Shell & BP financed Britain’s cold war propaganda machine

Formerly top secret files show how the two oil corporations bankrolled UK covert propaganda operations during the 1950s and 60s. The goal was to secure British access to key oil supplies across the developing world.

Exclusive: How Shell and BP financed Britain’s Cold War propaganda machine

JOHN McEVOY
31 August 2022

“Handsome” sums were provided by BP and Shell to the Information Research Department (IRD), which was Britain’s Cold War propaganda arm between 1948 and 1977, declassified files show.

The IRD used the secret subsidies to fund British covert propaganda operations during the 1950s and 1960s across the Middle East and Africa, where Britain’s oil interests were substantial. Today, the value of the payments would be in the millions of pounds.

Such operations involved setting up newspapers and magazines, funding radio and television broadcasts, and organising trade union exchanges.

The objective was to promote “stability” in these regions by countering the threat of communism and resource nationalism, while improving the “public image” of Britain’s leading oil companies.

Ultimately, the goal was to secure British access to the supply of Middle Eastern and African oil.

Oil and propaganda

During the 1950s and 1960s, the IRD met annually with Shell and BP representatives to discuss how secret oil subsidies were being used and whether the oil companies were getting value for money.

In December 1960, IRD chief Donald Hopson met Shell’s UK executive Brian Trench and senior BP executive Archie Chisholm, alongside a number of other Foreign Office officials. The name of one individual remains classified, suggesting Britain’s intelligence services were also in attendance.

At the meeting, it was noted the IRD had spent £75,500 in oil money – valued at over £1.2m today – on covert propaganda operations between April 1959 and March 1960.

Over half of this money had been spent on the Arab News Agency (ANA), a long standing British propaganda front which had strong links with MI6.

“ANA operated the most comprehensive service in English and Arabic available in the Middle East with branch offices in Damascus, Beirut, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Amman, and representatives in some 15 other cities, including Paris and New York”, wrote journalist Richard Fletcher.

Hopson informed the oil companies “that their contributions had made it possible to put the [Arab News] Agency in a very strong competitive position in regard to its communications”.

For instance, oil company subsidies allowed ANA to pay for British news agency Reuters’ wire service. During this period, Reuters was pliable to UK government influence, and was seen as a useful propaganda instrument.  

With this, ANA could supply news organisations across the Middle East with Reuters’ content. The service was described as “very successful in Egypt”, and it “secured the first place for Reuters in competition with the other world agencies”.  

It is unclear whether Reuters was aware that the UK government was secretly channelling oil money into its accounts. One UK file, dated 1960 and entitled “Information Research Department: renegotiation of contract between Reuters and the Arab News Agency”, remains classified by the Foreign Office.

‘Valuable propaganda instrument’

On top of this, the IRD used £3,000 of oil money to fund Al Aalam (“The Globe”), an ostensibly independent magazine published in Iraq, which was seen by the Foreign Office as “a most valuable propaganda instrument”.

Al Aalam supported UK anti-communist efforts and sought to counter anti-British messaging coming from Gamal Abdel Nasser’s Egypt. At this time, Nasserite Arab nationalism posed a significant threat to Britain’s regional interests, and was a central focus of British propaganda activities.

    The IRD thanked Shell and BP for their “handsome contributions”.

The oil companies’ contributions to Al Aalam, which had been ongoing since the early 1950s, “had in fact tipped the scale when the Treasury decision concerning the launching of the periodical was made”, it was noted. In 1960, the magazine achieved a monthly circulation of 85,000.

During this period, £15,000 in money from the oil companies was also “expended in Iran” on “emergency operations” which enabled “visits to be arranged, publication and translation work to be undertaken, and training schemes for Persian radio officials to be put in hand”.

‘Handsome contributions’

The IRD thanked Shell and BP for their “handsome contributions”, and requested an additional £138,750 in secret funding for the period April 1960 to December 1961. Indeed, these were “handsome contributions”, amounting to roughly 8 percent of the IRD’s annual official budget, and valued at £2.25m today.

“The general pattern of ANA’s activities would continue to be the same though the Agency would concentrate in the forthcoming year on strengthening its news collecting”, an IRD memo noted. To this end, the IRD requested an additional £42,500 for ANA’s running costs, and £26,250 for Reuters’ wire service.

On top of its pre-existing operations, the IRD proposed using oil subsidies to fund a number of new ventures.

One such project was geared towards building up “sufficient influence with certain selected Libyan Trade Unionists” in order to “encourage a spirit of moderation into industrial demands”. This issue was seen as “of direct interest to the oil companies” such that the IRD could “anticipate their support”.

‘Student news service’

In Latin America, the IRD wished to “interest ourselves particularly in the student and trade union fields” by setting up a “student news service” with oil company contributions.

