Showing posts with label GLOBAL RESEARCH. Show all posts
Showing posts with label GLOBAL RESEARCH. Show all posts

Tuesday, 16 May 2023

UK ENGINEERED PALESTINIAN NAKBA, SHOAH, HOLOCAUST, ETHNIC CLEANSING WITH THE US & USSR.

 THE DEVIL IS NEVER SHAMED WHEN TRUTH IS TOLD!!!  FRANCE IS AN OPEN ZIONIST-ISRAEL STATE!!!  BAFS

Not Israeli Independence but Palestinian Nakba!!!

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Israeli Independence or Palestinian Nakba?

VT's Dr. Elias Akleh shames EU Leadership, Relives Human Catastrophe that is Al-Nakba

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By Dr. Elias Akleh

Last Wednesday, April 26th, the German national Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen, serving as the president of the European Commission, shamelessly tweeted the following congratulation to the religiously racist genocidal colonial Israeli terrorist state for its 75th illegitimate founding anniversary on stolen Palestinian land:

“75 years ago, a dream was realized with Israel’s independent state. After the greatest tragedy of human history, the Jewish people could finally build a home in the promised land. Today we celebrate 75 years of a vibrant democracy in the heart of the Middle East, 75 years of dynamism, ingenuity, and ground-breaking innovations. You have literally made the desert bloom, as I could see during my visit to Negev last year. Today we also celebrate 75 years of friendship between Israel and Europe. We have more in common than geography would suggest. Our shared culture, our values, and hundreds of thousands of dual Israeli European citizens have created a deep connection between us. Europe and Israel are bound to be friends and allies. Your freedom is our freedom. Happy birthday to all the people of Israel.”

75 years ago, the illusory “dream” of the alleged “Israel’s independent state”, Ursula mentioned was accomplished by the Zionist militia terrorist gangs of Irgun and the Haganah through multiple brutal genocides of Palestinian civilians, erasure of more than 520 Palestinian towns and villages, the eviction and ethnic cleansing of 800,000 Palestinians and a massive land theft.

Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen is a German politician who has been serving as the 13th president of the European Commission since 2019. She served in the German federal government between 2005 and 2019, holding successive positions in Angela Merkel’s cabinet, most recently as minister of defence.

This Israeli dream has never been an “independent state”. It is a frontal military base for the Western colonial power as expressed by many American military leaders. This state/base could not function on its own. It depends on Western military and financial support mainly from the United States, whose successive presidents ignore the ever-growing homeless population, the economic and unemployment crisis, the messed-up educational system, the unaffordable prices of medical care, the deteriorating basic
infrastructures, and many other racial and social-cultural issues, but
give Israel almost $4 billion annually, plus all the military weapon systems.

Ursula also mentioned “the greatest tragedy of human history”, hinting to the alleged Holocaust although not mention it by name due to her German upbringing. German youths are intensely brainwashed with the holocaust myth since elementary school to instill guilt feelings in their psyche, thus making them vulnerable and easier to manipulate. This alleged holocaust is not the greatest tragedy in human history.

Ursula should be reminded of the hundred million Native American genocides, almost the same number of black African natives kidnapped from their homeland and shipped to be sold as slaves in America – the so-called new promised land- hundreds of thousands of them died while being shipped across the ocean, hundreds of millions of Christian Russians in the Gulag, the Ukrainian Holodomor, the Armenian genocide, and the on-going genocides of tens of millions of Arabs in the Middle Eastern region among many other tragedies perpetrated mainly by France, Britain, and the US.

Ursula has repeated the Judaic pagan religious myth of “the promised land” indicating the central Judaic belief of a racist god, who loves only the Jews but not the rest of his created human races. I wonder how this concept fit in Ursula’s Christian Democratic Union political party and in her Christian upbringing. Does she believe she is loved by God?

Native Indigenous Peoples of Palestine forced to live in 
Refugee Camps so that European Jews can steal their land 
and tell the Western World, it’s the Promised Land

Ursula celebrates Israel’s “vibrant democracy in the heart of the Middle East” hinting that election is real democracy and the myth that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. We do have democratic elections in Arab countries in the region such as Egypt, Lebanon, and Syria; democracies that Israel and the USA are trying hard to sabotage and destroy. Besides, the belief that election means democracy is a misleading idea. We witness the dictatorship of elected democracy in many so-called democratic countries, where one party would control the government according to their own whims while ignoring the needs of other parties as we see in Israel and
in the USA.


Ursula may ignore that the Palestinians as no-class citizens in this Israeli vibrant democracy, yet it is not as easy to ignore the class and race inequality and struggle in the skewed Israeli society. Israelis come in different and usually contradictory flavors. We have the Zionist colonial Ashkenazim (Khazars) of east European descent, the eastern Mizrahim or Sephardim Jews from Arabic countries and from Iran, the separatist Russian Jews, the non-Zionist ultra-Orthodox god-fearing Haredim Jews, and the fascist national religious Zionists settlers. Let us also not forget here the discriminated against, oppressed, and persecuted black Ethiopian Jews (the Israeli Niggers).

Each has its own religious and conflicting political agenda that conflicts with the so-called vibrant democracy. What keeps them together is their “dynamism”/infiltration, their “ingenuity”/debt usury Federal Reserve banking system, their “ground-braking innovations”/ spying technologies, sexually deviant propaganda, and media manipulation, summed together in their religious hatred for all goyim.

