Eric Zuesse

On June 17th, U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interviewed NATO’s and America’s General Ben Hodges, who is the Commanding General of the U.S. Army in Europe, which is "NATO's most senior land forces command.” He said (after 4:54 in the audio):

“This notion that somehow, Russia, you know, has no choice but to respond or that the West is being provocative, really, I don’t think rings true at all. … We’re building up on NATO’s borders. These are NATO countries, these are allies of ours, that are concerned based on what Russia is doing on their borders, and they’ve asked for assurance that their allies are there.”

The interviewer asked, “President Putin said that only an insane person could imagine that Russia would suddenly attack NATO. I mean, is NATO insane for worrying about a Russian attack?” Hodges replied (6:41):

“I think that’s an irresponsible question. It is completely unimaginable to me that Russia would ever invade Crimea. I mean, this was the day after the Sochi Olympics, after the Russians had spent millions and millions of dollars, and then threw away whatever goodwill they had earned the following day by invading Crimea.”

That’s so meny lies in such a short span, so that unpacking all of them will produce a long article; but, those lies are the mainstream view in America’s news media, so, here goes the reality that demolishes them:

HIS BASIC ‘HISTORY’ IS FALSE

Everything he says about what preceded Crimea’s switching back to Russia (of which it had always been a part until 1954) is false.

The Sochi Olympics ended on 23 February 2014. Contrary to what Ben Hodges says, there was no Russian invasion of Crimea the next day (nor actually ever, but we’ll get to that later). According to wikipedia, which is edited by the CIA (and so it must be right, if not far-right — like Hodges is), the “2014 Ukrainian Revolution” started on 18 February 2014. This overthrow of a government was occurring in the one nation, Ukraine, that Zbigniew Brzezinski and others have said is the most crucial nation of all that must be turned hostile toward Russia in order for America to win against Russia. (Ending communism and the Soviet Union doesn’t slake the sheer bloodthirst of people such as Brzezinski and Hodges — and Obama: Russia must simply be crushed; the communist-v.-capitalist thing was just an excuse for these psychopaths; and the only reason why Obama in 2012 denied Romney’s “our number one geopolitical foe” remark about Russia, was in order to fool the electorate about Obama himself.) Thus, grabbing Ukraine is more important to them (and their billionaire sponsors) than getting any of the twelve former Warsaw Pact nations that the U.S. had already brought into NATO. It’s not for what’s in Ukraine; it’s for what’s in Russia. (The Warsaw Pact itself had ended when the Soviet Union itself did, in 1991. The GHW Bush Administration promised Gorbachev that NATO would move “not one inch eastward,” but the U.S. constantly violates that promise, and then blames Russia for responding to its brazenness, as Russia must do for its own defense. If Obama and the U.S. Congress continue this, there will be a nuclear war.)

What happened five days before February 23rd, on 18 February 2018? Here is video of it; and, as is obvious there, Putin must have been fully informed of these rabidly anti-Russian riots in next-door Ukraine, even while he was at the Sochi Olympics. This video is from Hromadske TV. Hromadske TV was financed by three entities as shown in their 2014 Financial Report, a snippet of which is seen here, but the totality of which Financial Report was then removed from the Web because this information didn’t fit the West’s propaganda-line. I had read that Financial Report before it was taken down. This snippet published there is accurate. It shows that “Total cash inflows” during the second half of 2013 were $2,576,596, of which “Individual contributions” (by Ukrainian oligarchs) were $1,135,997; “The Embassy of the Kingdom of The Netherlands” was $793,089; “The Embassy of the United States of America” was $399,650; and George Soros’s “International Renaissance Fund” was $247,860. Consequently, that ’news’ report on Hromadske favored the people who were rioting against Ukraine’s democratically elected President, Viktor Yanukovych; and this Hromadske report said: "New wave of riots tonight in Ukraine.... and the president of Ukraine does nothing about it.” It blamed Yanukovych, for those riots against Yanukovych.

Here is more from Hromadske TV about the riots on that day, February 18th.

And here is the bloodshed on 20 February 2014, BBC Newsnight’s telecast about the violence.

Here is more of that bloodshed 20 February 2014, film-footage which was never telecast by BBC, their cut-outs.

Here is an independent video that was uploaded to the Web on 20 February 2014, showing a sniper reloading his rifle.

And here is Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News, simply assuming that the snipers on 20 February 2014 are “Police Snipers,” not U.S.-paid mercenaries who were merely dressed as if they were police.

But here is a video presenting evidence that U.S.-paid mercenaries is what they actually were.

And here is the shock that the EU’s foreign-affairs chief experienced when her own investigator told her that this was a coup, and not actually a revolution at all. (And yet, the EU went along with Obama’s sanctions.)

