{"id":220317,"date":"2022-09-26T12:00:39","date_gmt":"2022-09-26T11:00:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=220317"},"modified":"2022-09-26T06:25:08","modified_gmt":"2022-09-26T05:25:08","slug":"john-pilgers-2014-warning-about-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2022\/09\/john-pilgers-2014-warning-about-ukraine\/","title":{"rendered":"John Pilger\u2019s 2014 Warning about Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

John Pilger warned the \u201cU.S. is threatening to take the world to war\u201d over Ukraine, words that have taken on new meaning.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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Maidan coup in Ukraine, 2014. (Wikipedia)<\/p><\/div>\n

24 Sep 2022 – <\/em>Why do we tolerate the threat of another world war in our name? Why do we allow lies that justify this risk? The scale of our indoctrination,\u00a0wrote Harold Pinter<\/a>, is a \u201cbrilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis\u201d, as if the truth \u201cnever happened even while it was happening\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n

Every year the American historian\u00a0William Blum<\/a>\u00a0publishes his \u201cupdated summary of the record of U.S. foreign policy\u201d which shows that, since 1945, the U.S. has tried to overthrow more than 50 governments, many of them democratically elected; grossly interfered in elections in 30 countries; bombed the civilian populations of 30 countries; used chemical and biological weapons; and attempted to assassinate foreign leaders.<\/p>\n

In many cases Britain has been a collaborator. The degree of human suffering, let alone criminality, is little acknowledged in the west, despite the presence of the world\u2019s most advanced communications and nominally most free journalism. That the most numerous victims of terrorism \u2013 \u201cour\u201d terrorism \u2013 are Muslims, is unsayable. That extreme jihadism, which led to 9\/11, was nurtured as a weapon of Anglo-American policy (Operation Cyclone<\/a>\u00a0in Afghanistan) is suppressed. In April the U.S. state department noted that, following Nato\u2019s campaign in 2011, \u201cLibya has become a terrorist safe haven<\/a>\u201c.<\/p>\n

The name of \u201cour\u201d enemy has changed over the years, from communism to Islamism, but generally it is any society independent of western power and occupying strategically useful or resource-rich territory, or merely offering an alternative to U.S. domination.<\/p>\n

The leaders of these obstructive nations are usually violently shoved aside, such as the democrats\u00a0Muhammad Mossedeq in Iran<\/a>, Jacobo Arbenz in Guatemala and\u00a0Salvador Allende in Chile<\/a>, or they are murdered like\u00a0Patrice Lumumba<\/a>\u00a0in the Democratic Republic of Congo. All are subjected to a western media campaign of vilification \u2013 think Fidel Castro, Hugo Ch\u00e1vez, now Vladimir Putin.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained \u2018pariah\u2019 role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.\u201d<\/strong><\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Washington\u2019s role in\u00a0Ukraine<\/a>\u00a0is different only in its implications for the rest of us. For the first time since the Reagan years, the U.S. is threatening to take the world to war. With eastern Europe and the Balkans now military outposts of Nato, the last \u201cbuffer state\u201d bordering Russia \u2013 Ukraine \u2013 is being torn apart by fascist forces unleashed by the U.S. and the EU. We in the west are now backing neo-Nazis in a country where Ukrainian Nazis backed Hitler.<\/p>\n

Having masterminded the coup in February against the democratically elected government in Kiev, Washington\u2019s planned seizure of Russia\u2019s historic, legitimate warm-water naval base in Crimea failed. The Russians defended themselves, as they have done against every threat and invasion from the west for almost a century.<\/p>\n

But Nato\u2019s military encirclement has accelerated, along with U.S.-orchestrated attacks on ethnic Russians in Ukraine. If Putin can be provoked into coming to their aid, his pre-ordained \u201cpariah\u201d role will justify a Nato-run guerrilla war that is likely to spill into Russia itself.<\/p>\n

Instead, Putin has confounded the war party by seeking an accommodation with Washington and the EU, by withdrawing Russian troops from the Ukrainian border and urging ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine to abandon the weekend\u2019s\u00a0provocative referendum<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These Russian-speaking and bilingual people \u2013 a third of Ukraine\u2019s population \u2013 have long sought a democratic federation that reflects the country\u2019s ethnic diversity and is both autonomous of Kiev and independent of Moscow. Most are neither \u201cseparatists\u201d nor \u201crebels\u201d, as the western media calls them, but citizens who want to live securely in their homeland.<\/p>\n

Like the ruins of Iraq and Afghanistan, Ukraine has been turned into a C.I.A. theme park \u2013 run personally by C.I.A. director John Brennan in Kiev, with dozens of \u201cspecial units\u201d from the C.I.A. and F.B.I. setting up a \u201csecurity structure\u201d that oversees savage attacks on those who opposed the February coup. Watch the videos, read the eye-witness reports from the massacre in Odessa this month. Bussed fascist thugs\u00a0burned the trade union headquarters<\/a>, killing 41 people trapped inside. Watch the police standing by.<\/p>\n

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How right you were\ud83e\udd2fhttps:\/\/t.co\/JqFCJs4PJ7<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/8ZGh6GRz3R<\/a><\/p>\n

— marie velenski (@LOULOUGUINNESS) September 24, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n