happens to look like a mafia boss, to talk like a mafia boss, to wear a little lopsided half smile like a mafia boss. Just watch the now famous video:

Pres. Biden: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since…the project is in Germany’s control?”

Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.”

[Strongman Biden to Ukrainians, 2016: “I said, I’m telling you, you’re not getting the billion [US taxpayer] dollars. I looked at them and said: I’m leaving in six hours. If the prosecutor [Shokin] is not fired, you’re not getting the money. Well, son of a bitch. (Laughter) He got fired.”]

Able for sure.

It cost billions of dollars to lay the Nord Stream 2 pipeline across the Baltic Sea, from near Saint Petersburg to the port of Greifsfeld in Germany. The idea was to ensure safe natural gas supplies to Germany and other European partners by going around troublesome Ukraine, known for readiness to use its transit rights to siphon off gas for itself or blackmail clients.

Nord Stream 2 area map. (Berria Egunkaria, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons)

Of course, Ukraine was always vehemently hostile to the project. So was the United States. And so were Poland, the three Baltic States, Finland and Sweden, all attentive to what went on in their sea.

The Baltic Sea is a nearly closed body of water,

with narrow access to the Atlantic

through Danish and Swedish straits.

The waters near the Danish island of Bornholm where the Nord Stream pipelines

were sabotaged by massive underwater explosions

is under constant military surveillance by these neighbors.

“It seems completely impossible that a state actor could carry out a major naval operation

in the middle of this densely monitored area without being noticed by the countless active and passive sensors of the littoral states; certainly not directly off the island of Bornholm, where Danes, Swedes and Germans have a rendezvous in monitoring the surface and undersea activities,” writes Jens Berger in the excellent German website Nachdenkseiten.

Last June [2022], Berger reports, 

“the annual NATO maneuver Baltops took place in the Baltic Sea.

Under the command of the U.S. 6th Fleet,

47 warships participated in the exercise this year,

including the U.S. fleet force around the helicopter carrier USS Kearsarge. Of particular significance is one particular maneuver conducted by the

6th Fleet’s Task Force 68–a special unit

for explosive ordnance disposal and underwater operations

of the U.S. Marines,

the very unit that would be the first address for an act of sabotage on an undersea pipeline.”

In June this year this very unit was engaged in a maneuver off the island of Bornholm, operating with unmanned underwater vehicles.

Berger considers that a major sabotage operation “could not have been carried out directly under the noses of several littoral states without anyone noticing.”  But he adds this clever observation: “if you want to hide something, it is best to do so in public.”

In order to be able to attach explosive devices to a gas pipeline halfway unnoticed, one would need a plausible distraction —

a reason for diving near Bornholm

without immediately being suspected of committing an act of sabotage. It doesn’t even have to be directly related in time to the attacks.

Modern explosive devices

can, of course, be detonated remotely.

So, who has been conducting such operations in the maritime area in recent weeks? As luck would have it,

exactly the same task force around the USS Kearsarge

was again in the sea area around Bornholm

last week.

In short, during NATO maneuvers, some participant could have laid the explosives,

to be blown up at a later chosen moment.

By an odd coincidence, only a few hours after the sabotage of Nord Stream 1 and 2, ceremonies began

opening the new Baltic Pipe carrying gas from Norway to Denmark and Poland. 

The Political Significance of the Sabotage

A Royal Marine commando briefs Royal Marines, U.S. Marines, Royal Navy personnel and Singaporean observers in the vehicle deck of HMS Ocean (U.K.) during BALTOPS 2016. (NATO)

Due to Western sanctions against Russia,

gas was not being delivered through the destroyed pipelines. However,

gas inside the pipelines is leaking dangerously.

The pipelines remained ready for use whenever an agreement could be reached. And the first, dramatic significance of the sabotage is that

henceforth, no agreement can be reached. 

Nord Stream 2 would have been the key

to some sort of settlement between Russia and the Europeans.  The sabotage has virtually announced that

the war can only intensify with no end in sight.