Well, what happened, then, on the day after the Sochi Olympics ended — the day that Hodges says that Russia “threw away whatever goodwill they had earned the following day by invading Crimea.”? Here is from the Guardian, reporting on Monday, February 24th:

As a new regime consolidated its grip over power in Kiev on Sunday, calls for secession in the pro-Russian south of Ukraine were growing louder. At a protest attended by thousands in the port city of Sevastopol on Ukraine's Crimean peninsula, the crowd voted to establish a parallel administration and civil defence squads.

Demonstrators waved Russian flags – there was not a Ukrainian flag to be seen – and chanted "Russia, Russia, Russia" during the gathering. "Sevastopol is a Russian town and will always be a Russian town. … we will never surrender to those fascists in Kiev," said Anatoly, who was handing out Russian flags and declined to give his surname. "The struggle is only just beginning."

There was plenty of reason for Crimeans to be terribly afraid. On the night of 20-21 February 2014, there was “The Pogrum of Korsun” in which, as the Ukrainian Human Rights Organization itself documented, a Ukrainian nazi gang (specifically, of Right Sector thugs) that had been involved in the Maidan violence to overthrow Yanukovych, attacked a busload of Crimeans who were fleeing from Kiev back to Crimea, brutally beating the occupants and burning the bus. Obama’s people (Right Sector were essential to his operation in Ukraine) weren’t exactly trying to make nice to Crimeans, who had voted overwhelmingly for the man Obama was overthrowing.

Here is some of the bloodshed from the prior month, leading up to all that, on January 21st, then January 22nd, then January 25th. As you can see, there’s plenty of violence in it all. And it was directed against both Yanukovych and Russia. Crimeans, who had voted overwhelmingly for Yanukovych, and who overwhelmingly preferred Russia both to this new Ukraine, and to the U.S.A. itself, very reasonably felt threatened by these new, U.S.-imposed, rulers in Ukraine.

And here it is from even earlier, 2 December 2013.

And here it is from much earlier, 3 October 2013 — which was well before wikipedia’s article on “Timeline of the Euromaidan” even says that the demonstrations to bring down Yanukovych had so much as begun.

Who organized all of this violence for the U.S. — violence that the U.S. and EU subsequently blamed on Yanukovych, and then on Putin; and, for which Obama established and the EU accepted the economic sanctions against Russia?

Here, then, is the man, Andriy Parubiy, who had planned and led that violence; he was referred to, even by wikipedia, in this way: "From December 2013 to February 2014 Parubiy was a commandant of Euromaidan.[16] He was coordinator of the volunteer security corps [i.e.: of the mercenaries] for the mainstream protesters.[17].” In addition, there were paid ‘protesters,’ to add mere bodies and voices to the crowds. And, "Parubiy co-led the Orange Revolution in 2004.” That was a straightforward CIA operation. So, Parubiy was an expert at organizing a coup for Washington; in late 2013 and early 2014, he was doing it, yet again, now far better than before. And he wasn’t commanding “the police,” like Rupert Murdoch’s ‘news’ charged as having been the malefactors. Parubiy’s forces were shooting at, and were throwing firebombs into, first, the crowds of demonstrators, and, then, at the state security forces, sometimes killing the police.

This wikipedia article also mentions the following about Parubiy’s background, prior to his being hired by the CIA in 2004:

In 1991 he founded the Social-National Party of Ukraine together with Oleh Tyahnybok;[8] the party combined radical nationalism and some neo-Nazi features (by its name and the "Wolfsangel"-like sign).[5][9][10] In 1998–2004 Parubiy led the paramilitary organization of SNPU, the Patriot of Ukraine.[10] Parubiy left these organizations in 2004.[9]

2004 was when the U.S. started its subversion of Ukraine. Parubiy finally had a sponsor that could devote big bucks to the fascistification of Ukraine — Parubiy’s lifelong cause. George W. Bush was the U.S. President then. Obama was picking up from where GWB left off.

The Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine was built upon the basis of the extensive political movement in Ukraine during World War II that passionately supported the National Socialist Party of Germany, and that joined in the extermination of Jews and Poles, and that adopted much of the Hitler operation's symbolism, and held a very similar ideology, except that they wanted to kill all Russians, even more than they hated Jews and Poles; whereas Hitler’s party wanted to kill all Jews, above all else. So, this was a superb ideological background for a CIA that was out for American conquest of, specifically, Russia — not merely an ideological war to end communism (which turned out to have been basically just a ruse: the CIA is actually a fascist operation).

The great independent investigative historian Brandon Turbeville revealed at activistpost on 9 April 2015 the deeper history of this Ukrainian coup, going all the way back to U.S. President Bill Clinton’s Administration. But this coup was shown there to have already started in the Spring of 2013 (months before the official ‘histories’ in the West say it started), with this announcement from the U.S. Embassy in Kiev:

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv in partnership with Microsoft Ukraine hosted TechCamp Kyiv 2.0 on March 1, 2013 at the Microsoft Ukraine Headquarters. TechCamps support the U.S. State Department’s Civil Society 2.0 initiative that builds the technological and digital capacity of civil society organizations around the world. During the full day interactive workshop, the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv paired leaders in the technology community with civil society organizations to provide in-depth exposure to low-cost and easy to implement technologies. More than 60 civil society leaders from throughout Ukraine came together to get hands-on training in a variety of areas ranging from fundraising using crowdsourcing, citizen journalism, PR tools for NGOs, Microsoft software and programs for NGOs, and more. These civil society organizations will be poised to use new technologies to grow their networks, communicate more efficiently, and keep pace with the changing world. To date, State Department sponsored TechCamps in Ukraine have trained more than 200 civil society organizers from throughout the country and Belarus.

