Ukraine: Dying for freedom? A plea against the war alliance of the West
A reconciliation of facts and narratives in an information war
that turns almost everything on its head, from the fundamental
character of the United States and its policies to the perception
of the current conflict with Russia. Politics is rarely an honest
business. But the extent and perfection of U.S. disinformation
already go far beyond the ordinary – and without fundamental
changes, it will get worse in the future.
1. Complete unity is untypical for free societies
Everywhere in the West, Ukraine and its brave fight against
the Russian invasion is celebrated. More and more weapons
are being supplied ever more rapidly, with mantra-like
assurances that this will not lead to the West becoming a war
party and thus a target for Russia’s attack. The West sees itself
as fighting for the rule-based world order and the fundamental
values of free societies.
Anyone who even cautiously questions this or tries to place it
in a larger context is vilified as a Putin understander and
accused of spreading propaganda for the Kremlin. Anyone
who asks questions or even has a dissenting view of things is
either naive or a morally depraved conspiracy theorist who
undermines the free world order with disinformation and
makes himself an accomplice of war criminals.
But isn’t it constitutive for rational positions and free societies
that own convictions are always regarded as provisional,
dissenting opinions are respected and others are encouraged to
formulate and substantiate counter-positions to measure their
own convictions against them again and again?
2. Enlighted rationality is rarely black and white
The battle of „good versus evil“ is typical of totalitarian
regimes and fundamentalist ideologies. How can it be that it
doesn’t send shivers down everyone’s spine when Ukrainians
declare in interviews that Russians are not human beings?
„If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck and looks like a duck
it might BE a duck.“
Hate against Russians, uncompromisingness, maximum war
aims, escalation of war, and demonization of the enemy, who
is made contemptible as amoral and inferior, all this is typical
for fascists. This is the image of the Russian subhuman, as the
Nazis already had.
„Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy greeted the
European Parliament with a traditional Ukrainian saying:
“Slava Ukraini!” (Glory to Ukraine!), and received the
traditional choral response: „Heroyam Slava!“ (Glory to the
heroes!)“
This does not look like the war of an enlightened, free society
for a rule-based world order. This is what fascism looks like.
And the goal of a victorious peace with the destruction of
Russia according to the model of the Versailles Treaty shows
whose kind of person this is and what dangers it conjures up.
3. It is no „unprovoked offensive war“ by Russia
The U.S. war against Iraq can probably be considered an
unprovoked war of aggression since everyone knew before the
war that the accusations were fabricated. The bombing of
Serbia and Libya by the West was against international law.
The suppression of an uprising does not justify foreign
military intervention and certainly not overthrowing the
government or move borders. All of these violations of
international law by the West went unreacted.
The situation is different in southern and eastern Ukraine and
Crimea. Here, the conditions under international law for
military intervention by Russia are present. This was true in
2014 and it is even more true in 2022 when Russia responded
to the escalation of Ukrainian attacks against Donbas to
recapture to eradicate Russian identity in this originally
Russian-dominated area – after neither threats nor negotiations
were able to dissuade Ukraine from escalating its attacks.
International law is the basis and limit of national and
territorial integrity. A government can NOT claim territorial
integrity if it (like the regime illegally couped into power by
the USA in 2014) systematically and massively violates the
most basic fundamental rights of its people or individual
ethnic communities, explicitly if the persecution serves the
denial of tolerance of the national or cultural identity of an
ethnic group.
The aggressive campaign of the U.S.-affiliated central
government in Kyiv against everything Russian establishes
the right of the oppressed Russians to secede their territories –
and thus for third countries like Russia the right to support the
enforcement of this claim, all the more so in the case of
attacks on members of their ethnic group.
Crimea was not annexed, but a predominantly Russian
population legitimately withdrew from an illegitimate central
government and its ethnic anti-Russian policy and later joined
the Russian Federation for its protection.
4. The separation of the Donbass was legal
In the Russian-influenced Donbas, separatism, and separation
were also following international law, as was Russian military
aid. In contrast, the U.S. intervention in 2004-2010 and since
2014 has been a violation of the national self-determination of
the multi-ethnic state in the former Soviet republic.