In Germany, the Czech Republic and some other countries,

movements were beginning to grow

calling for an end to the sanctions,

specifically to solve the energy crisis by putting Nord Stream 2 into operation for the first time. The sabotage has thus

invalidated the leading demand of potential peace movements

in Germany and Europe.

This act of sabotage is above all

a deliberate sabotage

of any prospect of a negotiated peace in Europe.

The next move from the West has been for NATO governments

to call on all their citizens to leave Russia immediately. 

In preparation of what?

The Russians Did It

In this catastrophic situation, Western mainstream media are all

wondering who could be the guilty party, and suspicion automatically fixes on… Russia. 

Motive?

“To raise the price of gas” or “to destabilize Europe” — things

that were happening anyway.

Any far-fetched notion will do.

European opinion-makers are showing the result of

70 years of Americanization. 

Especially in Germany,

but also in France and elsewhere, for decades the United States has systematically spotted up-and-coming young people, invited them to become “young leaders,” invited them to the United States, indoctrinated them

in “our values”

and made them feel like members of

the great trans-Atlantic family. 

Image: “Crew member from the LVNS Talivaldis in the operations room, controlling and tracking the movement of the underwater robot during the BALTOPS maritime exercise in June 2020. (NATO)”

They are networked into top positions in politics and media. In recent years, great alarm is raised about alleged Russian efforts to exert “influence” in European countries, while Europeans bathe in perpetual American influence: movies, Netflix, pop culture, influence in universities, media, everywhere.

When disaster strikes Europe,

it can’t be blamed on America

(except for former President Donald Trump, because the American establishment despised and rejected him, so Europeans must do the same).

It has to be the bad guy in the movie, Putin.  

The fanatically anti-Russian former Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorsky couldn’t restrain himself and joyously greeted the massive natural-gas leaks from the destroyed pipeline

with a cheerful tweet, “Thank you, USA.”

But Poland was certainly also willing, and perhaps even able.  So perhaps were some others in NATO-land.

But they all prefer to publicly “suspect” Russia.

Officially, so far, no NATO government knows who dunnit. Or maybe they all know. Maybe this is like the famous Agatha Christie mystery on the Orient Express train, where suspicion falls on all the passengers,

and are all guilty. And all united in Omerta.”

…………………………………..

“Diana Johnstone is the author of Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, NATO, and Western Delusions. Her latest book is  Circle in the Darkness: Memoirs of a World Watcher (Clarity Press). The memoirs of Diana Johnstone’s father Paul H. Johnstone, From MAD to Madness, was published by Clarity Press, with her commentary. She can be reached at diana.johnstone@wanadoo.fr .

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.”

…………………………………………………:

6/6/2022: 7000 sailors: “NATO kicked off nearly a two-week United States-led naval exercise on the Baltic Sea

 on Sunday

with more than 7,000 sailors,

airmen and marines

from 16 nations,

including two aspiring to join the military alliance, Finland and Sweden.”…AP

...................

 

Courtesy of US taxpayers, terror attack by ‘rules based’ infants on energy infrastructure in international waters signals collapse of international law and permanent status of Germany as US vassal-Pepe Escobar

 .

Disabling the Nord Stream pipelines has “the added benefit of relegating Germany to the lowly status of absolute US vassal.”

9/28/22, “Germany and EU have been handed over a declaration of war," presstv, Pepe Escobar

“The sabotage of the Nord Stream (NS) and Nord Stream 2 (NS2) pipelines in the Baltic Sea has ominously propelled ‘Disaster Capitalism’ to a whole new, toxic level.

This episode of Hybrid Industrial/Commercial War,

in the form of

a terror attack against energy infrastructure

in international waters

signals

the absolute collapse of international law,

drowned by a

“our way or the highway”,

“rules-based”, order.

The attack on both pipelines consisted of multiple explosive charges detonated in separate branches close to the Danish island of Bornholm, but

in international waters.  

That was a sophisticated operation, carried out in stealth in the shallow depth of the Danish straits. That would in principle rule out submarines (ships entering the Baltic are limited to a draught of 15 meters). As for prospective “invisible” vessels, these could only loiter around with permission from Copenhagen – as the

waters around Borholm are crammed with sensors,

reflecting fear of incursion by Russian submarines.

