For years, Ukraine was recognized as one
of the most, if not "the" most, corrupt nation in Europe. It held on to
that reputation all the way up to the day Russia invaded, at which
point media worldwide suddenly started rewriting history.
Whitewashing Ukraine's Corruption and Authoritarianism
As noted by Ted Galen Carpenter, a senior fellow for defense and
foreign policy studies at the Cato Institute, in a sober and clear-eyed
article, published in April 2022:1
"Statements from U.S. and other Western officials, as
well as pervasive accounts in the news media, have created a stunningly
misleading image of Ukraine. There has been a concerted effort to
portray the country not only as a victim of brutal Russian aggression,
but as a plucky and noble bulwark of freedom and democracy ...
The promoters of that narrative contend that the
ongoing war is not just a quarrel between Russia and Ukraine over Kiev's
ambitions to join NATO and Moscow's territorial claims in Crimea and
the Donbas. No, they insist — the war is part of a global struggle
between democracy and authoritarianism ...
The notion that Ukraine was such an appealing
democratic model in Eastern Europe that the country's mere existence
terrified Putin may be a comforting myth to U.S. politicians and
pundits, but it is a myth. Ukraine is far from being a
democratic-capitalist model ...
The reality is murkier and troubling: Ukraine has
long been one of the more corrupt countries in the international system
... Ukraine's track record of protecting democracy and civil liberties
is not much better than its performance on corruption. In Freedom
House's 2022 report,2 Ukraine is listed in the 'partly free' category, with a score of 61 out of a possible 100 ...
Even before the war
erupted, there were ugly examples of authoritarianism in Ukraine's
political governance ... The neo-Nazi Azov Battalion was an integral
part of President Petro Poroshenko's military and security apparatus,
and it has retained that role during Zelensky's presidency ...
[O]ne can condemn Putin's actions and even cheer on
Ukraine's military resistance without fostering a false image of
Ukraine's political system. The country is not a symbol of freedom and
liberal democracy, and the war is not an existential struggle between
democracy and authoritarianism. At best, Ukraine is a corrupt,
quasi-democratic entity with troubling repressive policies.
Given that sobering reality, calls for Americans to
'stand with Ukraine' are misplaced. Preserving Ukraine's independence
and territorial integrity most certainly are not worth the United States
risking war with a nuclear-armed Russia."
Media 'Rediscovers' Ukraine's Corrupt Past
Given how mainstream media have been fawning over Zelensky, picturing
him as a fierce fighter for democracy, it was surprising to see The
Associated Press and NPR suddenly revisiting Ukraine's history of
corruption. A July 20, 2022, article, originally published by AP and
republished by NPR, states:3
"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's dismissal
of senior officials is casting an inconvenient light on an issue that
the Biden administration has largely ignored since the outbreak of war
with Russia: Ukraine's history of rampant corruption and shaky
governance.
As it presses ahead with providing tens of billions
of dollars in military, economic and direct financial support aid to
Ukraine and encourages its allies to do the same, the Biden
administration is now once again grappling with longstanding worries
about Ukraine's suitability as a recipient of massive infusions of
American aid."
The sudden critique comes on the heels of Zelensky's firing of his
top prosecutor, his intelligence chief and several other senior
officials, claiming they are spies or collaborators with Russia.
Zelensky has also dragged his feet when it comes to assigning a new
anti-corruption prosecutor, something that should have occurred last
December, and which, according to the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv, "undermines
the work of anti-corruption agencies."
Zelensky Blacklists Americans After Getting Millions From Taxpayers
A few days after firing his top officials, Zelensky's Center for
Countering Disinformation — established in 2021 — also issued a
blacklist of American "pro-Russian propagandists," which includes Sen.
Rand Paul, R-Ky, former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, D-Hawaii, independent
journalist Glenn Greenwald, retired Col. Douglas Macgregor and
University of Chicago professor John Mearsheimer.4
As noted by Fox News host Tucker Carlson, "Now the Ukrainian
government has decided that they can impose censorship in our country."
Carlson questioned how President Biden can possibly claim that we're
"defending democracy" by sending millions of American taxpayer dollars
to Ukraine.
This is being done while Zelensky bans all opposition parties — 11 in
all — and blacklists American politicians and journalists who question
the use of U.S. taxpayer funds and our involvement in the Ukraine
conflict.5
It rather appears we're aiding authoritarianism, doesn't it? Greenwald,
who appeared on Carlson's show to discuss the blacklisting stated:6
"The Ukrainians have a conflict with this neighboring
country in Russia. They're totally free to pursue whatever war policies
they want. They can fight Russia in the next 10 years if they choose.