Biden bragged in the U.S. election campaign about how he
managed to establish the Ukrainian prosecutor general within
hours. And the extermination campaign against everything
Russian is a massive human rights violation for which the
Kyiv regime, as well as those responsible in the U.S., should
answer to the International Criminal Court.
But: The USA does not recognize the ICC in The Hague and
has even threatened to use military force to free arrested US
citizens. This is what they look like, the „noble fighters for a
rules-based world order.
5. War and overthrow are the „business model“ of the
USA.
The USA is a former British colony, founded by immigration
to a continent where European diseases killed off much of the
native population before the USA (before as well as after
independence) expelled and slaughtered the remaining natives
and confined the rest to reservations.
The U.S. economy was based on slave labor in the South. The
supposed liberation of slaves was the subjugation of the
South, which wanted to export agricultural products
worldwide, by the industrialized North, which wanted to keep
foreign competition out of the U.S. market through
protectionism. If about human rights were the reason, they
would not have continued to slaughter the remaining Indians
together afterward and outsourced the exploitation of other
ethnic groups to the colonies.
In the first 20 years after the independence, the USA went to
war in the Mediterranean against North African states, which
made sea navigation unsafe with piracy for about 250 years
and enslaved more than 1 million Europeans according to
estimates. In Japan, the USA later used warships to force the
opening of the Japanese market for US products. In addition
to the war against Mexico, they brought other colonies in the
Caribbean and South Pacific under their control around 1900
in the war against Spain.
After World War 1, the victorious European powers saw the
supremacy of the European nations defended and, together
with the French and British, generously redistributed the
world in Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and the Ottoman
Empire – as they had previously divided up Africa.
In the Ottoman Empire, they failed because of the resistance
of the Turks. In Eastern Europe, they created a multitude of
small states with sometimes unclear borders for about 20
years, which led to quite a few wars over borders and quickly
to dictatorship in the countries. The Poland that Germany
occupied in 1939 was an ultra-nationalist, aggressive military
dictatorship. Not something you would weep for if you hold
European values.
The American people overwhelmingly rejected World War II
until Roosevelt used massive sanctions to give the Japanese
the alternative of „unconditional submission or war.“ In
alliance with Stalin, the U.S. armed a regime that stood for
unprecedented terror against its people. After the war, they
gave all of Eastern Europe to Stalin for the expansion of his
dictatorship.
The USA supported the French after 1945 in the Indochina
war in their attempt to restore colonial rule. Later, they
supported dictators from Taiwan to Korea to Vietnam. In addition, overthrows in Iran, Guatemala, and among others
later Chile, where brought the Pinochet regime to power. The
Iran-Contra affair showed how indifferently intelligence
operations were conducted not only against international law
but also against congressional resolutions. And in
Afghanistan, the Taliban owe their rule to the CIA to
overthrow the socialist government and bleed the USSR
economically and militarily.
Wars against Serbia, Iran, and Libya as well as the support of
Islamist terrorist groups in Syria show how indiscriminately
the U.S. selects – and drops – its partners. Whether Saddam
Hussein, Assad, Gaddafi, or Mubarak, whoever is a partner
today can be invaded or removed by the USA tomorrow. We
should be aware of this in Europe as well. The former
president of Pakistan, Musharaf, has just made public that the
USA threatened to bomb Pakistan back into the Stone Age
after 9/11 if the country did not support the USA’s war against
Afghanistan.
6. Surveillance state and lawless violence
Documentaries like „Hunt for Bin Laden“ show clearly how
comprehensive the surveillance by the USA is even in the last
corners of the earth.
Satellites and drones spy on everything in high resolution, and
radar and infrared technology can be used to find and track
people and groups partly through thin roofs or at night
through the clouds and leaves on the forest floor. The NSA is
a data sucker and increasingly intelligent programs for linking
and evaluating data create profiles that say more about people
than they are aware of themselves (which is then used again
for the targeted control of supposedly own decisions).