Swedish seismologists registered two underwater explosions on Monday – one of them estimated at 100 kg of TNT. Yet as much as 700 kg may have been used to blow up three separate pipeline nodes. Such amount

could not have possibly been delivered in just one trip by

underwater drones currently available in neighboring nations. 

The pressure on the pipelines dropped exponentially.

The pipes are now filled with seawater.

The pipes on both NS and NS2 can be repaired, of course, but hardly before the arrival of General Winter. The question is whether Gazprom – already focused on several hefty Eurasian customers –  would bother, especially considering that

Gazprom vessels could be exposed to a possible NATO naval attack in the Baltic.

German officials are already spinning that NS and NS2 can

“potentially” be out of commission “forever”.

The EU economy and EU citizens badly needed that gas supply.

Yet the EUrocracy in Brussels –

which rules over nation-states –

would not follow,

because they have been dictated themselves

by the Empire of Chaos, Lies and Plunder.

A case can be made that this Euro-oligarchy should one day be tried for treason.

As it stands, a strategic irreversibility is already self-evident; the population of several EU nations will pay a tremendous price and suffer serious consequences derived from this attack, short, medium and long term.  

Cui bono? 

Swedish Prime Minister Magdalena Andersson admitted that was

“a matter of sabotage”.

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen admitted

“it was not an accident”.

Berlin agrees with the Scandinavians.

Now compare it with former Polish Defense Minister (2005-2007) Radek Sikorski, a Russophobe married to rabid US “analyst” Anne Applebaum,

who merrily tweeted “Thank you, USA”.

It gets curiouser and curiouser when we know that simultaneously to the sabotage the Baltic Pipe from Norway to Poland was partially opened, a “new gas supply corridor” servicing “the Danish and Polish markets”:

actually a minor affair,

considering months ago their sponsors were in trouble finding gas,

and now it will be even harder, with much higher costs.

NS2 had already been attacked – in the open – all along its construction. Back in February [2022],

Polish ships actively tried to prevent the Fortuna pipe-laying vessel from finishing NS2. The pipes were being laid south of – you guessed it – Bornholm.

NATO for its part has been very active on the underwater drones department.

The Americans have access to long distance Norwegian underwater drones which can be modified with other designs. Alternatively, professional navy clearance divers could have been employed in the sabotage –

even as tidal currents around Bornholm are a serious matter.

The Big Picture reveals the collective West in absolute panic, with

Atlanticist “elites” willing to resort to anything –

outrageous lies, assassinations, terrorism, sabotage,

all out financial war, support to neo-Nazis –

to prevent their descent into a geopolitical and geoeconomic abyss.

Disabling NS and NS2 represents

the definitive closure of any possibility of a German-Russia deal

on gas supplies, with the added benefit of

relegating Germany to the lowly status of absolute US vassal.

So that brings us to the key question of which Western intel apparatus designed the sabotage. Prime candidates are of course CIA and MI6 – with Poland set up as the fall guy and Denmark playing a very dodgy part: it’s impossible that Copenhagen was not at least “briefed” on the intel.

Prescient as ever, as early as in April 2021 Russians were asking questions

about the military security of Nord Stream.

The crucial vector is that we may be facing the case of a EU/NATO member involved in

an act of sabotage against the number one EU/NATO economy [Germany].

That’s a casus belli. Outside of the appalling mediocrity and cowardice

of the current administration in Berlin,

it’s clear that the BND – German intel – as well as the German Navy and informed industrialists

sooner or later will do the math.

This was far from an isolated attack. On September 22 there was an attempt against Turkish Stream by Kiev saboteurs.

The day before [Sept. 21, 2022], naval drones

with English language IDs were found in Crimea,

suspected of being part of the plot. Add to it

US helicopters overflying the future sabotage nodes weeks ago;

a UK “research” vessel loitering in Danish waters since mid-September;

and NATO tweeting about the

testing of “new unmanned systems at sea” on the same day of the sabotage.

