"(ex-US Central Intelligence Agency operative) Philip Agee called the CIA 'Capitalism's Invisible Army'" ("The CIA As Organised Crime: How Illegal Operations Corrupt America And The World", Douglas Valentine, Clarity Press Inc., 2017, p137; Agee was the author of the landmark, block-busting, and revelatory insight book "CIA Diary: Inside The Company", Penguin, 1975, about the imperial US and its dirty work in Latin America. Murray Horton's obituary of Agee is in Watchdog 117, April 2008). p align=justify>"America's media empire is controlled by a tiny coterie of people" ("The Ordinary Person's Guide To Empire", Arundhati Roy, Harper Perennial, 2004, p121).

Former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev considers European representatives could have dealt better with Russia and its legitimate interests in the European Union's (EU's) negotiation of "an association agreement with Ukraine". He was "certain that Russia's participation [at the time] would have been constructive ... But instead of negotiations, Russia was simply presented with a fait accompli. The result is well known" ("What Is At Stake Now", Polity Press, 2019/20/21, pp79/80).

On 1st March, 2022, Anna Burns-Francis, TVNZ's correspondent in the US, quite unashamedly portrayed the Western military/nuclear alliance surrounding so much of Ukraine as "democracy" in action! So, in an ultimate Orwellian irony, what Russian Vladimir Putin feared as "having a knife at your throat" set for a first strike just minutes away from across the border, is benignly portrayed as an alliance simply dedicated to the defence of freedom (TVNZ1, 6pm, 1 News At 6pm, 1/3/22).

"Raw propaganda is now the rule in Western democracies, especially the US and Britain. They have become propagandists for war and conflict" (comment by famed investigative reporter John Pilger, Scoop, Top Scoops, 18/2/22).

When President Vladimir Putin launched his mad and horrible full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, he gave the gates of Hell a big shove. But since 9/11, and long before, the Anglo-American axis and the West had already been kicking it open. It is vitally important for both understanding and peace work to get a handle on what is really at stake in an increasingly challenged world. Given the lurch to gathering and consolidating geopolitical confrontation, we will need a human miracle to avert the looming Holocaust! So, we must urgently redouble our efforts for peace and arms control!

Countering America's Continuing Murderous Depredations

I start my analysis with a letter sent by myself and partner, Rosalie Newcombe, to the Prime Minister (PM). "As Government supporters, we want to make an appeal for an even more independent and kinder foreign policy than you have already set as an inspiring model for the world. It was the famous theologian and missionary Albert Schweitzer who said "compassion" is the most important human value. You have personally exemplified this value on the world scene with both words and deeds ("Jacinda Ardern: Leading With Empathy", Supriya Vani & Carl A Harte (Hardie Grant Books, 2012)".

"But we have no illusions about the threatening and repressive forces let loose on the planet today. The authors of the book cited above observe that your "kindness and humanity seem utterly incongruous with the world of politics" (p.327). So, Aotearoa/NZ under your leadership holds a special place internationally".

"Our plea to you along with a number of other concerned New Zealanders is to demonstrate even greater compassion and resistance. Lately, we have been sending your office material relating to the famine and health crisis now compounding in war-torn Afghanistan. Please take action both domestically and internationally to urgently and hugely increase humanitarian aid to this sadly afflicted country. America is still bent on destroying it!".

"The second issue of deep concern is the situation in the Ukraine. The mainstream media have been pushing their usual outrageously hypocritical propaganda. Present US President Joe Biden led the subversion of a democratically elected government in the Ukraine. He is now intent on aggressively rolling the American-led NATO nuclear war machine right up to Russia's borders in blatant confrontational style, completely violating the pledge made to Gorbachev. Please take pre-emptive and mediatory action in this case".

"The Biden Administration is so crazy and evil it is actually prepared to brazenly risk World War III. If the positions had been reversed, and it was Russia's predatory advance at issue then war would have already happened. Thank you for your consideration. We note too that the Rightwing mainstream media, including our own State-owned entities, are freely parading their neo-liberal bias as we near election year. Yet all the best and looking forward to a third term Labour/Green Government!"

Our letter dated 28th January 2022 to the PM was acknowledged and forwarded to the office of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Nanaia Mahuta, "for consideration". Given our country's traditional role as a close American ally and its role in the Five Eyes intelligence/covert action alliance, we could hardly expect any further comment from the Government about what we call "America's continuing murderous depredations"!

It is thus up to the people of Aotearoa/NZ, if we can muster sufficient energy and motivation, to try and move the Government into a better space for more independent and neutral peacemaking, and mediatory efforts in an increasingly stressed world. In an earlier e-mail response to us regarding Afghanistan, Nanaia Mahuta outlined the Government's policy at the time on the crisis in this sadly afflicted country. Minister Mahuta declared that: "The NZ government is gravely concerned about the developments in Afghanistan".

After explaining its programme for resettling Afghan nationals who have assisted our military intervention in Afghanistan, the Minister said that: "Aotearoa/NZ is actively engaging in international fora and has supported a number of initiatives currently facing Afghans. At the recent 48th Session of the Human Rights Council, we joined a joint statement, which expressed deep concern about serious human rights abuses, particularly against women and girls, and noted an urgent need to set up an independent mechanism to investigate and promote accountability for violation and abuses committed by Afghan parties".

