The New York Times report of 8th March that ‘Intelligence Suggests Pro-Ukrainian Group Sabotaged Pipelines, U.S. Officials Say’ elicited two sets of responses.

The mainstream US media dutifully replicated the story without curiosity or challenge, carefully sidestepping questions of plausibility or context, and often, as with the Washington Post, managing to avoid mentioning the name of Seymour Hersh, whose article of 8 February ‘How America Took Out The Nord Stream Pipeline’ they had spent a month trying to ignore. The alternative media, by contrast, jumped on the question of plausibility, put the Seymour Hersh article up front and saw this ‘revelation’ as a transparent attempt at diversion. They were broadly correct in that but they left out a very intriguing question, ‘why Ukraine?’.

The Nord Stream pipelines, build to transport gas from Russia to Germany had been blown up 26 September 2022, and there was immediate and unanimous agreement from all quarters that it was sabotage. The question was the classic murder mystery one, who dun it? The problem for the Western media was that by the standard criteria of means, motive and opportunity by far the leading contender was the United States. And the main immediate loser was Russia, which lost an expensive pipeline, a lot of valuable gas and its huge German market. The media, of course, is used to surmounting such challenges. The New York Times pointed the finger at Russia it its headline – Sabotaged Pipelines and a Mystery: Who Did It? (Was It Russia?) – but covered itself in the subheading by admitting there was ‘little evidence’. The Washington Post attempted to gain creditability by focussing on third parties – European leaders blame Russian ‘sabotage’ after Nord Stream explosions. President Biden had promised he would stop Nord Stream 2 and had forced Scholz to block its implementation. The sabotage made sure that Scholz could not change his mind. Germany was consigned to long term economic decline. All this was clear to anyone whose salary did not depend on denying it, but what remained unclear, or in dispute, was the mechanism of the sabotage and who the accomplices might have been. Seymour Hersh probably solved that puzzle; it was an American operation with help from the Norwegians, who became Germany’s largest gas supplier and made $100billion out of the operation. Hersh had been a thorn in the side of the US government since his exposure of the My Laimassacre in Vietnam in 1972, and he was drawing blood again.

The US responded to the Hersh article by attempting to dismiss it and by giving it very little coverage in the media. Then came the US intelligence press release through the New York Times. The NYT did not get the story through investigative reporting in the Hersh manner, nor through a whistle-blower but from a handout from officials. That meant it was a considered and calculated information operation, coming over five months after the sabotage and a month after Hersh. Plenty of time to prepare.

The US officials who were the source of the NYT article claimed that they were ‘reviewing’ new evidence and that apparently referred to an investigation ostensibly carried out by German media, led by Die Zeit. It is unclear whether US intelligence was responding to the German narrative or if the operation was coordinated. Given that Germany is very much a junior partner it is unlikely that the story would have surfaced unless the Americans agreed; the London Times claimed that US/NATO had suppressed Scandinavian intelligence accusing an Ukrainian oligarch since a week after the sabotage. Whatever the details, the new sabotage allegations can be best analysed now as a US-led coordinated operation, and that brings us back to the question of ‘why Ukraine?’.

The NYT article discreetly identified the consequences of ‘Ukrainisation’:

Any suggestion of Ukrainian involvement, whether direct or indirect, could upset the delicate relationship between Ukraine and Germany, souring support among a German public that has swallowed high energy prices in the name of solidarity.

Any findings that put blame on Kyiv or Ukrainian proxies could prompt a backlash in Europe and make it harder for the West to maintain a united front in support of Ukraine.

It has been argued very plausibly that the German story of a handful of ‘pro-Ukrainian’ sympathisers, perhaps Russians (a nice touch) doing what had previously been authoritatively considered only possible by state-level professionals is so implausible as to be probably a complete fabrication. Examples include Scott Ritter, Moon of Alabama and Jeremy Scahill. If it is a work of fiction, why cast Ukrainians as the culprits, why not stick with the Russians, or perhaps the North Koreans for a touch of the exotic? And if Ukrainians were up to something why not keep schtum, why let the cat out of the bag now?

One answer suggests itself: people at senior, but probably not top, level have decided that it is necessary to wean the public away from the Ukraine myth and prepare the ground for a deal. For the Germans that would be mainly to rescue the country from economic devastation and social fragmentation and for the Americans to clear the ground for the war against China. This interpretation is consistent with the possible disintegration of the Ukrainian military and the inability of the West to produce sufficient munitions.

An increasing number of stories are seeping into the media about the huge losses Kyiv is suffering and the concern that, as former US Colonel Alex Vershinin puts it, ‘Ukraine might be running out of men’. Vershinin is also the author of a seminal paper on industrial warfare, the huge demand for weapons and ammunition that the West can no longer satisfy. The West cannot provide enough for a proxy war in Ukraine let alone direct war with Russia, or China, or both.

Time for a dial back in Ukraine?

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https://johnmenadue.com/goodbye-to-ukraine-signs-that-the-us-preparing-to-dial-down-on-ukraine-to-concentrate-on-china/

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My country is failing, falling into the same dismal slough all dying empires are swallowed by. The Senators and Caesars of America have one last hope of holding onto their gain. If they can sew hatred and bitterness between brothers on the Russian steppe, the old western world order can buy time. They can hang on a little longer to their unimaginable wealth and power. Perhaps.

I have a friend in Russia whose wife begged him to take his family away from the border of conflict. Her reasoning was sound: save her small children in case the NATO threat flooded Russia’s western borders. Her husband, one of my closest Russian friends did what he had to, but not for reasons the New York Times or the mighty White House press department would seek advantage from.

