What's To Blame For The Mess In Ukraine?

Is the Russian incursion into Ukraine a desperate "land grab" by an unhinged Russian president? Is it as simple as that? That is what the mainstream media across the political spectrum is pumping out. And, as with all propaganda wars, anyone outside the lines is demonized. But what if there is something beyond the bumper sticker talking points? Watch today's Liberty Report:



from What's To Blame For The Mess In Ukraine?

It All Comes Back to NATO

When the Bush Administration announced in 2008 that Ukraine and Georgia would be eligible for NATO membership, I knew it was a terrible idea. Nearly two decades after the end of both the Warsaw Pact and the Cold War, expanding NATO made no sense. NATO itself made no sense.

Explaining my “no” vote on a bill to endorse the expansion, I said at the time:

NATO is an organization whose purpose ended with the end of its Warsaw Pact adversary… This current round of NATO expansion is a political reward to governments in Georgia and Ukraine that came to power as a result of US-supported revolutions, the so-called Orange Revolution and Rose Revolution.

Providing US military guarantees to Ukraine and Georgia can only further strain our military. This NATO expansion may well involve the US military in conflicts unrelated to our national interest…

Unfortunately, as we have seen this past week, my fears have come true. One does not need to approve of Russia’s military actions to analyze its stated motivation: NATO membership for Ukraine was a red line it was not willing to see crossed. As we find ourselves at risk of a terrible escalation, we should remind ourselves that it didn’t have to happen this way. There was no advantage to the United States to expand and threaten to expand NATO to Russia’s doorstep. There is no way to argue that we are any safer for it.

NATO itself was a huge mistake.

When in 1949 the US Senate initially voted on the NATO treaty, Sen. Robert Taft – known as “Mr. Republican” – gave an excellent speech on why he voted against creating NATO.

Explaining his “no” vote, Taft said:

… the treaty is a part of a much larger program by which we arm all these nations against Russia… A joint military program has already been made… It thus becomes an offensive and defensive military alliance against Russia. I believe our foreign policy should be aimed primarily at security and peace, and I believe such an alliance is more likely to produce war than peace.

Taft continued:

If we undertake to arm all the nations around Russia…and Russia sees itself ringed about gradually by so-called defensive arms from Norway and Denmark to Turkey and Greece, it may form a different opinion. It may decide that the arming of western Europe, regardless of its present purpose, looks to an attack upon Russia. Its view may be unreasonable, and I think it is. But from the Russian standpoint it may not seem unreasonable. They may well decide that if war is the certain result, that war might better occur now rather than after the arming of Europe is completed…

How right he was.

NATO went off the rails long before 2008, however. The North Atlantic Treaty was signed on April 4, 1949 and by the start of the Korean War just over a year later, NATO was very much involved in the military operation of the war in Asia, not Europe!

NATO's purpose was stated to "guarantee the safety and freedom of its members by political and military means." It is a job not well done!

I believe as strongly today as I did back in my 2008 House Floor speech that, “NATO should be disbanded, not expanded.” In the meantime, expansion should be off the table. The risks do not outweigh the benefits!

from It All Comes Back to NATO

Ukraine: The Propaganda Wars

(This is a version of an RPI update to subscribers sent yesterday. Subscribe here.)

The media and the war machine (or do I repeat myself?) want us to take sides in the Russo/Ukraine war. To those of us with long histories in military conflicts in which the US foreign policy establishment, media, and military have an interest, the terms are always framed as white hats and black hats - and you had better choose a side! 

"Are you on the side of FREEDOM or are you a puppet of [insert Hitler proxy here]?"

You must take a side. (In fact you must choose the side the Beltway blob wants you to choose).

The US government never fights in the self-interest of the elites. It only fights (directly and by proxy) for the freedom and liberation of others. If you doubt that you are un-American. History started when they tell you it started. Never mind about the past or how US intervention created the circumstances that led to whatever horrible outcome we witness.

The Iraqis would greet us as liberators, we were told. They will love our bombs. Likewise the Libyans once their leader is knife-raped to death. And then of course the Syrians once our al-Qaeda "moderate" head-choppers are put in charge. The rest of the world is so so grateful that the omniscient Washington foreign policy elites can choose their fate for them. Surely they are too foolish to decide for themselves!

Ironically, as the US government and its obedient media were hysterically telling us we must demand Russian blood for their attack on a Ukraine that had not attacked them first, the US government that same day bombed a Somalia that had not attacked it first. And let's not even talk about the horrific Saudi genocide (with full US support) in Yemen.

With one voice the US media, political elites, and brainwashed sheeple scream out: "You can't just go and attack a country that hasn't attacked you!!!" And the people of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Somalia, Yemen, and yes even Afghanistan scratch their heads in wonder at the ignorance, hypocrisy, and cynicism.

Like an alcoholic may occasionally get a moment of clarity, a politician may sometimes get a moment of honesty. California US Congressman and lead "Russiagate" conspiracy theorist Adam Schiff, spilled the beans in a 2020 speech:

US chauvinism & warmongering is so ingrained that @AdamSchiff can openly declare, in Jan 2020, that US uses Ukraine to “fight Russia over there,” and our elites applaud. Fast forward two years later when Russia fights back, and the same circle is outraged. pic.twitter.com/6B4QVFSZvV

— Aaron Maté (@aaronjmate) February 26, 2022

The US uses Ukraine to fight Russia, but then when Russia fights back we have to pour all our vodka into the street and launch WWIII.

The US military-industrial-media-Congressional complex that is behind this disastrous policy knows well, however, that war brings bigger dividends:

Biden’s anti-war coalition of Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman sends $350 million in love weapons for NATO’s nonviolent war against Russia and the Azov battalion’s pacifist-style shelling of the Donbas. https://t.co/sYntONlss2

— Dan Cohen (@dancohen3000) February 26, 2022

This is not a WHATABOUT column, however. It's just to point out how manipulated Americans are by the unholy partnership between government, Washington parasitical elites, and the media.

Perhaps the only thing worse are the third-tier flunkies who do their bidding in international organizations.

Yesterday NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced that NATO countries were going to send more weapons to Ukraine. Brilliant! Bureaucrats, especially stupid ones, always double down then their policies are shown to be failures.

As one report quoted the failed Swedish politico/NATO chief: 

'We see rhetoric, the messages, which is strongly indicating that the aim is to remove the democratically-elected government in Kiev,' he announced after a meeting with NATO leaders.

What? NATO must send weapons to Ukraine because Russia is attempting to remove its democratically-elected government? How dare they! Don't they know that's OUR job?

Here's the side we should be on in Ukraine and everywhere else: non-intervention in the affairs of others. Today's Ukraine nightmare is the product of a US foreign policy that overthrew not one, but two elected Ukrainian governments because the people chose a president that Washington's pampered elites didn't like.

As I wrote in an article yesterday, one thing we can take with us from Russia actually doing what it long said it would do if Ukraine was armed by hostile governments and pulled toward NATO membership is that:

Whether America and the EU like it or not, the era of 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality' is well and truly over. Its end is not to be mourned but to be celebrated. The only pro-America foreign policy is non-intervention in the affairs of others.

Yes, this is a good thing and it should be celebrated. Don't worry - it's not un-patriotic to applaud an authentically pro-America foreign policy! Now is the time to demand a change in how things are done. It does not weaken the US to decide to not meddle in the affairs of others. On the contrary, we are strengthened by shrugging off the burden of (very badly) running the rest of the globe.

Unless anyone believes we are stronger by burning one trillion dollars for the US military empire each and every year.

Let's ask the truckers and the waiters and the welders of America how they like billions of their hard-earned  dollars laundered to the ultra-rich Beltway elites through corrupt regimes abroad. Foreign aid is falsely perceived as a plate of rice and beans to a motherless child in a war-torn hellhole. The reality is that foreign aid is that which re-models all the bathrooms in million dollars mansions in McLean VA and its evil environs.

Gold plated Beltway toilets. The ignoble flotsam of the corrupt US empire.

from Ukraine: The Propaganda Wars

The Israeli data that nukes the Pfizer vaccine: What did Pfizer know and when did they know it?

Last year, Philip Dormitzer, the chief scientific officer at Pfizer, described Israel as “a sort of laboratory” to “see the effect” of his company’s vaccines. Well, it took over a year into the vaccine drive that injected most Israelis with three shots and some with four to finally publish information on adverse events. What Israel published earlier this month based on a health ministry survey of 2,049 people who got booster shots is not only damning, but unmistakably revealing that there is no way Pfizer did not see these adverse events during the clinical trials in 2020. What did they know and when did they know it?

On Feb. 10, the Israeli Health Ministry published (English version here) the results of a survey of adverse events among roughly 2,000 random Israelis who received booster shots. It’s shocking that it took this long for them to conduct such a survey and didn’t do this a year ago, but it’s better late than never. Just the top-line numbers from the survey should alarm us all. A total of 75% of women and 58% of men reported experiencing at least one side effect within the 21- to 30-day follow-up period of the interview. Obviously, the majority of these were minor, but 51% of the women and 35% of the men who experienced a side effect reported that as a result, they had difficulty performing daily activities.