Ursula, again, repeats the Zionist myth of Israelis “have literally made the desert bloom”. The fact is that Palestine is a very fertile land part of the famous Fertile Crescent of the region. Palestinians had made Palestine a green agricultural heaven for the last thousands of years. Palestinians were major exporters of major foodstuffs to European countries. Palestinian sea ports have been major trade hubs between East and West. Palestine was a major trade and cultural center for the Old World. Palestine exported culture, scientific achievements, major philosophy, and the three major religions to the whole world and particularly to pagan old Europe.

Israelis have damaged this Palestinian blooming heaven. Colonial Zionist Israelis had damaged Palestinian fertile agricultural fields using bulldozers to uproot hundreds of thousands of ancient fruit and olive trees in order to build their illegal colonies. They use planes to spray poisonous chemicals on vine and vegetable fields, they poison water wells to kill farm animals, and extremist settlers routinely conduct day and night raids against Palestinian fields to steal crops and burn trees under the protection of the Israeli army. For the last 75 years, Palestinian land had been irrigated with the blood of Palestinian victims, particularly the blood of women and children massacred by Israeli terrorists.

Ursula claims to celebrate “friendship between Israel and Europe” … due to “shared culture and values.” I wonder what friendship, shared cultures, and values she is talking about. History shows that Jews had been persecuted and evicted from every European country because of their elitist unique culture and anti-goyim values. Such persecutions and evictions were motivated by Christian religious hatred against the Ashkenazi anti-Christian Talmudic beliefs. If Ursula really believes that Israel and Europe are friends due to shared culture and values, why then wouldn’t Europe allow those Israelis to make Europe bloom instead of persecuting them and evicting them from every European country?

Contrary to what pro-Zionist politicians want you to believe, authentic Jews – Mizrahim and Haredim- were welcomed in the Muslim Arab countries as well as in Iran, where they had enjoyed safe and prosperous life and had even occupied political offices. The reasons for this are that Islam commands followers to respect and accept “the people of the Book” – Jews and Christians -, and that there is no difference between a Muslim and a foreigner except in belief in God.

As a president of a globally important position the president of the European Commission, and as a graduate of famous German and British universities, Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen is expected to be more informed of world history and political issues, to possess compassion and understanding of peoples’ sufferings, and to express integrity, responsibility, and neutrality rather than regurgitating and encouraging Zionist terrorist racist myths of anti-Palestinian tropes, that whitewash and encourage the on-going Israeli genocide of Palestinians – one Nakba (catastrophe) after another.

Ursula’s narrative perpetuates the continued and racist denial of the Palestinian Nakba and their right to return to their homeland. It whitewashes and justifies Zionist Israel’s 75 years of illegal occupation, apartheid regime, ethnic cleansing, land theft, and war crimes.

Ursula’s narrative can be paraphrased in the following words:

“Today we celebrate the 75 years of Israel’s continued violent occupation of the Palestinian homeland, the Israeli brutality with which Palestinians were ethnically cleansed out of their homes and rendered refugees, the successful Israeli violations of all international laws and all human rights, the preservation of Israel’s apartheid regime, Israel’s anti-religious anti-goyim hatred, and the inability and unwillingness of the international community to curtail Israeli terror.”

One day, many like Ursula Gertrud von der Leyen will lower their haughty heads and sights to the ground in shame, when they realize the evil they had defended and the heroes they had ridiculed.

Dr. Elias Akleh is an Arab-American from Palestinian descent. His family was evicted from Haifa, Palestine after the 1948 Nakba when Zionists stole his family’s property. Then the family was evicted again from the West Bank during the 1967 Naksah, after Zionists again, occupied the rest of Palestine.

 

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Do You Remember When Love and Peace Was A Thing?

By Johnny Punish, GM on Apr 30, 2023 04:09 am
VT Song of the Week: Black and White by Three Dog Night



VT RADIO: Main Stream Media On Fire

By Johnny Punish, GM on Apr 30, 2023 03:32 am
Special Podcast Report: In the wake of the Fox News settlement and Tucker Carlson firing, VT exposes the implosion that is Main Stream U.S. Media



Israeli Independence or Palestinian Nakba?

By Dr. Elias Akleh on Apr 30, 2023 12:42 am
VT's Dr. Elias Akleh shames EU Leadership and Relives the Human Catastrophe that is Al-Nakba



Scott Ritter: ‘Ukraine is Demolished’

By Jonas E. Alexis, Senior Editor on Apr 29, 2023 07:44 am
Going forward, Russia is expected to become more aggressive with big weapon use.







 

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Nakba: Britain and the Secret 1948 Palestine Memos

Classified cables found by MEE reveal that the UK knew of mass killings and displacement of Palestinians in May 1948, but downplayed them and refused to intervene

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It’s late April 1948, in Haifa, northern Palestine.

After more than 25 years, British officers are leaving their “mandate” over the territory and have set a withdrawal date: 15 May.

The exit is not going smoothly. Ethnic cleansing and violent atrocities are taking place across areas Britain is about to vacate. 

Zionist armed groups, allowed to flourish in Palestine by the British over three decades and subsequently trained and armed by the colonial power, are sweeping across Palestinian towns and villages, forcibly displacing residents from house to house.

Palestinians put up some resistance, helped by nominal forces from neighbouring countries, but are vastly outnumbered and under-equipped. Britain states that it is remaining neutral.

Cyril Marriott, consul-general in Haifa, is one of the last British officials to leave the embattled city.

He wonders, in a 21 April diplomatic cable sent to London and seen by Middle East Eye, whether Britain’s reputation will be damaged by “abandoning the pretence of keeping law and order before the expiry of the Mandate”.