Show me the (gas) money

The Danish Minister of Defense met urgently

with NATO’s Secretary General this Wednesday [9/28/22].

After all the explosions happened

very close to Denmark’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ).

That may be qualified as crude kabuki at best; exactly on the same day, the

European Commission (EC), NATO’s de facto political office,

advanced its trademark obsession:

more sanctions against Russia, including the certified-to-fail cap on oil prices.

Meanwhile, EU energy giants are bound to lose big time with the sabotage.

The roll call includes the

German Wintershall Dea AG and PEG/ E.ON;

the Dutch N.V. Nederlandse Gasunie; and the

French ENGIE.

Then there are those which financed NS2:

Wintershall Dea again as well as Uniper;

Austrian OMV;

ENGIE again; and

British-Dutch Shell.

Wintershall Dea and ENGIE are both co-owners and creditors.

Their fuming shareholders will want serious answers from a serious investigation.

It gets worse: there are no holds barred anymore on the Pipeline Terror front. Russia will be on red alert not only for Turk Stream but also Power of Siberia. Same for the Chinese and their maze of pipelines arriving in Xinjiang.

Whatever the methodology and the actors who were in the loop,

this is payback – in advance –

for the inevitable collective West defeat in Ukraine.

And a crude warning to the Global South

that they will do it again.

Yet action always breeds reaction: from now on, “funny things” could also happen to US/UK pipelines in international waters.

The EU oligarchy is reaching an advanced process of disintegration at lightning speed. Their window of

opportunity to at least attempt a role as a strategically

autonomous geopolitical actor

is now closed.

These EUROcrats now face a serious predicament. Once it’s clear who are the perpetrators of the sabotage in the Baltic, and once they understand all the

life-changing socio-economic consequences for pan-EU citizens,

the kabuki will have to stop. Including the already running,

uber-ridiculous subplot that Russia blew up its own pipeline when Gazprom could simply have turned off the valves for good.

And once again, it gets worse: Gazprom is threatening to sue

the Ukrainian energy company Naftofgaz for unpaid bills.

That would lead to the end of Russian gas transiting Ukraine towards the EU.

As if all of that was not serious enough, Germany is contractually obligated to purchase at least 40 billion cubic meters of Russian gas a year until 2030.

Just say no? They can’t: Gazprom is legally entitled to get paid even without shipping gas. That’s the spirit of a long-term contract. And it’s

already happening: because of sanctions,

Berlin does not get all the gas it needs

but still needs to pay.

All the devils are here

Now it’s painfully clear

the imperial velvet gloves are off

when it comes to the vassals.

EU independence: verboten.

Cooperation with China: verboten.

Independent trade connectivity with Asia: verboten.

The only place for the EU is to be

economically subjugated to the US:

a tawdry remix of 1945-1955.

With a perverse neoliberal twist:

we will own your industrial capacity, and you will have nothing.

The sabotage of NS and NS2 is inbuilt in the imperial wet

dream of breaking up the Eurasian land mass into a thousand pieces

to prevent a trans-Eurasia consolidation

between Germany (representing the EU), Russia and China:

$50 trillion in GDP, based on purchasing power parity (PPP)

compared to the US’s $20 trillion.

We must go back to Mackinder:

control of the Eurasian land mass

constitutes control of the world.

American elites and their Trojan Horses across Europe

will do whatever it takes

not to give up their control.

“American elites” in this context encompass

the deranged, Straussian neo-con-infested “intel community” and the Big Energy, Big Pharma and Big Finance that pays them and who profits

not only from the Deep State’s Forever War approach

but also wants to make a killing out of the Davos-concocted Great Reset.

The Raging Twenties started with a murder –

of Gen Soleimani [by infantile Trump].

Blowing up pipelines is part of the sequel. There will be a highway to hell all the way to 2030. Yet to borrow from Shakespeare, hell is definitely empty,

and all the (Atlanticist) devils are here.”

…………………………

“Pepe Escobar is an independent geopolitical analyst and author. His latest book is Raging Twenties. He’s been politically canceled from Facebook and Twitter. Follow him on Telegram.

