For years the eminent Russia scholar Stephen Cohen had ranked President Vladimir Putin of the Russian Republic as the most consequential world leader of the early twenty-first century. He praised the man’s enormous success in reviving his country after the chaos and destitution of the Yeltsin years and emphasized his desire for friendly relations with America, but increasingly feared that we were entering into a new Cold War, even more dangerous than the last.

As far back as 2017, the late Prof. Cohen argued that no foreign leader had been as greatly vilified in recent American history as Putin, and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine two weeks ago has exponentially raised the intensity of such media denunciations, almost matching the hysteria our country experienced two decades ago after the 9/11 attack on New York City. Larry Romanoff has provided a useful catalog of some examples.

Until recently, this extreme demonization of Putin was largely confined to Democrats and centrists, whose bizarre Russiagate narrative had accused him of installing Donald Trump in the White House. But the reaction has now become entirely bipartisan, with enthusiastic Trump-backer Sean Hannity recently using his prime-time FoxNewsshow to call for Putin’s death, a cry soon joined by Sen. Lindsey Graham, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee. These are astonishing threats to make against a man whose nuclear arsenal could quickly annihilate the bulk of the American population, and the rhetoric seems unprecedented in our postwar history. Even in the darkest days of the Cold War, I don’t recall such public sentiments ever being directed towards the USSR or its top Communist leadership.

In many respects the Western reaction to Russia’s attack has been closer to a declaration of war than merely a return to Cold War confrontation. Russia’s massive foreign reserves held abroad have been seized and frozen, its civilian airlines excluded from Western skies, and its leading banks disconnected from global financial networks. Wealthy Russian private citizens have had their properties confiscated, the national soccer team has been banned from the World Cup, and the longtime Russian conductor of the Munich Philharmonic was fired for refusing to denounce his own country.

Such international retaliation against Russia and individual Russians seems extremely disproportionate. As yet the fighting in Ukraine has inflicted minimal death or destruction, while the various other major wars of the last two decades, many of them American in origin, had killed millions and completely destroyed several countries, including Iraq, Libya, and Syria. But the global dominance of American media propaganda has orchestrated a very different popular response, producing this remarkable crescendo of hatred.

Indeed, the closest parallel that comes to mind would be the American hostility directed against Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany after the outbreak of World War II, as indicated by the widespread comparisons between Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Hitler’s 1939 attack on Poland. A simple Google search for “Putin and Hitler” returns tens of millions of webpages, with the top results ranging from the headline of a Washington Post article to the Tweets of pop music star Stevie Nicks. As far back as 2014, Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer had documented the emerging meme “Putin is the new Hitler.”

Although enormously popular, such Putin-Hitler analogies have hardly gone unchallenged, and some media outlets such as the London Spectator have strongly disagreed, arguing that Putin’s strategic aims have been quite limited and reasonable.

Many sober-minded strategic analysts have made this same point at length, and very occasionally their contrary views have managed to slip through the media blockade.

Although FoxNews has become one of the outlets most rabidly hostile to Russia, a recent interview with one of their regular guests provided a very different perspective. Col. Douglas Macgregor had been a former top Pentagon advisor and he forcefully explained that America had spent nearly fifteen years ignoring Putin’s endless warnings that he would not tolerate NATO membership for Ukraine, nor the deployment of strategic missiles on his border. Our government had paid no heed to his explicit red-lines, so Putin was finally compelled to act, resulting in the current calamity:

(see video)

Prof. John Mearsheimer of the University of Chicago, one of our most distinguished political scientists, had spent many years making exactly these same points and blaming America and NATO for the simmering Ukraine crisis, but his warnings had been totally ignored by our political leadership and media. His hour-long lecture explaining these unpleasant realities had quietly sat on Youtube for six years, attracting relatively little attention, but then suddenly exploded in popularity over the last few weeks as the conflict unfolded, and has now reached a worldwide audience of over 17 million. His other Youtube lectures, some quite recent, have been watched by additional millions.