“Any loss of prestige we may suffer is insignificant compared with the strong feeling that will be aroused in the United Kingdom if heavy British casualties are caused by our armed intervention between Jews and Arabs,” he writes. 

Months before Marriott’s cable, in November, the United Nations passed a resolution to split Mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states – a policy Palestinian Arabs rejected. 

Britain, which by then was coming under violent attack from the Zionist groups it had once propped up, declared it would leave by midnight on 14 May.

Haifa 1948

Jewish fighters in Haifa, 1948 (Wikimedia)

But 15 May 1948 would not just be remembered as the day that Britain left Palestine.

It was also the day that the State of Israel was declared, and the date generations of Palestinians continue to mark as the Nakba – or Catastrophe – 75 years later.

At least 13,000 Palestinians were killed and hundreds of villages were destroyed. In the end, 750,000 people were forcibly displaced from their homes.

More than 6,000 Israeli Jews, including 4,000 soldiers and 2,000 civilians, were killed

Previously classified diplomatic cables, seen by Middle East Eye at the National Archives in London, show that Britain was well aware of mass killings and displacement, in Haifa and beyond, during the final days of its Mandate.

But London would play down the scale of the events, refuse to intervene or allow others to do so, and would eventually label Palestinians and their allies as masters of their own downfall. 

Regional leaders warn of massacre

By the final days of April, leaders in Egypt and Syria were raising the alarm about the spiralling situation across their borders. 

Azzam Pasha, an Egyptian diplomat and the Arab League’s first secretary-general, told British envoy Ronald Campbell in Cairo that Palestinians were being massacred in Haifa, Tiberias and Deir Yassin.

“This massacre was, [Pasha] was convinced, part of a Jewish military plan designed to terrorise the Arab population inside the Jewish state so that by May 15th they would be relieved of having to deal with any fifth column,” Campbell recounted to London on 22 April. 

Pasha told journalists that same day, as transcribed in a British foreign office memo: “They have committed at Haifa acts as reprehensible as at Tiberias [and Deir Yassin] attacking women, children and old people. So far the British forces have displayed their inability to protect defenceless persons.”

On 9 April, in what became known as the Deir Yassin massacre, Zionist groups went house to house, killing over 100 Palestinians in the small village near Jerusalem, despite having agreed to an earlier truce. 

Nine days later, Tiberias fell to Zionist militias too, where 6,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled.

Then on 21 April, Jewish paramilitary organisations ethnically cleansed Haifa, ejecting tens of thousands of Palestinians.

Phillip Broadmead, British envoy in Damascus, wrote to the foreign office on 23 April following a meeting with Syrian President Shukri al-Quwatli, who was disturbed by events in Haifa. 

Quwatli complained to Broadmead that a local British commander in Haifa had refused “to take measures to stop the killing of Arab women and children”, unless Palestinians delivered all their arms to Zionist groups, as per a truce proposal rejected by the Arabs.

nakba military campaigns graphic

Damascus lamented that Britain had promised to maintain law and order by 15 May, but “the events at Deir Yassin and Haifa made it clear this was no longer the case”. 

In Cairo, Pasha told Campbell that there was “a fully mobilised Jewish force in the country whose activities were out of control”, but no counter-balancing Palestinian force.

According to British figures at the time, there were around 15,000 troops from Iraq, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan, in addition to 5,000 volunteers from the Arab Liberation Army. They were comfortably outnumbered by over 70,000 Jewish troops.

Cairo pleaded with Britain to turn a “blind eye” and allow volunteer Arab forces to enter Palestine before the Mandate expired to provide that “counter balance” to the mass killings and ethnic cleansing. London refused. 

Pasha told Campbell that if the British continued this stance until 15 May, “the result would be that Jewish forces would by that date have occupied all the strategic positions they required and the Arabs would find themselves at a great disadvantage”. 

He was right. Arab armies did enter Palestine to push back Israeli military advances after the expiry of the Mandate, but by then most of the key areas of what is now modern-day Israel had been depopulated and taken over by Zionist groups.

‘Reports have been exaggerated’

Despite the warnings, British officials significantly downplayed the scale of what was happening, including in Haifa. 

On 23 April, facing pressure from Arab governments, the foreign office wrote to its envoys in Jordan, Lebanon, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

“You should inform [the] Government to which you are accredited accordingly, and point out that previous reports have clearly been exaggerated,” it said. “In particular press stories of evacuation of 23,000 Arabs [in Haifa] are a considerable exaggeration.”

Five days later, junior foreign minister Christopher Mayhew would take to the floor in parliament and state: “Early reports of widespread massacre in the town [of Haifa] are untrue and were merely rumours caused by panic.”

Eventually, a few days later, British officials admitted in classified memos that the vast majority of Palestinian inhabitants had indeed left Haifa. The officials were nevertheless keen to promote the idea that those residents would return immediately.

“There are 6,000 Arabs in Haifa and many more are returning. Others wishing to return may be assured that under present conditions their security is guaranteed and that there is every reason to think that after 15th May they will be safe there,” said Alan Cunningham, then British High Commissioner in Palestine. 

“We are giving publicity to the fact that many are returning in the hope that this will spread confidence.”

They did not return. The Palestinian population of Haifa was reduced from 70,000 to around 6,000 in a matter of days.

There are at least 250,000 registered refugees from Haifa living around the world, according to figures from 2008. 

British officials parrotted the claim, which proved wholly untrue, that Jewish leaders would not allow for the mass evacuation of Palestinians due to the adverse impact it would have on the local economy. 