(The views expressed in this article are author’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Press TV.)”

---

Press TV’s website can also be accessed at the following alternate addresses:

www.presstv.ir

www.presstv.co.uk

 

In act of economic terror against innocent civilians, “rules-based” bully US sabotaged gas pipelines and bragged about it-Mark Wauck, 9/27/22…(Germany committed suicide by allowing US military base on its soil)

 .

“Pres. Biden: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly, since...the project is in Germany’s control?” Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.” abcn.ws/3B5SScx…[Feb. 7, 1922]

9/27/22, “US Sabotages Gas Pipelines–And Other Important Stories,” Mark Wauck, Meaning in History

“Do I know for a fact that the US did the deed—sabotaged both Nord Stream gas pipelines that run under the Baltic Sea from Russia to Germany? No, but

……

US fingerprints are all over this economic sabotage.

…….

Ask yourself: What other country on earth 

 

has the motive and the means to do this— 

 

and can also get away with it?

……..

Only the US, whether or not US personnel actually did it. In that regard I’m quite open to the possibility that UK and Polish personnel were involved in the sabotage near the Danish island of Bornholm—not far from the Polish coast:

.........

...

Now, some will rush to claim that Russia did this. Karl Denninger makes short work of that notion today:

……..

“My money is on sabotage but the question then becomes

 

who has motive and capacity to pull it off? 

 

It certainly wouldn’t be Russia; 

 

while they’re capable there’s no motive. 

 

They’d like to sell gas, of course,

 

and can’t without the pipes to deliver it.

This is truly a “black swan” sort of event, in that

now its precluded for Europe and Russia to agree in some way

to turn the pipes back on and deliver the gas

over the upcoming winter.

Without a means of delivery

it doesn’t matter what you want to do; you simply can’t do it.  And while I’m sure the damage can be repaired that’s not a “few day” or “couple of weeks” problem in a circumstance like this.”

That’s the key. Who wants to preclude Europe

from reaching an agreement with Russia?

That would be the self appointed guardians of

the self defined “rules-based order.”

Blinken, Nuland, Sullivan, and the rest of the gang. If the EU breaks ranks, then NATO collapses. It’s in Russia’s interest to keep that practical possibility open;

it’s in Neocon/Globalist interests to keep the EU—and especially Germany—

in subjugation to the rules-based order. 

Besides, we have Zhou’s word

that the US will engage in this type of economic terrorism:

ABC News @ABC

.....

…….

Pres. Biden: “If Russia invades…then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Reporter: “But how will you do that, exactly,

 

since…the project is in Germany’s control?”

……..

Biden: “I promise you, we will be able to do that.” abcn.ws/3B5SScx…[Feb. 7, 2022]

In related news, you may have heard that the US is now going to supply Ukraine with long—or, at any rate, longer—range missiles. Does it strike you that the

American Empire is absolutely determined

to preclude any possibility of a negotiated settlement?

Just as we sabotaged a promising looking settlement at Istanbul back in April?

Yesterday Zelensky thanked the US for the missiles, claiming they had arrived, although there’s some dispute about that:

— GEROMAN — The Zerbian –  – @GeromanAT

well – I guess NATO delivered a lot long before it was announced..

Ukraine Battle Map @ukraine_map

Apparently, in the interview yesterday what Zelensky said about “We received NASAMS” was not true as Ukraine has not received a single NASAMS System, either he was wrong or had mispoken Pentagon  recently said at least two NASAMS Systems will be in Ukraine  within two months https://t.co/Mw13dd9xAs

Meanwhile, the referenda will soon be over—today is the last day—and the four oblasts will be officially part of the Russian Federation. Russian forces that were providing security for the elections will return to combat duty that will now include defending Russia itself, rather than supporting the Donbass militias.”…

 

……………………

Since US overthrew Ukraine in 2014 it's been dragging the world into war with Russia, just one of hundreds of stops for unelected endless war machine which silently overthrew US after 911-John Pilger, UK Guardian, 2013, 2014

 .