"Aotearoa/NZ has also supported the establishment of a Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan and delivered a statement on the human rights of women and girls in conflict, which called for the protection of the rights of women to free and full participation in social, economic and political life in Afghanistan. Rest assured we will continue to add our voice to these important debates".

"We will continue to monitor closely the human rights' situation in Afghanistan and speak up strongly where required, including on the rights of women and girls. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs & Trade (MFAT) will also explore in conjunction with the international community other areas to provide assistance".

The Human Hell Of Afghanistan Caused By Western Intervention

Unfortunately, our Government, ever since it bought into the American-led revenge invasion post-9/11, must share some responsibility for the awful suffering inflicted upon the people of Afghanistan. Today, following the Taliban's rout of the foreign US/NATO occupying force, the latter has set out in further diabolical revenge mode to systematically punish the people it claimed to have been helping. Make them starve!

In our era, there are a number of American-based non-government organisations (NGOs) who do sterling work around the globe for social justice, the environment, sustainable development, and peace. Two of these NGOs are: Avaaz - The World in Action: and Daily Kos Liberation League:. Both NGOs signalled special alerts on the Afghanistan crisis in early 2022.

On the 16th February, Daily Kos put out an alert titled: '"Living Hell' Is How Experts Are Describing The Humanitarian Crisis In Afghanistan". Indeed, the crisis there is currently very dire - the world's worst! "Nearly every Afghan could be living in poverty by mid-2022" (ibid.). About nine million Afghan children are at real risk of starvation. For sure, the United Nations (UN) World Food Programme has described the situation as "Hell on Earth".

Daily Kos stated at the time: "As an occupying power, the US controls Afghanistan's foreign currency reserves - over $US9 billion in assets - and formerly doled out to the central bank" (ibid.). Since America halted the transfer of these assets, "Afghanistan is facing the worst economic shock of any country in modern history" (ibid.). This American NGO aptly cited Chris Geraldi, a writer for the the Nation, who remarked: "The hoarding of Afghanistan's foreign reserves is a striking example of the Administration's capacity for brutality" (ibid.).

Western perceived self-interest and callousness knows no bounds of course. The Biden Administration brazenly and brutally decided to grab some of the funds for American interests. It stole US$3.5 billion assets held in the US for families of America's 9/11 victims ("Afghans Protest Biden's Move On Funds", Press, 14/2/22). 9/11 stemmed from "blowback" to the rapacious exploitation of Middle Eastern oil by the US and its allies, along with the empire's related excesses in neighbouring regions ("Blowback: The Costs And Consequences Of American Empire", Chalmers Johnson, (Time Warner, 2000/02). To be sure, Saudis comprised most of the 9/11 terrorists. None were Afghans.

Biden's decision on Afghanistan's foreign reserves drew outraged protests across the spectrum of Afghan society. "Michael Kugelman, Deputy Director of the Asia Programme at the US-based Wilson Centre, called Biden's order to divert $US3.5b away from Afghanistan 'heartless'" ("Afghans Protest ...", op. cit.). He said: "I can't remember the last time so many people of such vastly different worldviews were so united over a US policy decision on Afghanistan" (ibid.).

In making his decision, President Biden allocated "another $US3.5b. in Afghan assets for humanitarian aid to a trust fund to be managed by the UN to provide aid to Afghans. The country's economy is teetering on the brink of collapse after international money stopped coming into Afghanistan with the arrival (to power) in mid-August of the Taliban" (ibid.). Further controversy centres on the question as to who should really control Afghanistan's assets for the country and its people - whether the UN, the central bank, or the government, let alone "a party or group" (ibid.).

Afghanistan's people are facing an unprecedented nightmare, worse probably even than at any time during the many years of war suffered by that country. We must rally to the maximum to do our best in providing humanitarian aid for this country, now shunted to the sidelines as the West mires itself in the geopolitics of the Ukrainian crisis. As always, the West's hardball interests are to the fore! We must work internationally as hard as possible to break out of this pernicious syndrome. Millions of desperate people are reaching out to us.

The Bullshit Propaganda Of The West Reaches A New Nadir

Writing in February 2022, investigative reporter John Pilger observed that Western foreign policy propaganda had reached new depths ("Western Democracies Have Mutated", op. cit.). "The war hysteria that has rolled in like a tidal wave in recent weeks and months is the most striking example" (ibid.). I shall touch on some media examples of this syndrome later below but first an example purveyed by an NGO with a very influential global reach.

Over the years, I have been an on/off member of the international online activist movement Avaaz, which as indicated above, is based in the US. Avaaz has done a lot of really good work in mobilising mass global opinion and related action. But I gave up once when it started pushing American propaganda about what was going on in Syria. In recent years, I rejoined again and found it doing good work round the globe.

But then with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, it lapsed back into American propaganda mode. An e-mail alert that I received from Avaaz on Ukraine featured a picture of a scowling President Vladimir Putin at the top and an accompanying text intended to demonise him as much as possible. Avaaz called on governments "to impose far-reaching sanctions on Moscow" - and for people worldwide to join and "defend democracy". The NGO talked about the invasion as "an attack on democracy. An attack on truth... And (for its members) in the face of aggression, (to) choose peace".