Full stop right there. Even before we get into more serious problems. Just the fact that the shot knocked out such a massive percentage of people clearly violates the informed consent through which the shots were marketed and most certainly makes any mandate immoral. Right off the bat, it’s clear that this is not like taking a vitamin D pill. Moreover, the fact that we have zero long-term studies, but such a massive percentage get at least a sick feeling from it in the short run should concern everyone. Again, why wasn’t such a survey done in January 2021 after the first dose?

Just take a look at the massive percentage of reports, especially for females, experiencing weakness, muscle ache, shaking, high temperature, and even dizziness and vomiting.


(bigger)

That is a massive percentage for a product ubiquitously marketed, endorsed, distributed, and then mandated by global governments as the safest and most effective vaccine of all time. And all for a virus that, with most younger people, would cause roughly the same symptoms anyway even after being vaccinated. The fact that this shot was even marketed to younger and healthier people is insane. Yes, some people might have willingly taken a shot if they thought they’d get some flu-like symptoms, but that confidence – that the flu-like symptoms don’t portend more severe long-term damage – can only work for an established vaccine that already has long-term safety data.

Now, let’s get to some of the more serious or potentially serious issues. The same table shows that 5.5% reported experiencing chest pain. We already know that there are major safety concerns for cardiovascular issues and that the spike protein is very pro-inflammatory and potentially thrombotic. And remember, this is 5.5% of just one dose. If you extrapolate that to America, where 551 million doses have been administered, that would be approximately 30 million cases of chest pain! It doesn’t necessarily mean that it causes short-term or long-term damage, but again, with a new vaccine with a novel and dangerous mechanism of action and no long-term safety studies, how can this be allowed to continue without further study?

A total of 4.5% of those who received booster doses reported neurological side effects. Assuming the doses are all relatively the same, that would extrapolate to roughly 25 million cases of neurological side effects in the United States. It would lend a lot of credence to the military whistleblowers who report seeing more than a tenfold increase in nervous system diagnoses in 2021 and leaves no doubt that the DOD was bluffing when it responded with “revised” data showing not even a modest increase.

There’s no doubt that the spike protein of the pathogen causes nervous system disorders in some people, just like it causes cardiovascular disorders, but clearly the shots do as well, and remember they don’t prevent you from getting the pathogen.

Read the rest here.

from The Israeli data that nukes the Pfizer vaccine: What did Pfizer know and when did they know it?

Fog Of War: What's Behind Russia's Ukraine Strike?

Russia's wide-ranging assault on Ukrainian military targets in the early hours of the morning has surprised Western capitals even as they repeatedly predicted an imminent attack. Propaganda machines on all sides are turned up to maximum. In today's Liberty Report we try to break down the facts and the antecedents with an eye on where things might go from here. Watch today's program:



from Fog Of War: What's Behind Russia's Ukraine Strike?

Why a war may be the only solution Americans can bring to this conflict

The US used to produce experts on Soviet and Russian affairs like Jack Matlock. Today we get the likes of Michael McFaul. The decline of popular interest in Russian-area studies, combined with intellectual laziness on the part of the average US citizen, is to blame.

On February 21, Russia’s President Vladmir Putin gave what will most likely go down in history as one of the most important speeches in modern history. It was a brutally honest example of how current events are shaped by the forces of history. What is important about this speech isn’t so much the content–that is now part of the historical record–but rather how it was absorbed and interpreted by those who watched it.

As an American imbued with more than a little first-hand insight into Russian affairs, I have been struck by the inability of the American people to comprehend the historical foundation of Putin’s speech. It is not my place to either attack or defend the details put forward by the Russian president. I would hope, however, that my fellow citizens would be able to engage in an informed, intelligent, and rational discussion about the speech, given the immense geopolitical ramifications attached to it.

Unfortunately, the average American, lacking both the intellectual training and the critical resource of time, is ill-equipped to participate in such an exercise. Instead, they have subordinated this task to a category of public servant known as the “Russian expert.” Under normal circumstances, one might find the existence of such a class a relief; after all, Americans are willing to entrust their financial security to “financial managers.” Why not surrender the intellectual machinations required to make sense of something as complex as Russian affairs and all that topic entails to the hands of the specialists, men and women schooled in the history, economy, culture, and language of Russia?

This isn’t the first time Americans have been called upon to entrust critical Russia-related analysis and the decision-making derived therefrom to so-called “experts.” From 1945 through 1991 the US and Soviet Union were engaged in a massive geopolitical conflict known as the Cold War. I happened to be an eyewitness to the final years leading up to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and to a speech which, in its own way, was as impactful as the one given by Vladimir Putin this week.

On June 28, 1988, I was in the second week of work as a member of the advanced party of US inspectors dispatched to the Soviet city of Votkinsk, located about 700 miles (just over 1,000km) east of Moscow, in the foothills of the Ural Mountains. Our job was to work with our Soviet colleagues to make the necessary preparations to receive the main body of 25 inspectors scheduled to arrive on July 1, 1988, when portal monitoring operations began, a month after the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty entered into force. On that date, we would begin our treaty-mandated task of monitoring the activities of the Votkinsk Missile Final Assembly Plant, located some 12 kilometers outside the city of Votkinsk, to make sure the Soviets no longer produced ballistic missiles that had been banned under the terms of the treaty.

The advance party was billeted in a well-kept Dacha situated in the woods on the outskirts of the city. Built to house the former Minister of Defense Dmitry Ustinov and his entourage during their frequent visits to Votkinsk, the Dacha was equipped with a well-stocked kitchen, a pool table, and a lounge where one could watch Soviet television. On the evening of June 28, I was surprised to find my Soviet hosts gathered around the television screen. That evening, Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), had convened the 19th All-Union Conference of the CPSU. At first blush, I gave the event no thought–just another communist party “yes” fest with officials falling over each other in fawning admiration of a totalitarian leader. I said as much to one of my hosts, an official from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“You couldn’t be further from the truth,” he replied. “This is a revolution!”

Over the course of the next three days, during breaks from what was a very busy schedule, I joined my Soviet hosts as we watched history unfold before us. Gorbachev was introducing real reform–perestroika–to the Soviet people. He was being challenged by the communist party, in the form of his deputy, Yegor Ligachev, and by reformers, in the person of Boris Yeltsin. The conference had turned into an ideological battleground, where the future of the Soviet Union was being decided live, in public, before the Soviet people, for the first time in its history.

If you had asked the average American citizen about the importance of the 19th All-Union Party Conference at the time it transpired, they wouldn’t have been able to provide an intelligent answer. Even though the Soviet Union had been elevated to the status of an “Evil Empire” with which the US was prepared to engage in all-out nuclear war to constrain, the American public at that time, much like their counterparts today, was satisfied to leave the heavy thinking in the hands of a class of civil servant, the ‘Soviet expert’ who would monitor the situation and advise the political leadership, and, as needed, the public.

Among those who constituted this ‘Soviet expert’ class were a category of military officers known as ‘Soviet Foreign Affairs Officers,’ or FAOs. Provided with advanced linguistic training and graduate-level education before attending a year-long finishing school, the US Army Russia Institute, located in Garmisch, West Germany, a Soviet FAO was a subject-matter expert whose mission was to provide critical insight to policy makers about Soviet issues and, as needed, carry out specific military tasks–such as implementing the INF treaty.

The disparity between the Soviet FAO and his or her civilian counterpart was played out live in Votkinsk. The advance party consisted of five persons–three military officers (two FAO-qualified and me) and two civilian civil engineers. At night, when the work was done and the television turned on, you would find the two civil engineers playing pool or reading a book, while the three military officers were glued to the television set.

Over the course of the next two years, I bore witness to two critical events transpiring in parallel–the implementation of the INF treaty, and the implementation of perestroika. Both played an important role in shaping the events that led to the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union. As trained Soviet experts, the FAOs and I were able to provide invaluable insight into the phenomenon of perestroika in the hinterlands of the Soviet Union. That which empowered us was the education we had received in Russian history and affairs from an American academic establishment that had, since the end of the Second World War, been prepared for just this task.

The Soviet FAO, together with their counterparts in the State Department and US Intelligence Community, were the beneficiaries of an education system which had seen an explosion in Russian Area Studies during the Second World War, when the Soviet Union was considered an ally, and which only grew after the war ended, and the Soviet Union was reclassified as an enemy. The unique circumstances which gave rise to the study of Russian Affairs in the US allowed for the retention of academic integrity in the face of ideological pressure to paint the Soviet Union in a negative light.

One of the clearest examples of this phenomenon can be found in the person of Richard Pipes, a renowned American academic who specialized in Soviet and Russian history and who taught at Harvard for decades while advising various US presidents, most notably Ronald Reagan, on matters pertaining to Soviet policy. Pipes was decidedly anti-Soviet, and the advice he provided was decidedly hardline in nature. His writings, however, were derived from historical fact subjected to proper analysis and scrutiny. His book, The formation of the Soviet Union: Communism and nationalism, 1917-1923, was mandatory reading for any student of Russian studies (indeed, it should be mandatory reading today, given the correlation between its subject matter and the content of Putin’s February 21 speech.) I have a first-edition copy of Pipe’s book in my personal library, and I have made extensive use of it over the years as I try to discern what is transpiring inside the former Soviet Union, and why.