“If the Jews press their terms too harshly the Arabs would be likely to evacuate Haifa, a course not welcome to the Jews as the life of the town would be interrupted,” a 23 April memo sent from Palestine to London stated.

“It is probable therefore that the Jews will temper their terms to prevent total evacuation.” 

Britain appeared to be presenting a narrative contrary to the reality on the ground. 

It asked its various envoys in the Middle East to remind Arab governments that British troops had engaged Jewish mortars, referring to military action taken against Zionist fighters in Jaffa. 

British troops briefly halted Operation Hametz, an ultimately successful attempt to blockade Palestinian towns around Jaffa. 

It was the first direct battle between British forces and Irgun, the militant right-wing Zionist organisation that had bombed the British administrative headquarters at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem two years earlier. 

Following that confrontation, British officials claimed several times that “the morale of the Jews had considerably deteriorated, as Arab morale had risen”. 

Palestinian existence will ‘become precarious’

Any such high morale was short-lived. Zionist advances on Jaffa were only halted temporarily.

Britain knew, and admitted in private, that Palestinians stood no chance of remaining in the port city that would become part of Israel’s Tel Aviv.

In a top-secret telegram memo from late April, the commanders-in-chief of the Middle East Land Forces (MELF) predicted what would happen once its forces left the city.

“The Jewish community is firmly and securely established and once our own security forces withdraw there will be little question of the Arabs seriously threatening Jewish life or property,” they told the defence ministry back in London.

“Indeed, the existence of Arabs will become precarious.” 

That assessment was correct. Jaffa was completely obliterated, with around 96 percent of Arab villages there destroyed by May 1948. Its entire population of over 50,000 Palestinian inhabitants were expelled, according to Ilan Pappe‘s The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine

There are now over 230,000 refugees from Jaffa living across the globe.

In total, those expelled from Palestine in 1948 and their descendants number 5.8 million refugees, mostly living in neighbouring countries.

They have never been allowed to return, making it the longest unresolved refugee crisis in modern history.

British commanders in Palestine knew that Jewish groups would take control, not just of Jaffa, but in towns and cities across Palestine. 

“Between now and the surrender of the Mandate[,] clashes are likely to intensify in numbers, scope and duration. In these clashes the Jews are likely to hold their own,” the Land Forces central command said.

“Ultimate success is likely to be with the Jews with their far greater material resources and intense unity of purpose.”

That superiority did not occur in a vacuum: during the Arab Revolt of the late 1930s, British forces weakened Palestinian society, including gutting its paramilitary forces. 

Palestinian historian Rashid Khalidi argues in The War for Palestine: Rewriting the History of 1948, that Palestine was not lost in the 1940s, but the decade prior, by the British crushing of its civil and military institutions. 

Britain blames Arab ‘ineptitude’

In the final days of the Mandate, in several different memos across a number of days, Britain’s ambassador claimed that Palestinians and their allies only had themselves to blame. 

“Arab military forces in Palestine are now suffering the inevitable consequences of incompetent leadership and lack of discipline and morale,” said Cunningham. 

“In their hearts the Arabs realise that their much vaunted Liberation Army is poorly equipped and badly led; they feel that their monetary subscriptions have been squandered and they themselves misled. 

“They must pin blame on someone and who more deserving than the British!” he added sarcastically. 

British military leaders also took aim at other Arab governments in the region, blaming them for provoking Zionist miltias.

“Foreign Arab irregular forces, having stirred up a hornets’ nest have now been prudently withdrawn, leaving unfortunate Palestine Arabs to be stung,” said Cunningham.

“The Jews for their part can hardly be blamed if in the face of past Arab irregular action and of continued threats of interference by Arab regular forces, they take time by the forelock and consolidate their position while they can.” 

The military central command agreed with Cunningham’s appraisal of Arab forces, hitting out at their “cowardly behaviour” and “refusal to follow our advice to restrain themselves”.

On 15 May, Marriott, the consular-general in Haifa, was one of the few Brits to remain in the territory, after 100,000 officers had left in the days and weeks prior.

He gives a mistakenly optimistic final assessment. 

“Jews control the town but their armed forces are little in evidence. They obviously want the Arab labour force to return and are doing their best to instil confidence,” Marriott said. 

“Life in town is almost normal even last night[,] except of course for the absence of Arabs. I see no reason why Palestine Arab residents of Haifa and neighbourhood should not return.”

Seventy-five years later, those residents of Haifa and their descendants are still waiting for that return.

*

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Featured image: ETHNIC CLEANSING: Palestinian refugees in 1948 Photo: Public Domain

 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Monday, 21 November 2022

GLOBAL RESEARCH The War in Ukraine Made in Washington Not Moscow By Mike Whitney

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***

 

 

“Your people do not yet feel an impending sense of danger. That worries me. Can’t you see the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction?

Meanwhile, people pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, You Tube, 12 minute video

 

“The Russians have put their nuclear weapons on high-alert.This is a really significant development.. They are….sending us a very powerful signal as to how seriously they take this crisis. So, if we start winning, and the Russians start losing, you need to understand that what we’re talking about doing here, is backing a nuclear-armed great power –that sees what’s happening as an existential threat—into a corner. This is really dangerous.

Go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don’t think that what happened in the Cuban Missile crisis was as threatening to us as this situation is to the Russians. But if you go back and look at what US decision-makers thought at the time, they were scared stiff.” (Mearsheimer: The risks of “backing Russia into a corner“, Twitter minute 1:19)

Putin does not want Washington’s nuclear missiles parked on his western border in the Ukraine. For security reasons, he cannot allow this. He has made this excruciatingly clear over and over again. As he said on December 21, 2021, more than a month before the war began:

“If US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems.”