The alert elaborated further that the war "is the act of a criminal regime, riven with insecurity about democracy ... it fears the judgement of its own people". Avaaz contended: "That is why Putin is brutally cracking down on brave Russians taking to the streets to protest this war. It's why he's dedicated to spreading lies all over the world. And it's why he's willing to kill Ukrainians, who overthrew a corrupt pro-Putin regime in 2014, to prevent a flourishing democracy emerging on Russia's borders" (my emphasis). Instantly motivated to comment on this particular alert e-mail from Avaaz, I sent the following reply:

"While I strongly oppose Putin's invasion of Ukraine, your message reads like another piece of typical American propaganda. The truth and reality are that Biden & co. perpetrated the overthrow of a democratically elected government in 2014, orchestrated by the CIA, (the largely Congress-funded) National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Victoria Nuland* & co. The US/NATO have rolled up to Russia's borders in warmongering fashion in order to try and install nuclear missiles, just minutes away from targets as part of their evil first strike strategy. Putin has said it would be like having a knife at your throat".

"The US invades countries like Iraq to safeguard its empire even though they lie thousands of miles away from the homeland. If Russia had been rolling up Latin America, all hell would have long broken loose! Russia is being both ruthless and pre-emptive!! Yes, let us strongly oppose this mad, horrible war, but also condemn the real criminal warmongers who provoked it!!!" Given that Avaaz has been continuing with its American propaganda, I have now unsubscribed from this NGO (*Victoria Nuland is US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. Ed.).

Getting At The Roots Of The Crisis

Rosalie and I sent another letter to the PM on the 22nd February, again enjoining a more independent stance. "We have been passing on a number of information e-mails such as the one above (in the case of this article, see the ref. below) from American NGOs regarding the unfolding Ukrainian crisis, which could tip humankind into World War III (WWIII). We are very concerned that the Government seems to be conforming to the Anglo-American/NATO war-mongering policy in its criticism of Russia. This is the 1960s Cuban Missile crisis in reverse! - a potential enemy power wanting to install nuclear weapons at its rival's back-door".

"To repeat, we see a crazy, evil warmongering American Administration deliberately risking nuclear war by taking its nuclear weapons right up to Russia's border, after blatantly overthrowing Ukraine's democratically elected government in 2014 with the help of the international criminal organisation, the CIA, and the usual phalanx of far Rightwing forces involved in a typical US-orchestrated coup. As Anti-Bases Campaign (ABC), CAFCA, and others have documented, the US even attempted to undermine our own democratic sovereignty and independence during the establishment of our nuclear free zone by a Labour government in the 1980s".

"World Beyond War (WBW), along with its closely allied companion in peace action, Roots Action, and other American and international NGOs have huge comprehensive evidence and documentation about the US and NATO record to comprehensively damn the propaganda of these entities and their pliant corporate media. Please take a more truthful, independent, and mediatory stance in this crisis".

At this point, I want to register here how in my view, WBW is the best international campaign NGO in the world on anti-nuclear and peace-making campaign initiatives and information dissemination. Headed by the inspirational David Swanson and live-wire activists like Greta Zarro, it marshals an unparallelled range of expertise, experience, and knowledge. Its Website, packed with documentary, visual and interactive communications, pours out a constant flow of material that can blow away the constant crap we get from the corporate media.

For sure, the mainstream media works hand in glove with so much of the militarist political Establishment, the conservative academic commentariat, etc., in helping pave the road to Hell! A graphic, ongoing example in Aotearoa/NZ is American-owned Newshub TV3 which is a fount of US Pentagon/State Department propaganda, courtesy of the CIA-groomed CBS and other similar media outlets. Its constant disinformation is enormously damaging for the public understanding in Aotearoa/NZ of world geopolitics.

WBW, Roots Action, and others can provide a vital antidote to this poisonous stuff (e.g., see: "Learn And Take Action About the Ukraine Crisis", 27/2/22; "Anti-War Pro-Peace Resources Database Free To All", 28/10/21). We need to promote their reach as far and wide as possible.

As the Anglo-American-led Western empire comes under increasing pressure due to the growing competition for resources and investment from a host of geopolitical players, the struggle for world hegemony is intensifying, especially vis-a-vis Russia and China. Climate change, environmental deterioration, and other factors are compounding the acuity of the confrontations.

Battling The Tide Of Pernicious Propaganda On The Ukrainian Crisis

Meantime, the tsunami of Western propaganda on Russia, especially the demonisation of President Putin has swept on. Putin might well be a hard-fisted, authoritarian dictator of Russia capable of vicious deeds but he is facing an imperial US Administration with definite leanings to neo-fascism and geopolitical predation. For decades, we have written about so much of all this in previous issues of Foreign Control Watchdog (FCW): and Peace Researcher (PR):.

The real roots and dimensions of the geopolitical competition are studiously ignored or perverted by the Western media. Douglas Valentine, the leading American expert on the CIA, the criminal Mafia-like organisation which operates effectively as America's "deep state", puts it like this: "Journalism in the US is a traditional cover for CIA officers. And when the owners of the media aren't covering for the CIA, they're selling commercial time-slots to the multi-national corporations (i.e., transnational corporations - TNCs) that, in turn, are selling you commodities made in sweatshops in foreign nations that have been subverted by the CIA".

"You could almost say there's no such thing as factual reporting. It's as valuable as most of the over-priced commodities people buy to elevate their status. Everything is twisted and delivered in nine second sound-bites, so you'll buy something, not know something, or forget about something" ("The CIA As Organised Crime", op. cit., in ch. 9, "The CIA in Ukraine", p139). Valentine added ominously in regard to the CIA: "They can do anything and it's not going to get better, as resources diminish, as the income inequality gap widens, these ('dark') trends are just going to get worse" (ibid., p142).

