https://www.freepressjournal.in/analysis/policy-watch-fresh-evidence-confirms-agreement-on-limiting-nato-in-russia-ukraine-crisis

Ukraine – The US rings the death knell for global banking and business

RN Bhaskar

This is the way the world ends

not with a bang but a whimper

— TS. Eliot, ‘The Hollow Men’

Ever since the Ukraine Russia US conflict began, western media has tried to show that the only party to blame is Russia.  This article is an attempt to disabuse them of the positions they have taken, and the lies they have been propagating.

#1: That there was no agreement with Russia about not expanding NATO membership to countries to the east, adjoining Russia.   Wrong.  Documents declassified by the US in 2017 and now with the George Washington University (http://nsarchive.gwu.edu) provide enough evidence that there was indeed an agreement.  More details can be found at https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early). The photograph shows Eduard Shevardnadze (USSR), James A. Baker (US), Hans-Dietrich Genscher (FRG), Roland Dumas (France), Douglas Hurd (Great Britain), Oskar Fischer (GDR).  Just a couple of days earlier, on February 9, 1990, there was the famous assurance given by U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would be allowed “not one inch eastward”.

Sadly, even fact-finding sites which are committed to inform the public about fake news reiterated these lies (see https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/feb/28/candace-owens/fact-checking-claims-nato-us-broke-agreement-again/  and https://web.archive.org/web/20220222223845/https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/topics_111767.htm#c203).

2# That Russia is disregardful of human lives. Consider the facts. As of March 3, less than 10,000 people have died on both sides (https://www.the-sun.com/news/4786663/russia-ukraine-war-death-toll-number-people/).  Compare this with the over 600,000 people in Iraq that the US killed (Lancet study — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancet_surveys_of_Iraq_War_casualties and https://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2006/10/10/AR2006101001442.html). The US, obviously disputes this and claims that only 30,000 people died. Yet it refuses to authorise an independent survey.

#3: That Russia is destroying historical buildings.  Really?  Media controlled by the US, led by the BBC and CNN, will tell you such stories.  They told similar stories when the Taliban blasted the Bamiyan Buddha in Afghanistan.  But wait! Did the BBC or CNN ever talk about the clay tablets of the Sumerian and Mesopotamian civilisations which US bombers pulverised to smithereens?

#4: That Russia has deliberately hit a nuclear plant in Ukraine, thus endangering the lives of people.  First, the truth has yet to come out.  Second, if there was damage, it will be less that caused by the depleted uranium bombs used by the US in Iraq.  It will be considerably less than the radioactive nuclear trials conducted by the US in the largest of the Marshall Islands, Kwajalein. This has been brilliantly documented by the award-winning documentary maker John Pilger, in the Coming War on China (http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-coming-war-on-china).  The Marshall Islands, points out Pilger, are where the US has one of its most secretive bases, with a missile launch pad designed as a ‘stepping stone to Asia and beyond’ and aimed at China”.  Russia has not done anything like that till now.

#5 That Russia is destroying Ukraine, a democratic country.  Hilarious.  Just listen to US senator Tulsi Gabbard (https://www.youtube.com/shorts/505uQahvKvg and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OF5oPNjMZw4). She is one of the few US politicians willing to take a stand on such issues.

#6 Did Russia attack Ukraine without provocation?  Laughable. Just listen to what John J. Mearsheimer said in 2015 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lfk-qaqP2Ws).  He is a Distinguished Service Professor in the Political Science Department at the University of Chicago.  The writing on the wall could be seen seven years ago.

That is why when diplomats today claim that they were taken unawares, all one can say is that they were either blind to realities, or are now parroting the US spiel.

For several years, Russia has been asking the US to restrict the membership of NATO and respect the agreement of 1990. Instead, the US sang its siren songs to the Ukrainian premier, who was gullible enough to try needle Russia further.  Finally, Russia had no option but to stop Ukraine from pursuing an ‘unholy’ alliance with the US.