Following 9/11 “a silent coup has taken place in Washington and rampant militarism now rules. The Pentagon currently runs “special operations”-secret wars-in 124 countries. At home, rising poverty and a loss of liberty are the historic corollary of a perpetual war state."….“Under the “weak” Obama, militarism has risen perhaps as never before. With not a single tank on the White House lawn, a military coup has taken place in Washington.”

May 13, 2014, “In Ukraine, the US is dragging us towards war with Russia," John Pilger, UK Guardian

“Washington’s role in Ukraine, and its backing for the regime’s neo-Nazis, has huge implications for the rest of the world.”

 

“Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination, wrote Harold Pinter, is

…..

a “brilliant, even witty, highly successful

…….

act of hypnosis”,

…..

as if the truth “never happened even while it was happening”.

Every year the American historian William Blum [“America’s Deadliest Export: Democracy”] publishes his “updated summary of the record of US foreign policy” which shows that,

since 1945, the US has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments,

many of them democratically elected;

grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries;

bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries;

used chemical and biological weapons;

and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.

In many cases Britain has been a collaborator.

The degree of human suffering,

let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the west, despite the presence of the world’s most advanced communications and nominally most free journalism. That the most numerous victims of terrorism – “our” terrorism – are Muslims, is unsayable.

That extreme jihadism, which led to 9/11,

was nurtured as a weapon of Anglo-American policy (Operation Cyclone in Afghanistan)

[Image: Feb. 1983, “President Reagan meeting with Afghan Mujahideen in the White House” .…”Clockwise: Ronald Reagan; Michael A. Barry; Muhammad Umar Babrakzai; Mohammad Ghafoor Yousefzai; Habib-Ur-Rehman Hashemi; Farida Ahmadi; Mir Niamatullah and Gul Mohammad…Added: “Thanks to the marvels of declassification, we now know precisely when America’s engagement in Afghanistan was set in motion. It was on 26 December 1979, just two days after the Soviet invasion. President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser,Zbigniew Brzezinski, sent him a memo entitled “Reflections on Soviet intervention in Afghanistan”. Carter endorsed it, and soon the CIA was funnelling huge amounts of money through Pakistan to fundamentalist warlords. A year later, after Ronald Reagan replaced Carter, American involvement further deepened. “It is essential that Afghanistan’s resistance continues,” Brzezinksi wrote in his historic memo.

“This means more money as well as arms shipments to the rebels, and some technical advice. To make the above possible, we must both reassure Pakistan and encourage it to help the rebels. This will require a review of our policy toward Pakistan, more guarantees to it, more arms aid and, alas, a decision that our security policy toward Pakistan cannot be dictated by our nonproliferation policy.”…

As soon as Washington signaled to General Zia that it would stop monitoring the program in exchange for his help with the anti-Soviet war, he launched a global effort, led by AQ Khan, to assemble nuclear technology and fuel. Less than 20 years later,

Pakistan successfully tested its first nuclear weapon.” 12/28/2009, Kinzer]

(continuing): “is suppressed. In April the US state department noted that, following NATO’s campaign in 2011, “Libya has become a terrorist safe haven."

The name of “our” enemy has changed over the years, from communism to Islamism,

but generally

it is any society independent of western power

and occupying strategically useful or resource-rich territory,

or merely offering an alternative to US domination.

[“With al-Qaida now among its allies…the US intends to crush the last independent states in the Middle East: Syria first, then Iran.”…9/10/2013]

The leaders of these obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the democrats Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran, Arbenz in Guatemala and Salvador Allende in Chile, or they are murdered like Patrice Lumumba in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

All are subjected to a western media campaign of vilification –

think Fidel Castro, Hugo Chávez, now Vladimir Putin.

Washington’s role in Ukraine

is different only in

its implications for the rest of us.

For the first time since the Reagan years,

the US is threatening to take the world to war.

With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of NATO,

the last “buffer state” bordering Russia – Ukraine –

is being torn apart by

fascist forces unleashed by the US and the EU.

We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis

in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.

