What's The Difference Between Bombing A Hospital In Ukraine And Bombing One In Afghanistan?

 The level of moral outrage in Western Media, is the difference.

In the case of Ukraine, where the Russians are the culprits, Maximum Outrage. In the case of Afghanistan, where the guilty party was the U.S., a yawn. Or more precisely,  curt, clinical reports,  devoid of emotion, completely neutral morally, with the most damning details omitted.

In addition to Western propagandists whipping up outrage against the Russian crime, add furious denunciations by Western politicians and government apparatchiks. You don't see that when the U.S. commits war crimes and lies through its teeth about it.

The Russians are accused to bombing a maternity hospital in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. The U.S., during the regime of Barack "The Drone Assassin" Obama, attacked the Medicins Sans Frontieres  (Doctors Without Borders) hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan, with a U.S. gunship. And "gunship" understates the power of the weapon used, an AC-130 outfitted with cannons and machine guns and much else, capable of directing hugely destructive attacks on the ground, massacring large numbers of people.

There are significant differences between the two attacks. In the case of the Russian attack, based on Western media reports, there is no clue as to whether the hospital was deliberately targeted or the victim of Russian random area bombardment by artillery and missiles fired from miles away. In the case of the MSF hospital destroyed by the U.S., MSF had REPEATEDLY given the exact location coordinates of the hospital to the U.S. military so it wouldn't accidentally attack it. Unfortunately this helped the criminal U.S. deliberately attack it.

The MSF hospital had giant red crosses on the roofs, clearly visible to the pilots of the attacking flying warship. That plane also carries numerous magnification equipment for suveillance, aiming, targeting, firing, and recording evidence of the military's own crimes. (Or "actions," if you prefer euphemisms.)

There is also a difference in the deaths that resulted. The total death toll in the Mariupol attack, as reported by the Kyiv regime and Western media, is 3. Two adults, and one child. A tragedy.

The number murdered in the deliberate U.S. attack in Kunduz- 22, plus dozens more maimed and wounded. More than 7 deaths in Kunduz for each one in Mariupol. Both staff and patients were casualties of the vicious U.S. attack.

Western media harped on the Mariupol attack for several days. But the later reports omitted the number of casualties. Apparently the propagandists decided 3 deaths wouldn't be shocking in the context of a war.

MSF described the attack on their hospital, which was actually a series of repeated bombings lasting an hour in the dead of night:

From 2:08 AM until 3:15 AM local time today, MSF’s trauma hospital in Kunduz was hit by a series of aerial bombing raids at approximately 15 minute intervals. The main central hospital building, housing the intensive care unit, emergency rooms, and physiotherapy ward, was repeatedly hit very precisely during each aerial raid, while surrounding buildings were left mostly untouched. [In contrast, apparently the Mariupol hospital was hit with a single munition.]

The U.S. then followed its usual playbook when caught dead to rights committing an atrocity that ends up publicly visible in "the West." (The people in the victim countries know all about U.S. war crimes. It is the Western publics that are blissfully unaware.) It insists the target was legitimate, a "terrorist" hit. Then when that lie loses all credibility, it switches to "oops, sorry, it was an accident." Apparently the U.S. didn't like the fact that MSF treats all comers, indeed HAS to do so to maintain neutrality and be tolerated by all sides. So Taliban combatants were among the patients there.

The MSF hospital was the ONLY hospital for the city of Kunduz. The U.S. forced its closing, a crimes against all the inhabitants of that city.

For good measure, while issuing soothing, evasive unctuous verbiage publicly, Obama had a U.S. army tank smash through the gates of the hopital days after the aerial attack, an act of intimidation intended to silence MSF. Obama could have a second career as a Mafia don.

For its part, Russia issued this excuse for attacking the Mariupol hospital, through foreign minister Sergey Lavrov: Lavrov said the hospital was being used by fighters. In other words, Russia used the standard Israeli justification for blowing up civilian targets. When Israel periodically devastates the open air concentration camp of Gaza,  "mows the lawn," as the Israeli rulers cynically refer to their periodic wars on the trapped population of Gaza, they claim Hamas fighters are hiding in the targets, using the population as "human shields." (So of course they are justified in murdering the "shields.") 

But the excuse doesn't work for Enemies of The West. Only for the West and its colonial settler implant in Palestine, Israel.