Every one of my Soviet ‘expert’ counterparts was a byproduct of an American system of education designed to empower those who participated with critical fact-based discernment skills, capable of separating fact from fiction and filtering out personal and institutional bias. The result was a system that produced people like Jack Matlock, the US Ambassador to the Soviet Union during its final years, and George Kolt, the CIA’s top Soviet analyst. Both will go down in history as predicting the collapse of the Soviet Union (the thing about experts is that while their advice might be prescient, it is still held hostage by politicians who answer to a domestic constituency which is often unmoved by fact-based analysis.)

The end of the Cold War, however, brought with it the end of both the Soviet expert and the academic establishment that produced them. By way of example, I had been given two classified commendations by the Director, CIA, for my work in the Soviet Union. But in 1992, after being invited to CIA Headquarters to interview for an analytical position, I was told by the head of the new Russia analytical unit that I was too imbued with “Cold War” thinking; the world had moved on.

Russia became a playground for a new category of ‘expert,’ the political and economic ‘exploiter’ who viewed Russia as a defeated power subject to the whim of the American victor. This class was dominated by the likes of Michael McFaul and his ilk, people who viewed Boris Yeltsin not as the by-product of Soviet and Russian history, but rather a malleable tool in their effort to transform Russia into a compliant “democracy” subservient to their new American masters.

Russian-area studies stopped being the go-to major when it came to interacting with the former Soviet Union, replaced by business and economics degrees sought by people whose purpose wasn’t to understand Russia but rather to exploit it. Interest in Russian studies dwindled, a byproduct of a decline in interest and numbers, in terms of graduate students and faculty. Moreover, the system became infected by the reality of “garbage in, garbage out”: as the old Cold War Soviet specialists were retired from their posts in academia, they were not replaced by people possessing similar academic discipline, but rather a new generation of academics governed more by political perception than fact-based reality. Again, Michael McFaul comes to mind, a man driven not by the complex history of the Soviet Union and Russia, but rather his own vision of what Russia should be.

It is the Michael McFauls of the world who dominate the mainstream media today, people whose academic pronouncements are in keeping with government-approved dogma and, as such, sympathetic to the media corporate executives who work hand-in-glove with the government to spoon-feed what passes for “objective truth” to the American people. Jack Matlock still writes on Russian affairs, his articles providing a fresh, fact-based look at the reality of what is transpiring in Russia today. A public debate between he and McFaul would be most welcome by those who truly seek insight into what is happening in Russia (I consider myself a student of Ambassador Matlock, and if he is not able to throw down the gauntlet of debate, I am–consider the challenge made, Mr. Ambassador!)

The American people are being poorly served by the new class of Russian experts to whom they have relegated all intellectual examination of current Russian affairs. Maybe when gasoline prices skyrocket, and inflation further shrinks their already burdened paycheck, the average American citizen might sit up and take notice. By then, however, it will be too late. 

Vladimir Putin’s speech of February 21, just like Mikhail Gorbachev’s address at the 19th All-Union Party Conference in June 1988, should be viewed and assessed with expert eyes, trained to discern fact-based intent and relevance. This happened back in 1988, and we were able to effectively manage the collapse of the Soviet Union. It is not happening today, and we may very well find ourselves neck deep in a conflict which we do not understand and for which we have no answer other than war. 

Reprinted with permission from RT.

from Why a war may be the only solution Americans can bring to this conflict

The New ‘Russiagaters’: Right-Wingers Channel Hillary in Attacks on Biden

"Bad" Vlad Putin only "took over" part of Ukraine because of President Biden's weakness. So says many in the US right wing. A "real man" president would have imposed costs so prohibitive that Putin would never have dreamed of recognizing what has been de facto reality since 2014: that the Russian-speaking part of Ukraine wants no part of the US-installed government in Kiev.

So goes the thinking of the armchair right-wingers. And I don't even mean neocons: plenty of those now scoring body blows on our president-on-the-ropes are Trumpers and even populists. The question to these "weak Biden" jaw-boners remains: what would you have done to show how "tough" you are that would sufficiently terrify the Russian president into accepting US missiles on (what would be) NATO-member Ukraine's soil? Nuke Moscow out of the blue? And sacrifice the United States in the process?

That's "pro-America"? Killing America?

These are not serious people. In fact they are carbon copies of their supposed nemeses like Rachel Maddow and Adam Schiff.

Former (Trump) White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany, who I am sure is pleasant enough, has dusted off her camos and is declaring war on Biden for "showing weakness" that invited Putin to rampage through Europe reconstituting the Third Reich...or something like that:

"There is no greater supporter of the Democrat Party than Vladimir Putin!”

“He got Crimea on Obama's watch, and now he's getting exactly what he wants on Biden’s watch!” @OutnumberedFNC @FoxNews ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/Gclhlg4cfd

— Kayleigh McEnany (@kayleighmcenany) February 22, 2022

Oh yeah...that old Putin. He's got a life-sized poster of Chuck Schumer in his bedroom. He's got a collection of Biden bobble-heads.

Of all people, McEnany should know how destructive it is to stomp up and down and scream "you're Putin's puppet!" After all, that exact mindlessness hobbled her own boss for four years, preventing him from fulfilling his campaign promise of "getting along with Russia." It may well have cost him re-election. Nevertheless, echoing the absolute lack of thinking on the American Right these days, she chooses to morph into Rachel Maddow.

Come on, Kayleigh. If you want to be taken seriously don't act so foolish.

Putin did not "get" Crimea and east Ukraine on Biden's watch because they're best buds. Crimea and eastern Ukraine were broken away from Ukraine because of the preposterously idiotic idea that there is any value to the United States in moving NATO to Russia's doorstep in the hopes of "regime-changing" Putin.

US foreign policy since at least the dawn of the Wolfowitz Doctrine - and arguably since Brzezinski's brilliant idea that creating, arming, and training a bunch of jihadists (who became al-Qaida) would be a swell idea because it would finally give then-USSR its Vietnam - has been a series of own-goals. In other words, what is achieved is the exact opposite of the stated aim. 

This brings up a larger question of why conservatives are in the main so awful on foreign policy (and even on "woke" ideology and, frankly, everything else). A brilliant Tweet from a long banned account best captures everything that is wrong with conservatives:



Conservatives of our era are woefully uneducated, uninterested, and uninformed. There are no Sobrans or Menckens among them because they willfully know nothing - and care even less - about that upon which they opine. 

They stand for nothing but cheap political points. Twitter "gotcha" points.

Right-wingers' favorite, Sen. Tim Scott, likewise repeats the "Putin invaded Ukraine because Biden is weak" talking point:

Russia’s heightened aggression against the territorial integrity of Ukraine is a clear violation of international law.

Unfortunately, for the second time in less than a year, the Biden administration’s weakness on the world stage has emboldened our adversaries. pic.twitter.com/AQAkllCAoO

— Tim Scott (@SenatorTimScott) February 22, 2022

The big secret is that with a few exceptions, Members of the House and Senate are dumb as dirt. The only thing greater than their lack of intelligence is their lack of interest in anything at all beyond power. Someone should ask Senator Scott what he would have done as Commander-in-Chief to prevent Russia from accepting the request for recognition of the two breakaway Ukrainian republics.

Better yet, someone should have shown him a map without place names and asked him to point out where these republics actually are.

Here's the new rule: You can't call for war or sanctions on a country you can't find on the map.

The recently-embalmed looking Newt Gingrich also hits "weakness" as the reason for Russia's "invasion":

Gingrich blasts Biden for following 'Obama model' of weakness toward Russiahttps://t.co/9Ga5yyJmj3

— Fox News (@FoxNews) February 22, 2022

The "Obama model" of weakness? Obama overtly overthrew a democratically-elected government in Ukraine, from one seeking a friendly trade relationship with Russia to one chock-full of Nazi weirdos maniacally hostile to Russia. It's like China installing the Taliban into power in Mexico.

That's "weakness"? No, that's cajones. Insanely stupid and "America-last," but cajones nonetheless.

Republican candidate for Congress and favorite of the "pro-Trump" wing of the party Robby Starbuck also channels the delusional right-wing on Biden/Putin/Ukraine:

Democrats are truly masterful at mental gymnastics. Somehow I’ve read about 20 different takes from them on how it’s Trump’s fault that Russia might take Ukraine on Biden’s watch. Reality: Biden gave Putin his pipeline for nothing, Trump refused. Putin smells weakness & attacks.

— Robby Starbuck (@robbystarbuck) February 21, 2022

So Republicans believe that the US government has the right to cancel business deals between two non-American actors? That Washington has a say on how Germany gets its energy?

This is the "party of small government"? A government so big that it can tell other governments where they are allowed to get their energy? 

It's "Putin's pipeline"? Tell that to Germans huddled in their cold apartments because putting a bunch of natural gas on ships from the US across the Atlantic is about as efficient as a Soviet five-year plan in producing consumer goods in 1975.

Why do these "free market" Republicans all sound like commies?

And come on: "Putin smells weakness & attacks"? You want to be taken seriously with such a stupid statement? Robby would deserve to lose his House bid for the crime of being too foolish for office, but sadly the bar is set far lower than this. 

Similarly, Chairman of the GOP Ronna McDaniel, who no one accused of being an intellectual, jumped on the neo-Russiagate bandwagon, Tweeting scorn on Biden for failing to keep Putin "in check":

Biden promised to keep Putin in check. He failed. pic.twitter.com/AfLJi1qF1k

— Ronna McDaniel (@GOPChairwoman) February 22, 2022

Is that really the job of the US president? Putting other leaders "in check"? It's clear at this point that "American exceptionalism" is not only a mental illness, but a highly dangerous one.