But that's not what they're doing.
They're begging and in a sense, demanding that other
countries, including my own, the United States, provide them with a
seemingly endless supply of weapons and money, which means we not only
have the right, but the obligation to debate that and ask whether that's
in the interest of the American people to do."
Ukraine Is No Defender of Democracy
In the video at the top of this article, I've included three episodes
of "The Jimmy Dore Show" in which Dore discusses this and other news
surrounding the Ukraine war. In the first segment, he reviews past news
articles discussing Ukraine's corruption. Repeatedly, in 2014, 2015 and
beyond, Ukraine was declared the most corrupt country in Europe.
In the second segment, Dore reviews how Zelensky was supposed to
clean out corruption and usher in a new era of good governance. That
didn't happen though.
The Panama Papers7,8
— described as "a giant leak of more than 11.5 million financial and
legal records [which] exposes a system that enables crime, corruption
and wrongdoing" — have revealed Zelensky, his wife and several
associates own "hidden offshore assets," raising suspicions that
Zelensky may be just as corrupt as his forerunners.
The third Dore Show segment reviews Ukraines' blacklist of
pro-Russian journalists, which, as mentioned, includes Greenwald, Scott
Ritter, Jeffrey David Sachs and many others. The beauty of being
discredited by mainstream media is that they revealed to you who is
actually telling the truth.
What Happens to US Weapons in Ukraine?
One wonders whether the U.S. "aid" to Ukraine might also be a corrupt scheme in and of itself. As admitted by CNN,9
the U.S. government doesn't know what happens to the billions of
dollars' worth of military hardware and munitions shipped to Ukraine.
The supplies cannot be tracked, and the obvious risk is that the
weapons can end up in the hands of militias and terrorists. However,
this is "a conscious risk the Biden administration is willing to take,"
CNN says. In the meantime, the U.S. and NATO are simply shipping over
whatever Zelensky claims he needs. According to CNN:10
"Trucks loaded with pallets of arms provided by the
Defense Department are picked up by Ukrainian armed forces — primarily
in Poland — and then driven into Ukraine, Kirby said, 'then it's up to
the Ukrainians to determine where they go and how they're allocated
inside their country.'"
Theft Through Endless Warfare
As noted by Wikileaks founder Julian Assange in 2011, the purpose of
the Afghan war — the longest war in U.S. history, which lasted from 1999
until 202111 — was not to subjugate Afghanistan. It was to launder money through war.
"The goal was to use Afghanistan to wash money out of
the tax base of the United States, out of the tax bases of the European
countries, through Afghanistan, back into the hands of transnational
security elite. That is the goal. I.e., the goal is to have an endless
war; not a successful war," Assange said.
Is Ukraine just another repeat of this same scheme? It's starting to
look that way. Rather than sending diplomats and urging Ukraine to
negotiate peace, the NATO alliance insists Ukraine fight to the last
man, and send weapons and financial aid that quickly vanish into a
proverbial black hole.
What's the Goal in Helping Ukraine?
The problem facing NATO and the U.S. is that people are increasingly
becoming aware of the fact that things don't add up. Why are we involved
in this conflict? We're clearly not defending "democracy"; quite the
opposite. We're aiding and abetting an authoritarian regime — and actual
real-world Nazi adherents.
As reported by Jeff Childers, president and founder of the Childers Law firm, in a July 19, 2022 blog post:12
"The Economist ran a story yesterday headlined, 'Is
America Growing Weary of the Long War In Ukraine?' Well. I was
immediately suspicious, because the Ukraine war hasn't been that long
...
Late in the article, the Economist put its
tobacco-stained finger right on the squidge that marks the real problem:
'Mr. Biden's aim in the war is unclear. His administration has stopped
talking about helping Ukraine to 'win,' and instead speaks of preventing
it from being defeated.'
That's the problem, all right. What IS the goal, Joe?
If it's 'winning,' what does that even look like and how do we get
there? ... It seems the pro-war Ukrainians want the U.S. to just skip
the messy middle and jump right into direct war with the Russians, to
teach them a lesson or something.
But the Russians have nuclear missiles and doomsday
submarines and even nuclear torpoedos for goodness' sake. A
fully-kinetic global war won't help the Ukrainians, at all. Probably
just the opposite. It's magical thinking."