The espionage is supplemented by special forces that can
strike anywhere in the world at any time, and by drones
(guided out of Ramstein, among other places) that kill
worldwide. In addition, kidnappings in secret CIA prisons and
Guantanamo a torture prison without access to justice.
7. USA: Oligarchy instead of democracy
According to some theories, democracy was never meant to
be the implementation of collective self-determination, but
rather a political system of feigned co-determination from the
beginning, which does not stand for a turning away from
totalitarian rule, but only for more efficient enforcement of the
rule of the same elites. What sounds like the worst conspiracy
theory has long been substantiated by scientific research:
The central findings are:
– Political decisions largely reflect the interests of small
elites, not those of the majority, as they should in a
functioning democracy.
– People make decisions much less rationally and are much
more susceptible to emotional and subconscious influence
than the human image of democracy would suggest.
– Money and function elites instrumentalize language,
science, and media to control public opinion and the
decisions of the citizens incl. election decisions by the
information war to a large extent.
Money, education, and degree of the organization decide in
the western democracies. Particularly impressive are the
campaigns of Edward Bernays in the 1950s, who achieved an
overthrow of the socialist government in Guatemala for the
United Fruit Company, and the PR agency Hill&Knowlton,
which in 1990, by spreading a lie about the alleged theft of
incubators for premature babies by Iraqi soldiers, achieved
that the USA restored the monarchy in Kuwait – by defeating
Iraq. In science, among other efforts, redirecting attention
from sugar as a significant driver of obesity to fat has been
successful – in part through a selective choice of data used and
dominance in the media. Even the Nazis used films in
particular for indoctrination, because they recognized that this
works better than facts or documentaries.
Cambridge Analytica has shown how data analysis can be
used to create personality profiles and then manipulate
potential voters in their election decisions with tailored
messages. Just in mid-Feb. 2023, the case of „Team Jeorge“
from Israel has become known, which among other activities
creates artificial profiles to manipulate public opinion under
fake identities via social media.
Those who do not want to appear in public can found
associations to promote certain topics. They can offer
networks and support for certain professional groups or steer
supposed grass-roots movements from the background, such
as the Koch brothers, who are probably behind the Tea Party,
among others.
In addition to the active dissemination of messages and
opinions, there is also an increasing use of tactics, as already
used by the Stasi (Note of the editorial office: Stasi is the short
form for Staatssicherheit, some kind of spying secret service
in the former, Russian occupied Eastern Germany):
Decompose and destroy.
Currently, such campaigns are taking place against Gabriele
Krone-Schmalz, Daniele Ganser and Hans-Georg Maaßen
(Note of the editorial office: Well-known Germans who are
critical to mainstream narratives, e.g. increasing weapon
deliveries to Ukraine), among others, who are being
consistently defamed and their credibility destroyed by an
alleged scientific community in solidarity with several leading
media outlets. The interesting thing is that this tactic also
works against people of integrity with a high level of
competence and a good reputation up to that point.
Information and awareness run much less on fact checks than
on credibility and moods. Hardly anyone is able to reliably
check concrete facts. Instead, we gather input and look for
patterns. And when almost everyone in politics, the media, and science claims something, no matter how wrong it may
be, most people are persuaded by a broad consensus or
manipulated by emotions.
As a result, the privileged explain the world to us and they
deliberately and systematically suppress and destroy any
narrative that threatens the credibility of their own narrative –
e.g. lectures by Krone-Schmalz and Ganser or statements by
the former president of the Federal Office for the Protection of
the Constitution (Note of the editorial office: Hans-Georg
Maaßen). And where it is not successful to defame the
contents or messages, they try to destroy the reputation of the
messengers and to make the messages about it untrustworthy
and devalued. Once branded as a conspiracy theory, most
people block it mentally to avoid being assigned to the camp
of the lepers – even if it is only because they talk to the
„wrong people“, listen to them, or repeat their theories.
Democracy means the free informed decision of the majority.