On top of this, the IRD requested £5,000 for a “trade union exchange visits scheme”. The scheme had already begun in Latin America, and the IRD was looking for oil money to expand the project into Africa.

It was also “hoped to start an examination of the possibilities of setting up a [television] programme agency for the Middle East shortly”.

Another project focused on news agency Gulf Times/Al Khalij, an IRD outfit based in Beirut, which was looking to expand and open a new office in Kuwait.

According to one IRD document, the agency’s core objective was “the preservation of [British] oil interests in the Gulf”. It was noted that the oil companies may thus “think it suitable to contribute [£30,000] towards the capital cost of the new venture”, which was valued at £110,000. This project, however, was ultimately abandoned by the IRD in April 1961.

‘Handmaid of BBC Arabic’

In 1963, the oil companies funded Huna London (“This is London”), a magazine which was described by one IRD official as “the handmaid of the BBC Arabic service” and “the best means we have of addressing the Arabs as a whole”.

Huna London had been the words used to announce the first BBC broadcast in Arabic in 1938, and the magazine would become the Arabic equivalent to the Radio Times, which listed British television and radio programmes alongside “contributions from leading writers and illustrators of the day”.

Oil money had “enabled 6,000 extra copies” of Huna London to be printed in 1963, “each requested by an individual Arab, to be sent out from Beirut”. The IRD envisaged that it might soon receive “requests for 100,000 or more copies”, which was described as a “highly desirable” outcome.

One proposed project remains redacted in entirety.

‘Contingency money’

Beyond this, the oil companies provided the IRD with tens of thousands of pounds in “contingency money”, which was to be used as “a stimulator of desirable projects”.

Norman Reddaway, a seasoned British propagandist based in the British embassy in Beirut, described the contingency fund as “particularly useful for pump-priming and for persuading people that desirable things could be done in advance of agreement by London”.

The oil companies felt the IRD was making good use of their money and, by 1960, they wanted to help British propaganda operations expand.

For instance, Shell was “widening their field of interest and… thinking in terms of propaganda in distribution areas as well as in producing territories. They are thus concerned with the public image of the oil companies in places like West Africa as well as in the Middle East”.

As a result, the IRD “could take it that” the oil companies “had an interest in all production and refining areas and territories adjacent thereto. Thus, for example, Somalia was an area of interest because of its proximity to Aden”.

Pump-priming

By late 1963, Shell and BP were beginning to express irritation at the IRD’s continued reliance on oil funds for ongoing projects.

Shell and BP had intended to pump-prime British covert propaganda projects so that these ventures could become self-sustaining. The oil companies, it was noted, were happy to help propaganda projects get off the ground but “did not like involving themselves in continuing commitments”.

In private correspondence dated 16 December 1963, Chisholm told Foreign Office official Leslie Glass that: “the object originally of the exercise on which we are engaged was to assist you to overcome certain financial restrictions in getting things moving at a critical and difficult time. We have been glad to continue our assistance with certain of these projects to our mutual advantage”.

Chisholm continued: “It was always our intention, however, that as projects reached full development and they justified financing from other sources, our contributions to them should tail off”.

Trench agreed, expressing hope that ANA, the Reuters service, and the Ariel Foundation – a British front organisation which facilitated exchanges of trade unionists and academics – “could be entirely financed from other sources by about 1966”.

The oil companies also found covert payments an awkward affair. Chisholm, for instance, “asked whether a less complicated method of making subventions was desirable”.

The IRD was not satisfied. In a draft response to Trench, one IRD official noted that “we are… faced always with the preliminary difficulty of being able to only approach you regarding projects which have a territorial interest common to you and your friends”.

Moreover, the IRD emphasised that “the result of a cessation of your [oil company] support would be that… undertakings would have to be cut down and be less freely available in the areas of common interest”.

Secret oil subsidies, in other words, were seen as central to the success of Britain’s propaganda operations in the region.

‘Very grateful’

Meanwhile, the IRD would have to discuss Latin America “bilaterally” with Shell, given the company’s interests in Venezuela outweighed BP’s interests in the region.

Despite the oil companies’ reservations, another £60,000 was provided to the IRD in 1964, for which British officials were “very grateful”. At this stage, future oil-funded projects in Algeria and the United Arab Republic were under consideration.

Secret oil subsidies to the IRD continued beyond 1964. As historian Athol Yates found, BP agreed in 1968 to fund broadcaster Sawt Al Saahil, a British covert radio station based in Sharjah (an emirate in the Gulf), to the tune of £3,000 for three years.

However, the extent to which Shell and BP funded British covert propaganda operations in the late and post-Cold War period remains unclear.

Shell and BP did not respond to requests for comment.
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John McEvoy is an independent journalist who has written for International History Review, The Canary, Tribune Magazine, Jacobin and Brasil Wire.