Such massive global attention finally forced our media to take notice, and the New Yorker solicited an interview with Mearsheimer, allowing him to explain to his disbelieving questioner that American actions had clearly provoked the conflict. A couple of years earlier, that same interviewer had ridiculed Prof. Cohen for doubting the reality of Russiagate, but this time he seemed much more respectful, perhaps because the balance of media power was now reversed; his magazine’s 1.2 million subscriber-base was dwarfed by the global audience listening to the views of his subject.

• Why John Mearsheimer Blames the U.S. for the Crisis in Ukraine
  Isaac Chotiner • The New Yorker • March 1, 2022 • 3,900 Words

During his long and distinguished career at the CIA, former analyst Ray McGovern had run the Soviet Policy Branch and also served as the Presidential Briefer, so under different circumstances he or someone like him would would currently be advising President Joe Biden. Instead, a few days ago he joined Mearsheimer in presenting his views in a video discussion hosted by the Committee for the Republic. Both leading experts agreed that Putin had been pushed beyond all reasonable limits, provoking the invasion.

READ MORE:

https://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-putin-as-hitler/

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Until Assange is out of prison and free to be a citizen of the world. the US and ALL their allies do not have a leg to dance with...

AND BEAR WITH US: the irresponsible Western media would not mind a FULL-ON CONFRONTATION  between NATO and Russia (and China)... and are hiding as much as possible the REASONS that drove Putin into Ukraine, behind "colour stories of suffering people"... YES, we know that people are suffering, but please Western media LEARN the TRUE hegemonic momentum of the Western World. Start with defending the heartland...

FROM Jeremy Scahill (The Intercept)

The invasion of Ukraine is a baldfaced act of aggression. But the corporate media has a double standard for the United States.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is a baldfaced act of aggression, replete with war crimes. It is rightly being condemned as such by large numbers of people and nations across the globe.

From the beginning of this crisis, Russian President Vladimir Putin has exploited the past bombing campaigns of the U.S. and NATO to frame his own warped justification for his murderous campaign in Ukraine.

But the fact that Putin is trying to justify the unjustifiable does not mean that we must ignore the U.S. actions that fuel his narrative. The laws of war and international law should apply not only to the declared bad guys of the moment or to parties that unilaterally attack other nations, but also to every nation — including our own.

The corporate media has always found it much easier to express outrage at the actions and crimes of a foreign autocrat than to confront the conduct of its own government.

I co-founded The Intercept eight years ago in large part to fill a desperate need for critical analysis and independent reporting on U.S. militarism. Today, I continue to see an entrenched double standard that permeates the consistently hypocritical U.S. response to the actions of its enemies.

In recent days, U.S. and NATO officials have highlighted Russia’s use of banned weapons, including cluster munitions, and have said that their use constitutes violations of international law. This is indisputably true. What goes virtually unmentioned in much of the reporting on this topic is that the U.S., like both Russia and Ukraine, refuses to sign the Convention on Cluster Munitions.

The U.S. has repeatedly used cluster bombs, from the war in Vietnam and the “secret” bombings of Cambodia to a 2009 attack in Yemen that killed 55 people under President Barack Obama. Despite the ban, which was finalized in 2008 and went into effect in 2010, the U.S. continued to sell cluster bombs to nations like Saudi Arabia, which regularly used them in its attacks in Yemen.

It is also relevant that to this day there has been no accountability for the crimes committed by the U.S. in its invasion and occupation of Iraq, its 20-year war in Afghanistan, the post-9/11 CIA torture and kidnapping program, or the killing of civilians in drone and other airstrikes in numerous countries. The U.S. has systematized a self-exoneration machine. And Russia and every nation on Earth knows it.

There are actions that the U.S. and other Western countries could take to bolster the legitimacy of their denunciations of Putin’s actions. They could end support for Israel’s aggression against Palestine and recognize Palestinians’ legitimate right to self-defense. The U.S. could immediately end all support for Saudi Arabia and “make it a pariah,” as President Joe Biden promised. The U.S. could stop its drone strikes in Somalia and elsewhere. But that’s not what’s being talked about on cable news or in the halls of power.