Extreme inequality in education and resources leads to a few
dominating the perceptions and decisions of the majority. This
is the rule of the few, the oligarchy, and this extends to
thoughts and language.
8. Fake NGOs as a Weapon in hybrid warfare
Under Reagan alone, 3 of the most important fake NGOs have
emerged in the USA: „International Republican Institute“
(IRI), „National Democratic Institute“ (NDI), and „National
Endowment for Democracy“ (NED). The NED is financed by
the US Foreign Ministry, the other two are financially
supported by the Foreign Ministry through the NED. In
addition, there are the Soros organizations „Soros Foundation“
and „Open Society Institute“ as well as the organization
„Freedom House“, which was already founded in 1941 to
fight the Nazis.
The Spiegel (Note of the editorial office: a German journal)
describes with admiration how such organizations work in an
editorial of 13.11.2005 under the title „Die RevolutionsGmbH“.
In many cases, the goal is simply the non-violent overthrow of
the government or the organization of the election of the own
candidates – only in foreign countries. I.e. groups were
supported, which prevented among other things the re-election
of Milosevic or served in 2003 in Georgia and 2004 in
Ukraine the interests of the USA by the implementation of a
certain government.
Interestingly to this topic also the broadcast Fareed Zakaria
GPS from 16.10.2022 on CNN, which refers to the
particularly high success rate of non-violent overthrows in the
past, but at the same time states that this has recently declined
dramatically.
And, interestingly, nonviolent overthrows are especially
successful where organizations are run very tightly
hierarchically and proceed very strategically.
In plain language, they are successful when they are
organized, financed, and tightly managed by governments or
powerful backers. This has nothing to do with any kind of
spontaneous mass protest. This is organized war by other
means – including the thugs who, if necessary, ensure security
on the ground.
9. In Ukraine, the USA has staged two coups d’état
If we look at Ukraine against this background, then in 2004
Soros activists prevented the election of Yanukovych, the
candidate of the pro-Russian population in eastern and
southern Ukraine and the desired successor of the retiring
President Kuchma. Instead, in the „Orange Revolution“ with
Yushchenko, they forced the election of the husband of a
Ukrainian-American, a former employee of the U.S. State
Department, and in the White House under Reagan with
months of mass demonstrations.
In Feb. 2010, the candidate pushed through by Soros had just
5% in polls and elected was the 2004 prevented candidate,
Yanukovych. Yanukovych negotiated the EU Association
Agreement and was willing to sign it even though it contained
military components that were predictably unacceptable to
Russia. The agreement failed because the West refused to
grant economic aid to the bankrupt country. Instead, it
boycotted the European Championship in Kyiv in order to
force the release of Yulia Tymoshenko – in other words, it
interfered massively in internal politics. When Putin offered
Ukraine cheaper gas and a loan worth billions, Yanukovych
turned away from the EU and towards Russia – especially
since Ukraine, even after independence from Russia, received
raw materials at prices well below the world market price,
which supported the economy.
In response, activists, funded and led by the U.S., launched
the Euro-Maidan permanent demos, which were by no means
consistently peaceful. These demos at some times set up thugs
to protect the demonstrators „from the assaults of the security
organs.“ In fact, the aim was to prevent the dissolution of the
months-long demo by force. So we have a president in a
multi-ethnic state who emerged from an election. And when,
for understandable reasons, he aligns his policy more strongly
with Russia, the USA organizes his overthrow. This is
radically anti-democratic and lawless behavior that violates all
norms in international law. Even on the evening before the
coup, Germany and France had negotiated a compromise.
Then the lawless overthrow of U.S.-led and financed Western
Ukrainians against the president of all of Ukraine happened,
whose supporters were based primarily in the pro-Russian
south and east.
Legendary is the intercepted and published telephone
conversation of Victoria Nuland, Secretary of State in the U.S.
State Department and in charge of coordination on the ground.
Nuland estimated in a 2013 speech that the U.S. had
„invested“ a total of 5 billion in Ukraine since 1991.