So: Parubiy had lots of backing. However, he actually delegated the management of the coup to Dmitriy Yarosh, who headed Ukraine’s other nazi party, the “Right Sector.” The reason for this is that whereas the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine did not have its own force of highly trained paramilitaries, Right Sector did — and Yarosh had trained them all: he had always led them.

Here is a conversation that Yarosh — the actual muscle-man of “Maidan” — had on 25 February 2014, in which Yarosh was speaking privately with Oleg Tyagnibok, who was the co-founder (with Parubiy) of the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine, now called the “Svoboda” or “Freedom,” party (at the CIA’s suggestion). He was very open there about his intense nazi racism, because he was speaking there with a fellow nazi, only from the other nazi party in Ukraine. (Only Ukraine has two nazi parties.) Ben Hodges is on their side. He represents President Barack Obama. Don’t be surprised that a Black can also be a racist fascist; in Israel, there are plenty of racist-fascist — i.e., ideologically nazi — Jews. It’s the ideology that won in the United States, imposed upon it by the American aristocrtacy, who finance almost all major national politicians. The U.S. Government has been take over by them, not by the U.S. public — it’s no longer a democracy.

When this coup — which the founder of the "private CIA" firm Stratfor once referred to as “the most blatant coup in history” — was over, the new regime was planning to kick Russia’s navy out of Russia’s main naval base ever since 1783, which was in Crimea, which had always been part of Russia until the Soviet dictator in 1954 simply transferred Crimea to Ukraine, despite the wishes of the Crimeans.

RUSSIA DID NOT INVADE CRIMEA

Obama himself phrased the entire ‘justification’ for his economic sanctions against Russia, on the basis of “the annexation of Crimea,” via a “conquest of land." So, Ben Hodges is merely repeating Obama, using a clearer phrase (“invade Crimea”), in order to ‘justify’ American responses that are even more aggressive: military, not just economic, against Russia. However, just as I had headlined in that article, "The Entire Case for Sanctions Against Russia Is Pure Lies.” The reality is:“The International War-Criminal Is Obama, Not Putin.”

If that doesn’t sound correct to you, please click on the links here wherever you question what’s being said, and on the linked sources within those linked articles, and try to find a way to reconstruct from that evidence the viewpoint that the West’s newsmedia present of these matters. People shouldn’t wait until a nuclear war before they start to check what the actual facts are. If they do that, then they will simply die with their illusions (and, because those illusions have fooled so many other people). But those illusions have been imposed upon them by extremely bad people (they are manufactured illusions), and then taken upon those people’s followers by their not caring enough to investigate things on their own — not investigating in order to identify whom the world’s mega-criminals actually are. What’s involved here is not merely justice, but even survival. Of the world, as we know it.

CONCLUDING NOTE

Among the news media to which have been submitted for publication every article I have written, and so all of which are well aware of the facts that have been documented here and in the articles that are linked-to here, are: ABC New, CBS News, NBC News, CNN, MSNBC, NPR, PBS, The New York Times, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Guardian, Independent, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The Nation, Progressive, Mother Jones, American Prospect, Foreign Policy, National Review, Forbes, BusinessWeek, New York Review of Books, Rolling Stone, Alternet, Common Dreams, Truthout, Salon, Huffington Post, Slate, and many others. If you had not previously known the facts and documentation that has been presented here, it’s not because those news media haven’t had it presented to them; it’s because they have turned it down. If you want to find out why they don’t publish this information, then you might want to write to them and ask why they are keeping this information and documentation secret from their readers, viewers, and listeners. Are the companies’ owners, and/or big advertisers, making that decision, so that their ‘journalists’ are largely just PR-spreaders, or stenographers to power?

Is this America’s ‘free press’? Is this America’s ‘democracy’? But in fact, the U.S. was recently discovered to be, and long to have been, a dictatorship, in which the people who are not in the richest 10% have no impact whatsoever on the nation’s policies. A brief video accurately summarized that study (by Gilens and Page) and explained why its findings are that way. It’s most likely the people in the top 0.01%, even above that the billionaires, who are actually being served by this dictatorship. But, anyway, the objectives of the bottom 90% don’t at all affect federal policymaking. That’s clear from the data.

People such as Ben Hodges are placed where they are, because they serve the top 0.01%, or maybe even less. This is why they can lie to the public with total impunity.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity, and of Feudalism, Fascism, Libertarianism and Economics.
..Economics.