Eric Zuesse

Whereas in America (which makes and sells half of all of the world’s war-weapons), the manufacturers of war-weaponry are privately owned and succeed only by enriching their investors, Russia’s manufacturers of war-weapons are majority-owned by the Government and succeed only by winning Russia’s wars — serving the Government, which controls these companies, instead of serving private investors, who control the Government itself by lobbying and political donations. In America, the arms-manufacturers control the Government in order to control their markets, which are their own Government and secondarily its ‘allied’ or vassal-Governments (which also buy their products). Russia never privatized its war-industries; so, they serve the Government — the public, not investors (who, in turn, control the Government in order to be able to control those corporations).

Ever since America’s failed war against Vietnam, the U.S. Government has been accustomed to military failure. That war began in 1954 when President Eisenhower “sent 700 military advisers to South Vietnam” without seeking congressional approval, and in violation of the U.S. Constitutional requirement for there to be no U.S. standing army and thus explicitly that only after a congressional declaration of war can a President send any U.S. forces to any foreign country. Ike relied upon his immediate predecessor President Truman’s precedent of having done the same thing (violated the Constitution) by sending a force for “police action” (lying that it wasn’t military) to start his war to conquer Korea by enforcing Truman’s General Order #1, on 17 August 1945, to stop North Korea’s forces from advancing into South Korea. Ike then hid from JFK this and other traps that were awaiting him in Vietnam, and in Cuba. According to JFK’s description of his 19 January 1960 meeting with Ike prior to assuming office, JFK said, regarding Vietnam, “Eisenhower never mentioned it, never uttered the word Vietnam.” Ike never mentioned the 700 troops in Vietnam, but JFK found that he had inherited that. So, “In May 1961, Kennedy sent 500 more American advisers to Vietnam” — he just continued Ike’s unConstitutional policy there; it was the path of least resistance. Soon, however, he learned that it was a dreadful mistake, and that Ike had silently left minefields for him and had aimed to get his successors blamed for Ike’s disastrous decisions (which Kennedy learned too late). “By early November 1963, the number of US military advisers had reached 16,000”, but Kennedy already knew that he was trapped and would be attacked especially by Republicans if he changed course. He was just learning the ropes, and starting to think about how to change course, when he got assassinated (and his V.P. Johnson continued those errors).

That war ended in a U.S. defeat when President Ford withdrew the last U.S. troops from Vietnam by helicopters on 30 April 1975. (He, of course, failed to win election. His successor, Carter, then failed to win re-election, due to Ike’s having stolen Iran in 1953 and Carter’s suffering the resultant Iranian anti-American fervor in 1979, which doomed his campaign and brought in President Reagan.)

Afterward, the only successful U.S. wars were two very limited ones, both waged by President GHW Bush: one to seize and capture Panama’s leader and drug-trafficker Manuel Noriega on 3 January 1990; the other to expel Iraq’s forces from Kuwait during 24-28 February 1991.

America’s other wars were failures, or, at best, partial failures: Grenada in October 1983, Beirut in 1983-4, Libya in 1986 and again in 2011, Somalia 1992-95, Haiti 1994-5, Yugoslavia 1995-2000, Afghanistan 2001-2021, Philippines 2002-2017, Iraq 2003-22, Libya 2011-2022, Syria 2012-2022, and Ukraine (coup) 2014-2022. (They all were successes for America’s arms-makers, however.) None of America’s invasions after WW II was justified, nor was any of them in accord with America’s Constitution. All of them were done in order to use, test-out, and to wear-out and replace, U.S. weapons, so as to increase sales-volumes and enrich political donors, who got the congresspeople elected that they wanted elected, to vote for these invasions and for the military appropriations. The system succeeded at what it was designed to do: produce profits for those American international corporations, whose owners control the U.S. Government.

And then there are the U.S. regime’s many other undeclared wars, which are partnerships with U.S.-allied regimes in which America supplies only the weaponry and training but no direct fighters, such as in America’s partnership with the Sauds to grab control over Yemen — causing mass starvation in Yemen. (It burns up lots of U.S. weapons, thus likewise pumping U.S. weapons-sales and profits.)

Russia has been spending $70 billion annually on its entire military; America has been spending (not just in its ‘Defense’ Department but in all Departments) around $1.5 trillion per year, for its military.