"Democracy" As Cover for Dirty Work

John Pilger gave a devastating portrayal of a key geopolitical turning-point in his description of the CIA-contrived coup in Indonesia in 1965 and the ensuing genocide of the Leftwing opposition there, coupled with the resultant outcome of both TNC raw resource and factory exploitation (see chapter one, "The Model Pupil" in his "The New Rulers Of The World", Verso, 2002/03).

NZ has postured on the world scene as a country that upholds human rights and a purported "international rules-based order". But, of course, as a member of the so-called Five Eyes intelligence/covert action club, our country has been, and continues to be, deeply compromised by its complicity in a host of war crimes and human rights abuses perpetrated by the US "rogue state", and the rest of the Anglo-American axis.

For me personally, a revelatory moment of insight into this syndrome came in 1987 when I was an active member of the NZ Nuclear Free Zone Committee (NZNFZC) and a co-editor of its magazine Peace Researcher, (PR) now published by ABC. Ex-CIA agent Ralph McGehee, who visited Aotearoa/NZ on a NZNFZC-funded speaking-tour, had disclosed some damning information about the CIA's role in the Indonesian genocide in his book "Deadly Deceits: My 25 Years In The CIA" (Sheridan Square Publications, 1983).

Using information from his book and another relevant reliable source, I wrote a letter to the editor of the Press on the truth of the Indonesian coup. My letter was suppressed. My subsequent battle with the then Editor Binney Lock and its wider implications was written up in PR (first series, June 1987, no. 13). Actually, at the time of the coup back in the 1960s, the political climate in the West permitted a brazenly open celebration of the genocide, although of course keeping total silence about Five Eyes covert action.

These days, however, there is also an ongoing conspiracy of silence about the genocide itself, let alone NZ's collaboration, while CIA manipulation of the media continues to run freely - indeed more rampantly than ever! It needs to be recorded here that McGehee's warnings and predictions about the covert dirty work of the CIA and associated agencies were absolutely accurate. We strove hard to counter them in NZNFZC, PR, and the specialist Christchurch-based counter-foreign subversion group Nuclear Free Kiwis, along with all the concerted efforts of the rest of the NZ anti-nuclear/peace movement. So much then for America's proclaimed dedication to freedom and democracy!

It is sobering to reflect what would very likely have happened if the Fourth Labour government had been even moderately leftwing in socio-economics. The US would have probably unleashed its full armoury, short of actual armed intervention! There was indeed some posturing about possible economic and monetary sanctions by certain American agents during this period.

Instead, NZ embraced neoliberal "Rogernomics" in the style of the Reagan/Thatcher junta and the US was content to bide its time. It has slowly closed its steel jaws back on our country under subsequent National and Labour governments right up to the present (see Murray Horton's article elsewhere in this issue on Five Eyes and Rocket Lab).

Ripping Off People And Resources!

Another episode from my personal experience relates to NZ's part in the exploitation of the resources of poorer countries (i.e., of what used to be called the "Third World"). In 1974, the UN General Assembly voted overwhelmingly for a New International Economic Order (NIEO) intended to give a fair deal to Third World peoples and producers. A key resolution endorsing the proposed NIEO programme was strongly opposed by "the United Kingdom and the US" ("Penguin Dictionary Of International Relations", Graham Evans & Jeffrey Newnham, Penguin Books, 1998, p368). Indeed, these countries were totally opposed to the NIEO.

The basis of the NIEO programme was meant to be founded on existing international commodity agreements (ICAs), including that for coffee. ICAs gave a measure of price support and stability for producing countries but these pacts had been systematically undermined to a very large degree by the richer countries (e.g., "The Great Tin Crash: Bolivia And The World Market", Latin American Bureau, 1987). In turn, NIEO initiatives met such fierce rich country opposition that the proposals duly lapsed.

Later, NZ sadly showed its true colours in working closely with US and allied nations in a so-called "free trade" programme, which resulted in the establishment of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), as implemented in 1995 ("Fixing The Rules: North-South Issues In International Trade And The GATT* Uruguay Round", Kevin Watkins, Catholic Institute for International Relations, 1992; "The New Protectionism: Protecting The Future Against Free Trade", Tim Lang and Colin Hines, Earthscan, 1993/4). *GATT = General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the predecessor of the World Trade Organisation. Ed.

In the meantime, America had callously sabotaged the Coffee ICA, which had proven to be the best of the commodity agreements. Client state NZ also correspondingly withdrew its support for this particular ICA in lock-step with the US. I had a historic special interest in the Coffee ICA, having compiled an educational dossier on it back in 1977 ("Coffee Backgrounder.No. 1", produced by Corso, Wellington: for background, refer e.g., to "Black Gold: A Dark History Of Coffee", Antony Wild, Harper Perennial, 2005).

Learning of an NZ Treasury document pertaining to the Coffee ICA, I requested a copy from the then Labour government Minister of Trade, Mike Moore. He refused my request. I later got a copy under the Official Information Act (OIA). The document predictably recommended that NZ withdraw from the Coffee ICA because it delivered higher prices to producing countries than the "free market" would ensure us.