The current U.S. president, the grinning and semi-senile Joseph R. Biden, now has the unmitigated gall to call for war crimes investigations of Russian actions in Ukraine. This guy was vice president for 8 years during the Obama regime, a regime that committed thousands of war crimes and violations of the rules of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places such as Libya where it targeted civilian targets such as homes and infrastructure. He's the absolutely wrong guy for that task.

Except in the morally-inverted world of Western power politics.

The Western elites expressing outrage over the Ukraine attack are either guilty of selective outrage and applying a double standard, which makes their arrogation of moral judgship an act of insolence, or are flat out putting on an act, which is outrageous, cynical, and disgusting. It can be hard to tell who among them are "sincere," that is to say, feeling actual emotions, which are method actors getting into it, and which are totally feigned in their outrage.

One way to tell if a person or organization  genuine in its denunciations is to test for consistency in their behavior. In this case, we can go back and check if they denounced the U.S. bombing of the MSF hospital. If not, they are phonies. At best, they are self-indulgent poseurs. 

Well, do you really need to check if any Western "leader" (political boss) or major media or government apparatchik or favored house intellectual morally condemned the Obama-Biden regime and the U.S. military for the Kunduz atrocity? Do they EVER condemn ANY U.S. atrocity? Hell, they cooperated in CIA kidnappings and torture of "terrorism suspects"! For those of us with memories, who pay attention, there is no need to check. Feel free to do so as a research project. It would be useful to publish such a study.

I wrote four essays on the Kunduz atrocity by the U.S. in 2015, when it occurred. I wrote at the same time condemning Russia for bombing hospitals in Syria. So I am not motivated by "anti-Americanism," an invented ideology used to dismiss out of hand any critique of U.S. Imperialism and its crimes. I am motivated by NORMAL HUMAN MORALITY!

If you click this link, you will get a page with the four essays on the Kunduz atrocity, the one on Russia, and several other related articles. For details about the attack, see in particular "Why Did the U.S. Launch a Sustained Aerial Bombardment of a Doctors Without Borders Hospital?"
To learn about the murderous AC-130 warplane in particular, see "WikiLeaks Invites Obama to Bomb It," and  "What Happens When One Nobel Peace Prize Winner Bombs Another Nobel Peace Prize Winner?"

 

Russian Invasion of Ukraine Is A Political Godsend For Joseph Biden and Boris Johnson

Two corrupt and venal politicians, the top two politicians in the political power structures of the U.S. and UK respectively, have had a political life preserver tossed to them by Vladimir Putin. (Not that Putin intended that!) Yet the power establishment's "pundits," who spend so much time dissecting political minutiae, haven't deigned to take the slightest public notice of this obvious, major turn in the political fortunes of their "leaders," not in the U.S. anyway. (I haven't studied the UK media on this, but I suspect the same is largely true.) You see, there is a reason this blog is called "Taboo Truths."

Both of these ruthless, selfish individuals, with lifelong records of immoral and sometimes criminal behavior, were in deep political trouble prior to Putin's reckless and foolish move. 

For most of the past year, the chatterers of the U.S. media Blatherariat have been clucking their tongues like a bunch of malicious high school student gossips about how terrible Biden has been doing in the polls, with popularity around only 40% of the public, comparable to Trump's during his presidency. There has been a constant stream of yammering of the dire prospects for the Democratic Party in the 2022 Congressional elections and even the 2024 presidential one. Much ink has been spilled and much gas expelled criticizing the Democratic Party's failure to make itself more popular and to "sell its program" to "the American people."

Establishment power media chatterers said the party may be over for Smokin' Joe Biden.

Suddenly, along comes this great distraction, a foreign "crisis" that has absorbed almost all of the U.S. media propaganda system's attention. BIden, being the lifelong imperialist that he is, immediately started beating his breast and waxing moralistic about the blackness of Russia and the Evil Putin as contrasted with the purity and beauty of the U.S. and its bloc of "democracies" that love "freedom" so much. He and his subaltern lackeys running Europe (plus NATO frontman Jens Stoltenberg and even the ludicrous Justin Trudeau, prime minister of Canada, the U.S.' northern satellite nation) immediately and incessantly vomited forth an unending stream of high-handed, superior than thou denunciations of what they claimed was Putin "threatening to invade Ukraine." While this could be a reasonable inference as to Russia's intent (as indeed turned out to be the case) as a factual statement it was the opposite of reality, as  the Russians repeatedly denied they were going  to invade (while massing military forces along the Russian border with Ukraine). THey were either lying, or Putin changed his mind, but they NEVER THREATENED to invade Ukraine.