In crucial military technologies, Russia is the world’s leader. For example, on December 23rd, South Front headlined “KINZHAL HYPERSONIC MISSILE PROVED TO BE UNSTOPPABLE IN UKRAINE: RUSSIAN MILITARY CHIEF”, and it’s no mere brag by Russia; it is true. (Such missiles would be unstoppable in any nation.) Furthermore, on November 14th, I headlined “U.S. GAO Finds Failure Is the Norm in U.S. Military Aircrafts”. That’s what happens when the military manufacturers serve their investors instead of the public. On June 17th, U.S. military expert Alex Vershinin headlined at the UK’s Royal United Services Institute, “The Return of Industrial Warfare”, about how inferior America is militarily as compared to Russia, and he argued — without mentioning or even showing any awareness of it — that America’s replacing industrialization (the manufacturing economy) with financialization (the financial-services economy) had done this (hollowed-out America’s military). I would argue more specifically that the resultant intense corruptness in America’s military has done this. The U.S. ‘Defense’ Department is the ONLY federal Department that can’t be audited. Its opportunities for graft are unlimited (or else are limited only by the value of the dollar, which would mean that the dollar’s international value is bound to crash and collapse some day, as having been the ultimate Ponzi scheme). In fact, trillions of dollars in spending by the Pentagon simply cannot be traced. Nobody knows, or can find out, where it went. However, already on 3 June 2016, America’s National Interest magazine had headlined “Russia vs. America: A Nuclear Bomber Showdown: Who wins?” and answered that Russia was way ahead and would likely remain so: “the situation is not going to change in the foreseeable perspective — each step of the parties is followed by a quick response. Thus, as long as the United States develops its antimissile defense, Russia is going to develop ICBMs and warheads likely to penetrate this antimissile defense. The only beneficiaries in such a situation are weapons manufacturers.” And, as things have turned out, even Russia’s antimissile defense systems are superior to America’s. However, to America’s rulers — its billionaires — their net worth is more important, and their system is very successful at increasing that.

Another reason why Russia gets far higher bang for each military buck spent is that whereas America’s military is designed to expand the American empire throughout the world, Russia’s is designed to protect the nation’s sovereign independence and to ward-off America’s constant (ever since 1945) aim to turn Russia into yet another U.S. ‘ally’ (vassal-nation). Whereas America’s billionaires drive America’s military for increasing their empire, the Russian population drive Russia’s military for the nation’s protection and very survival.

There is no evidence — none — that Russia, spending $70 billion annually on its military, is militarily inferior to America, which spends $1.5 trillion per year on its military.

In a country that spends 20 times more for its military but gets military inferiority instead of military superiority, deceiving the public is essential (in order to function as being a ‘democracy’, which the U.S. Government needs in order to be able to call any country it aims to take over — or regime-change — a “dictatorship”). And that is the way it is done, and has been done, for decades, now. So, the military has been, at least since 2001, the highest-respected institution of all, by the American people. The trick has been very successful.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s new book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.

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HISTORY IS WRITTEN WITH THE FLUID BLOOD OF THE FUTURE AND THE DRY BLOOD OF THE PAST.... WHAT WE'RE SEING IN "UKRAINE" IS HOPEFULLY THE LAST CHAPTER OF A DIFFICULT AND COMPLEX HISTORY OF THIS REGION OF THE WORLD. POLES, GALICIANS, JEWS, RUSSIANS — AS THE MAIN ETHNIC GROUPS OF "UKRAINE" HAD MANAGED TO SURVIVE HATRED OF EACH OTHERS TILL THE AMERICAN EMPIRE, HELL-BENT ON DESTROYING RUSSIA SINCE 1919, INTERVENED OVERTLY IN POST USSR.

WE KNOW THAT SOME REGIONS OF "UKRAINE" HAD BEEN ADDED FROM RUSSIA IN 1922: MOST OF THE DONBASS. ADDED IN 1954, WAS CRIMEA, ADDED IN 1949 WAS A PORTION OF POLAND. 

THIS DIFFICULT AND SAD, SOMEWHAT SHAMEFUL, HISTORY WOULD BE WELL-KNOWN TO PUTIN, WHO TO SAY THE LEAST HAS BEEN TRYING TO PLACE AN END TO THE HATRED AND THE MASSACRES OF ALL, BETWEEN ALL.

THE TURKISH ORGANISED PEACE DEAL BETWEEN RUSSIA AND "UKRAINE" WAS NEARLY DONE, WHEN THE ANGLO/SAXON/JEWISH CABAL OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE STOPPED THE PROCEEDINGS. BORIS JOHNSON PROMISED TO DEFEND "THE TERRITORIAL INTEGRITY OF UKRAINE" WHICH IS TERRITORIAL IN NAME ONLY. THE PEOPLE LIVING ON THIS TERRITORY NEEDS TO BE DIVIDED AND PROTECTED BY THESE DIVISIONS, LIKE THE IRISH SECEDED FROM MOTHER ENGLAND.