A few years after the launch of the WTO in 1995, America's hand-picked crony operative NZ's Mike Moore became Director-General of the organisation in 1999. The same year, Moore figured as the arch-villain in the "Battle of Seattle" as protests erupted over the WTO free trade agenda. Protesters "focused on issues including workers' rights, sustainable economies, and environmental and social issues" (in answer to a question posed on Google about the issues at stake). Moore held the role of WTO Director-General during the controversial period 1999-2002. Suitably enough, he finished his career as NZ Ambassador to the US from 2010-2015. Jane Kelsey's obituary of Mike Moore is in Watchdog 154, August 2020. Ed.

Free market exploitation can take various forms. In 2017, Douglas Valentine said of the Western capitalist penetration of Ukraine: "The CIA isn't doing illegal things so the minimum wage will go up, or so that the bankers will be more careful about selling mortgages to people who can't afford them. They're working with the bankers. They want Ukrainians putting their money in a Morgan Stanley brokerage firm in Kyiv. They want to suck the life out of Ukrainians. That is what the CIA is there for, and they are very careful and cautious about whom they recruit to achieve that goal" ("The CIA As Organised Crime", op. cit., p137).

Most significantly, following the US-orchestrated coup in 2014 and the resultant appointment of the billionaire confectionery manufacturer, property and mass-media magnate "Chocolate King" Petro Poroshenko to the office of President, American foreign control guaranteed that its own breed of corrupt capitalist oligarchs were in control of Ukraine. And, of course, the US assiduously cultivates its own oligarchs like Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, & co.

The CIA, Joe Biden, & Covert Co.'s Cultivation Of Capitalist Corruption

Researcher/analyst Douglas Valentine has highlighted the role of the then Vice President Joe Biden in the American capitalist subversion of Ukraine. A central aim of such subversion is to initiate and grow a Rightwing network ready and able to facilitate both American political and corporate control across the target country. In the case of Ukraine, a CIA-backed organisation known as the Centre of United Actions (Centre UA) was very instrumental in generating the unrest behind the 2014 coup (ibid., pp129-131). It coordinated 40 NGOs throughout Ukraine, implementing a range of activists and employing lots of journalists, public relations agents, etc.

"The Centre UA's stated purpose was to pull Ukraine out of the Russian orbit and deliver it to Western corporations. And that's what happened with the obligatory payoffs" (ibid., p131). Indeed, a couple of years after Centre UA was established (in 2012), "Vice President Joe Biden's son joined the Board of Directors of the largest Ukraine gas producer Burisma Holdings" (ibid.). Valentine was interviewed in May 2014 for the chapter on Ukraine in his book. He observed at the time that Joe Biden's son "Hunter Biden heads Burisma's legal department and liaises with international organizations" (ibid.).

What was so egregiously outrageous about all of this, although just grist to the mill for America's power elite, was the fact that Hunter Biden joined the Burisma Board in April 2014, just after the so-called "revolution" in Maidan Square, Kyiv, in February of that same year. To be more explicit, he "joined the board of Burisma Holdings, owned by Ukrainian oligarch and former politician Mykola Zlochevsky, who was facing a money laundering investigation, in the immediate wake of the Ukrainian revolution", (Wikipedia).

"Biden served on the Board of Burisma until his term expired in April 2019, receiving compensation of up to $US50,000 per month in some months' (ibid.). At the time, he was "still an attorney with Boies Schiller Flexner (a law firm based in New York), and a consulting firm in which Biden is a partner was also retained by Burisma" (ibid.).

The Wikipedia entry on Hunter Biden says that "there has been no evidence of wrong-doing by Hunter Biden in Ukraine" (ibid.). What a stunning statement but a graphic illustration of the morality of capitalist geopolitics at work. So, Obama's Vice President not only coordinated the programme to subvert Ukraine's elected democracy but he blatantly got his own son appointed on the Board of the biggest gas company in this bitterly contested land. The pervasive nepotistic crony capitalism exhibited by both Joe Biden and Donald Trump has surely demonstrated the rot at the heart of American politics.

One analyst noted how: "The credibility of the US was not helped by the news that, since May 2014, Vice President Joe Biden's son had been on the Board of Directors of Burisma". ("Money Land: Why Thieves & Crooks Now Rule The World & How To Take It Back", Oliver Bullough, Profile Books, 2018, p193).

Ironically enough, the Washington Post (WP) was particularly damning. "The appointment of the Vice-President's son to a Ukrainian oil (and gas) Board looks nepotistic at best, nefarious at worst, (WP) wrote, shortly after Hunter Biden's appointment" (ibid.). The newspaper went on to say: "You would have to wonder how big the salary has to be to put US soft power at risk like this. Pretty big, we'd imagine" (ibid.). Overall, however, any such criticism was muted.

The reality is that the CIA is the "secretive military wing of the plutocrats" as the interviewer of Douglas Valentine aptly comments. Multi-billionaire, WP owner, and one of world's very richest men, Jeff Bezos, is indeed very close to the CIA! For sure, as mentioned earlier, the US has its own set of greedy manipulative oligarchs!!

Camouflaging The Groundwork For A Coup And Regime Change

The global reach of corrupt politics as exemplified just above is just part of a very pervasive operative system. What is striking in this particular case is how US-contrived regime change in Ukraine revealed such a brazen instance stemming from right up at the top of the Obama Administration. Researcher/analyst Douglas Valentine paints the broader background for us. First, he crisply encapsulates the essence of the coup - what Wikipedia so perversely calls in propaganda mode Ukraine's "Revolution of Dignity"!