The Intercept is one of the few news outlets with the courage and independence to go against the grain in times of war and point out these uncomfortable truths. As a nonprofit news outlet, we rely on member donations to continue this bold, independent coverage.

---------------

YES ! But…. HAS JEREMY SCAHILL COME A BIT LATE TO THIS REALISATION? And does painting the Russians as black as the USA, by Jeremy Scahill, holds water? No. The Russians are protecting the Donbass (including having to take Mariupol) from a planned assault by the Ukrainian forces in early/mid March. (Of course this will be explained by the West as Russian disinformation. Should the Ukrainian have invaded the Donbass, this would have been presented as fighting terrorists — or such).

Beyond protecting RUSSIANS in Donbass, the stated aims of Putin is to eliminate the military and the “Nazis” (say fascist) from Ukraine. Note that the war could be stopped by Zelenskyy INSTANTLY, by agreeing to a) the Minsk Agreement and b) not making noising about joining NATO (not demand US nukes on Ukrainian soil) and c) demanding that the West permanently afford Russian's security with a treaty. This were REASONABLE demands made by Russia last year and reiterated many times: The Response of the West? FUCK YOU, PUTIN!!!. 

And as we know “we can't trust the US and NATO information”: U.S. and NATO officials have highlighted Russia’s use of banned weapons. We have no way to verify this. And the Russian army will say that this is disinfo from the West — which is a bit like SADDAM HAS WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. 

---------------------

From Glenn Greenwald

Today I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the news outlet I co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, as well as from its parent company First Look Media.

The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.

The censored article, based on recently revealed emails and witness testimony, raised critical questions about Biden’s conduct. Not content to simply prevent publication of this article at the media outlet I co-founded, these Intercept editors also demanded that I refrain from exercising a separate contractual right to publish this article with any other publication.

I had no objection to their disagreement with my views of what this Biden evidence shows: as a last-ditch attempt to avoid being censored, I encouraged them to air their disagreements with me by writing their own articles that critique my perspectives and letting readers decide who is right, the way any confident and healthy media outlet would. But modern media outlets do not air dissent; they quash it. So censorship of my article, rather than engagement with it, was the path these Biden-supporting editors chose.

The censored article will be published on this page shortly (it is now published here, and the emails with Intercept editors showing the censorship are here). My letter of intent to resign, which I sent this morning to First Look Media’s President Michael Bloom, is published below.

As of now, I will be publishing my journalism here on Substack, where numerous other journalists, including my good friend, the great intrepid reporter Matt Taibbi, have come in order to practice journalism free of the increasingly repressive climate that is engulfing national mainstream media outlets across the country.

This was not an easy choice: I am voluntarily sacrificing the support of a large institution and guaranteed salary in exchange for nothing other than a belief that there are enough people who believe in the virtues of independent journalism and the need for free discourse who will be willing to support my work by subscribing.

Like anyone with young children, a family and numerous obligations, I do this with some trepidation, but also with the conviction that there is no other choice. I could not sleep at night knowing that I allowed any institution to censor what I want to say and believe — least of all a media outlet I co-founded with the explicit goal of ensuring this never happens to other journalists, let alone to me, let alone because I have written an article critical of a powerful Democratic politician vehemently supported by the editors in the imminent national election.

By now you all should know that Glenn was exposing the corruption of the Bidens — in Ukraine and in China. But at the time EVERYONE (not every voters considering that more than 70 million people voted for Trump) but EVERYONE in the mass media (MSM) wanted to get rid of Trump-the-loony. As I say above: 

Trump seems to have been the only President who took the secret pact as a joke and this is why the ESTABLISHMENT is using all the tricks in the book to prevent his re-election...

By and large, we still support Glenn Greenwald and The Intercept as valuable sources, but with various degrees of trust. On the corruption of the Bidens, we have other trustworthy sources that have been published, with video links, on this site. Find them. 