Former President Trump himself also chimes in on how he would have been so tough on Russia that Putin would never have dared recognize a part of Ukraine disenfranchised by Obama's interventionism which rejected the fake government put in place by Victoria Nuland and her pals in 2014. Is it Stockholm syndrome in a president who was continuously whacked in the head by the 2X4 of "Putin's puppet" accusations?

There are literally hundreds of more examples of non explicitly neocon Republicans singing from the "Russiagate" songbook over developments in Ukraine.

None of them - with few exceptions like the Columbia Bugle and Darren Beattie - understand that "America first" means the opposite of "America tells the rest of the world what they can do." 

Once and for all: It's not President Biden's "weakness" that has botched up US relations with Russia and Ukraine and put us on the verge of war. It's the stupidity of US interventionism under Vice President Biden! Were it not for the US-backed coup in 2014 we wouldn't be talking about Crimea returned to Russia or the crisis in the Donbas. 

It's not weakness, but the stupidity of interventionism - a bipartisan affliction - that is the source of the problem!

We are led by a hopelessly corrupt political class. A duopoly of dunces. As I've oft-repeated, Patrick Buchanan's "two wings of the same bird of prey."

from The New ‘Russiagaters’: Right-Wingers Channel Hillary in Attacks on Biden

Invasion...Or Not? Biden Administration Unsure On Russia Moves

Russian President Putin's surprise announcement that Russia would recognize two breakaway republics in eastern Ukraine as independent has left the Biden Administration and NATO - as well as the EU - at a loss for how to respond. Is it a war? Limited incursion? Will more sanctions do the trick? Also today: Why is Scotland no longer publishing vax info? And Canada's peaceful protest organizer denied bail, faces years in prison. Watch today's Liberty Report:



from Invasion...Or Not? Biden Administration Unsure On Russia Moves

Fear and Loathing in Washington

One can frequently disagree with government policies without necessarily regarding them with disgust, but the Joe Biden Administration has turned that corner, first with its senseless promotion of a new Cold War that could turn hot with Russia and, more recently, with its actions undertaken to undermine and punish Afghanistan. The fact that the White House wraps itself in the sanctimonious, self-righteous twaddle that is so much the hallmark of the political left is bad enough, but when the government goes out of its way to harm and even kill people around the world in pursuit of an elusive global dominance it is time for the American people to rise up and say “Stop!”

As a former CIA operations officer, I departed government service in 2002 in part due to the impending invasion of Iraq, which I knew was completely unjustified by the web of largely fabricated information that was flowing out of the Pentagon to justify the attack. In the years since I have been appalled by the Obama era attacks on Syria and Libya as well as by the assassinations and cruise missile strikes carried out under Donald Trump. But all of that was a Sunday in the park compared to the hideous nonsense being pursued by Biden and his crew of reprobates. Trifling with the use of force as part of negotiations intended to go nowhere over Ukraine could well by misstep, false flag or even design escalate into nuclear war ending much of the life on this planet as we know it, and we are now also witnessing the cold, calculated slaughter of possibly hundreds of thousands of civilians just because we have the tools at hand and believe that we can get away with it. What we are seeing unfold right in front of us goes beyond appalling and it is time to demand a change of course on the part of a runaway federal government that is drunk on its own self-assumed unbridled right to exercise total executive authority over vital issues of war and peace.

I am most particularly shocked and dismayed over what the Biden Administration did to Afghanistan on February 11th, which is unambiguously a crime against humanity. On that day the President of the United States Joe Biden, still smarting from the botched departure from Afghanistan and low approval ratings, issued an executive order invoking emergency powers stipulating that the $7 billion in Afghan government money being held and frozen in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York would be retained by the US and divided in two.

Half of the $7 billion would be placed in a US government administered trust fund. The money would in theory go to fund humanitarian relief in Afghanistan to be carried out by agencies unidentified but presumed to be acting in coordination with the barracudas at the Treasury Department while the other half would go to benefit the victims of 9/11. This money is not just “frozen assets,” it is the entire reserve of the Afghan central bank, and its appropriation by the US will destroy whatever remains of the formal Afghan economy, making Afghanistan entirely reliant on small rations of foreign aid that come through channels unconnected with the Afghan government.

The other half of the story is that Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9/11 but instead became a victim of the US lust for revenge. After 9/11, the Taliban government offered to turn over Osama bin Laden to the United States if Washington were able to provide evidence that he was somehow involved in the attacks in New York and Virginia. The George W. Bush Administration was unable to do so, but chose to invade instead.

Afghanistan now has a government that is recognized by the United Nations and many other countries, though not by Washington, which insists that the Taliban are terrorists. Sanctions pressure being exerted by Washington on the new Taliban dominated regime has inter alia brought about a major humanitarian disaster, with various international agencies predicting that many thousands of Afghan civilians will die of starvation because there is no money available to provide relief. The United Nations has reported that three-quarters of Afghanistan’s population has plunged into acute poverty, with 4.7 million people likely to suffer severe or even fatal malnutrition this year.

The money in New York unambiguously belongs to the Afghan government and the country’s central bank. It is not money that came from the United States, which means that what Biden, who is already stealing Syria’s oil, is engaging in yet one more large scale theft, this time from people dying from famine and disease. Furthermore, as the US was de facto an occupying military power in Afghanistan, the responsibility to protect the civilian population is explicitly required under the articles of the Geneva Convention, to which the US is a signatory. That Washington will watch many thousands of civilians die because it has used its position as an occupying power to steal money that might alleviate the suffering is unconscionable and amounts to a war crime.

Undoubtedly the half of the money allegedly allocated for humanitarian relief will be directed to organizations that will do Washington’s bidding in terms of how the aid is distributed and who gets it. It is being reported that it will take months to set up the aid network, by which time thousands will die. That is to be expected and may have been intentional. And as for the other half of the money directed towards 9/11 “victims,” just watch how that plays out. There are undoubtedly instances of Americans who lost multiple and even cross generational family members at 9/11 and are still in need of assistance. Fine, that is a given, but why punish the Afghans to deal with that? And as soon as the money is on the table you know exactly what will happen. All the shyster lawyers working on a percentage of the payoffs will come out of the woodwork and the major beneficiaries of all the loot will be people who know how to manipulate and game the system. That is what happened to the billions that came raining down as a consequence of the insurance claims on the World Trade Center and also in the distribution of other monies that followed. You can bank on it.

Washington has become adept at lying to cover up its crimes overseas, but foreigners, who are not likely inclined to read the Washington Post and are directly affected by the deception, frequently have a more facts-based understanding of what exactly is going on. And it is why no one any longer trusts the United States. And, it is interesting to note how inevitably the lying by the US government is both bipartisan and inclined to blame the victim as a fallback position. This was seen in Donald Trump’s assassination of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani over two years ago. Soleimani was in Baghdad for peace talks and was falsely accused by the White House of preparing to attack American soldiers. There is also the more recent assassination of alleged ISIS leader Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi and killing of 13 additional women and children in Syria where accounts of villagers don’t quite square with the Pentagon version of what allegedly took place.

And then there is a long-concealed atrocity also in Syria which took place in the town of Baghuz in March 2019. At least 80 mostly women and children died in an attack by American F-15 fighter bombers, which was only reported in the media in November 2021. Reportedly, a large crowd of women and children were seen by photographic drones seeking shelter huddled against a river bank. Without warning, an American attack jet dropped a 500-pound bomb on the group. When the smoke cleared, another jet tracked the running survivors and dropped one 2,000-pound bomb, then another, killing most of them. Military personnel at the Udeid Airbase in Qatar watching the attack by way of the drone camera reportedly reacted in “stunned disbelief” at what they were witnessing. A Pentagon cover-up followed and to this day the official comment on the attack is that it was “justified.”

So, by all means go and listen to lying Jen Psaki and pencil neck Ned Price or to Secretary of State Tony Blinken and possibly to the ultimate nitwit himself, President Honest Joe Biden. Or you can just pick up a New York Times or Washington Post where deliberately leaked government lies are backed up by what the newspapers pretend to be editorial integrity. These folks just might drop us into a nuclear war or could possibly continue in their larcenous ways to rob the world. Sooner or later the chickens will be coming home to roost and accountability for America’s war crimes will be demanded. Stay tuned.

Reprinted with permission from Unz.com.

from Fear and Loathing in Washington

Hawks Make Little Distinction Between Russia and the Soviet Union

Foreign policy hawks in the United States habitually equate a noncommunist Russia with the totalitarian Soviet Union. An especially graphic example is a recent article in 19FortyFive by Michael Rubin, a senior fellow at the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute. The title, "Russia Was a Rogue State Long before Ukraine and Georgia," accurately conveys the extent of Rubin’s Russophobia. Predictably, he blames Moscow entirely for the 2008 Georgia war, even though a European Union investigation concluded that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili’s forces initiated the fighting. Likewise, he studiously ignores the assistance that the United States and some of its European allies gave demonstrators who unseated Ukraine’s elected, pro-Russian president as a trigger for Russia’s subsequent annexation of Crimea.