No American president would allow a potential adversary to deploy their nuclear missiles to sites along the Mexican-American border. The risks to national security would be far-too great.

In fact, Washington would remove those missile sites through force-of-arms without batting an eye. We all know that. So, why isn’t that same standard applied to Russia? Why are policymakers siding with the US and NATO when all the parties involved know what is at stake and know that they have all signed treaties that promise “not to improve their own security at the expense of their neighbors”? These are not just meaningless ‘verbal commitments’ that were made in casual conversations over cocktails; these are promises that have been signed into treaties that the signatories are required to honor. (Note: The United States and every nation in NATO have signed treaties– Istanbul in 1999, and Astana in 2010– that stipulate they cannot improve their own security at the expense of others.) There’s no doubt that NATO expansion enhances the security of Ukraine while weakening the security of Russia. That much is indisputable. And it’s not just a violation of treaties, but a clear provocation tantamount to a declaration of war. Check out this short excerpt from an article by Ray McGovern which shines light on a few of the crucial details that have omitted by the western media:

“President Vladimir Putin has warned repeatedly of the existential threat he believes Russia faces from what Russia calls “offensive strike missiles” like the Tomahawk and, eventually, hypersonic missiles along its western border.

So-called “ABM sites” already emplaced in Romania and about to be completed in Poland can accommodate Tomahawks and hypersonic missiles overnight with the insertion of a computer disk… Putin himself made this crystal clear in an unusual presentation to a small group of Western journalists six years ago. (See the first 10-minutes in this video.)

On December 21, 2021, President Putin told his most senior military leaders:

“It is extremely alarming that elements of the US global defense system are being deployed near Russia. The Mk 41 launchers, which are located in Romania and are to be deployed in Poland, are adapted for launching the Tomahawk strike missiles. If this infrastructure continues to move forward, and if US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems. This is a huge challenge for us, for our security.”

On December 30, 2021, Biden and Putin talked by phone at Putin’s urgent request. The Kremlin readout stated:

“Joseph Biden emphasized that Russia and the US shared a special responsibility for ensuring stability in Europe and the whole world and that Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine.” Yuri Ushakov, a top foreign policy adviser to Putin, pointed out that this was also one of the goals Moscow hoped to achieve with its proposals for security guarantees to the US and NATO.

…On February 12, 2022, Ushakov briefed the media on the telephone conversation between Putin and Biden earlier that day.

“The call was as a follow-up of sorts to the … December 30 telephone conversation. … The Russian President made clear that President Biden’s proposals did not really address the central, key elements of Russia’s initiatives either with regards to non-expansion of NATO, or non-deployment of strike weapons systems on Ukrainian territory … To these items, we have received no meaningful response.”

On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. I can see why so many Americans believe the Big Lie that it was “unprovoked,” because they just don’t know.” (“Relentless: JFK on Cuba; Putin on Ukraine”, Ray McGovern, antiwar.com)

What does this mean?

It means Biden backed-away from his original commitment. It means Washington refused to even consider Putin’s modest and legitimate security demandsprior to the Russian invasion. It means that Washington knew that the threat of NATO expansion –and particularly the threat of lethal missiles on Russia’s western border– would give Putin NO CHOICE but to respond militarily in order to establish his own security buffer. Putin summed it up like this:

“We are not threatening anyone.… We have made it clear that any further NATO movement to the east is unacceptable. There’s nothing unclear about this. We aren’t deploying our missiles to the border of the United States, but the United States IS deploying their missiles to the porch of our house. Are we asking too much? We’re just asking that they not deploy their attack-systems to our home…. What is so hard to understand about that?”(“Russia’s Putin, The US is parking missiles on the porch of our house”, YouTube, Start at :48 seconds)

Any reasonable person would conclude that Putin had a gun to his head and had to do ‘what any responsible leader would do’ in a similar situation.

But Putin did NOT do ‘what any responsible leader would do’. Instead, he waited. Yes, he delivered his “security demands” publicly and forcefully a number of times, but the threat of Ukrainian membership in NATO was not the tripwire that led to the invasion. What compelled Putin to invade was the bombardment of ethnic Russian civilians in an area of east Ukraine called the Donbas. As we noted in an earlier article,

What Really Happened?

On February 16—a full 8 days before the Russian invasion—the shelling of the Donbas increased dramatically and steadily intensified for the next week “to over 2,000 per day on February 22.” The vast majority of these blasts were logged in daily summaries by observers of the OSCE who were on the frontlines. In other words, the records were kept by trained professionals who collected documented evidence of the Ukrainian Army’s massive bombardment of areas inhabited by their own people. To date, we have not read even one analyst who has challenged this catalogue of documented evidence. Instead, the media simply pretends the proof doesn’t exist. They have simply vanished the shelling from their coverage altogether in order to shape a Washington-centric version of events that completely ignores the historical record.” (“Some of Us Don’t Think the Russian Invasion Was “Aggression”, Unz Review)

As we said, this was the tripwire that triggered the Russian invasion. The “Special Military Operation” was essentially a rescue mission that was closely linked to an urgent national security issue. All the same, the proximate cause of the war, was not NATO enlargement, but the shelling of civilian areas in the Donbas.

This week, a confidential audio recording of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was released on the internet confirming that our version of events leading up to the Russian invasion are, in fact, accurate. Take a look at this blurb on Maria Tadeo’s Twitter account:

Here’s more from an article at RT:

The former Italian PM reportedly blamed Kiev for inciting conflict with Russia….

Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has reportedly claimed that Kiev triggered a conflict with Russia by reneging on a peace plan for eastern Ukraine (The Minsk Treaty), a tape provided to the media suggests…..Speaking to members of his Forza Italia party on Tuesday, Berlusconi reportedly offered a viewpoint about the origin of the Ukraine crisis that clashed with the NATO-favored narrative of unprovoked Russian aggression against its neighbor.

In the audio clip, Berlusconi can be heard accusing Kiev of failing for years to uphold a peace deal with the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came to power in 2019, he “tripled down” on attacking the regions, the politician stated

Donetsk and Lugansk asked for Moscow’s protection, he continued. Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine…” (“Berlusconi trashes NATO narrative on Ukraine – media“, RT)

Whatever one thinks of Berlusconi, his version of events fits perfectly with the report of intensified shelling produced by the observers of the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe. (OSCE) One can only wonder why the media has failed to investigate these blatantly credible claims that cast considerable doubt on the official version of “Who actually started the war in Ukraine”?

In a recent interview on You Tube, Colonel Douglas MacGregor explained how Putin made every effort to ensure the security of the ethnic Russians living under siege in Ukraine by appealing to the US and EU to address the situation and settle on a way to stop the violence. Putin’s requests, however, fell on deaf ears. Here’s how MacGregor summed it up:

“Putin tried desperately to get the British, the French, the Germans and us to understand that his Russian citizens should be treated equally before the law just like Ukrainian citizens inside this large multi-ethnic state. (But) Zelensky and his friends said ‘No. Either you become what we are or you get out.’ And that resulted in this tragic (Russian) intervention.….

Russia had no interest in ‘conquering Ukraine’ or running into Kiev and ‘making peace at the point of a gun’. But, now, Zelensky has been intransigent and his handlers have been intransigent because we (The US) decided we were going to ‘bleed Russia’. We were going to sanction them and destroy their economy. We were going to kill hundreds of thousands of them and, ultimately, bend Russia to our will and force them to become subjects of the greater global American-dominated financial system.

That hasn’t worked. All of the sanctions have backfired. It is now our European allies who are in desperate trouble. We are in desperate trouble too, only it is not quite as acute as it is in Europe. And, on top of that, we haven’t succeeded in destroying the Russian military at all. It’s held together very, very well and– as I said– right now you have this economy-of-force operation down in the south where there’s a massive buildup of forces from Minsk all the way back into western Russia that will be launched eventually (I suppose) when the ground freezes because that is the best time to operate in that kind of terrain.

Earlier I told you what this is really about: There’s this attempt to destroy Russia. We’ve decided to made it this blood-enemy that has to be eliminated because it refuses to march down the path that Europe has.” (“Massive Buildup”,Colonel Douglas MacGregor”, You Tube, 3 minutes)

Truer words were never spoken: The US decided to make Russia its blood-enemy because it refuses to click-its-heels and do as it’s told. Russia refuses to be another sniveling flunky in the exalted “Rules-based System”.

So, now we’re in a full-blown ground war with Russia; a war that was concocted, instigated, funded, guided, and micromanaged by Washington. A war that—by any objective standard—is Washington’s war as much as Iraq and Afghanistan were Washington’s wars. The difference this time is that our enemy can not only defend himself, but has the wherewithal to reduce the continental United States to smoldering heap of rubble. We are reminded of a comment Putin made recently that seems to have slipped-by the media unnoticed. He said:

“We will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have, and we will do everything we can to ensure the safety of our people.”

We hope that someone on the Biden team is smart enough to figure out what that means.

*

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This article was originally published on The Unz Review.

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Featured image is from The Unz Review