HERE IS A PORTION OF AN ARTICLE THAT COULD HELP UNDERSTAND THE HATRED BETWEEN ALL, AND WHY FASCISM, NAZISM, RELIGIOUS ZEALOTRY FLOURISHED AND CONTINUE TO THIS DAY. UNFORTUNATELY, WE KNOW THAT THE AMERICAN EMPIRE HAS BEEN USING THESE DIVISIONS FOR PROFIT, WITHOUT MUCH REGARD FOR THE LOCAL SENSITIVITIES.

EVEN BY THE 1930s, THE AMERICAN EMPIRE WAS INTERFERING WITH THIS CONFLUENT OF CONTRADICTIONS CALLED "UKRAINE". MANY AMERICAN INDUSTRIALISTS WERE SUPPORTING THE NAZIS, AND THE USA GOVERNMENT WAS AMBIVALENT. THE EBBS AND FLOWS OF VARIOUS RIOTING NATIONALISMS LED TO ATROCITIES COMMITTED BY THE COMMUNISTS. IN SOME WAYS, THE JEWS, A PEOPLE WITHIN THE PEOPLE, BORE THE BRUNT OF THE MASSACRES AND THE BLAME FOR THESE DREADFUL HAPPENINGS.

STALIN, A GEORGIAN, BECAME THUS RUTHLESS, AND THE MEMORY OF THIS HATRED BETWEEN THE PEOPLE IS STILL LINGERING. SEPARATION OF THE ETHNIC GROUPS IS PARAMOUNT. DENAZIFICATION OF UKRAINE AND MAKING IT "NEUTRAL" BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE WEST IS PARAMOUNT. DEMILITARISATION OF UKRAINE IS PARAMOUNT. THREE MAIN REASONS THAT HAVE DRIVEN THE MASTER OF HISTORY, VLADIMIR PUTIN, TO ACT BEFORE RUSSIA IS DESTROYED BY THE AMERICAN EMPIRE USING "UKRAINE" AS A BATTERING RAM. 

SO, ONE WOULD HAVE TO ACCEPT THAT THE DONBASS REGION, MOSTLY POPULATED RUSSIANS, NEEDS TO BE SEPARATED FROM "UKRAINE". THIS WAS THE PURPOSE OF THE MINSK AGREEMENTS. PUTIN "BELIEVED" IN THE MINSK AGREEMENTS. BUT THE WEST UNDER THE LEADERSHIP OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE WAS CHEATING. PUTIN WOULD HAVE HAD TO KNOW THIS AND WOULD HAVE PLANNED HIS MOVES PATIENTLY. NOW HAVING SURGICALLY REMOVED THE DONBASS AND CRIMEA FROM UKRAINE, FOLLOWING THE UNITED NATION RESOLUTION 2202, RUSSIA IS PREPARING TO STAY PUT — THOUGH IT WILL RECONQUER THE BITS IT HAS VOLUNTARILY RETREATED FROM. THE NEXT STAGE IF FOR UKRAINE TO BECOME "NEUTRAL".

HISTORY TELLS US THAT HATRED BETWEEN PEOPLE CAN LAST A LONG TIME. SAY UNTIL THE NORTHERN IRELAND AGREEMENT OF THE 1980s, EIRE AND THE UK WERE FIGHTING BITTERLY. ALL TO DO WITH LANGUAGE, HISTORY AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.

UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RUSSIA WILL NOT GIVE UP THE DONBASS AND CRIMEA. THIS IS NOT NEGOTIABLE. UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES, RUSSIA WILL NEVER ACCEPT UKRAINE AS A NATO FRONT. THIS IS NOT NEGOTIABLE. THE WEST HAS TO ACCEPT THIS AND ZELENSKY, THE UNINTELLIGENT MAN OF THE MOMENT, HAS TO UNDERSTAND THIS. 

RUSSIA, UNDER CLEVER PUTIN, PERFORMED A PAINFUL AND NECESSARY SURGERY TO THE CANCEROUS HATRED OF THE PAST. THE ONLY WAY FOR THIS TO HEAL PROPERLY IS FOR THE WEST (USA) TO GIVE UP ITS DREAM OF WORLD CONQUEST. END OF STORY.

