The
international order continues to burn in the flames emanating from the
Ukraine. At this point we would all do
well to consider the virtues of restraint and neutrality. It is the
lack of those two things that has gotten us where we are:
. . . the facts really aren’t complicated.
Russia’s recent invasion, far from being “unprovoked” (as shamelessly claimed
in mainstream media), follows eight years of the US-backed Ukrainian regime’s
deadly shelling of ethnic Russians near the border of Russia itself, in
fighting that has killed more than 13,000 civilians in territory Vladimir
Putin’s administration pledged to protect long ago.
And that carnage
had a fairly obvious cause, too: it was precipitated by the US-supported coup
that toppled Ukraine’s elected government in 2014, ostensibly because of human
rights abuses but more fundamentally because that government had refused to
convert the former Soviet republic into a vassal state of NATO.
The machinations
resulting in what is now called the “Maidan coup” destroyed Ukraine’s
neutrality between Russia and the West, unleashing in its stead a violent
and bigotednationalist movement for which the inhabitants of the Don River
basin, mostly ethnic Russians, have been paying with their lives ever since.
That much should
be clear to all unbiased readers – like the fact that NATO’s relentless march
toward the Russian border (in direct violation of U.S. officials’ promise to
Russian leadership as far back as 1990) is the real story of “aggression” behind the
manufactured outrage over the Russian “attack” on Ukraine.
But the
tossing aside of restraint by the West wasn’t haphazard, continues Michael
Lesher, the author of the essay linked above; the goal was to continue the push
for a ‘Great Reset’ that covid began:
In a very real
sense, this propaganda campaign is an extension of the lockdowns imposed on the
populations of the Western “democracies” (I add the quotation marks mournfully
but advisedly) in early 2020 – and of the attacks on the freedoms of their
citizens for which COVID-19 is no longer as sturdy a pretext as it seemed to be
two years ago. For most of us, that is really its primary significance.
In other words,
the agenda underlying the new Cold War – and mind you, it’s already a pretty
hot “cold war” when Atlantic
Magazine, formerly a storehouse of liberal antiwar pieties,
is chiding
the US for not being sufficiently “bloody and brutal” in Ukraine – is
not aimed at Russia (despite the US-led economic
warfare that mainly targets blameless Russian citizens). It’s not even
aimed at Ukraine (notwithstanding obvious US efforts to exacerbate the conflict
by flooding
the country with weapons).
The real target
is us. And whatever news we see from Ukraine in the mainstream press – now,
tomorrow, a month from now, whenever – that’s one point we mustn’t forget.
Remember the
rapid erosion of free speech throughout the West as the COVID coup started to
intensify? Well, that was just a foretaste of the censorship we can expect to
see on social media as our opinion-makers shift to a Cold War footing. Remember
the marginalization of news sources whose information about SARS-CoV-2 didn’t
square with the Official
Message?
The senseless
banning of RT in many “free” countries since Russia’s invasion suggests how
that trend will proceed. Remember the way accurate public comment about Anthony
Fauci or Bill Gates became an act of sedition as of 2020?
Today, arbitrary
government crackdowns (no
warning, no trial, no proof of illegal acts) are already
getting worse; war hysteria will further aggravate them.
As for the
economy, Reuters
is reporting “wild
swings in the prices of oil, metals and other raw materials” –
surely a harbinger of worse things to come.
In fact, rising
consumer prices, shortages, fiscal contraction, increased unemployment – all
products of lockdowns – are already showing signs of spiraling out of control
as the super-rich fatten off war profiteering and the rest of us are lectured
about the “sacrifices” expected of us in the fight against the Russian
Beelzebub.
If anyone denies
that these things represent the actual goals of the warmongering over Ukraine,
I have one question for him: can you please suggest a more persuasive
explanation for what otherwise resembles a case of collective insanity among
the war promoters?
. .
.
So the senseless
violence the U.S. and its allies have provoked in Ukraine is not really a new
war at all. From the perspective of the Western citizenry – for the purposes of
people like me and most of my likely readers – it’s only another front in the
war for the New Normal, a war that has been waged against us for years and
which shows no sign of stopping.
Recognizing that
is not to dismiss the genuine suffering caused by the violence, nor does it
require us to overlook other reasons for seeking to end the Russia-Ukraine
conflict.
But it does warn
us against limiting our attention to suffering in a distant place while our own
freedoms are under attack. It reminds us that specific pretexts for dismantling
democratic government come and go, but that the appetite of the ruling class
for increased power is permanent and insatiable.
It cautions us
against complacency, reminding us that no one will protect our rights if we
ourselves don’t – especially when our press is full of lies and our public
intellectuals endorse mass surveillance and war hysteria.
Yes, we are at
war.
But it’s a war
fought on our own soil and against oppressors much closer to home than a
Russian president. Our enemies are human automata who want to strip life of the
freedom without which life is meaningless. Our principal weapons are the only
ones that work against such enemies: truth, compassion, dignity, determination
and love.
To give
credence to what he is saying, one only has to consider the admission by
certain US intelligence officers about feeding doubtful intelligence to the
media to stoke the fires of war in the US population. Via Ron
Paul (with more details here):
Last week an extraordinary article
appeared in, of all places, NBC News, reporting that the US intelligence
community is knowingly feeding information it does not believe accurate to the
US mainstream media for the American audience to consume.
In other words, the article reports
that the US “deep state” admits to being actively engaged in lying to the
American people in the hopes that it can manipulate public opinion
According to the NBC News article,
“multiple US officials acknowledged that the US has used information as a
weapon even when confidence in the accuracy of the information wasn’t high.
Sometimes it has used low-confidence intelligence for deterrent effect…”
Readers will recall the shocking
headlines that Russia was prepared to use chemical weapons in Ukraine, that
China would be providing military equipment to Russia, that Russian President
Putin was being fed misinformation by his advisors, and more.
All of these were churned out by the
CIA to be repeated in the American media even though they were known to be
false. It was all about, as one intelligence officer said in the article,
“trying to get inside Putin’s head.”
That may have been the goal, but what
the CIA actually did was get inside America’s head with false information meant
to shape public perception of the conflict. They lied to propagandize us in
favor of the Biden Administration’s narrative.
Rather than
yell and scream for more offensive weapons for the Ukraine, considering the
manipulation we’ve all been subjected to, now is the time to opt for neutrality
and restraint. Not only has
non-interference been a key part of traditional US foreign policy since Washington’s
time, it is also an
integral part of Western culture that we have inherited from the ancients:
. . .
The rest is
at https://thehayride.com/2022/04/garlington-a-smidge-of-restraint-might-help-in-ukraine/.
***
A related
essay, a bit dated now, but some points are still relevant:
https://thehayride.com/2022/02/garlington-the-apocalypse-for-our-politicians-has-arrived/.
--
Holy Ælfred
the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!
Anathema to
the Union!
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