It is worth going through the NSarchive website giving details about the declassified papers. It says, “. . . . . President George H.W. Bush had assured Gorbachev during the Malta summit in December 1989 that the U.S. would not take advantage (“I have not jumped up and down on the Berlin Wall”) of the revolutions in Eastern Europe to harm Soviet interests.”

President Biden will have to explain the true meaning of the “rule of law” that he accuses Russia of violating.  And if there are to be war crimes, it is the US that needs to be tried first.  It has killed the largest number of people, forced regime changes in more countries than anyone in the world, and used weapons of mass destruction time and again (https://www.freepressjournal.in/analysis/ukraine-the-war-that-usa-wants).

In fact, the US has been very clever. As pointed out by Harold Pinter in 2005 in his Nobel Award acceptance speech, (https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/literature/2005/pinter/25621-harold-pinter-nobel-lecture-2005/): “Direct invasion of a sovereign state has never in fact been America’s favoured method. In the main, it has preferred what it has described as ‘low intensity conflict’. Low intensity conflict means that thousands of people die but slower than if you dropped a bomb on them in one fell swoop. It means that you infect the heart of the country, that you establish a malignant growth and watch the gangrene bloom. When the populace has been subdued – or beaten to death – the same thing – and your own friends, the military, and the great corporations, sit comfortably in power, you go before the camera and say that democracy has prevailed. This was a commonplace in US foreign policy in the years to which I refer.”

The biggest beneficiary in the conflict is the US.  It has managed to scuttle the Nord Stream 2 pipeline which would have reduced its sale of oil and gas to the EU.  It has seen the price of oil and gas rise, which means more money for its petro-dollar kleptocrats (https://asiaconverge.com/2022/02/the-us-wants-to-checkmate-germany-not-ukraine-over-nordstream2/).  And any war generates money for US armaments manufacturers.  Germany’s resolve to enhance its military spending is music for Biden and his team.

Typical of the US, lies are now being layered upon lies to deny that all this ever happened.

As a result, the US and its “coalition of the willing” have now unilaterally weaponised currency, have put into place sanctions, and have completely wrecked the entire banking system.

The biggest sufferers will be poorer countries who will have to pay higher prices for oil, gas and even food. Shipping and freight will become expensive.  The rich countries may make more money, but the world will end up poorer.  Is that not a crime?  Were the sanctions and the blockage of the sea by Turkey authorised by the UN?

They appear to have forgotten that all currency is based on faith that it will be honoured and remain fungible.  When that faith breaks down, currency become worthless paper. When Vladmir Putin talks about a war of a series of escalations, he is justified in doing so, because all norms have broken down, all faith shattered, and all promises repudiated.

Today, the world is left with a situation where there is no guarantee that anyone will survive, only because of the mad ambitions of US war makers.  Ukraine was made the fall guy.  And its people have been de-housed, killed or maimed, because of the US, not Russia.  The US triggered the war. Russia only protected and defended its own interests.

When that happens, the last bulwark is always a show of force, which is what Putin is doing.

And, yet the US and its media megaphones will try and erase the truth and give a different spin on what has actually happened.

It reminds us of what Harold Pinter spoke of in his Nobel award acceptance speech: “The United States supported and, in many cases, engendered every right-wing military dictatorship in the world after the end of the Second World War. I refer to Indonesia, Greece, Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Haiti, Turkey, the Philippines, Guatemala, El Salvador, and, of course, Chile. The horror the United States inflicted upon Chile in 1973 can never be purged and can never be forgiven . . . Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes, they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.”

Obviously, because the BBS and the CNN did not talk about it.  Instead, they preferred to malign Russia, Afghanistan Iraq, and China, and once even did so with France.

The US goes unscathed because it has perfected the art of promoting a tapestry of lies, better than Heinrich Goebbels could ever have done. And it has created better gas and nuclear chambers for destruction, than the Nazis could ever have.