Ukraine map after war

What Will Be The Geographic End State Of The War In Ukraine

March 19, 2022

The Ukrainian National Security Advisor has sent a letter to the White House and the CIA to request money in support of an insurgency in Russian held areas:

The document, dated March 6, asked the U.S. "to allocate additional funds for the organization of the resistance movement and voluntary formations of territorial communities throughout Ukraine."

The White House and the Ukrainian embassy vehemently deny that the letter is real. I however do not believe that it is faked. It just was not meant to become public. The CIA has been training 'resistance' militia in the Ukraine since 2015. To request new money for more of it is only natural.

The U.S. will finance a resistance in Ukraine through the CIA just as it did in Syria and just like it did from 1949 until the early 1950s when the U.S. financed anti-Soviet insurgency in Ukraine ended in misery.

But resistance against whom?

The premise seems to be that Russia wants to occupy the Ukraine.

It can be seen in an English language interview the Turkish state TV channel TRT had with Vitaly Klitschko, the mayor of Kiev. Klitschko accuses Russia of wanting to recreate the USSR. He rejects any negotiations for peace and wants the Ukraine to keep fighting.

After the interview the historian Gilbert Doctorow pointed out that it was Russia which first left the USSR to end the financing of outlaying provinces at the center's cost and that no one wants to recreate that situation.

As Putin ones said:

Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart. Whoever wants it back has no brain.

Russia has limited aims in Ukraine and will end the war and leave most of the Ukraine when those aims are achieved either by negotiations or by other means. It is the Ukraine that will have to bear the cost for it.

But Zelenski, Klitschko and the U.S. overlords do not want to see it that way. The U.S. wants to keep Russia in the Ukraine to fight it to the last Ukrainian and to damage it that way.

The Washington Post writes that there seems to be no Ukrainian urge to negotiate anything:

The prospects of a near-term deal look bleak, diplomats say, but mixed signals from Zelensky about how close he is to striking an agreement have only heightened anxiety about the trajectory of the negotiations.
...
“I’m ready for dialogue; we’re not ready for capitulation,” Zelensky told ABC News earlier this week, while vowing to continue fighting Russia for as long as necessary.

Zelensky reiterated that message in even stronger terms on Tuesday when the prime ministers of Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovenia traveled to Kyiv to meet him in a risky wartime visit. “He showed very little interest in a negotiated settlement and said Ukraine needed to keep fighting until Putin altered his demands,” said a diplomat familiar with the discussions, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive meetings.

The U.S. seems to be happy with that stand and the secretary of state even wants to widen the war:

“There’s no indication on our end that the Ukrainians are suing for peace. They want to fight,” said a senior U.S. official.
...
Zelensky will have to sell any peace deal to his own people — a tricky task if he is forced to concede too much. He has been a wildly popular wartime president, but he was an unpopular peacetime one. And Ukraine’s westward ambitions have only been strengthened by Russia’s assault.
...
Any potential deal will also require buy-in from the West, which will need to lift sanctions on Moscow in exchange for its withdrawal of Russian forces.

But Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that a simple withdrawal of troops may not meet a U.S. standard for sanctions relief. The United States “will want to make sure that anything that’s done is, in effect, irreversible, that this can’t happen again, that Russia won’t pick up and do exactly what it’s doing in a year or two years or three years.”

The only way to get to that end state is the total dismantling of Russia. That may indeed be what Blinken has in mind. What plans does he have to make it happen?

When the war to disarm the Ukraine started to my utter surprise I asked what Russia would desire as the geographic end state of the war:

It is difficult to discern what the planed end state of this operation is. Where is this going to stop?

Looking at this map I believe that the most advantageous end state for Russia would be the creation of a new independent country, call it Novorossiya, on the land east of the Dnieper and south along the coast that holds a majority ethnic Russian population and that, in 1922, had been attached to the Ukraine by Lenin. That state would be politically, culturally and militarily aligned with Russia.

This would eliminate Ukrainian access to the Black Sea and create a land bridge towards the Moldavian breakaway Transnistria which is under Russian protection.

The rest of the Ukraine would be a land confined, mostly agricultural state, disarmed and too poor to be build up to a new threat to Russia anytime soon. Politically it would be dominated by fascists from Galicia which would then become a major problem for the European Union.

On March 19 I revisited the question and added Kryvyi Rih (Kriwoi Rog in Russian), the yellow part of the map, to the list:

Novorossiya roughly includes the red and yellow areas in the above map. It also includes the valuable Soviet developed iron ore mines and factories of Kryvyi Rih west of the Dnieper river.

I especially want to point out that I spoke of a "mostly agricultural state, disarmed and too poor to be build up to a new threat to Russia anytime soon."

