What Price These Lies?

In a statement issued at the conclusion of the NATO Summit in Wales, US President Barack Obama said, “The path for Russia to rejoin the community of nations that respects international law is still there”.

The arrogance of this willingness to stand upon the world’s stage, and turn the truth directly on its head with an out and out bald-faced lie, is breathtaking. We can surely presume that most people in the US are primarily focused on the weekend’s ball games, or on who’s dating whom in Hollywood, and know very little about the facts concerning events in Ukraine. These people are, of course, easily taken in by this Big Lie.

But a significant percentage of the world’s population, and millions of informed people in the US, know the true facts. We are not taken in at all. What we see is the President of the United States, with the entire world listening, shamelessly lying to further the interests of the United States’ aggressive lust for expanding power. Is it possible that he does not understand the cost involved in so cynically and shamelessly perpetrating such a Big Lie?

Massive numbers of people around the world who may have doubted the malevolently self-serving nature of US policies, who may have thought there was some truth to the American “shining city on the hill” mythology, have now had all doubt removed. With this bald-faced lie from the US President, they now know for sure that America is a malevolent actor that is only serving its own greed and lust for expanding its power.

Let’s briefly review the mere facts of what actually happened. These facts are well established in the historical record. They are not hidden, or obscure. Anyone can access them, using the tools that anyone reading this has right at their very fingertips.

In November of 2013 the legally elected government of Ukraine refused to sign a trade pact with the West, which included an IMF package of loans that mandated a contractual requirement that the Ukrainian government engage severe austerity measures that would cause great deprivation among the Ukrainian people. The Ukrainian government chose instead to sign a pact with Russia that provided the financial aid it needed, but did not impose the cruelty of austerity on the Ukrainian common people.

At that point, US Intelligence forces put in motion a concerted, long planned, and ultimately successful effort to first destabilize Ukraine, and then to overthrow the legally elected Ukrainian government. US Intelligence was able to leverage a powerful neo-Nazi movement in Ukraine, people who actually lionize Adolph Hitler, are fond of using the Nazi straight-armed salute, fly the same banner that was used by the Waffen SS, and openly advocate for ethnic cleansing against Jews, and against Ukraine’s considerable population of Russian speaking people.

Using gangs of these Neo Nazis as shock troops, US Intelligence was successful in overthrowing the Ukrainian government. The tactics used were shockingly ruthless. Nazi snipers were used to gun down demonstrators, for example, in a false flag operation to blame this on the government, (the evidence of this is abundantly clear). A brigade of Neo Nazis in Odessa attacked a group of pro-government demonstrators with clubs, and crude weapons, such as chains attached to a short club, with a spiked ball on the end. When several dozens of these unarmed and defenseless pro-government demonstrators took refuge in an old building, the Nazi thugs locked the doors and set the building on fire with Molotov cocktails. As dozens of people burned to death, the Neo Nazis surrounding the building cheered, and lustily sang their songs of praise to Nazi ideology.

These were the US Intelligence’s “good guys”. These were the people who were characterized as forces working for ‘democracy’ against a corrupt government.

We should note that the next election in Ukraine was barely a year away, but why wait for an inconvenient election when US Intelligence has the power to violently overthrow an elected government in the name of ‘democracy’.

The Ukrainian government declined from using the requisite violence against the Ukrainian people that would have been required to remain in power. Instead, the government fled. The Ukrainian president left Ukraine, whereupon US Intelligence handpicked a new government, which was, of course, installed in power after an ‘election’ was rapidly held, with Neo Nazis patrolling polling stations to make sure that the ‘wrong’ people did not vote.

Russia’s only year round seaport, and its largest, and by far most important, Naval base is located in Sevastopol, on the Crimean peninsula. In the 1950s, when Russia and Ukraine were both part of the same federated nation, the Soviet Union, Crimea had been placed under Ukrainian administration for the sake of geographic convenience. Crimea was traditionally Russian territory, however, and a large majority of its population are Russian-speaking people who consider themselves to be Russians. The treaty of convenience that placed Crimea under Ukrainian administration also gave Russia the right, in perpetuity, to maintain its military forces in Crimea. Faced with losing some of its most crucial strategic assets, Russia asserted its military power that was already present in Crimea to protect its security assets. No ‘invasion’ took place, or was required. A referendum was held, and the overwhelming majority of ethnic Russian people in Crimea voted to secede from Ukraine and assert Crimea’s traditional status as a part of Russia itself.