Valentine recounts that: "The book 'Flashpoint In Ukraine' (subtitle: "How The US Drive For Hegemony Risks World War III", Clarity Press, 2014) provides ample evidence that the Obama regime and its privateering corporate partners overthrew the pro-Russian Ukraine government and installed a government packed with neo-Nazis and American elites. They did this for their own enrichment, and yet the US media never made it an issue. It's business as usual. The average Ukrainian citizen doesn't benefit; just the 'super-predator' American elite and their Ukrainian 'compradors') who organised the coup. It's amazing to behold" ("The CIA As Organised Crime", op. cit., p131).

What we can add here at this point about what is truly "amazing" to behold (actually so very predictable but yet so stunning in its hypocrisy!) is how a crucial element in the recent media propaganda blitz on the Ukraine crisis virtually omits any reference to the 2014 coup. At most it is cited as a "revolution" or an "uprising". An egregious example was that of Newshub's TV3 presenter Mike McRoberts supposedly giving us some background on the crisis and how we got where we are today. There was nothing about overthrowing a democratic government of course!

Instead, McRoberts gave us a spiel in line with the crap that its favourite foreign news feed CBS spins out almost every day (Newshub Live at 6pm, 25/2/22). The only historical context he gave for his presentation - appropriately tuned to his anti-Russian theme - was that Russia took over Crimea and separatist Donbass.

He even quoted the Social Darwinist British PM Boris Johnson about Putin being "a blood-stained aggressor in search of imperial conquest" (which is so touching given the bloody imperial record of the Anglo-American axis right up to the present-day!) (ibid.). He also cited President Biden as calling out Putin as a new "Hitler"! (ibid.). Well, American presidents surely know how to recognise their mirror image in the very face of their enemy!

In a similar earlier item on TV1, reporter Logan Church's only reference to events in 2014 was that Russia had illegally taken over Crimea (1 News at 6, 26/1/22). As per normal in such grossly biased coverage NATO is presented as a military defensive alliance, not the predatory imperial beast that it really is, all primed to start WWIII.

It is indeed so stunning that in early 2014 so much of the US-orchestrated Ukrainian regime change was played out for weeks so blatantly in the open. American leaders were whipping up the neo-fascist militias in Maidan Square while at the same time pulling the strings for their dirty work behind the scenes. All this - only eight years past! - has already gone down the Orwellian memory-hole.

A Long Reactionary Reach

In his exposition on Ukraine, Douglas Valentine emphasises that the groundwork for such coups can be very long in the making. He pointed out how "the CIA has been operating with Ukrainian exiles since the end of WWII, when they hired Reinhard Gehlen. Gehlen had been the chief anti-Soviet spy for the German Army. US Army Intelligence hired Gehlen in 1945, but as soon as the CIA was formed it grabbed him and put him in charge of Eastern Europe.

The CIA used this former Nazi to reactivate the spy networks he had in Ukraine, Poland, Latvia, all the Eastern European countries, and these old Nazi spies and saboteurs went to work for the CIA" ("The CIA As Organised Crime", op. cit., p138). "All of this is illegal, but this is what the CIA does all around the world. It's been doing it in the Ukraine for generations. It has the grandchildren of Nazis on its payroll, an incredible infrastructure of neo-Nazi secret agents who've been battling against Russia for 70 years" (ibid., p139).

"The history of the US intelligence operations in Ukraine is educational. OSS (Office of Strategic Services - precursor of the CIA) officers in WWII released Stepan Bandera from prison in 1944. Bandera was a Nazi collaborator whose militia slaughtered Poles, Jews and communist workers on the eastern front. The US recruited Bandera (as it did so many other Nazis in Operation Paperclip and other ops to work for the empire!)". As Timothy Snyder, Professor of History at Yale University, has made clear, the historical legacy of what he calls the "bloodlands", including those of Ukraine, reeks of the slaughter savagely inflicted by both the Nazis and the Soviets ("Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler And Stalin", Bodley Head, 2010).

Meanwhile, the ironies of Western propaganda on the Ukrainian conflict continue to be both perverse and immense. A Press item reported how a "Soviet-era statue" standing as a memorial to Jews murdered by Nazi death squads was "collateral damage" in a Russian attack on the Kyiv TV tower ("Russian Missiles Defile Holocaust Memorial", 4/3/22). TV journalists here cited the memorial as a testament to the falsity of Putin's claims about Ukrainian Nazis. But fascist militias like the Azov Regiment form the cutting-edge of Ukraine's defence forces (Al Jazeera on Ukraine's Nazis: ).

As Valentine updates the situation about the competition for geopolitical influence in Ukraine: "The Russians can't compete, when billionaires like George Soros are sprinkling a million here and five million there - money that goes into building civic institutions that are ideologically attuned. Whether people do it for love or money, or belief of a brighter future, the CIA is manipulating the social and political processes..." ("The CIA As Organised Crime", op. cit., p135). People are recruited and paid as CIA operatives. "It's illegal. It's treasonous. You can't take money from a foreign intelligence agency and work against your own country, but that is what the CIA is doing in Ukraine right now and around the world on a massive scale" (ibid.).

Contesting The Potentially Catastrophic Crap!

There has been a continuous flow of poisonous propaganda on the Ukrainian crisis, exonerating the West from any responsibility and heaping total blame on the pariah Putin. Take a typical conservative political commentator like Josie Pagani, the sort so beloved by the mainstream media in pushing their misinformation messages. She is billed as having worked in "politics, aid, and development".