No, according to Rubin, such episodes are indicative of Vladimir Putin’s strategy to "recreate the Soviet Union in all but name." He then condemns the administrations of Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden for insufficient resolve in the face of such malignant, imperial ambitions. However, Rubin asserts that the "real problem is deeper. Russia’s aggression and sense of impunity did not begin with Georgia, but rather with Japan. In the tail end of World War II, Russia seized southern Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands from Japan."

There’s just one problem with his thesis: The seizure of territory from Japan was made by the Soviet Union. There was no independent "Russia" in 1945, and it reflects extreme intellectual laziness to use the terms interchangeably, as Rubin and some other analysts do. During the Soviet era, Russia was just one component of the USSR, albeit the largest one. Moreover, it is incorrect to assume that ethnic Russians always ran the communist state. The longest-tenured Soviet dictator (who ruled for nearly 3 decades) was Joseph Stalin – a Georgian, not a Russian. Nikita Khrushchev, who led the USSR for more than a decade, was ethnically Russian but grew up in Ukraine and was culturally Ukrainian. Indeed, according to his great-granddaughter, Nina Khrushcheva, he was exceptionally fond of Ukraine. It probably was not a coincidence that Khrushchev was the person who made the decision to transfer Crimea, which had been part of Russia since 1782, to Ukraine.

There are other reasons why a sharp distinction needs to be made between the Soviet Union and the noncommunist Russia that emerged when the USSR dissolved in December 1991. Today’s Russia is markedly different from the Soviet Union economically, politically, and ideologically. At the end of the Cold War, the USSR had the world’s second largest economy; Russia in 2020 ranked eleventh – just behind South Korea. The Soviet Union embraced Marxist-Leninist economics, whereas Russia is very much part of the capitalist world. Granted, the capitalism it practices is an extremely corrupt variety characterized by cronyism, but it still a far cry from the rigidly centralized, government-run economy of the Soviet era. Politically, Putin’s rule embodies a conservative authoritarianism, not the outsized, revolutionary ambitions of the USSR’s communist rulers.

Militarily, there also is a massive contrast between the Soviet Union and Russia. The former sought to keep up with the United States in terms of both military spending and capabilities. The strain of that quest was a major reason for the country’s eventual implosion. Moscow’s current annual military outlays are less than one-tenth of US expenditures, and the budget is comparable to those of Britain, France, Japan and other regional powers.

The bottom line is that the Soviet Union was an expansionist, totalitarian great power with superpower pretentions. Today’s Russia is a conventional regional power trying to preserve a sphere of influence in its immediate neighborhood against encroachment by an extraordinarily capable US-led military alliance. I’m astonished at how often supposed military or foreign policy experts on television news shows make no distinction between the Soviet Union and Russia in their presentations. Some even misspeak and refer to "Soviet" actions or goals, when it’s apparent that they mean "Russia."

For Rubin and fellow hawks, it is as though the dissolution of the USSR at the end of 1991 never took place. The policies they advocate implicitly treat Russia as an inherent enemy no different from the West’s mortal adversary during the Cold War. Indeed, that corrosive attitude has dominated thinking throughout most of the US foreign policy establishment and news media.

The mentality emerged early in Bill Clinton’s presidency when US officials pushed to expand NATO eastward toward the Russian border, a policy that George W. Bush’s administration eagerly intensified. Perhaps such a destructive mindset was inevitable, since that generation of policymakers had been so thoroughly marinated in the rhetoric and perceptions of the Cold War. It was especially significant, though, that Washington adopted a provocative, confrontational policy before Russia did anything even hinting at threatening, expansionist behavior. To use Rubin’s own standard, such belligerent behavior on Washington’s part occurred long before Russia’s actions in Georgia or Ukraine.

Citing Soviet misconduct as a justification for adopting a hostile policy toward Russia is not only inappropriate, but outrageous. Germany in the 21st century is not to blame for Nazi Germany’s awful depredations. Democratic Japan is not responsible for the Nanjing massacre and other crimes that Imperial Japan committed. Turkey is not to blame for the Armenian genocide waged during the final years of the Ottoman Empire. And today’s Russia should not be held accountable for either the human rights abuses or the acts of aggression that the Soviet Union committed. America’s political and policy elites need to change their thinking.

Reprinted with permission from Antiwar.com.

from Hawks Make Little Distinction Between Russia and the Soviet Union

Ukraine War Possibility Suddenly Heating Up

Recent developments in eastern Ukraine are increasingly pointing to the direction of a more direct conflict between Ukrainian and Russian forces. The two breakaway eastern regions have evacuated civilians amid OSCE reports of massively increasing mortar and other military attacks over the line of demarcation. Most according to OSCE maps are coming from the Kiev side into the breakaway region. Russia today will according to press reports decide today whether to recognize the breakaway regions as independent. Fasten your seatbelts. And watch the Liberty Report:



from Ukraine War Possibility Suddenly Heating Up

Presidential Role Model

On President’s Day weekend, let us commemorate the record of the best president in US history: John Tyler.

A random poll of Americans would draw mostly puzzled looks at the name, but according to Independent Institute Senior Fellow Ivan Eland, in his 2009 ranking of the presidents, Recarving Rushmore, this 10th US president has the strongest record upholding Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty.

On the prosperity front, Tyler vetoed both the attempt to revive the national bank, and a bill to raise tariffs. His efforts for peace included ending “the longest and bloodiest Indian war in US history,” and cutting the number of troops in the US Army by 33%. He also chose not to respond militarily to both an internal rebellion in Rhode Island, and to a border dispute with Canada, both of which were instead resolved peacefully.

But what of those presidents whose birthdays morphed in “Presidents Day”—Washington and Lincoln—or these two plus one usually ranked as “Greats:” Washington, Lincoln, and FDR?

As Eland points out:

What do these three presidents have in common, then? The answer: a crisis, especially war. The greatest crises in American history were the country’s founding, the Civil War, and the Depression and World War II. Washington, Lincoln, and FDR, not coincidentally, were the presidents during these crises.

Washington ranks #7 using Eland’s Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty (“PP&L”) scale, which keeps him in the “Good” category. Points against him include his handling of the Whiskey Rebellion, and inflating Executive power beyond the Founders’ intent, both in foreign and domestic policy.

Lincoln fares far worse, coming in at #29 and “Bad.” As others have also noted, Lincoln unnecessarily provoked the Civil War, and then made it far worse than it need have been, directly managing the war in an “incompetent, brutal, and dictatorial” manner, including approving total war against the South:

The ruthless General William Tecumseh Sherman unleashed his brutal March to the Sea, and General Philip Sheridan burned the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia. These generals bombarded southern towns and cities with artillery, burned them to the ground, and looted and pillaged the rest—all in violation of acceptable conduct in war as enshrined in the 1863 Geneva Convention. Sherman ordered houses to be burned and Confederate civilians to be killed in retaliation for Confederate troops attacking Union soldiers. Sherman wrote his wife that the war’s objective was “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least part of the trouble, but the people.” ....

Eland also dubs Lincoln “the Father of Big Government in the United States,” and cites his civil liberties violations, including his notorious suspension of habeas corpus.

FDR ranks #31, also “Bad.”

Eland agrees with the assessment—extensively documented by Robert Higgs‘s extensive research—that FDR’s policies exacerbated and prolonged the Great Depression, and cites as well his deceit that took America into World War II. And of course the entire administration stands as the greatest example to date of the Crisis and Leviathan thesis, which precedents continue to haunt us to this day.

As the adage goes, “You get what you measure.” If the PP&L index were the measure, “Presidents Day” would celebrate John Tyler, Grover Cleveland, Martin Van Buren, and Rutherford B. Hayes—names more often found as the answer to trivia contents than those whose visages are carved on Mount Rushmore. So long as warmongering, power-grabbing, civil and economic liberties-violating presidents are rated “Great,” while uncharismatic but principled figures are ridiculed both by historical analysts and in campaign debates, this is what we’ll continue to get. But it needn’t be so, and a president emulating Tyler’s policies wouldn’t be a bad start.

——-
See Ron Paul’s “Afterwords” interview of Ivan Eland on Recarving Rushmore, here.

See audio, video, and transcripts of events held based on Recarving Rushmore:
Bush, Obama, and Presidential Power, with Ron Paul and Richard Shenkman

Reprinted with permission from Independent Institute.

from Presidential Role Model

The Federal Reserve: Enemy of American Workers

According to numbers released by the US government, consumer prices have increased by 7.5 percent in the past year, the steepest increase since 1982. The actual price increases are even worse than the government numbers suggest, given that the “official” statistics are manipulated to understate the real rate of price increases. According to John Williams of ShadowStats, prices have actually increased by around 15 percent over the past year.

The fact that prices remain at historically high levels shows that inflation is far from “transitory,” as Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had described it. The continuing inflation has led the Federal Reserve Board to suggest the Fed will start increasing interest rates earlier than previously announced. The Fed may also break with its practice of only raising rates by 25 basis points at a time and increase rates by increments of up to 50 basis points. However, the increases the Fed is discussing would still leave interest rates at historic lows. Thus, such interest rate increases would do little or nothing to ease the pain rising prices cause for average consumers.

Most policy “experts” and politicians, including President Biden, support interest rate increases to deal with inflation. However, some progressives oppose raising rates. Opponents of rate increases fear that increasing interest rates will slow economic growth, increase unemployment, and depress wages. These progressives believe the old fallacy that workers benefit from easy money. The truth is workers are inflation’s main victims.