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Home About Contact Membership Store Donate Archives USA Canada Latin America Africa Middle East Europe Russia Asia Oceania Italiano Deutsch Português srpski العربية 中文 Notre site en Français: mondialisation.ca Nuestro sitio en español: Globalizacion Asia-Pacific Research Global Research grtv youtube twitter facebook rss US Nato War Economy Civil Rights Environment Poverty Media Justice 9/11 War Crimes Militarization History Science The War in Ukraine: Made in Washington Not Moscow By Mike Whitney Global Research, October 24, 2022 Region: Europe, Russia and FSU, USA Theme: Intelligence, Militarization and WMD In-depth Report: UKRAINE REPORT [print]  215  34 150  412 All Global Research articles can be read in 51 languages by activating the Translate Website button below the author’s name. To receive Global Research’s Daily Newsletter (selected articles), click here. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles. ***     “Your people do not yet feel an impending sense of danger. That worries me. Can’t you see the world is being pulled in an irreversible direction? Meanwhile, people pretend that nothing is going on. I don’t know how to get through to you anymore.” Russian President Vladimir Putin, You Tube, 12 minute video   “The Russians have put their nuclear weapons on high-alert.This is a really significant development.. They are….sending us a very powerful signal as to how seriously they take this crisis. So, if we start winning, and the Russians start losing, you need to understand that what we’re talking about doing here, is backing a nuclear-armed great power –that sees what’s happening as an existential threat—into a corner. This is really dangerous. Go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis. I don’t think that what happened in the Cuban Missile crisis was as threatening to us as this situation is to the Russians. But if you go back and look at what US decision-makers thought at the time, they were scared stiff.” (Mearsheimer: The risks of “backing Russia into a corner“, Twitter minute 1:19) Putin does not want Washington’s nuclear missiles parked on his western border in the Ukraine. For security reasons, he cannot allow this. He has made this excruciatingly clear over and over again. As he said on December 21, 2021, more than a month before the war began: “If US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems.” No American president would allow a potential adversary to deploy their nuclear missiles to sites along the Mexican-American border. The risks to national security would be far-too great. In fact, Washington would remove those missile sites through force-of-arms without batting an eye. We all know that. So, why isn’t that same standard applied to Russia? Why are policymakers siding with the US and NATO when all the parties involved know what is at stake and know that they have all signed treaties that promise “not to improve their own security at the expense of their neighbors”? These are not just meaningless ‘verbal commitments’ that were made in casual conversations over cocktails; these are promises that have been signed into treaties that the signatories are required to honor. (Note: The United States and every nation in NATO have signed treaties– Istanbul in 1999, and Astana in 2010– that stipulate they cannot improve their own security at the expense of others.) There’s no doubt that NATO expansion enhances the security of Ukraine while weakening the security of Russia. That much is indisputable. And it’s not just a violation of treaties, but a clear provocation tantamount to a declaration of war. Check out this short excerpt from an article by Ray McGovern which shines light on a few of the crucial details that have omitted by the western media: “President Vladimir Putin has warned repeatedly of the existential threat he believes Russia faces from what Russia calls “offensive strike missiles” like the Tomahawk and, eventually, hypersonic missiles along its western border. So-called “ABM sites” already emplaced in Romania and about to be completed in Poland can accommodate Tomahawks and hypersonic missiles overnight with the insertion of a computer disk… Putin himself made this crystal clear in an unusual presentation to a small group of Western journalists six years ago. (See the first 10-minutes in this video.) On December 21, 2021, President Putin told his most senior military leaders: “It is extremely alarming that elements of the US global defense system are being deployed near Russia. The Mk 41 launchers, which are located in Romania and are to be deployed in Poland, are adapted for launching the Tomahawk strike missiles. If this infrastructure continues to move forward, and if US and NATO missile systems are deployed in Ukraine, their flight time to Moscow will be only 7–10 minutes, or even five minutes for hypersonic systems. This is a huge challenge for us, for our security.” On December 30, 2021, Biden and Putin talked by phone at Putin’s urgent request. The Kremlin readout stated: “Joseph Biden emphasized that Russia and the US shared a special responsibility for ensuring stability in Europe and the whole world and that Washington had no intention of deploying offensive strike weapons in Ukraine.” Yuri Ushakov, a top foreign policy adviser to Putin, pointed out that this was also one of the goals Moscow hoped to achieve with its proposals for security guarantees to the US and NATO. …On February 12, 2022, Ushakov briefed the media on the telephone conversation between Putin and Biden earlier that day. “The call was as a follow-up of sorts to the … December 30 telephone conversation. … The Russian President made clear that President Biden’s proposals did not really address the central, key elements of Russia’s initiatives either with regards to non-expansion of NATO, or non-deployment of strike weapons systems on Ukrainian territory … To these items, we have received no meaningful response.” On February 24, 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine. I can see why so many Americans believe the Big Lie that it was “unprovoked,” because they just don’t know.” (“Relentless: JFK on Cuba; Putin on Ukraine”, Ray McGovern, antiwar.com) What does this mean? It means Biden backed-away from his original commitment. It means Washington refused to even consider Putin’s modest and legitimate security demandsprior to the Russian invasion. It means that Washington knew that the threat of NATO expansion –and particularly the threat of lethal missiles on Russia’s western border– would give Putin NO CHOICE but to respond militarily in order to establish his own security buffer. Putin summed it up like this: “We are not threatening anyone.… We have made it clear that any further NATO movement to the east is unacceptable. There’s nothing unclear about this. We aren’t deploying our missiles to the border of the United States, but the United States IS deploying their missiles to the porch of our house. Are we asking too much? We’re just asking that they not deploy their attack-systems to our home…. What is so hard to understand about that?”