The Rise of Totalitarianism in America
The U.S. support of an authoritarian regime like Ukraine is perhaps
best explained by the realization that the U.S. itself has shifted in
that direction. According to American philosopher, social critic and
cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky,13
who appeared on Russell Brand's podcast in July 2022, the U.S. is
"living under a kind of totalitarian culture, which has never existed in
my lifetime and is much worse in many ways than the Soviet Union before
(Mikhail) Gorbachev."
The cause for this cultural change, Chomsky believes, can be traced
back to the censorship of global news. Basically, most Americans live in
an echo chamber, where there's no diversity of views, especially not
from perceived adversaries:
"If today in the United States, you want to find out
what Minister (Sergey) Lavrov of Russia is saying, you can't do it. It's
barred. Americans are not permitted to hear what Russians are saying," Chomsky told Brand. "Can't get Russian television, can't access Russian sources ...
You wanna find out what the adversaries are saying,
which is of utmost importance … But the United States has imposed
constraints on freedom of access information, which are astonishing and
which in fact go beyond what was the case in post (Joseph) Stalin and
Soviet Russia."
The Biolab Angle
Another angle that can help explain the U.S. support of a clearly
authoritarian and anti-democratic regime is the fact that we have a
number of biolabs in Ukraine, the purposes of which the U.S. government
is keen to obscure. Childers addresses this as well:14
"The next story may possibly be the most significant
news I've ever reported, and I don't think I'm exaggerating. The news is
that Deputy Chairwoman of the Russian State Duma (congress) Irina
Yarovaya gave an update yesterday on Russia's official investigation
into US Biolabs in Ukraine.
What the Russians are saying isn't pretty. And they
claim to have a mountain of evidence. So far, the U.S. has not deigned
to respond to any of the deadly serious allegations.
Remember that back in May, the Russians presented
evidence to the U.N. Security Council arguing that the U.S. had been
performing illegal bioweapons development — AND TESTING — in Ukraine,
including accusing the last three Democrat administrations of working
with George Soros, Bill Gates, and big pharma to break treaties, develop
illegal weapons technology, release bioweapons into Ukraine, test the
weapons on soldiers and mental patients, and — most significantly —
infect the Russian people and crops ...
A remarkable diagram shows all the alleged players
that goes far beyond those named above, and includes Pfizer, the Bill
and Melinda Gates Foundation, and others.
The Russians accused the top Democrats of
facilitating the illegal research for military purposes in league with
big pharma, which was brought in whenever there were tests or leaks, to
develop lucrative treatments for the new diseases.
In return, argued the Russians, big pharma funneled
massive campaign contributions back to Democrats, making a sinister and
demonic viral feedback loop."
According to Yarovaya, the key masterminds of this conspiracy include
the U.S. Democratic party, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and
George Soros. The U.S. government, meanwhile, has done nothing to
counter these Russian allegations, other than dismiss them as "Russian
misinformation" unworthy of so much as a reply.
Childers suspects Biden's attempt to set up a Disinformation
Governance Board might even have been an "effort to screw an even
tighter lid" on the biolabs story, seeing how Nina Jankowicz, selected
to lead the board, previously worked for Zelensky himself. She also
worked for the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.15
Russian Report to Drop Before the US Midterms
According to Yarovaya, the Russian government intends to release a
comprehensive report about the U.S. biolabs in Ukraine sometime before
the U.S. midterm elections. In her July 18, 2022, status update to the
Russian legislature, she stated:16
"As evidence today, the parliamentary commission may
already present the facts that bio laboratories supervised by the
Pentagon on the territory of Ukraine did not meet safety criteria. In
the current mode of their activity, they posed and pose a colossal
threat for citizens of Ukraine and for the whole world.
The facility was not only insecure. Despite the fact
that they were working with dangerous viruses and pathogens, there was
also a leak. It is quite likely that this explains the growth of
epidemics in Ukraine.
But most likely, those who created these laboratories
were interested in ensuring [they] were not adequately protected, not
only for corruption, but also in order to carry out a live experiment;
in this way, to monitor what the reaction from the population would be,
what the mortality rate would be, what the consequences would be."
Russians Accuse US of Intentional Negligence
To be clear, the Russians are accusing the U.S. of intentional
negligence, which is no small matter. As noted by Childers, the same
thing appears to have happened in Wuhan.
From 2018 onward, the U.S. State Department issued reports in which
investigators warned the lab was poorly run and primed for an accident.
Fast-forward to late 2019, and SARS-CoV-2 mysteriously emerged right in
the vicinity of that same lab.
