.
Is Putin the real and only problem in Ukraine? The Ukraine war is framed by the West as a morality play which we (the good) battle them (the evil) – certainly not part of a complex geo-political struggle between two empires.
With Orwellian bombast all context about the war in Ukraine is smeared by western media outlets as ‘Russian disinformation’. Such tactics are hardly new!
The ongoing fairy tale of the West’s ‘battle against evil’ has been many chapters, as this little list of U.S. regime change operations since 1945 shows:
South Korea (1948), Greece (1949), Costa Rica (1948), Albania (1949) , Syria (1949), Burma & China (1950), Egypt (1952), Guatemala (1952), Iran (1953), Guatemala (1954), Syria (1956), Indonesia (1957), Iraq (1959), Vietnam (1959-63), Cuba (1959-62), Cambodia (1959), Congo (1960-65), Laos (1960), Dominican Republic (1961), Iraq (1963), Brazil (1964), Indonesia (1965-67), Cambodia (1970-79), Chile (1970-73), Bolivia (1971), Ethiopia (1974-91), Angola (1975-91), East Timor (1975-99), Argentina (1976), Afghanistan (1979-92), Poland (1980-89), Chad (1981-82), Nicaragua (1981-90), Grenada (1983), Panama (1989-94), Iraq (1991), Haiti (1991), Iraq (1992-96), Haiti (1994-5), Zaire (1996-97), Yugoslavia (2000), Afghanistan (2001-21), Iraq (2003-21), Kyrgyzstan (2005), Palestine (2006-7), Syria (2005-9), Libya (2011), Syria (2012-2017).
These governments were attacked in service of imperialism, in doing so the U.S has installed many brutal dictatorships. Each and every time the U.S. casts itself as the good guy.
Add to this list the West’s economic assassins at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) who have helped enslave and loot the global south since 1944. The IMF is but the contemporary extension of the West’s long history of theft, invasions, genocide and slavery. The rest of the world has no illusions about the West because it has been under its heel for centuries. Western fairy tales are for westerners.
As true bullies of truth, humility and morality – the wholly corrupt western media INSISTS that we forget:
(a) That the U.S. helped to topple the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2013 because it was steering away from Western influence. Just add it to the list!
(b) The expansion of NATO eastwards in violation of each and every promise made to Russia since World War 2.
(c) That the U.S. has over 700 military bases around the world that form an encirclement of Russia / China and a military budget that dwarfs all others combined (just two inconvenient facts about NATO’s ‘defensive’ alliance).
(d) The endemic corruption and neo-Nazi elements within Ukraine, that both have a long history.
(e) That a peace agreement, in March 2022 was blocked by the West, who wanted to retain Ukraine as a proxy against Russia.
(f) That the west has broken its own red-lines as regards the supply of (i) long range missiles and fighter jets for Ukraine – making it increasingly obvious that they seek to target Russia and (ii) weapons banned under the Geneva convention like cluster munitions and depleted uranium.
(g) That Zelensky wants Ukraine to be ‘the big new Israel’ and that Biden does too as part of ‘a new world order’ (one that clearly doesn’t include an independent Russia, China or indeed anyone).
It is current events in Gaza though that ought to be the fin de siecle of Western fairytales. Here Israel, the very flower of Western settler colonialism is engaged in all too familiar genocide and ethnic cleansing of an indigenous population.
The current bloodbath in Gaza being but the final act in a long history of illegal invasions, occupations, murders, oppression and racism that the West set up, supplied, protected and cheered – all in service of U.S. imperialism.
No rational person can still believe that the West’s involvement in Ukraine is a moral crusade, when that same West is offering ‘unequivocal support’ for an illegal invasion, occupation, genocide and ethnic cleansing in Palestine.
This is not to say that Russia is without imperialist sins or without its own fairy tales; just that real life is complex and requires context to be understood.
Ukraine – like Palestine – is being mangled between empires and we in the West are not the heroic combatants against evil bogey-man Putin but complicit aggressors in a long imperialist arc.
If you cannot ditch the fairy tales about the West’s ongoing involvement in Ukraine, Palestine, Syria, Taiwan and elsewhere, then gulp down your Kool Aid, hop up and down all red faced about Putin or Hamas or whoever and be happy. But shut up.
Global imperialism is sustained by the dishonest morality tales spun by ALL, be they Western, Russian or Chinese. If you can’t be the solution that confronts ALL of these lies , please don’t be the problem by spreading them.
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Since 2013 I have worked on this Ad-Free site: trying to give a voice to those without the power or agency to speak out for themselves and speaking simple truths that well paid journalists in the corporate media dare not utter.
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Thank you in solidarity with all our readers. John Lynch, Editor.
Cannot subscribe to mailing list! Tried afew times to no avail! Please could you add me? Thanks.
That’s odd. I will look into that. Will add you manually in the meantime.
I couldn’t either
try now – I thought I had fixed it.
fixed now I think – thanks for letting us know.
Unable to subscribe
try one of the other posts – most of the click through buttons do work