Workers may see their nominal pay (pay unadjusted for inflation) increase while the Fed-produced price increases cause real wages to plummet. That is certainly the case today. In contrast, the Federal Reserve’s money creation benefits crony capitalists who receive the new money created by the Fed before the injection of new money causes prices to rise. This increases the elite’s purchasing power, furthering income inequality.

The Federal Reserve’s creation of new money does more than erode the value of the currency. It also artificially lowers interest rates, which are the price of money. This distorts the signals sent to market actors, leading to investment decisions that do not reflect the real condition of the market. The result is a temporary boom, followed by a bust. Workers who find new jobs in the boom lose those jobs in the bust. These workers are then not just unemployed. They are also often saddled with unmanageable debt incurred during the low interest rate, easy money phase of the business cycle.

Progressives could help workers by joining the movement for market-based money. Free-market money will be safe from government manipulation, and thus its value will remain stable. A step toward restoring a free-market monetary system is letting the people know the truth about the Federal Reserve by passing Audit the Fed. Another step is legalizing alternative currencies by repealing legal tender laws and ending all capital gains taxes on precious metals and cryptocurrencies. Congress must also begin to cut spending, starting by making major cuts in our 750 billion dollars military budget and ending all corporate welfare.

Fiat money benefits financial and political elites at the expense of working people whose standard of living is eroded by Federal Reserve actions. As a Texas labor leader once told me, “Gold has always been the working man’s friend.” I would add that fiat money is the worker’s foe.

from The Federal Reserve: Enemy of American Workers

The Burden Of Proof Is Always On The Ones Making The Claim (Even If It's About Russia)

Well you'll be shocked to learn that, while the Ukraine invasion we've been told for weeks was happening any day now still has not occurred, the US and UK have declared that Russia attacked Ukraine in an invisible and unverifiable way for which the evidence is secret.

"The White House blamed Russia on Friday for this week’s cyberattacks targeting Ukraine’s defense ministry and major banks and warned of the potential for more significant disruptions in the days ahead," AP reports. "Anne Neuberger, the Biden administration’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technologies, said the US had rapidly linked Tuesday’s attacks to Russian military intelligence officers."

"Technical information analysis shows the GRU was almost certainly involved in disruptive DDoS attacks," adds a statement from the UK Foreign Office.

No evidence for this claim has been provided beyond the assertive tone with which American and British officials have uttered it, but that likely won't stop arguments from western narrative managers that this "attack" justifies immediate economic sanctions.

President Joe Biden says Russia President Putin is going to invade Ukraine. Reporter asks, "What reason do you have to believe he's considering that option at all?" Biden replies, "We have significant intelligence capability." Again, no evidence. Just trust us. pic.twitter.com/C9wwFE8w4p

— Kevin Gosztola (@kgosztola) February 18, 2022

You've probably also heard by now that President Biden announced at a press briefing that Vladimir Putin has made the decision to invade Ukraine and violently topple Kyiv "in the coming days," citing only "intelligence". 

"What reason do you believe he's considering that option at all?" a reporter asked Biden after his speech.

"We have a significant intelligence capability, thank you very much," the president answered, and made his exit.

As we were reminded earlier this month in an interesting exchange between State Department spinmeister Ned Price and AP's Matt Lee, US officials firmly believe that simply placing assertions next to the word "intelligence" should be considered rock solid proof that those assertions are true, and the press are expected to play along with this.

And indeed, a large percentage of the political/media class is responding to Biden's unevidenced claim that Putin has decided to launch a full-scale ground invasion of Ukraine as though that invasion is actually happening.

It is beyond belief that in 2022, as we face challenges like covid & climate change, any national leader would start a war that could kill thousands & create millions of refugees. There is a diplomatic solution to this crisis. It is tragic that Putin seems intent to reject it.

— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) February 18, 2022

Two critical statements by Biden just now:

1. US has intelligence that Putin has made the decision to further invade Ukraine.

2. The invasion will go all the way to Kyiv, a city of 2.9m people.

Europe—the world—won’t be the same if Biden is right.

— Ivo Daalder (@IvoHDaalder) February 18, 2022

It is not even a tiny bit rare for US presidents to make incendiary claims about governments they don't like without solid intel. https://t.co/5wp4CBrlvX

— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) February 19, 2022

There are also accusations of false flags amid the fighting in eastern Ukraine and numerous other claims about what Russia is doing as it prepares for this invasion it's supposed to launch, and it's all just being blindly accepted as objectively true in mainstream political discourse. Nowhere is it questioned. Nowhere is the fault of the US and NATO in creating these tensions between Russia and Ukraine ever reported, nor are the geostrategic benefits the US hegemon stands to reap from this standoff. Few even bother trying to articulate what Moscow would gain from invading Ukraine, except the occasional infantile "they hate us for our freedom"-style think piece about how Putin just can't stand democracy.

If online you question the veracity of any of these claims in light of the extensive history these institutions have of lying to us about just this sort of thing, it's treated as a freakish and bizarre interjection that is at best misguided and at worst proof that you're an agent of the Kremlin. I haven't received so many notifications from people calling me a Russian operative since 2018, which to me is funny because everything I was saying about western Russia narratives in 2018 has since been completely vindicated.

And I think it's important while this all unfolds to take a moment to remind ourselves that the burden of proof is always on the party making the claim. This is a basic principle we all hold true in matters of logic and debate and in the legal system, and really anywhere that disputed claims are scrutinized, and it doesn't magically stop being the case just because a claim is spoken in an assertive tone by powerful people about a country they don't like. If you make a claim in an irrelevant time-wasting Twitter argument you'll immediately be asked for proof that it's true, but if the most powerful government in the world makes an incendiary claim of potentially world-shaping consequence we're all just expected to accept it, even though that government has a proven track record of making false claims.

Amazing interview with of the former MI6 chief with the Atlantic Council's @B_judah (the whole gang present) where the intel goon *admits* that many western "intel leaks" media outlets are dutifully conveying aren't real leaks but propaganda messages designed to undercut Putin. pic.twitter.com/UOzBxG5F5H

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) February 17, 2022

The onus is not on anyone else to prove that the US and UK governments are lying when they make these claims, the onus is on the US and UK governments to prove that they are telling the truth. At some point after Donald Trump's election it became a mainstream liberal doctrine that you can say whatever you want about Russia no matter how outrageous and suffer no professional consequences if it proved completely false, and nobody's really been pushing back on that. So many people built entire careers out of suggesting for years on end that the entire Trump family was going to be dragged out of the White House in chains for Kremlin collusion, and when this failed to prove true everyone just acted like it was fine and continued on with their careers.

But it's not fine. It's not okay that this bizarre cold war hysteria environment has melted everyone's brain over the last five years. It's not okay that the most basic standards of logic and evidence have been flushed down the toilet. It's not okay that we now have MI6 spooks and CIA mouthpieces openly acknowledging that the government is using the western press to wage an information war geared at undermining Russia when both the government and the press are supposed to be simply telling us the truth.

I don't know what's going to happen with Ukraine. What I do know is that it would be good to drag the Overton window of acceptable debate kicking and screaming back to the point where the burden of proof needs to be met even, and especially, by the world's most powerful people. And where, if that burden is not met, their claims are treated with all the disdain they deserve.

Reprinted with permission from Caitlin's Newsletter.
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from The Burden Of Proof Is Always On The Ones Making The Claim (Even If It's About Russia)

Documents Reveal US Gov’t Spent $22M Promoting Anti-Russia Narrative in Ukraine and Abroad

Amid soaring tensions with Russia, the United States is spending a fortune on foreign interference campaigns in Ukraine. Washington’s regime-change arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), has spent $22.4 million on operations inside the country since 2014, when democratically-elected President Viktor Yanukovych was overthrown and replaced by a successor government handpicked by the US Those operations included propping up and training pro-Western political parties, funding pliant media organizations, and subsidizing massive privatization drives that benefit foreign multinational corporations, all in an effort to secure US control over the country that NED President Carl Gershman called “the biggest prize” in Europe.

Demwashing the CIA

The National Endowment for Democracy was set up in 1983 by the Reagan administration after a series of public scandals had seriously undermined both the credibility and the public image of the CIA. That the organization was established and continues to function as a cutout group doing much of the agency’s dirtiest work is not in question. “It would be terrible for democratic groups around the world to be seen as subsidized by the CIA,” Gershman himself said, explaining its creation. “A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA,” NED cofounder Allen Weinstein told The Washington Post in 1991.

Since its inception, NED has been a driving force behind many of the most prominent uprisings and coups around the world. The organization currently has 40 active projects in Belarus, all with the goal of removing President Alexander Lukashenko from office. Last year, the country was engulfed by nationwide protests that made worldwide headlines. NED senior Europe Program officer, Nina Ognianova, boasted that her agency was involved in the uprising. “We don’t think that this movement that is so impressive and so inspiring came out of nowhere — that it just happened overnight,” she said, noting that NED had made a “modest but significant contribution” to the protests.

The 2021 protest movement in Cuba was also led by NED-financed operatives, with the organization’s own documents showing how it had for years been infiltrating the Cuban art and music scene in an attempt to turn popular culture against the communist government. Ultimately, the movement failed. However, NED continues to prop up anti-government Cuban artists, media outlets, politicians and public figures.