In the most outrageously spin doctor fashion, Pagani actually says that we are already in WWIII and that: "It started when Putin invaded Crimea in 2014" - thus spinning the same line as TV3's Mike McRoberts and TV1's Logan Church ("People Power Spurs Governments To Action", Press, 4/3/22). Pagani went on to say that: "We just didn't realise it". (i.e., WWIII is already happening!).

Well, Pagani, like so many other de facto US military-industrial cheerleaders, has obviously been in a zombie state for a very long time! The American imperial war machine has been dismantling and abjuring any form of disarmament and arms control for decades now. It has abandoned treaties like the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty and the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty. This fits with the its nuclear-war fighting agenda.

World famous anti-nuclear and peace activist Dr. Helen Caldicott has tracked the path to growing confrontation and war (see her: "The New Nuclear Danger: George W Bush's Military-Industrial Complex", Scribe, 2002/revised ed. 2004; & "War In Heaven: The Arms Race In Outer Space", with co-author Craig Eisendrath, The New Press, 2007; see also the landmark "First Strike!: The Pentagon's Strategy For Nuclear War", Robert C Aldridge, South End Press, 1983).

Josie Pagani wonders how we "didn't realise" that "WWIII is already happening". It comes as no surprise that PR agents in the mainstream media have long been unaware that they have been taking us into this most dangerous phase. "Sleep-walking Into Armageddon" is the title of Dr. Caldicott's book (The New Press), which she edited in 2017, warning how bad things were getting. Douglas Valentine agrees. Warning about the American power elite, he remarks: "They can do anything and it's not going to get better, as resources diminish, as the income inequality gap widens, these trends are just going to get worse" ("The CIA As Organised Crime", op. cit., p142).

While President Putin has made a series of well documented peace overtures over the years, the US-led West has refused to participate in any meaningful disarmament and peace-making negotiations. Instead, breaking a pledge not to expand NATO eastward, it has rolled menacingly up to Russia's borders, calculatedly prising country after country out of the Russian orbit in an obvious attempt to surround its rival as much as possible.

Freud's Death Instinct Driving The Western Establishment And Its Media!

It helps at this juncture to gain a greater perspective on the state of the planet and the trajectory of humankind. Douglas Valentine describes a critical course of human "development" in these terms: "American society since its creation 240 years ago has had as its goal the enrichment and empowerment of a small group of property owners and their succeeding generations who, after they conquered the continent, took over the world".

"The civic and government institutions in the USA have been organised over 240 years to advance that purpose. The fact that the CIA came along 70 years ago and pushed that process by doing illegal things on an industrial basis hasn't changed the thrust of the American empire and its front men" (ibid., p140). "The people who control the Centre UA and manage its operations in Ukraine are doing the same thing here (i.e., in the US itself!). It's the same rulers. It's the same PR people and journalists, the same politicians, and they are doing the same things. Just trace the provenance of so many of them" (ibid.).

For myself, it was during the 1980s era with Reagan's suicidal death instinct openly on display that it really registered home just how blindly - even eagerly! - self-destructive human beings can be (for ref. see: "Nuclear Nightmares: An Investigation Into Possible Wars", Nigel Calder, BBC, 1979; "With Enough Shovels: Reagan, Bush & Nuclear War", Robert Scheer, Secker & Warburg, 1982; & "Peddlers Of Crisis: The Committee On The Present Danger And The Politics Of Containment", Jeffrey W Sanders, Pluto Press, 1983). Reagan's Administration, in capitalist gambling mode, was quite prepared to risk everything for further materialist geopolitical gains.

We see the same thing unfolding today with two crazy, evil regimes - the Biden Administration and Putin's Kremlin - both prepared to go to any lengths for nationalist and personal reasons. But in the 1980s there was a crucial difference. The world saw the rise of an influential and vibrant international mass peace/anti-nuclear movement (as expressed e.g., in "Exterminism And Cold War", edited by New Left Review, Verso, 1982). For many of us New Zealanders, in the antipodes as it were, we felt like we were looking in on scenes in a madhouse as the Reaganites rattled their nuclear weapons. Aotearoa/NZ chose sanity and became nuclear free.

But, again, as the neoliberal generation bedded in and Reaganite/Thatcherite "free market" economics came to dominate in the Anglo-American axis and elsewhere in much of the West, the public perception and awareness of the dangers of nuclear war and militarism faded away to a very considerable extent. We now live with unprecedented stupidity, blind, narrow self-interest, short-sightedness, and denialism as expressed in the mainstream media - as dictated by the ruling vested interests who own and control them.

Grappling With Some Very Immediate Dire Challenges

We can certainly condemn Putin and his coterie for the terrible war being inflicted upon the people of Ukraine. That country, which has such a tormented history, needs all the humanitarian aid we can give it. Above all, it needs genuinely motivated mediation and peacemaking. The belligerent warmongering West carries far more responsibility than Putin's Russia for causing this potentially catastrophic conflict. Russia's national security concerns have been absolutely legitimate. It had tabled a very reasonable set of proposals for discussion ("Western Democracies Have Mutated Into Propagandists For War And Conflict", op. cit.).

Russia's key request to the West - to not include Ukraine in NATO - if acceded to, would have prevented the horrible war now raging. It could stop this war virtually at once! A pact between the West and Russia could have guaranteed Ukraine's neutrality as a buffer state. But in failing at present to put its first strike nuclear weapons on the border with Russia, NATO has fallen back to Plan B: mire Russia in a Ukrainian civil war aimed at undermining Russia's very stability. Such is the imperial madness of Biden & co!