NOW TO A BIT OF HISTORICAL CONTEXT. STALIN'S "BABIES":

The Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine was characterized by terror and repression as Stalin immediately embarked on a Sovietization drive that not only included the distribution and display of Soviet insignia and propaganda, but also involved a massive campaign against perceived “enemies of the state.” Due to Stalin’s fear of any national or anti-Soviet elements, hundreds of thousands of suspected political adversaries were arrested, imprisoned, deported to Siberia or Kazakhstan, or executed en masse between February and June 1940. Initial arrests and deportations focused on anti-communists, prewar Polish elites, civil servants, governmental officials, military officers, and Ukrainian nationalists. By April 1940, however, the NKVD began arresting a wide variety of people including family members of those previously convicted, as well as prominent doctors, engineers, lawyers, journalists, artists, university professors, teachers, merchants, and well-to-do farmers. Those that avoided immediate deportation or death sentences remained locked in NKVD prisons when the Germans launched their assault on the Soviet Union.

It is estimated that close to 140,000 political prisoners were being held in prisons throughout Soviet-occupied territories on the eve of Operation Barbarossa. Upon hearing news of the German invasion, the NKVD was ordered to evacuate and liquidate all political prisoners under evacuation order No. 00803.

In Western Ukraine the NKVD started to execute prisoners on the morning of June 23, regardless of whether they had been incarcerated for major offenses or were merely waiting to be questioned. In the central prison in the city of Lutsk, located in the northwestern oblast of Volyn, inmates were crowded and locked into small cells under the pretense of a large-scale evacuation. Shortly thereafter, NKVD officers called inmates by name into the courtyard, lined them up, and began throwing grenades at the group while Soviet tanks fired machine guns. A handful of survivors were then forced to spend the rest of the day digging graves and burying corpses until their overseers fled an advancing German unit. Casualty estimates from the Lutsk prison massacre vary based on sources, ranging from 1,500 to 4,000.

NKVD extermination procedures varied from prison to prison, depending on the number of prisoners to be executed, with some prisoners systematically shot in the back of the neck or burned alive in locked cells. Inmates incarcerated in the three-story prison of Dubno, located in the Rivne oblast, were shot and stabbed with bayonets while they slept.

On June 26, 1941, the NKVD blew up two large cells filled with approximately 1,200 female prisoners in Sambir, a city located about 80 kilometers southwest of L’viv. In the city of Ivano-Frankivsk, formerly known as Stanyslaviv, three large basement cells had been stacked to the ceiling with close to 2,500 dead bodies. In the NKVD investigative prison in L’viv, Soviet authorities threw the victims, dead or alive, into basement cells, locked the doors, and set fire to the building in an attempt to hide their crimes. Other major sites of massacres include Zolochiv and Dobromyl in the L’viv oblast, Chortkiv in the Ternopil oblast, and the city of Rivne in the Rivne oblast. It is estimated that between 800 and 1,500 prisoners died in each of these locations.

It was not only the number of those killed that shocked the populace, but also the manner in which they died. Many of the prisoners killed at the hands of the NKVD in Western Ukraine endured brutal torture before being killed. The first known reports of the NKVD prison massacres appeared in German newspapers in the first week of July 1940 and described scenes of family members searching through thousands of tortured corpses. An unattributed report from Berlin reported that victims in L’viv were crowded into cells where they were either shot or had their stomachs cut open. Similarly horrific reports recount crucified priests with crosses carved into their chests, makeshift torture chambers with blood-soaked walls, and mass graves full of bodies displaying marks of torture and missing limbs.

Eyewitness accounts confirm the brutal manner in which some prisoners were tortured and then murdered. Bohdan Kazanivs’kyi, who survived the mass execution of prisoners in the Brygidki prison in L’viv, described seeing groups of prisoners taken to the prison basement and then hearing their deafening screams as they were tortured before they were shot. A female survivor jailed in the Lontsky women’s prison in L’viv recalled walking past corpses missing ears, eyes, and noses when the invading German forces freed her. Others remembered seeing bodies that had been severely burned by boiling water.

The number of prisoners that had been tortured make it clear that several of the massacres in Western Ukraine were not simply a spontaneous action by the retreating Red Army and NKVD, but had been, at least to some degree, planned by Soviet authorities. The fact that many prisoners were called by name, tortured, and then subsequently shot also indicates that the NKVD liquated prisons in a somewhat orderly fashion. This individualized approach suggests, as Alexander Motyl and Ksenya Kiebuzinski maintain, the Soviet secret police acted with “a special animus engendered by the fact that most of the prisoners were Ukrainian nationalists, whom Soviet propaganda branded as the worst kind of ‘enemies of the people.’”

Uncovering thousands of visibly tortured and partially decomposed bodies caused outrage among Ukrainians and Poles alike. The atrocity deeply affected popular attitudes, which had two important consequences. On the one hand, the massacres reinforced hatred against Soviet rule and enhanced Ukrainian enthusiasm for Germany. Since the opening of the prisons coincided with Germany’s invasion of the Soviet Union, it was easy to associate Germany with liberation and the Soviet Union with oppression. The fact that the NKVD spent time gratuitously torturing prisoners struck many Ukrainians and Poles as evidence of their victimization under Soviet rule. Consequently, many Ukrainians joined the Nazis in the fight against the USSR during the war and tens of thousands of Ukrainians fled their homeland in 1944 as the Red Army retook Western Ukraine.