I could say that because nearly all of Ukraine's resources and industries are in the south and east. If Russia takes those or creates the new state of Novorossiya the 'rest of Ukraine' will be mostly de-industrialized. Also of note is that the south and east include most of the famous black soil areas, which consists of a half meter deep humus layer that allows for good agricultural results without using much fertilizers.

Much of the steel and heavy machine industries in the south and east have been neglected over the last 30 years under Ukrainian rule or were destroyed during the wars that are raging since 2014. It will require very large investments to revive them but the potential profits will be great.

Nearly half a year after I wrote about it, the Washington Post, with the help of some Canadians, is catching up on the issue:

In the Ukraine war, a battle for the nation’s mineral and energy wealth

After nearly six months of fighting, Moscow’s sloppy war has yielded at least one big reward: expanded control over some of the most mineral-rich lands in Europe. Ukraine harbors some of the world’s largest reserves of titanium and iron ore, fields of untapped lithium, as well as massive deposits of coal. Collectively, they are worth tens of trillions of dollars.

The lion’s share of those coal deposits, which for decades have powered Ukraine’s critical steel industry, are concentrated in the east, where Moscow has made the most inroads. That’s put them in Russian hands, along with significant amounts of other valuable energy and mineral deposits used for everything from aircraft parts to smartphones, according to an analysis for The Washington Post by the Canadian geopolitical risk firm SecDev.
...
“The worst scenario is that Ukraine loses land, no longer has a strong commodity economy and becomes more like one of the Baltic states, a nation unable to sustain its industrial economy,” said Stanislav Zinchenko chief executive of GMK, a Kyiv-based economic think tank. “This is what Russia wants. To weaken us.”
...
Yet SecDev’s analysis indicates that at least $12.4 trillion worth of Ukraine’s energy deposits, metals and minerals are now under Russian control. That figure accounts for nearly half the dollar value of the 2,209 deposits reviewed by the company. In addition to 63 percent of the country’s coal deposits, Moscow has seized 11 percent of its oil deposits, 20 percent of its natural gas deposits, 42 percent of its metals and 33 percent of its deposits of rare earth and other critical minerals including lithium.

I believe that the natural gas share Russia already holds is higher as there are several sub-sea gas fields around Crimea and off the eastern coast.

If the Russian forces also take Kryvyi Rih and Dnipro they will have about 75-80% of Ukraine's pre-war GDP under their control.

Russia's war effort is currently financed by the 'west' which pays for it through record energy prices created by its own sanctions on Russia.

As the Russian Interfax agency reported yesterday (machine translation):

The positive balance of the current account of the balance of payments of the Russian Federation in January-July 2022 amounted to $166.6 billion, which is 3.3 times more than in the same period in 2021 ($50.1 billion). Such information is contained in the assessment of the balance of payments of the Russian Federation, published on the website of the Bank of Russia.
...
According to the base scenario of the Central Bank’s forecast for 2022, updated in July, with an average annual oil price of $80 per barrel, the current account surplus is expected to be $243 billion, the positive balance of foreign trade in goods and services - $277 billion, and the negative balance of primary and secondary income - $33 billion.

If the 'west' really wants to deprive Russia of money it must immediately lift the sanctions and restart importing oil, gas and coal from Russia at then much lower prices.

Russia will not lack money to finance the rebuilding of Novorossiya's great industries. Once that is done those areas are evidently able to support themselves and to guarantee a high standard of living. They will also have enough money to militarily defend themselves against anything the poor rest of Ukraine will be able to finance.

At the end of March, after negotiations between Russia and Ukraine in Turkey, there was nearly an agreement on a ceasefire and on the end of the war. Joe Biden then tasked Boris Johnson with telling Zelensky to continue the war. The 'west' would otherwise stop paying him. Zelensky did as he was told and stopped all negotiations with Russia.

An agreement with Russia at that time would have kept the Ukraine mostly as one state with only minor losses in the Donbas. But the decision to continue the hopeless war also ended all chances for Ukraine to keep its riches.

It will be poor and helpless while its 'western' neighbors will feast on it.

15 Crazy Facts about the Universe!

Facts you may not have known before!

15 Crazy Facts about the Universe
by Usman Abrar
Dec 24, 2014

The universe is a odd wild place, and man through history has been observing for ways to try to make sense of it. So, to give you a better appreciative, here are 15 crazy realities about the cosmos that will certainly get you thinking.

1. The Alcoholic Space Cloud

These space clouds are thousands of light years away and comprise over a billion litters of alcohol. These clouds are made when stars heat up, and produce clouds of gas and dust. It’s clearly not drinkable, but is a vital organic compound that is critical to the presence of life.

2. The Ponzo Illusion

Have you observed that when the moon is on the skyline, it seems larger and closer? Well, it’s really not, it’s known as the “Ponzo illusion”. Your brain expands the size of the moon thus, it seems larger to you than it actually is.