NED was also funneling money to the leaders of the 2019 Hong Kong protests in an attempt to prolong the movement. “The organization and its partner will leverage their extensive existing networks to support exiled activists and to sustain and grow activist communities remaining in Hong Kong,” one NED grant explains, adding that a secondary goal was to “strengthen regional and international support for the pro-democracy movement,” by carrying out a worldwide PR campaign promoting it, something that might help explain why the events dominated the news cycle for months.

Meanwhile, NED has also channeled millions to right-wing opposition groups in Nicaragua and even organized rock concerts in Venezuela in an effort to undermine support for its socialist government.

While NED is careful to couch all of its activities in the language of “democracy promotion,” the fact that it has never carried out a single project in the US-backed Gulf dictatorships of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, or the United Arab Emirates — some of the least democratic nations in the world — underlines that the organization exists to antagonize enemy governments.

NED is almost entirely funded by Congress and is staffed largely by ex-national security state leaders. Its current president is Damon Wilson, former special assistant to President George W. Bush and senior director for European affairs at the National Security Council. Other top officials pepper NED’s board of directors, including current CIA Director William J. Burns, current Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs and 2014 Ukrainian Maidan revolution mastermind Victoria Nuland, as well as veteran national security official Elliott Abrams, infamous for his role in supplying weapons to far-right death squads in Central America and his attempts to overthrow the government of Venezuela.

Despite this, NED still insists that it is a private, non-profit, non-governmental organization. One key reason for this designation is that its private nature means that its affairs do not fall under the same legal scrutiny as those of government organizations like the CIA. It is harder to acquire documents under the Freedom of Information Act, for example, meaning that the group’s actions remain shrouded in secrecy.

Economic and political capture, NED-style

Studying the NED grants database reveals that the organization has approved 334 separate grants to Ukraine, a country the group’s 2019 annual report identified as its “top priority,” owing to “its size and importance for the Europe region.” The report notes that NED is focused on “counter[ing] foreign [i.e., Russian] malign influence, particularly disinformation and corrosive capital.” Of the European nations, only Russia itself has been the target of more NED money ($37.7 million to Ukraine’s $22.4 million).

NED is rather hazy about where its money is going, with the only clues being brief, one-paragraph descriptions (rarely longer than 75 words) full of boilerplate rhetoric. Yet scrutinizing even the vague project outlines, it becomes clear that NED has two major objectives in Ukraine:

Pushing through a mass privatization of the country’s state-owned businesses.

Building up political parties that will represent elite US interests.

Of the $22.4 million, over $2.9 million has been awarded to the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE), an offshoot of the US Chamber of Commerce, for the purpose of “sparking economic transformation” in Ukraine. What sort of transformation the CIPE wants to see is made clear on its website, which states categorically that “Free market capitalism and global trade have resulted in the greatest economic gains in human history,” and that the center’s role is to further free market penetration around the world.

For instance, one NED grant to the CIPE — worth $500,000 and entitled “Developing [a] Market Economy” — described the project’s goal as “enhanc[ing] the role of leading business associations and the private sector in public policy decision-making, and improv[ing] the capacity of the private sector and officials to cooperate to develop and implement economic reforms.” In other words, to hand over government decision-making to big business, something many might argue is the antithesis of democracy.

The post-2014 government, installed after the Maidan Revolution, has already implemented a course of economic shock therapy, selling off many of the country’s state-owned assets, in the process turning Ukraine into, by quite some margin, the poorest nation in Europe (although it has also helped create many new billionaires). Nevertheless, the US wants to see further privatizations, along the lines of what it helped implement in Russia in the 1990s.

NED has also been key in building up pro-US political forces in Ukraine, notably awarding the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) nearly $2.2 million towards this endeavor. Congress established NDI in tandem with NED; and NDI, like its sister organization, claims to be a non-governmental organization, despite being affiliated with the Democratic Party. Its chairperson is Madeline Albright, secretary of state under the Clinton administration.

One $595,000 grant describes how NDI will “help political parties develop into inclusive, national movements,” and will “assist parties in the development of inclusive, internal communication and decision making procedures” and “conduct public opinion research and trainings to help parties better understand and respond to citizens, including those outside of their traditional geographical bases of support.” A less charitable interpretation of the grant would be that the US government is taking over the political direction and organization of Ukrainian political parties, molding them as they see fit.

In tandem with the support of political blocs also comes the grooming of young political and social activists who NED hopes will become the leaders of tomorrow. To this end, it has given at least $385,000 to the European Institute for Democracy in Warsaw, in order to, in its words, “support a new generation of political leaders in Ukraine,” by conducting training courses for their handpicked proteges, flying them out of the country to provide lessons in “election campaigning, women empowerment, effective governing, and crisis management,” among other skills.

The point, of course, is to develop a cadre of pro-Western neoliberal thought leaders who will ally themselves to the United States and its vision for Ukraine. Left unstated in all this is that the US is deciding who exactly this new generation of leaders comprises. And for all the nods towards diversity and liberalism, the US’ record in Eastern Europe shows they are happy to support fascists and other highly anti-democratic forces. Those who do not share Washington’s goals for Ukraine need not apply. Thus, by using its financial muscle to support only one side in this debate, NED hopes to engineer a future in which pro-Russia, anti-privatization political figures and movements are sidelined and marginalized.

Media capture, NED-style

Another key focus for NED is to establish and support pro-Western media outlets and NGOs that backed both the 2014 overthrow of Yanukovych and the new government’s privatization agenda. This is all couched as “promoting independent media.” But in reality, it is creating a network largely dependent on and answerable to Washington.

One example of this is the Ukraine Crisis Media Center, which consistently publishes studies about “Russia’s efforts to distort facts” and scare stories about an impending Russian invasion, while inviting the British ambassador to give talks at its headquarters. Ukraine Crisis describes its vision of Ukraine as an “outpost of freedom and democratic development in Eastern Europe,” and an “integral part of the West.” Ukraine Crisis is directly funded by a number of different US governmental organizations, as well as by NATO and the governments of Germany, Canada, the United Kingdom, Norway, Sweden, Poland, Finland and the Netherlands.

Most of the media organizations NED funds also maintain English-language versions of their websites. This is because many of these groups are used to influence Western audiences as well as individuals inside the target country, Ukraine. The Center for Civil Liberties (CCL), for example, has been supported financially since 2016 and has received at least $204,000 from NED. It plays an important role in injecting US government narratives into American media reporting, having been presented simply as a “human rights group” in a wide range of outlets, including The Washington Post, USA Today and The New York Post. None of these articles inform readers that CCL is directly in the pay of a CIA front group, precisely because it would undermine their credibility.

Media networks directly owned and operated by the US state, including Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and Voice of America, also frequently use CCL as an expert source. This gives the impression that there is a sizable groundswell of individuals all focusing on the same issue when, in reality, it is simply operatives from the same source (the US government) all interacting with each other.

Target: Donbas

Before his overthrow, President Yanukovych maintained cordial relations with Russia. However, that changed drastically after the Maidan Revolution, with the new government not only attempting to tie itself to the West, but also aggressively suppressing any pro-Russian sentiment. Since 2014, the government has shut down Russian-language media and jailed pro-Russian voices. It has also banned the Russian language from schools and in public places such as in stores and restaurants. Any business caught violating the law is subject to a fine.

This has caused significant consternation inside the country, not least because almost one-third of Ukrainian citizens speak Russian as their first language, and significant minorities do not speak Ukrainian at all. This is particularly true in the Donbas, the large industrial area of Eastern Ukraine, and in the Crimean peninsula, which Russia controversially annexed in 2014. In both regions, Russian is far-and-away the majority language, spoken by nearly three-quarters of the population. Support for Yanukovych and language preference are closely correlated. Since 2014, the Ukrainian government has also been engaged in a low-level civil war in the Donbas against Russian-speaking militias.

The Donbas is a target for not only the Ukrainian government but for NED as well. The word “Donbas” is referenced 52 times in the 334 one-paragraph grants noted above, while eastern Ukraine is mentioned 108 times and Crimea 22 times. The projects are full of coded references to “expanding outreach” of media outlets into the Donbas, or, even more alarmingly, to “assisting” civil groups “working in the front line territories of the Donbas” — a statement so vague that it could mean anything from health workshops to funneling weapons.

Selective anti-corruption agenda

Another focus of NED projects is anti-corruption drives. The words “corrupt” or “corruption” appear 83 times in the NED grants to Ukraine, and the endowment has funded a wide range of NGOs dealing with the subject. For instance, it has awarded $106,000 to the Kharkiv Anti-Corruption Center (KhAC) and $225,000 to the Anti-Corruption Action Center in Kiev.

NED describes KhAC’s work as “non-partisan” and concerned with “promot[ing] government transparency and accountability in eastern Ukraine,” by “monitor[ing] the financial performance of Kharkiv-based municipal enterprises, expos[ing] corrupt practices, and launch[ing] legal proceedings to prevent them.”

Certainly, corruption is endemic in Ukraine. Yet there is good reason to question the intentions of these groups and suspect that they are selectively pursuing opponents of American policy. KhAC was actually established by leaders of the Maidan Revolution. Furthermore, the board of the Anti-Corruption Action Center is littered with Western government officials, including the director general of the European Anti-Fraud Office (a department of the European Commission), a former FBI special agent, as well as controversial neoconservative intellectual Francis Fukuyama.