(“Russia’s Putin, The US is parking missiles on the porch of our house”, YouTube, Start at :48 seconds) Any reasonable person would conclude that Putin had a gun to his head and had to do ‘what any responsible leader would do’ in a similar situation. But Putin did NOT do ‘what any responsible leader would do’. Instead, he waited. Yes, he delivered his “security demands” publicly and forcefully a number of times, but the threat of Ukrainian membership in NATO was not the tripwire that led to the invasion. What compelled Putin to invade was the bombardment of ethnic Russian civilians in an area of east Ukraine called the Donbas. As we noted in an earlier article, What Really Happened? On February 16—a full 8 days before the Russian invasion—the shelling of the Donbas increased dramatically and steadily intensified for the next week “to over 2,000 per day on February 22.” The vast majority of these blasts were logged in daily summaries by observers of the OSCE who were on the frontlines. In other words, the records were kept by trained professionals who collected documented evidence of the Ukrainian Army’s massive bombardment of areas inhabited by their own people. To date, we have not read even one analyst who has challenged this catalogue of documented evidence. Instead, the media simply pretends the proof doesn’t exist. They have simply vanished the shelling from their coverage altogether in order to shape a Washington-centric version of events that completely ignores the historical record.” (“Some of Us Don’t Think the Russian Invasion Was “Aggression”, Unz Review) As we said, this was the tripwire that triggered the Russian invasion. The “Special Military Operation” was essentially a rescue mission that was closely linked to an urgent national security issue. All the same, the proximate cause of the war, was not NATO enlargement, but the shelling of civilian areas in the Donbas. This week, a confidential audio recording of former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi was released on the internet confirming that our version of events leading up to the Russian invasion are, in fact, accurate. Take a look at this blurb on Maria Tadeo’s Twitter account: Here’s more from an article at RT: The former Italian PM reportedly blamed Kiev for inciting conflict with Russia…. Former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has reportedly claimed that Kiev triggered a conflict with Russia by reneging on a peace plan for eastern Ukraine (The Minsk Treaty), a tape provided to the media suggests…..Speaking to members of his Forza Italia party on Tuesday, Berlusconi reportedly offered a viewpoint about the origin of the Ukraine crisis that clashed with the NATO-favored narrative of unprovoked Russian aggression against its neighbor.… In the audio clip, Berlusconi can be heard accusing Kiev of failing for years to uphold a peace deal with the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. When Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky came to power in 2019, he “tripled down” on attacking the regions, the politician stated Donetsk and Lugansk asked for Moscow’s protection, he continued. Russian President Vladimir Putin sent troops into Ukraine…” (“Berlusconi trashes NATO narrative on Ukraine – media“, RT) Whatever one thinks of Berlusconi, his version of events fits perfectly with the report of intensified shelling produced by the observers of the Organization for the Security and Cooperation in Europe. (OSCE) One can only wonder why the media has failed to investigate these blatantly credible claims that cast considerable doubt on the official version of “Who actually started the war in Ukraine”? In a recent interview on You Tube, Colonel Douglas MacGregor explained how Putin made every effort to ensure the security of the ethnic Russians living under siege in Ukraine by appealing to the US and EU to address the situation and settle on a way to stop the violence. Putin’s requests, however, fell on deaf ears. Here’s how MacGregor summed it up: “Putin tried desperately to get the British, the French, the Germans and us to understand that his Russian citizens should be treated equally before the law just like Ukrainian citizens inside this large multi-ethnic state. (But) Zelensky and his friends said ‘No. Either you become what we are or you get out.’ And that resulted in this tragic (Russian) intervention.…. Russia had no interest in ‘conquering Ukraine’ or running into Kiev and ‘making peace at the point of a gun’. But, now, Zelensky has been intransigent and his handlers have been intransigent because we (The US) decided we were going to ‘bleed Russia’. We were going to sanction them and destroy their economy. We were going to kill hundreds of thousands of them and, ultimately, bend Russia to our will and force them to become subjects of the greater global American-dominated financial system. That hasn’t worked. All of the sanctions have backfired. It is now our European allies who are in desperate trouble. We are in desperate trouble too, only it is not quite as acute as it is in Europe. And, on top of that, we haven’t succeeded in destroying the Russian military at all. It’s held together very, very well and– as I said– right now you have this economy-of-force operation down in the south where there’s a massive buildup of forces from Minsk all the way back into western Russia that will be launched eventually (I suppose) when the ground freezes because that is the best time to operate in that kind of terrain. Earlier I told you what this is really about: There’s this attempt to destroy Russia. We’ve decided to made it this blood-enemy that has to be eliminated because it refuses to march down the path that Europe has.” (“Massive Buildup”,Colonel Douglas MacGregor”, You Tube, 3 minutes) Truer words were never spoken: The US decided to make Russia its blood-enemy because it refuses to click-its-heels and do as it’s told. Russia refuses to be another sniveling flunky in the exalted “Rules-based System”. So, now we’re in a full-blown ground war with Russia; a war that was concocted, instigated, funded, guided, and micromanaged by Washington. A war that—by any objective standard—is Washington’s war as much as Iraq and Afghanistan were Washington’s wars. The difference this time is that our enemy can not only defend himself, but has the wherewithal to reduce the continental United States to smoldering heap of rubble. We are reminded of a comment Putin made recently that seems to have slipped-by the media unnoticed. He said: “We will defend our land with all the forces and resources we have, and we will do everything we can to ensure the safety of our people.” We hope that someone on the Biden team is smart enough to figure out what that means. * Note to readers: Please click the share buttons above. Follow us on Instagram and Twitter and subscribe to our Telegram Channel. Feel free to repost and share widely Global Research articles. This article was originally published on The Unz Review. Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG). Featured image is from The Unz Review The original source of this article is Global Research Copyright © Mike Whitney, Global Research, 2022 Comment on Global Research Articles on our Facebook page Become a Member of Global Research Related Articles The Polish Missile Incident Was a Close Brush with Nuclear Annihilation Nov 21, 2022 New Plan to Secure US Weapons in Ukraine Leaves Gaps: Experts Nov 21, 2022 Video: Ukraine’s Undeclared War Against NATO Nov 20, 2022 Maligned in Western Media, Donbass Forces Are Defending Their Future from Ukrainian Shelling and Fascism Nov 20, 2022 Eight Years on from Malaysia Airlines MH17 Destruction: A Clear Lack of Evidence that Moscow Was Behind It Jul 17, 2019 Signs of Diplomacy in Ukraine? Finding a Faint Pulse Nov 18, 2022 Related Articles from our Archives Putin Warns NATO Against ‘Global Catastrophe’19 October 2022 Surprise, Surprise…The Washington Post Publishes a Commentary Full of Lies Against Putin3 February 2022 Putin's Statement on Russia’s ‘Red Lines’17 April 2022 [print]  215  34 150  412 Articles by: Mike Whitney Disclaimer: The contents of this article are of sole responsibility of the author(s). The Centre for Research on Globalization will not be responsible for any inaccurate or incorrect statement in this article. The Centre of Research on Globalization grants permission to cross-post Global Research articles on community internet sites as long the source and copyright are acknowledged together with a hyperlink to the original Global Research article. 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