3. The Moon Smells like Gunpowder

Astronauts upon departuring the moon after the Apollo missions termed the moon dust as smelling like gun powder. Though, researchers are still not able to conclude why, because the two have tremendously different compositions.

4. A Day in Venus Is Longer Than Its Year

Odd isn’t it? Venus finishes a complete orbit around the sun, even before it manages to turn on its axis once. This results in a day being lengthier than a year.

5. Lunar Drift

After extensive research, researchers have found that each year the moon moves around 3.8cm away from the Earth.

6. Black Holes

At one point, black holes were enormous stars. When one of these stars die, it releases gaseous layers and the core ends into a small and dense sphere known as a black hole.

7. Other Galaxies

Researchers estimate that there are a billion more galaxies in the cosmos, none of which are observable without a strong telescope.

8. Biggest Diamond Ever

The biggest diamond ever, was found in 2014, guess what? It’s a collapsed star floating in outer space. It measures 4000KM crossways and a core made of billions of carats.

9. Space Junk

Earth has over 8,000 objects floating about it. These objects are categorized as space junk or debris that is left over from space missions.

10. Earth Has More Than One Moon

Okay, not exactly but, researchers have discovered various asteroids that are pursuing the earth as it orbits the sun.

11. Cold Welding

In outer space, when two metals touch one another, they get fixed together forever. Welding typically needs heat, but in this situation the vacuum of space plays its part.

12. The Sun Rays Striking the Earth are 30,000 Years Old!

Did you know that, the sun rays striking the earth on the go over 30,000 years ago?

13. Universal Speed Limit

It’s a fact that light cannot surpass 186,000 miles per second which is recognized as the Universal Speed Limit.

14. Not once Climb Stairs and Enhance an Nanosecond to Your Life

The forces of gravity raises close the surface of the Earth and so does your acceleration. This means the time slows down and you pass more seconds on different heights of stairs.

15. Twins Paradox

This crazy fact states that if one twin goes in a spaceship, touching the speed of light, due to the effect of relativity, the other twin in the spaceship would return to Earth comparatively younger than his twin brother.

So, these are 15 crazy facts about the cosmos that will surely blow your mind. Do comment your views...

Sri Lanka crisis

 

US-led bloc's proxy war with Russia since 2014

Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg’s words strengthen the case for Moscow’s military operation in Ukraine

NATO boss lets the cat out of the bag: US-led bloc has ‘been preparing since 2014’ to use Ukraine for proxy conflict with Russia
Robert Bridge
3 Jul, 2022

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg may have said the quiet part out loud on Wednesday when he revealed to reporters that NATO’s push into Eastern Europe since 2014 was done specifically with Russia in mind.

“The reality is also that we have been preparing for this since 2014,” he said. “That is the reason that we have increased our presence in the eastern part of the alliance, why NATO allies have started to invest more in defense, and why we have increased [our] readiness.”

The NATO chief went on to insist that Russia has been “using force in the eastern Donbass since 2014.”

What he neglected to mention, though, was the role Western powers played in the outbreak of civil violence in Kiev on February 24, 2013 that led to the Maidan coup and, ultimately, to the current situation. The US and its influence on the ground in Ukraine, channelled through "civil society" groups it bankrolled, was largely responsibility for that mess.

Even Victoria ‘F**k the EU’ Nuland (then-US assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs) admitted as much in April 2014 when she said Washington had invested $5 billion dollars into “spreading democracy” in Ukraine – apparently because such efforts worked so well before.

Russia’s greatest ‘crime’ at the time was to provide an alternative route to national development for Kiev. The US Diplomatic Forces flew into swift action on November 21, 2013 when the government of then-Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych made the sudden decision not to sign the European Union-Ukraine Association Agreement (AA), which the West had been insisting upon, opting for closer ties to Russia and the Eurasian Economic Union. Here is where all the talk about “building democracy” was exposed as the lie it was.

“It would be a huge shame to see five years of work and preparation go to waste if the AA is not signed in the near future,” Nuland said at the December 13, 2013 US-Ukraine Foundation conference. “So it is time to finish the job.”

That sounds more like an implicit threat than any sort of call to democratic principles. As Ukraine would soon discover, Washington considers as ‘democratic’ only those countries that obey its will.

While Nuland was taking multiple trips to Kiev in the midst of the Maidan melee, passing out snacks alongside John McCain and the US Ambassador, very strange things were happening that have never been adequately explained.

To this day no definite result has come from investigations into the infamous ‘Maidan snipers’ that killed dozens of both protesters and police officers. Conflicting reports and claims by various sides name them as working for the embattled government, the protesters, Russia – all in the name of stoking tensions further. According to some of the snipers themselves, they received direct orders from a US officer. Would that be something that NATO (or someone linked to NATO) could have sanctioned? It’s impossible to say with any certainty, but the killings went far towards enraging the masses, which ultimately drove Yanukovych out of the country.