Legendary her sentence „Fuck the EU!“, in which she clarifies
that the USA intends to enforce „their man“ against the
concerns of the Europeans. A few days after the
unconstitutional coup, the EU recognized the coup plotters,
and funds from the EU, the US, and the IMF, among others,
flowed into Ukraine to prop up the illegal regime.
The escalation in eastern Ukraine and Crimea, as well as in
Odesa, happened due to the fact that the U.S. did not want to
risk again that 5 years after a „successful“ coup, a pro-Russian
government would be elected again. Therefore, this time the
Ukrainian fascists were brought on board, whose brutality
cannot be better demonstrated than by the murder of almost
50 pro-Russian demonstrators in Odesa, who were first hunted
down and then killed in a house set on fire by the fascists, into
which they had fled.
10. The facts do not condemn Russia but the USA
Against this background that the secession of the Donbas and
Crimea happened – and that was supported by Russia. This
was legitimate resistance of the Russian population against the
illegal, foreign-directed takeover of power in Kyiv, recognized
and supported by the EU and the USA, with the participation
of Ukrainian fascists, who have only one function: To
permanently suppress everything Russian in order to
permanently stabilize the rule of the USA.
The facts are clear: the aggression and the violation of
international law and human rights were organized by the
USA, supported by fascists, and carried by the EU. Russia, on
the other hand, protected the human rights of Russians and
their claims under international law – which is legitimate and
moral. The case of eastern Ukraine is classic for a situation in
which international law allows secession – and thus also its
support by foreign countries, especially for citizens of their
own people. There was no annexation of Crimea. There was a
secession of Crimea that was permissible under international
law and later Crimea’s accession to the Russian Federation.
11. Minsk was the outstretched hand of Moscow
Russia could have overrun Ukraine in 2014 in a coup d’état
and would have had every right to do so. The behavior of the
United States, on the other hand, was blatantly contrary to
international law. The West’s recognition of the coup plotters
and inclusion of the fascists in the government would have
given Russia every mandate to occupy and set up an interim
government. In retrospect, it is difficult to understand why,
after 2004, Russia again tolerated the unlawful turnover of
power by the United States in 2014.
Russia once again trusted the West – and once again was
smeared. Instead of implementing Minks, i.e. establishing
minority rights in the constitution, Ukraine, under the
directive of the U.S., did not implement Minsk. Kyiv has even
denied the binding nature of the Minsk agreement, citing the
military threat posed by Russia. This is a logic that would
render any peace treaty non-binding.
12. The war is the result of systematic escalation by the
USA
Biden made it very clear in the election campaign that the
U.S. was making the decisions in Kyiv. And the USA has
decided to arm Ukraine, make it militarily capable and
integrate it into the West, and to make the military reconquest
of the territories the legal duty of every government.
Thus, war was inevitable and the U.S. systematically escalated
it through more and more arms deliveries, more and more
intense attacks on the Donbas, and no substantive offer of
negotiations. Russia tried to negotiate, and it built up a
backdrop of threats. In the end, Putin had no choice but to
give the order to invade – and the U.S. was prepared, inflicting
ever more severe defeats on the Russians.
13. A nuclear power can draw red lines at any time
The goal is to repel and crush the „criminal“ Russia. Russia
should pay reparations and hand over war criminals and never
again be able to threaten neighbours. This is the Versailles
approach. And it would threaten Putin’s head.
But Russia is a nuclear power. Russia can threaten to destroy
human life on Earth unless Eastern Europe submits to
Moscow again. That has not changed since 1990. Russia can
wipe out the Ukraine, Poland or even Berlin. And then? Not
only would it be foolish for the U.S. not to back down then, it
would ultimately destroy the U.S. with nothing to gain by
doing so. If Putin decides tomorrow to unconditionally
enforce the restoration of the blocs with nuclear weapons,
then the West (including the USA) has exactly 2 options:
Acceptance of the demand or just annihilation.
By Till Benz
Translated by Peter Mueller
[2nd edition/23, page 2]