Having masterminded the coup in February [2014] against the democratically elected government in Kiev,

Washington’s planned seizure of Russia’s

historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed.

The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.

But NATO’s military encirclement has accelerated,

along with US-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine.

If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained “pariah” role will justify a NATO-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.

Instead, Putin has confounded the war party

by seeking an accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing Russian troops from the Ukrainian border

and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon the weekend’s provocative referendum.

These Russian-speaking and bilingual people –

a third of Ukraine’s population –

have long sought a democratic federation that reflects the country’s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous of Kiev and independent of Moscow.

Most are neither “separatists” nor “rebels”,

as the western media calls them,

but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.

Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan,

Ukraine has been turned into a CIA theme park –

run personally by CIA director John Brennan in Kiev,

with dozens of “special units” from the CIA and FBI

setting up a “security structure” that

oversees savage attacks

on those who opposed the February coup.

Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports

from the massacre in Odessa this month [May 2014].

Bussed fascist thugs burned the trade union headquarters,

killing 41 people trapped inside.

Watch the police standing by.

A doctor described trying to rescue people,

“but I was stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals.

One of them pushed me away rudely, promising that soon me and other Jews of Odessa are going to meet the same fate.

What occurred yesterday didn’t even take place during the fascist occupation in my town in world war two.

I wonder, why the whole world is keeping silent.” [see footnote]

Russian-speaking Ukrainians are fighting for survival.

When Putin announced the withdrawal of Russian troops from the border,

the Kiev junta’s defence secretary,

Andriy Parubiy – a founding member of the fascist Svoboda party –

boasted that attacks on “insurgents” would continue.

In Orwellian style, propaganda in the west has

inverted this to Moscow “trying to orchestrate conflict and provocation“, according to William Hague.

His cynicism is matched by Obama’s grotesque congratulations to the coup junta on its

“remarkable restraint” after the Odessa massacre.

The junta, says Obama, is “duly elected”. As Henry Kissinger once said: “It is not a matter of what is true that counts, but what is perceived to be true.”

In the US media the Odessa atrocity has been played down

as “murky” and a “tragedy”

in which “nationalists” (neo-Nazis) attacked “separatists”

(people collecting signatures for a referendum on a federal Ukraine).

Rupert Murdoch’s Wall Street Journal damned the victims – “Deadly Ukraine Fire Likely Sparked by Rebels, Government Says“. Propaganda in Germany has been pure cold war, with the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

warning its readers of Russia’s “undeclared war”.

For the Germans, it is a poignant irony that

Putin is the only leader to condemn

the rise of fascism in 21st-century Europe.

A popular truism is that “the world changed” following 9/11. But what has changed?

According to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg,

a silent coup has taken place in Washington

and rampant militarism now rules.

The Pentagon currently runs “special operations” – secret wars –

in 124 countries.

At home, rising poverty and a loss of liberty are

the historic corollary of

a perpetual war state. Add the risk of nuclear war, and the question is: why do we tolerate this?”

Added: From Mr. Pilger, 2013:

“The sterile repetitive debate about whether “we” should “take action” against selected dictators (ie cheer on the US and its acolytes in yet another aerial killing spree) is part of our brainwashing….Under the “weak” Obama, militarism has risen perhaps as never before. With not a single tank on the White House lawn, a military coup has taken place in Washington. In 2008, while his liberal devotees dried their eyes, Obama accepted the entire Pentagon of his predecessor, George Bush: its wars and war crimes. As the constitution is replaced by an emerging police state, those who destroyed Iraq with shock and awe, piled up the rubble in Afghanistan and reduced Libya to a Hobbesian nightmare, are ascendant across the US administration. Behind their beribboned facade, more former US soldiers are killing themselves than are dying on battlefields.”…9/10/2013, “The silent military coup that took over Washington,” UK Guardian, John Pilger

…………………….

www.johnpilger.com

“The following footnote was appended on 16 May 2014: The quotation from a doctor who says he was “stopped by pro-Ukrainian Nazi radicals” was from an account on a Facebook page that has subsequently been removed.”

 

 

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