Now, any official that admits COVID was or might be the result of a
lab leak is also careful to say that it must have been an accident. But
if a lab is intentionally negligent, is a subsequent leak really
accidental?
The point the Russians seem to make is that it's not accidental at
all. However, intentional neglect allows the responsible party to
pretend that an intentional release was accidental. That way, they're
not guilty of a crime. But that's not all. Childers continues:17
"The Russians also alleged that the U.S. culprits are
hiding behind 'animal research;' further concealing their guilt by
genetically grafting human infection capabilities onto existing animal
viruses, so they can claim natural origins for the newly-developed bugs.
Like with COVID. Or monkeypox ...
Yarovaya said the result of all this intentional
negligence has been 'unforeseen situations all over the world.' She
fingered the U.S. for the novel monkeypox outbreak. 'Everything related
to coronavirus, monkey pox, should be searched in the test tubes of
American laboratories,' she said.
By a totally random coincidence, the very same Wuhan
Institute of Virology where COVID was developed was also experimenting
with monkeypox ... Because the Russians are naming specific individuals,
it is starting to look like the Russians plan to launch a
Nuremberg-style international criminal complaint along the lines that so
many Americans have been wishing for."
'Game of Nuclear Chicken'
If Childers suspicion that the Russians are planning a
Nuremberg-style complaint, it's no wonder the U.S. government is trying
to keep a lid on the accusations, even at the risk of having their
silence appear incriminating in and of itself.
Childers also believes China may join with Russia in this effort, as
Russia's justification for invading Ukraine to take down dangerous
biolabs would also "create a neat justification for a Chinese invasion
of Taiwan." As it turns out, Taiwan is home to a staggering 1,251
biolabs that serve "medical, agricultural, food and environmental
needs."
At least 31 of those labs work with "virology, bacteriology,
parasitology, mycology and vector biology," and one, a biosecurity level
4 (BSL4) lab in northern Taiwan belongs to the military. So, China
could easily justify an invasion of Taiwan by saying there are unsecured
biowarfare facilities there.
"All these allegations — completely ignored by corporate media — are incredibly serious," Childers notes.18 "The Russians are accusing the U.S. of a biological weapons of mass destruction attack.
It has long been the official policy of the U.S. that a bioweapons
attack is equivalent to a nuclear attack, and would justify a nuclear
response.
It doesn't matter whether they're right. The Russians
appear to believe they are legally justified in retaliating against the
U.S. using weapons of mass destruction. And they're building the case
using a lot of shady stuff that the U.S. and its deep-state corporate
allies have been up to.
It sure would be a good time for the U.S. government
to speak up and get totally transparent about the legitimate purpose
behind all these labs. Assuming there IS a legitimate purpose.
But perpetrators, whoever they are, would almost
certainly risk nuclear war to protect their secrets if only half of what
the Russians are saying is true. So, wittingly or not, we are all
involved in a deadly game of nuclear chicken. And our driver is Joe
Biden."
Is There a Way Out?
In an interview with Lex Friedman, filmmaker Oliver Stone discussed the history of corruption in Ukraine — detailed in his film "Ukraine on Fire" — the propaganda surrounding the current Russia-Ukraine conflict, and his understanding of why Russia is acting the way it is.
At the end of that interview, Friedman asked Stone whether he thinks
we can walk back from the brink of nuclear war. Stone replied:
"Yes, [through] reason ... and then diplomacy. Talk
to the guy. Mr. Biden, why don't you calm down and go talk to Mr. Putin
in Moscow. And try to have a discussion without falling into
ideologies."
Assuming the U.S. government in general and Biden in particular are
not embroiled in criminal biowarfare activity in Ukraine, then Stone's
suggestion is reasonable. However, if their actions are based on a need
to protect a dirty secret (or two), then diplomacy wouldn't even be on
the menu of options.
Russia would probably want its pound of flesh. They would want
justice to be settled, which in the case of illegal biowarfare
manufacturing could include the lifelong incarceration of certain
individuals. Seeing how Biden is on Russia's list of "key mastermind
conspirators," it seems reasonable to assume he wouldn't easily be let
off the hook.
And that brings us right back to Childers' prediction, which is that
the perpetrators "would almost certainly risk nuclear war to protect
their secrets if only half of what the Russians are saying is true."
So, while World War III has so far been an information war waged
against the public, nuclear war between nations is still a possibility —
thanks to corruption at the highest levels, which prevents diplomatic
solutions.