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“In 2014, I went out to buy something and heard this whizz. Someone shouted for us to get down, so everyone did. Several shells exploded. I lay on the ground for a bit, but when it got quieter, I decided I should try to get to a shelter of some kind. There was a church nearby – very beautiful and new. Many people rushed there, and I wondered, ‘Will I make it?’ So I ran. I guess the fear helped, because I ran very fast. I was going down to the church basement when I heard the shells flying again. They hit the ground nearby, and I felt relieved that I chose my time right.

“There were many people in the basement, including children. Altar boys brought everyone tea and some food, laid down the mattresses. Some families basically lived in this basement and others for months. And those who were living in Soviet buildings or private houses with proper basements were the lucky ones. I was living in a new building, on the top floor, so I had nowhere to run during the shelling. It’s a terrible feeling when you’re looking at the horrors around you and are helpless to change anything about it. When I evacuated in 2015, the building I lived in was hit by a shell. My neighbor on the 7th floor got hurt.

“My relatives who are still there say that after the evacuation the shelling got much worse. The Ukrainian forces started shelling both Donetsk and the outskirts. Though it’s good that at least there are no air raids now – they used to fire at us from the air, hitting residential areas.

“All these years, we asked Ukraine to find a compromise and stop the war, but Zelensky didn’t want to talk to ‘those people’ – that’s what he called us. The president we, the Donbass people, didn’t even choose, doesn’t want to listen to us.

“In 2014, many people living in the eastern regions rose up against the new regime. There were no weapons – sticks at best. Back then, Ukrainian armored vehicles would stop and turn around. They had no orders to crush the protests. Ordinary Ukrainian soldiers weren’t capable of that – it could only be done by the armed gangs.

“There are politicians in Ukraine who think that we shouldn’t be here, that we don’t deserve to live here on our land. They don’t see us as human. Well, we didn’t want to remain part of their country either. It’s not about the language – it’s a beautiful language, I learned it at school. What does language have to do with the fact that it’s spoken by fools? If Russia hadn’t interfered, they would have tried and shelled us again. We wouldn’t make it without Russia. And the US is just getting rich off the war.”

When asked about their future expectations, the women fumble for words. They simply say that they want to lead peaceful lives, like before, working and raising their kids. Meanwhile, there are more and more refugees coming from the new republics to Russia each day.

READ MORE:

https://www.rt.com/russia/551534-russia-ukraine-dpr-refugees/

Remember that around 14,000 people have been killed in the Donbass by Ukrainian forces since 2014...

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NATO White Helmets follow al-Qaeda to Ukraine

Vanessa Beeley

Four-hundred and fifty extremists from Idlib, north-west Syria have arrived in Ukraine according to Al Mayadeen.

Hailing from Idlib – the “largest Al Qaeda haven since 9/11”-  these fanatics from various countries have been despatched to Ukraine to fight against the Russian forces that alongside the Syrian Arab Amy signified the end of their Caliphatist dreams in Syria. 

These extremists passed through Turkey, a NATO member state, to arrive at their destination in western Ukraine. According to Al Mayadeen: 

senior fighters from the terrorist group Hayat Tahrir-Al-Sham (rebranded version of Jabhat Al Nusra aka Al Qaeda) have held a number of meetings with senior leaders in the Turkistan Islamic Party group and Ansar Al Tawhid and Hurras Al Din groups, and agreed on allowing a number of their fighters to enter Ukraine through Turkey”.

According to the Counter Extremist Project: 

Hurras al-Din and its leaders are U.S. Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The U.S. presently offers a $5 million reward for information on three of its leaders” 

Yet here they are fighting for NATO member states, led by the US, in Ukraine, alongside the NATO fascist and Neo-Nazi contras.

Sources in Idlib added that these foreign fighters are veterans of the war against Syria led by the US and UK, bankrolled by Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The fighters had been causing issues in Idlib and “were given this opportunity to fight against Russia as a compromise by which they would receive a new start and with an acceptable income”.