Meanwhile, Reuters, then not yet so sure of Kiev’s innocence, asked (back in 2014) why no one was charged with killing policemen, especially when it is considered that the prosecutors and the minister in charge of the investigation all played a part in fueling the uprising. By way of evidence, the General Prosecutor of Ukraine Vitaly Yarema was videotaped striking a traffic cop in the face during the protests. To what degree were Yarema and numerous other Kiev officials corrupted and compromised by Western money will never be known, but it’s a question still worthy of asking.

Another thing to question is why the Western media barely reported Kiev’s shelling of the Donbass, home to millions of Russian speakers and passport holders, over the course of the last eight years? At the same time, numerous reports – many of them from Ukrainian citizens caught up in the fighting – describe atrocities and war crimes being committed by Ukrainian forces, many of them outright neo-Nazis, such the Azov Battalion. These forces have been indiscriminately bombing schools, hospitals and residential areas, and, to emphasize, these eyewitness accounts are coming from the Ukrainian people themselves.

Back to NATO and Ukraine. The brutal reality, as summed up by Jens Stoltenberg’s remark, is that Ukraine is already a de facto proxy member of NATO, and has been since at least 2014.

As the scholar John Mearsheimer explained, “The alliance began training the Ukrainian military in 2014, averaging 10,000 trained troops annually over the next eight years.”

The arming of Ukraine happened regardless of who was in the White House. In December 2017, the Trump administration, together with other NATO states, began sending ‘defensive’ weapons to Ukraine, while Kiev took a major role in military exercises held on the Russian border.

The US and Ukraine have been co-hosting Exercise Sea Breeze, yearly naval drills in the Black Sea. The July 2021 iteration was the largest to date, including navies from 32 countries. In September the same year, the Ukrainian army led ‘Rapid Trident 2021’, which the US Army describes as “A US Army Europe and Africa-assisted annual exercise designed to enhance the interoperability among allied and partner nations.”

The key word here is “interoperability,” which would give ‘non-NATO partner’ Ukraine much of what was already being given to regular paying client states. Yet Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky just keeps asking for more, and NATO is happy to oblige.

Some may argue that Ukraine was absolutely right to join forces with NATO, considering that Russia had ‘annexed’ the Crimean Republic and absorbed it into its ‘empire’. That’s the view being sowed across NATO and its partner states. In reality, the Crimean population held a democratic referendum that asked whether they wanted to rejoin Russia as a federal subject, or if they wanted to restore the 1992 Crimean constitution and peninsula's status as a part of Ukraine.

The result should have silenced the critics, but instead it just infuriated them more: a 97% vote for integration of the region into the Russian Federation with an 83% voter turnout. Consequently, President Putin signed a decree, after its formal ratification in the State Duma, recognizing Crimea as a sovereign state –without so much as a drop of blood being shed.

It would take a dyed-in-the-wool Russophobe to take in all of the above and not, at the very least, understand why Russia launched its special military operation in Ukraine.

- - -
Robert Bridge is an American writer and journalist. He is the author of 'Midnight in the American Empire,' How Corporations and Their Political Servants are Destroying the American Dream.

Minsk deal was used to buy time!

Petro Poroshenko said the Minsk agreements “meant nothing” and claimed credit for giving Kiev enough time to militarize...

Minsk deal was used to buy time – Ukraine's Poroshenko
17 Jun, 2022

Petro Poroshenko has admitted that the 2015 ceasefire in Donbass, which he negotiated with Russia, France and Germany as president of Ukraine, was merely a distraction intended to buy time for Kiev to rebuild its military.

He made the comments in interviews with several news outlets this week, including Germany’s Deutsche Welle television and the Ukrainian branch of the US state-run Radio Free Europe. Poroshenko also defended his record as president between 2014 and 2019.

“We had achieved everything we wanted,” he said of the peace deal. “Our goal was to, first, stop the threat, or at least to delay the war – to secure eight years to restore economic growth and create powerful armed forces.”

He cited Sun Tzu’s stratagems as an inspiration for the deception. Winning a war does not necessarily require winning military engagements, Poroshenko said, calling the deal he made a win for Ukraine in that regard.

Poroshenko failed to be reelected in a landslide vote for President Volodymyr Zelensky, who promised voters that, unlike his predecessor, he would secure peace in Donbass.

In the interviews, Poroshenko spoke about his role in negotiating the Minsk agreements, a roadmap for reconciliation between his government and the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics. The former president apparently confirmed that Kiev hadn’t come to the talks in good faith, but simply wanted a reprieve after suffering a military defeat.