This stout and capable friend, I’ll call him Vasily here, after the hero Vasily Grigoryevich Zaitsev, the famous sniper of WW2, is Russian through and through. Brave, capable, and honest as the day is long, he lives half in and half out of the forests and the traditions that fortify Russia. What I mean to say is, combat would never be a reason for him to flee. Save two purposes, that is. If your brothers and cousins live over the border in Ukraine, or Latvia or another corner of crisis, the probability of killing some of them is too much to ask. Russians and Ukrainians have no real hatred for one another. The hate that caused this conflict was manufactured through extremist groups like the Bandera/Nazis, and NGOs run by our CIA and people like George Soros.

But this is what America’s President Joe Biden, and the ghastly mafia that has gripped my country want. It’s the reason Ukraine is not already a smoldering pile of ashes. Russia’s Putin has informed the world of this many times, but his voice is muffled by censors in the west.

“Enmity and its synonyms “hostility,” animosity, and animus all indicate deep-seated dislike or ill will. Enmity (which derives from an Anglo-French word meaning “enemy”) suggests true hatred, either overt or concealed.” – Webster’s Dictionary

In Russia, especially on the borders of this conflict, there are hundreds of thousands, like Vasily, torn between the love of country, and other devotions even more sacred. Several hundred thousand reservists have already donned their plate armored vests and AK-47s to push NATO and Nazis out of neighboring Ukraine. Within their ranks, I also have friends torn just like Vasily is torn. So, darkly and horrifically, the deep state who envisioned Ukraine’s Euromaidan has won a war for hearts and minds in Ukraine. Those scoundrels who faked a Minsk peace deal, and who turned eastern Ukraine into a kind of Maginot Line (WW2 fortifications), are only evil, not stupid. They know how to create perpetual chaos better than any cabal or tribe on earth.

“Hatred is corrosive of a person’s wisdom and conscience; the mentality of enmity can poison a nation’s spirit, instigate brutal life and death struggles, destroy a society’s tolerance and humanity, and block a nation’s progress to freedom and democracy.” – Liu Xiaobo

Unfortunately for the American empire, they built, greed and arrogance blended with mediocrity is their undoing. The elite order has thrown everything they have at Vladimir Putin and Russia, but Russia is stronger now than ever by comparison. News that banks are starting to fail in the U.S. has not been missed by the people of my country. Neither have the train or other infrastructure catastrophes. The U.S.A. is falling apart from rust and decay, and our leaders funnel trillions into the lords of Blackrock and other money-plundering pirates.

And the hundreds of billions Biden and Co. are giving to the most corrupt regime on the planet are not appreciated by three hundred million men, women, and children who don’t want war. In Europe, widespread protests are already popping up. A few have taken place in the U.S., for the idiocy of it all is so powerful, the nightly news cannot keep a lid on it. No, dear George Soros, the enmity you and your henchmen drove between liberal and conservative Americans won’t hold long now. When we’re all digging in the dirt for a turnip root to feed our kids, your billions and even your existence will be forfeit.

“Oh, sure, we have another world war coming, and another great depression, but where are the leaders this time?” Kurt Vonnegut

The European Union will soon disintegrate, as it should have decades ago. When your Zelensky demands Greek, Romanian, and Croatian soldiers to fill his destroyed ranks, Germany will be leading nothing. Brussels will go back to being just a town, only a much poorer place to live than before NATO promised protection for all. The Russians will not even have to invade after a while now.

Once the monetary bubble bursts, poverty, and loss will rip the treaty alliances in the west to bits. The enemies the brains on Think Tank Row in Washington picked this time are too many and too powerful. This big stall by Biden’s handlers, will not work. Slav against Slav, everybody in the world knows who did this. But the real fall is coming not because our leaders are found out, but because empires built by conquest, always fail.

Enmity sewn by my country in the past has transmuted. Now, in the face of an unrelenting, godless, and unquenchable hegemony, China, Russia, India, the expanding BRICS nations, and much of the rest of the world have reason to embrace one another. The hatred America planted all over the earth, will now haunt my poor countrymen. It’s not what I would have ever wished for, but the “Whore of Babylon” will surely suffer as it said in the Bible. God help us at harvest time.

Phil Butler, is a policy investigator and analyst, a political scientist and expert on Eastern Europe, he’s an author of the recent bestseller “Putin’s Praetorians” and other books. He writes exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

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https://journal-neo.org/2023/03/24/operation-enmity-a-holding-action/

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Ukrainian oligarchs' secret escape to the French Riviera

Since the invasion of their country, dozens of wealthy Ukrainian families have fled to villas in the South of France. These illegal departures for men of fighting age have earned them the nickname the 'Monaco Battalion.'

In Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, there is almost complete silence. Only light building-site noises disturb the scenery of the Côte d'Azur peninsula, about 10 kilometers from Nice. Some of the most popular jewels of the Côte d'Azur can be found here, such as the Villa Ephrussi de Rothschild and its abundant gardens and the Villa Santo Sospir, with its walls painted by Jean Cocteau. In this township of 1,500 inhabitants, which has long been appreciated by wealthy Russians, imposing gates hide prestigious homes.

From time to time a luxury car passes on the winding and shaded roads. Several of them display Ukrainian license plates, with the letters "UA" underlining a yellow and blue flag. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, there have been so many of them that the daily newspaper Ukrainska Pravda has compared Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat to Koncha-Zaspa, the neighborhood of the Ukrainian elite in the south of Kyiv, in the middle of a forest. There is the same opulent decor and the same discretion.

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https://www.lemonde.fr/en/m-le-mag/article/2023/06/01/ukrainian-oligarchs-secret-escape-to-the-french-riviera_6028690_117.html

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