Does that mean they were receiving a more-than-acceptable income in Syria? It is well known that Al Qaeda and affiliates are benefiting financially from the dirty war against Syria. 

The fighters were apparently given assurances that their families would be allowed to follow on and settle in Ukraine. It must be noted that the Zionist influence in western Ukraine and particularly Kiev consists of a vast web of military, intelligence and ideological projects.

The inclusion of these Islamist extremist mercenaries in the war against Russia in Ukraine demonstrates the collusion between Israel and these terrorist gangs, already documented multiple times in Syria. 

Around 300 of the terrorists are Syrian nationals from Idlib and Aleppo countryside, 150 are Belgian, French, Chinese (Uighurs), Moroccan, Tunisian, Chechen and British nationals. 

The Syrian nationals will receive around $1200 – $1500 but there is no figure given for the foreign nationals. Bear in mind an average Syrian Arab Army soldier receives 70,000 Syrian Pounds per month, around $ 20. 

Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that 16000 foreign mercenaries will fight for Ukraine. 

So, NATO member states are yet again turning a sovereign nation into a battlefield  using mercenaries and fanatics to defend their agenda – to blockade and besiege Russia on the western flank and to ensure NATO expansion east despite the Minsk agreements. 

Russian President, Vladimir Putin had warned German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz of the growing number of foreign mercenaries operating in Ukraine during a telephone conversation on the 4th March. 

This is not the first evidence of Syrian extremist armed groups heading to Ukraine. Militant Wire Telegram channel had previously reported that a Syrian businessman, Tariq Al Jasem from the southern Aleppo countryside had formed a faction to fight against Russia in Ukraine. 

Al Jasem’s links to extremists in Syria was later confirmed by Syrian researcher, Ibrahim Mohammed Wahdi.

One thing is for sure, confronting Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine will be a very different experience for these Islamist terrorists who benefitted from extensive rat runs in the areas they occupied in Syria, spending most of their time underground while Syrian civilians were used as human shields above ground.

There are no tunnels for them to escape to in Ukraine, they will be exposed to the full force of a Russian military already experienced in dealing with these terrorist groups after six years battling them successfully  in Syria. 

THE WHITE HELMET TAG TEAM 

The pseudo humanitarian organisation embedded with Al Qaeda and affiliates in Syria, the White Helmets, are now offering to “help Ukrainians organise their first responders” according to an opinion piece by Josh Rogin for Washington Post. 

On March 16 the leader of HTS (Al-Qaeda in #Syria) Abu Jaber thanked the #WhiteHelmets & called them the "hidden soldiers of the revolution" pic.twitter.com/1ac8M8xb5d

— Ibn Walid (@walid970721) March 20, 2017

Rogin doubles down on the US/UK legacy media narratives on Russian involvement in the Syrian war against terrorist forces sponsored, promoted and armed by the Western US-led coalition. 

The whole Russia “is bombing hospitals, schools, civilian infrastructure” canard is rolled out, as always lacking the important context that Al Qaeda inc. occupy schools and hospitals. These buildings are converted into military headquarters, ammunition factories and storage, Sharia courts, prisons, torture chambers and detention centers as I have personally witnessed in Aleppo, Eastern Ghouta, southern Idlib — please subscribe to my YouTube channel or Odysee for multiple recorded civilian testimonies.

I interviewed Ahmad Aldayh in May 2017, in his shop in East Aleppo. He had been held prisoner by Jabhat al Shamiya brigade [affiliated with Nusra Front aka Al Qaeda] in the Eye Hospital in East Aleppo for 7 weeks just prior to its liberation by the SAA on 4/12/2016 when the wardens fled the advancing Syrian Army.

READ MORE:

https://off-guardian.org/2022/03/10/nato-white-helmets-follow-al-qaeda-to-ukraine/

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UPDATE: Zelensky is very very smart. SEE:

zelensky is working with the russians...