The agreements included a series of measures designed to rein in hostilities in Donbass and reconcile the warring parties. The first steps were a ceasefire and an OSCE-monitored pullout of heavier weapons from the frontline, which were fulfilled to some degree.

Kiev was then supposed to grant general amnesty to the rebels and extensive autonomy for the Donetsk and Lugansk regions. Ukrainian troops were supposed to take control of the rebel-held areas after Kiev granted them representation and otherwise reintegrated them as part of Ukraine.

Poroshenko’s government refused to implement these portions of the deal, claiming it could not proceed unless it fully secured the border between the rebellious republics and Russia. He instead endorsed an economic blockade of the rebel regions initiated by Ukrainian nationalist forces.

Zelensky’s presidency gave an initial boost to the peace process, but it stalled again after a series of protests by right-wing radicals, who threatened to dispose of the new Ukrainian president if tried to deliver on his campaign promises.

Kiev’s failure to implement the roadmap and the continued hostilities with rebels were among the primary reasons that Russia cited when it attacked Ukraine in late February. Days before launching the offensive, Moscow recognized the breakaway Ukrainian republics as sovereign states, offering them security guarantees and demanding that Kiev pull back its troops. Zelensky refused to comply.

Now an opposition MP, Poroshenko, called on Western nations to provide more and heavier weapons for Kiev so that Ukrainian soldiers can “do [the West’s] job” and defend Europe from Russia. He also called for more anti-Russia sanctions and for his country to join the EU and NATO as soon as possible.

Poroshenko claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin was the one who broke the Minsk agreements. He claimed credit for Ukraine not falling into Russia’s hands within a matter of days, which was the prediction of some Western officials. The country stood up to the attack thanks to military reforms that his government implemented, the former president claimed. Moscow never gave a timeline for its military operation in Ukraine, stating only that it has proceeded as intended.

The Ukrainian official also called for the “de-Putinization” of Europe, his own country and Russia itself. He said this meant curbing Russian influence in other nations and toppling Putin. It is the only way to save the world from an “existential threat” that, Poroshenko claimed, the Russian leader poses.

America Is Being Eradicated!

America Is Being Eradicated
By Paul Craig Roberts
PaulCraigRoberts.org
July 7, 2022

No sooner had I given up on the US Congress when Georgia Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green said  that “Ukraine is the new Iraq wrapped up with a pretty little NATO bow, with a nuclear present inside.”  She said that instead of sending weapons and billions of dollars to Ukraine, the US should pull out of NATO and avoid nuclear war by ceasing to provoke the Russians.

“Grinding up Ukraine to fight with Russia is disgusting, Russia could have been an ally,” she tweeted.

“Warmongers in Washington seeking war with Russia should suit up and go fight it” themselves, she suggested. “Send your kids and leave ours alone. Pay for it yourself.”

When an American hears such intelligent talk from inside the bought-and-paid-for-Congress, he has to cheer.  His spirits pick up.  He realizes that if there is one voice, there might be two, and that the possibility of America coming to its senses was not completely ruled out.

But reality crowds in.  The Republicans are almost as determined to get rid of Marjorie Green as the Democrats.  Independent thinkers who represent the American people instead of the powerful economic interests who fund the political campaigns and the neoconservative ideologues who rule Washington are a non-welcomed species in Washington.

Green has survived, so far, which shows a budding awareness of reality among the  American people.  The  American political system cannot tolerate people like Green and aware, sentient Americans, so the public’s interest remains under threat.

That this is a fact is obvious from the way the Republicans and Democrats are trying to frame the coming campaign over which party gets to be the whore for the ruling interests for the next presidential term.

The Democrats are frantic and hysterical.  OMG! (Oh, My God) is their opening phrase, Roe vs Wade, the sacred ruling that let us kill babies in the womb, has been overturned!!!  

OMG, parents won’t let their kids be indoctrinated with critical race theory and Woke rules against gender pronouns.!

OMG! parents won’t even let public schools convince the kids to be transgendered!  

If we don’t DO SOMETHING, the Trump Deplorables will return and stop our destruction of America!  OMG!  Traditional morality will be taught, sexual perversion as a legitimate choice will be out!  Liberal progressivism will be stopped!  The Trump Deplorables will take away the legal privileges we Democrats have conferred on blacks and sexual perverts!  White people will be able to defend themselves, and OMG they will be able to use gender pronouns and own guns!!!  This would mean the end of the world!!!

This captures the essence of the Democrat political propaganda that I daily receive in emails urging me to DO SOMETHING by sending Democrats money.

The only thing better about the Republican political propaganda is that it is not anti-white. Otherwise, it is just as stupid as the Democrats’ propaganda, only in different directions.