In an article in the elite American journal Foreign Policy, executives at the Anti-Corruption Action Center frame “corruption” and “Russian” as virtually synonymous. “[Ukraine’s] democratization and ongoing efforts to fight entrenched graft and cronyism are a threat to [President Vladimir] Putin’s model of governance,” they explain, adding that Russia uses “strategic corruption” to undermine Ukraine’s sovereignty. The country is a “battlefield” between Ukrainian democracy and Russian autocracy, they write, calling for the US to flood Ukraine with arms and to sanction Moscow.

In this sense, then, NED’s incessant focus on “corruption” appears to look far more like a witch hunt to bring down political forces that it opposes. This is reminiscent of the tactics of advanced “lawfare” — using legal means to destroy political enemies — that Washington used to overthrow Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff in 2016 and imprison her predecessor, Lula da Silva, paving the way for far-right pro-US Jair Bolsonaro to become president.

Unbeknownst at the time, the US government was secretly aiding an “anti-corruption” operation known in Brazilian as “Lava Jato.” A combination of corrupt judges and extremely flimsy evidence led to the persecution of the leaders of the Workers’ Party. Both the FBI and CIA were crucial to the operation. As one prosecutor involved in the persecution quipped, Lula’s arrest was “a gift from the CIA.”

Send in the Neo-Nazis

At the same time as NED has been training political leaders, other arms of the US government have been training military units, almost certainly including the notorious Neo-Nazi group, the Azov Battalion. A Yahoo! News report noted that, since 2015, the CIA has been training “insurgent leaders” while Congress rubber-stamped hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military aid to Ukraine. The congressional aid bill originally included text explicitly barring assistance to Azov but, under pressure from the Pentagon, the language was removed. “Given all this,” wrote Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic, “it would be more of a surprise that the neo-Nazis of Azov haven’t been trained in the CIA’s clandestine make-an-insurgency program.”

In their drive to stoke hostilities between the West and Russia, corporate media have overwhelmingly ignored the fact that the US and NATO forces have been supporting openly Neo-Nazi paramilitaries for many years. A MintPress study of the op-ed pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal found that only one of 91 articles published in January mentioned this connection at all, with far more asserting that Vladimir Putin himself is Hitler incarnate. Around 90% of opinion columns pushed a “get tough on Russia” message, with anti-war voices few and far between.

“People who take at face value the Western media coverage would have a very distorted perception of the Ukraine conflict and its origin,” Ivan Katchanovski, Professor of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, told MintPress, adding:

They omit or deny that there is a civil war in Donbas even though the majority of scholars who [have] published or presented concerning this conflict in Western academic venues classify it as a civil war with Russian military intervention. The Western media also omitted that recent ‘unity marches’ in Kharkiv and Kyiv and a staged training of civilians, including a grandmother, were organized and led by the far right, in particular, the Neo-Nazi Azov [Battalion].”

The Azov publicity stunt involving a grandmother, to which Katchanovski is referring, was a particularly noteworthy incident. Conducting a civilian training operation in the middle of the Donbas city of Mariupol while a crowd of Western journalists looked on, Azov units showed locals how to use rifles. The extraordinary image of a silver-haired, 79-year-old “babushka” staring down the sights of an AK-47 went viral around the world, allowing the media to construct an “everyone in brave Ukraine is doing their part to oppose an imminent Russian invasion” narrative. The story was covered by a host of outlets, including ABC News, MSNBC, Newsweek, the BBC, The Guardian and The Financial Times, as well as by media in Ireland, Australia, Israel, Denmark, Thailand and Indonesia. Images from the training day featured on the front cover of six national British newspapers on February 14.

This was all despite the fact that the Wolfsangel insignia of the many Azov soldiers instructing the grandmother is clearly visible in a number of the images. The Wolfsangel was the crest of the infamous SS brigades, Hitler’s elite paramilitary units that carried out the extermination of millions of people (including countless Ukrainians) in Nazi death camps across Europe. The image is widely used by Neo-Nazi groups in the US and is considered a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League. Azov’s original commander, politician Andriy Biletsky, has stated that he sees Ukraine’s mission as to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade … against Semite-led subhumans.” None of the outlets above mentioned the fact that they were profiling Neo-Nazis.

Judging by other pro-Nazi coverage, this was far from an honest oversight. Earlier this month, a number of prominent Western media outlets, including The Daily Mail, ran puff pieces on Olena Bilozerska, a Ukrainian sniper with “at least ten confirmed kills.” Bilozerska was presented as a quintessential “girlboss” who was defending her land from foreign aggression. The Sun — Britain’s best selling newspaper — called her a “hero” in its headline. Both outlets even included a video of her killing Russian-speaking Ukrainian citizens for readers’ pleasure. This enjoyment might have been tempered somewhat if the Mail, Sun or other outlets revealed to their readers that Bilozerska is a fascist from the Right Sector group, a Neo-Nazi paramilitary.

This information is far from difficult to find, as Bilozerska is a well-known public figure inside Ukraine, keeping a popular blog and YouTube channel where she shares her thoughts. These reportedly include that the Holocaust did not happen, that homosexuals should not be allowed to eat at the same table as heterosexuals, and that monuments to Hitler’s greatness should be erected in Berlin. In 2013, German state-owned media outlet Deutsche Welle was forced to rescind an award for which it had nominated her after activists highlighted her pro-Hitler writings. In 2019, she was invited to NATO headquarters in Brussels to give a speech.

A broken promise and an existential threat

In 1990, the US government promised Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would stray “not one inch eastward” from its current position in exchange for Soviet support for German reunification. However, it later reneged on this promise, and between 1999 and 2004 NATO galloped eastward, even admitting three former Soviet republics, all of which share a land border with Russia. In 2008, NATO also invited Ukraine and Georgia to join.

For Moscow, this was an existential threat. Russia as a country draws its origins from the Kievan Rus Federation, a medieval state whose capital was Kiev and from where the word “Russia” derives. In the 13th century, the Rus people fled north towards Moscow to avoid the Mongol invasion, helping to establish the Grand Duchy of Muscovy, which later became the Russian empire, the Soviet Union and the Russian Federation today. Putin himself has said that he considers Russians and Ukrainians to be “one people”; “Ukraine” literally means “borderland” in Russian. Yet White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki recently described Ukraine as “our eastern flank” — an assertion that is significantly less credible than Russia’s claim.

The US-Russian relationship fundamentally deteriorated during the 2014 Maidan Revolution. President Yanukovych had been playing the European Union and Russia off against each other, negotiating economic deals with both. Unsurprisingly, given Ukraine’s importance to Moscow, Russia offered a more lucrative deal, which he accepted. This turned out to be Yanukovych’s political death warrant, as the United States immediately began supporting a nationwide protest movement. Senior US officials like Senator John McCain and Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland flew to Kiev, famously handing out cookies to protestors in Independence Square.

In February 2014, leaked audio of Nuland speaking with US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt showed that the United States was pulling the strings and crowning the kings. “I don’t think Klitch should go into the government. I don’t think it is necessary. I don’t think it is a good idea,” Nuland can be heard saying, referring to the boxer-turned-politician Vitali Klitschko. “I think Yats [Arseniy Yatsenyuk] is the guy who has got the economic experience, the governing experience,” she added. Less than one month after the audio leaked, Yatsenyuk became the next prime minister.

Less than two weeks after the phone call, snipers massacred almost 100 people protesting. Although the US immediately blamed the Yanukovych administration, another leaked audio call, this time between the E.U.’s foreign affairs chief and the Estonian foreign minister, revealed that they believed pro-US forces had staged a false-flag attack as a pretext to remove Yanukovych and stage a coup. In the end, far-right militias like Azov and Right Sector provided the muscle to force Yanukovych out of office.

However, as Katchanovski noted, very little of this context is given in the press, leaving audiences fundamentally ignorant of the basic facts. In Katchanovski’s opinion:

The Western media coverage of the escalating Ukraine conflict is highly inaccurate and selective. The Maidan massacre, which led to the current conflict, is either omitted or misrepresented even though overwhelming evidence shows that this crucial mass-killing of the protesters and the police was perpetrated by the elements of the Maidan opposition; in particular, the far-right. Such evidence includes videos of snipers in the Maidan-controlled buildings shooting the protesters and the police, testimonies of the absolute majority of wounded protesters at the Maidan massacre trial and investigation, several hundred witnesses, and 14 self-admitted members of Maidan snipers groups.”

All over the world, the National Endowment for Democracy is training groups of people who can function as the leaders of another color revolution. In the process, it helps squash genuine grassroots movements by co-opting them and using its financial clout to push activism down pro-US avenues. Spending more than $22 million on the country, NED has made Ukraine one of its top priorities. Yet an analysis of the groups receiving money reveals that the whole operation is an attempt to shore up support for the US-backed Zelensky administration, and to carry out a foreign interference operation, the extent of which blows anything Russia is accused of out of the water. The National Endowment for Democracy can claim it is in the business of democracy promotion. In reality, it does anything but that, unless “democracy” is entirely synonymous with elite US interests.

Reprinted with permission from MintPressNews.

from Documents Reveal US Gov’t Spent $22M Promoting Anti-Russia Narrative in Ukraine and Abroad