One can only stand aghast at the West's malicious warmongering hypocrisy given its record since WWII. The US has invaded and intervened in countries all round, so often on the pretext of a pack of lies and malign propaganda as in the case of Iraq in 2003. In this particular conflict, as in so many others, the Anglo-American corporate media exulted in the exhibition of "shock and awe" firepower and to hell with multitudinous civilian deaths, injuries, refugees, and other such fallout.

"The overall conclusion [in a relevant review of American such interventions] reached is that the US most likely has been responsible since WWII for the deaths of between 20 and 30 million people in wars and conflicts scattered over the world" ("Deaths In Other Nations Since WWII Due To US Interventions", James A Lucas, 24/4/07).

The murderous geopolitical gaming goes on (Covert Action Magazine, Jeremy Kuzmarov, 1/3/22).

Refer also to: As U.S. Threatens War with Russia, Biden Administration Unveils Imperial Strategy for Indo-Pacific That Could Lead to War with China (19/2/22, also by Jeremy Kuzmarov). For decades, US-based Covert Action Magazine (CAM) has monitored the derelictions of empire.

Mindless Media In Meltdown!

Given time and space, my article only deals with just some of the relevant factors and dimensions involved in the current Ukrainian crisis and just touches on others. I hope to deal with certain various aspects in more detail in later PR and/or Watchdog articles. A hugely important dimension that I can only briefly touch on here relates to Crimea and the other Russian-speaking and oriented areas that the Kremlin effectively took over in the civil war that erupted in 2014.

Under the series of Minsk agreements started in September 2014 and set for expiry in February 2022, provisions were made to accommodate the grievances of inhabitants in the Donbass region and regulate the conflict towards peaceful accord. But, in fact, the US-backed Ukrainian regime obviously wanted to take back this region by force ("Russia's Ukraine Manoeuvres Are A Response, Not A Provocation", Al Jazeera, Leonid Ragozin, 13/4/21). The malign media have perverted the public perception of both the reality of what is happening on the ground and the issues at stake.

By 2022, about 150,000 Ukrainians were lined up on the border of Donbass; and after several violent episodes, the Russian military build-up on the border with its neighbour continued to grow in response.

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator and co-founder of the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Energy in Space, stressed how since 2014 the Ukrainian regime's forces have been shelling Donbass and its infrastructure. He has visited the area and seen for himself the extensive damage inflicted there (Gagnon was interviewed by Earthwise programmer Lois Griffiths on Christchurch's Plainsfm 96.9, 31/1/22).

The Western political Establishment only cares for human life whenever and wherever this life relates to its geopolitical interests. National Party foreign affairs hot-air windbag, buffoon Gerry Brownlee actually joked about Putin being mad when the latter put Russia's nuclear weapons on special alert! Before the Russian invasion, the NZ media were doing more than their share of warmongering. They repeatedly portrayed the conflict on the Donbass border as that driven by the separatists being held back by heroic Ukrainian army defenders. As usual, Newshub TV3's reports were to the fore in their propagandistic slant.

Similarly, Ukrainian President Zelensky's call for the US/NATO to impose a "no-fly zone" over Ukraine has garnered obvious support from both TV3 and TV1. It would mean, as Putin has warned, a direct military confrontation between Russia and the West, as even Biden & co. have so far acknowledged. Yet our local media are cheering on the Holocaust! TV3's Lisette Reymer (a cheerleader for Rocket Lab) and TV1's Daniel Faitaua - both European correspondents - have been to the fore in their warmongering.

Such reporters have been brazen in their promotion of prising Ukraine out of the Russian orbit and into the Western capitalist camp. Yet Russia took over eastern Ukraine in the 17th Century and "eventually absorbed the whole of the country into their empire" ("Geographica's Pocket World Reference", Random House, 2000, p649). Ukraine has traditionally had close ties with Russia. With the current continuing escalation of hostilities and the expansion of NATO's militarist consolidation in neighbouring countries, a scenario is fast developing that has all the hallmarks about it of a stumbling lurch into WWIII.

Can We Escape Our Killer Ape Heritage!?

So far, Plan B has worked like magic for the Anglo-American axis and their NATO allies. The brain-dead, zombie mainstream media are on in lockstep in fervently mobilising resistance to the Russian invader and whipping up war fever. Never mind that the invasion was so outrageously and obviously provoked in fact by US/NATO!

As the conflict gets increasingly locked into an intransigent and compounding crisis, humankind stumbles even closer to the brink of complete and total disaster. When talk of WWIII becomes common parlance, then we know we are in very dangerous territory. The US/NATO pastime of baiting the bear might soon backfire horrendously for everybody! World Beyond War is charting the way forward with its calls of "Russia Out Of Ukraine" and "NATO Out Of Existence"! There is now a desperate urgency for the international peace/anti-nuclear movement to address the crisis in full, and help humankind avoid a very ominously looming Doomsday!!

PS. In light of the Labour Government's totally one-sided anti-Russian sanctions programme and utter hypocrisy given NZ's record of close ongoing collaboration with murderous rogue state America, I am now reflecting on my own personal support for the Government. Our part in the warmongering US/NATO drive to WWIII is even being locked into a missile silo straight to Hell!