On the other hand, Ukrainian and Polish hatred of the Soviets easily transferred to the Jewish population due to the common misconception associating Jews with communism. According to the historian Paul Hanebrink, “the belief that communism was created by a Jewish conspiracy and that Jews were therefore to blame for crimes committed by Communist regimes became a core element of counterrevolutionary, antidemocratic, and racist ideology in many different countries.” Following the Nazi-Soviet division of Poland some 200,000-300,000 Polish Jews sought refuge from the Germans in Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, confirming for many Ukrainians and Poles that Jews supported communism and the Soviet Union. Upon arrival in Western Ukraine, Nazi propaganda used Soviet mass killings to increase interethnic tensions and perpetuate the “Judeo-Bolshevik” myth, encouraging and assisting the local population in waves of violence against the Jewish population, which led to a series of pogroms in July 1941.

With or without Nazi agitation, a significant number of Ukrainians and Poles, along with local police and militias, raided Jewish homes and accompanied Nazi officers around the city helping them to hunt Jewish enemies. Jews were beaten with sticks and whips, forced to clean city streets, and made to perform various rituals associated with communism. In a particularly debasing undertaking in the L’viv Jewish Quarter, Jews were required to dig mass graves and bury the corpses of massacred prisoners. 

Ukrainian nationalists and local police units also aided in the mass shootings conducted by Einsatzgruppe C, which resulted in the killing of an estimated 4,000 to 8,000 Jewish victims. During the pogrom in L’viv, Ukrainian militia men shouted that the beatings of Jews were in response to their brothers and sisters being murdered by the NKVD. In an atmosphere fueled by mass grief and the notion that the Jewish population was collectively guilty for the crimes perpetrated by the NKVD, the purpose of the pogrom was to humiliate Jews as a form of social justice for the prison massacres.

The impact and aftermath of the prison massacres highlights the consequences of interethnic conflict and violence during war, which has the potential to distort and disrupt local relationships, especially in ethnically diverse regions such as Western Ukraine. The Soviet occupation of eastern Poland had already produced waves of anti-Polish violence in 1939-1940 due to a series of repressive policies passed by the Second Polish Republic during the interwar period that suppressed Ukrainian cultural expression. Although the pogroms that occurred in July 1941 were a product of a variety of factors embedded in ethnic relations among Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews, it seems apparent that Ukrainian and Polish participation in anti-Jewish violence was in part sparked by the outrage the massacres both created and reinforced.

The 1941 Western Ukrainian prison massacres also provide a graphic illustration critical to understanding Soviet mass killings and Soviet totalitarianism. Soviet authorities murdered an estimated 12 million people in the 30-plus years between the Bolshevik seizure of power and the death of Stalin. Soviet killings under Stalin were methodical: enemies of the people were identified and then systematically destroyed—the majority of which died of forced starvation, perished in Soviet internment camps, or were shot with a bullet to the back of the head. While the 1941 prison massacres typify Soviet atrocities in many respects, one important difference is the fact that a large number of the prisoners were brutally tortured before being shot. Not surprisingly, the Soviet regime denied all involvement in the massacre and tried to place the blame, as with the famous Katyń massacres, on the Nazis.

Interethnic conflict and violence were prominent aspects of war on the Eastern Front as individuals and population groups grappled with multiple invasions and occupations. The 1941 NKVD prison massacres provide an example of how ordinary people experienced and responded to events during World War II. As with many atrocities, the prison massacres affected people differently across Western Ukraine. Some people responded with violence due to shock, fear, and anger, while others reacted with passivity or indifference. The bitter memories of Soviet crimes committed during the 1939-1941 occupation ultimately reinforced anti-Soviet attitudes in Western Ukraine and affected how local inhabitants reacted to the Nazi occupation of the region. Anti-Soviet sentiments can also be seen as one of the reasons many Ukrainians and Poles fled the advancing Red Army in 1944, settling in Western Europe with hopes of immigrating to North America.

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https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/1941-nkvd-prison-massacres-western-ukraine

THESE ARE STALIN'S POSTHUMOUS BABIES..... AND PUTIN IS TRYING TO PUT THEM TO SLEEP.... MAY HE SUCCEED. MAY ZELENSLY COME TO COMMON SENSE ON THIS ISSUE. PEACE.

GL.

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