The Republicans, of course, open, as they have since time immemorial, with “Do you support Republican efforts to cut spending, balance the budget, reduce the national debt, and fight inflation?”  As this program has a record of total failure, why do the Republicans remind voters of their inability to control government?

After this downhill start, the Republican “surveys” speed up toward collapse in service to Israel and enmity toward China.

“Do you support efforts to stop the Biden administration from removing the US Embassy in Israel from Jerusalem?”  In other words, don’t you want Trump back so his Jewish son-in-law can make more millions by having his father-in-law break more international conventions in the interest of Israel?  And if Republicans are really this stupid to believe that Biden would antagonize the Jews, the Republicans need an IQ boost.

Another Republican survey question is are you in favor of the Democrats effort to ban airline travel, forbid air conditioning, and force people to walk to work?  This is the Republican description of “green energy,” but it will strike most as off the wall.

The Republicans never fail to damn themselves by being against health care for all. “Medicare for all,” aka national health insurance, which every Western country except the US has, is “socialized medicine.”  What the US has is Big Pharma medicine.  The medical system is run for the sake of Big Pharma profits. Private medicine hardly exists in the US. The doctors have been forced by Big Pharma, insurance companies, and incorporated “health care organizations” into employees who no longer have the authority to violate “protocols” and have to treat patients not according to the doctors’ judgment but according to the profits of Big Pharma.  

Having shot themselves in the head a number of times, the Republicans can’t resist yet another shot at themselves–China.  Republicans have done the most to keep Americans from understanding that the reason China is towering over us economically is that Wall Street forced, under threat of takeovers, US corporations to relocate their production for US markets in China and other parts of Asia, where labor costs were far less than in the US, thus significantly raising the profits of offshored US corporations.

This relocation devastated the finances of US cities and states, formerly manufacturing powerhouses, and enabled China to surprise the dumb..t American “foreign policy community,” by surpassing us in 5 years instead of the expected 50 years.  

Trump and the Republicans want to blame China for Wall Street forcing US corporations to relocate their production for US markets in Asia where labor costs were lower.

This means either that Trump and Republicans are stupid, or that they do not dare criticize those on Wall Street who forced American investment offshore.  Take your pick.

The only question decided in American elections is which political party gets to provide whore services to its masters. Money is the reason it pays to be in office.

In America who is in office?  The military/security complex, Big Pharma, which owns the FDA, NIH, CDC, and Congress.  Digital tech, which builds the police state for the ruling elites. Agri-business, oil, mining, timber,  and real estate interests at the state and local levels.  Those who rule are those who provide the campaign contributions that put people into office.  Voters serve only to provide the appearance of “democratic rule.”  In actual fact, voters’ interests, if ever served, are at the bottom of the barrel.

So, what will the next election really be about.  It won’t be about any of the propaganda of either political party.  There are only two issues before Americans, and neither will be addressed.  One is whether “our”–what a joke–government will, under neoconservative leadership, succeed in provoking nuclear war with Russia.  China is in that picture as well.

The other is whether the demonization of white Americans, especially heterosexual white males, which is the main goal of the Democratic Party as per the New York Times’ 1619 Project that declares the basis of America to be white racism, will continue.  If this campaign against white people continues, especially if Democrats retain political offices, white Americans will be in the identical position as Jews are said to have been in Nazi Germany.

The sordid Democrats are running, and have been, on a campaign against Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, and the rest of our founding fathers, dismissed by the New York Tims as racists who built a country on white racism.  This lie is institutionalized in US universities and in public schools in Democratic districts.  

This lie divides America, our country.  It is destroying us.  And it is the Democrats who are destroying us.  

Thus, as stupid as the Republicans are, war with China, which we would immediately lose, is preferable to the civil war that the Democrats are promoting.  Imagine trying to put on trial an American president elected by the American people for trying to overthrow the US government.  Only deranged Democrats who believe that there are 150 different genders can orchestrate such a stupidity.

People only know what they are born into. American young have no experience of the past, and they do not read.  They have no sense of what has been lost. They only know what they are born into, and they are born into anti-white indoctrination.  The loss of the youth is the way countries decline and are lost. To the young, free speech is presented as white racism. The young don’t know privacy.  They are accustomed to exposing themselves and their activities on social media.  Free speech is offensive. It offends blacks, sexual perverts, transgendered, feminists.  A new aristocracy is rising.  It consists of those protected against feeling offended.  The offenders are white heterosexual males, and the narrative is that these offenders are being justly suppressed.

We are left with the question.  Who rises to fight for Sodom and Gomorrah.  Will it be the demonized and persecuted white heterosexual males who are forced to take “sensitivity training” and subordinate themselves to women, preferred races and sexual perverts?

Don’t count on it. The US military’s ability to recruit has collapsed.  See this.

Paul Craig Roberts, a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how americans lost the protection of law, has been released by Random House. Visit his website.