US Intelligence gave several key positions in the new Ukrainian government to leaders of the Ukrainian Nazis, including control over Ukraine’s military and internal security forces. The Ukrainian military was is disarray, so several battalions of Nazi ultra-nationalists were formed from the same street thugs that had aided in overthrowing the government. These battalions of Nazis immediately began attacking the Russian-speaking people of Eastern and Southeastern Ukraine, engaging in their much desired ethnic cleansing by killing large numbers of civilians with artillery bombardments.

These Russian-speaking people organized themselves in defense, and looked to Russia for aid and protection. Referendums were held, and an overwhelming majority of these people voted for Russia to annex this territory. Russia, even while being constantly accused of “aggression”, declined to annex these regions. Vladimir Putin, the man who is being demonized in the Western media for his “territorial aggression”, spoke very calmly, and said that Russia would not use its vastly superior military against its Slavic brothers in Ukraine. Putin advocated, from the outset, that a diplomatic solution be found that would assure the protection and safety of the Russian-speaking people of Ukraine. These provinces under attack by Ukrainian Nazis should remain a part of Ukraine, the supposedly “aggressive” Putin said, but should enjoy a recognized autonomy, which would include the right to protect themselves, in a federated Ukrainian state. He was confident, he said, that as events sorted themselves out, the people of Europe, and the people of Ukraine itself, would come to understand that their own best self-interests lay in a peaceful resolution of these hostilities.

This is the man whom the president of a nation which engineered a coup to overthrow the Ukrainian government, and installed a junta government in its place, has now invited to “rejoin the community of nations that respects international law”.

Russia may or may not have provided any significant degree of military aid to the people of Eastern and Southeastern Ukraine, to protect themselves from the deadly aggression of the rag tag Ukrainian Nazi brigades. It seems likely that some aid was given, in the form of weapons, and probably military organization and intelligence (advisors). The media hysteria about a Russian “invasion” of Ukraine has been just that, however: ungrounded hysteria. In the modern world of satellite imagery, if an “invasion” took place, it would be very easy to thoroughly document and prove beyond any doubt. All we have seen, however, are satellite pictures of small numbers, mere handfuls, of troops, and a column made up from a dozen or so military vehicles. There is no evidence of anything that could in any stretch of the imagination be called an “invasion”.

These are the well-established facts of the historical record of these events in Ukraine. These are the facts that are well known by massive numbers of people around the world, and millions of people in the US itself. They are NOT some obscure ‘conspiracy theory’. These are the well-documented facts of history, which anyone can access with a few minutes of time, and a decent search engine.

When the President of the United States stands before the entire world, and characterizes the above narrative as “Russian aggression”, and magnanimously allows that Russia has a “path to rejoin the community of nations that respects international law”, this transparently bald-faced Big Lie is being greeted with a shocked intake of breath around the entire world, as all traces of doubt that people may have had about America’s shameless pursuit of its own greed for power has been removed.

Distracted as so many of us are by our ballgames, and by the sex-lives of vapid celebrities, the majority of Americans may be taken in by this Big Lie, but rest assured that informed Americans are learning an important lesson about the cynical, shameless, and consummately arrogant willingness of the US Power Elite to lie to its own people. This US Power Elite is so arrogant in its naked degree of power to control the US media that they do not even seem to care that so many easily see through these transparent lies.

This shocking arrogance of power is further dividing, and greatly weakening our nation, as any vestige of claim to the mantle of moral right is cynically surrendered to naked greed for power.

Hundreds of millions of people have lost any illusions they may have still held about America’s purpose and intentions throughout the world. With this most recent Big Lie, perpetrated in our Age of Information, when so many are able to easily access the truth, the loss of any vestige of people’s faith in America is the price that the US Power Elite has paid for whatever they think they have gained in Ukraine.

Raymond Zwarich is a retired carpenter who lives with his wife on a 16 acre farmstead in central Massachusetts. They keep chickens, grow large organic gardens, and have 11 thriving bee colonies. They sell their eggs, produce, and honey to their neighbors, a large clientele of regular customers, and at local farmers' markets. He is trying his best to find some way to respond as a responsible citizen to the insanity of our times. Read other articles by Raymond.