It doesn't matter, because BIden is now playing the role of "Leader of the Free World and Defender of Global Democracy" to the hilt. Thanks to the cooperation of most of the propaganda system excluding its neo-fascist organs like the Murdoch propaganda empire and others, Biden benefits from the rally-around-the-leader effect during a manufactured "crisis."  In point of fact, what happens in Ukraine CANNOT POSSIBLY BE A CRISIS FOR THE U.S. BECAUSE UKRAINE IS NOT A VITAL STRATEGIC AREA FOR THE U.S. It only matters because the U.S. is determined to shrink Russia down, to compress it as much as possible.

Unfortunately for the U.S., Russia is one of the two major nuclear weapons powers in the world, the other being the U.S., naturally. Between them, the two possess 93% of the world's nuclear weapons.
Now on to the British prime minister. Boris "Bojo The Clown" Johnson had seemingly been clinging to office as prime minister of Britain by his fingernails. A series of revelations of revelry and partying by him and his staff, in violation of COVID lockdown restrictions imposed by his regime, enraged the public. People had been prevented from visiting dying relatives by the restrictions. Revelations kept coming, with Johnson repeatedly lying, denying, playing dumb, and being just asinine, enraging people even more. (He's done this his whole life, and always gotten over with it, so he can be forgiven for sticking to habit.) Member of his own party, the "Conservaties" (also known as Tories) were publicly criticizing him, some advocating his replacement. (Britain has a parliamentary system, in which the party or coalition that controls Parliament, the legislature, gets to pick the prime minister, the chief executive of the nation.)

 Some wanted the PM to go!

Then, as a side effect of the Ukraine invasion, Vladimir Putin came to the rescue. For Bojo, Russia intimidated and then invaded Ukraine in the nick of time. Johnson has matched Biden in blistering rhetoric, self-righteously posing as an avatar of virtue against the Evil Putin, striving to outdo the stridency of Biden and calling for even stricter "sanctions" (economic warfare).

Bojo The Clown Socks It To Putin! (Rhetorically.)

U.S. elites (political and media) and the ducks lined up behind them (Europe, Canada, Japan) consistently claimed to be "the world." Apparently Africa, Latin America, India, China, indeed almost all of Asia, aren't part of "the world."( Jair Bolsonaro, president of the largest nation in population  in the Western Hemisphere south of the U.S., even sided with Putin!) But don't you call them "racist!" (While the motivation for their hyperbolic lying maybe wasn't racist, the effect sure comes off that way!) 

But finally a bit of evidence to support the notion that "the world" sees things the U.S. way. 140 nations at any rate, which voted in the UN general assembly to denounce the Russian invasion. But 35 nations, presumably on earth and thus part of "the world," abstained, and 5 voted against: Russia, Belarus, North Korea, Syria, and Eritrea. All are easy to understand, except Eritrea isn't so obvious. Presumably they need Russia for something. The Assad dictatorship of Syria needs the Russian air force to stay in power. The Belarus' dictator needs Russia to prop him up, and has allowed Russian forces to stage on Belarus' soil to invade Ukraie. North Korea is North Korea, and has been under brutal economic siege enforced by the U.S., which has pushed sanctions through the UN over N.K.'s missile and nuclear weapons programs. No love lost there.

Bottom line: for both Biden and Johnson, the invasion of Ukraine is a tremendous blessing, with perfect timing to boot. And that's not a "cynical" statement, it's a TRUE statement reflecting REALISM. Taboo truths are are often branded "cynicism" by the power establishment's propagandists. Their other go-to epithet to suppress unwanted facts is "conspiracy theory." Be aware.

"Ohhhh, What A Lucky Man, He IS!"

To understand what led up to the current Ukraine "crisis," you need to read my prior essays at https://jasonzenith.blogspot.com/search?q=UKRAINE, especially "Obama Dictates Terms to Russia To Keep Its Naval Base in Crimea." 

When you go there, you can click on"2022" on the side of the page to see my latest essays. Or just scroll down from where you are now! And put your email in the box on the right side of the page to be notified of future posts. You DO want to be NOTIFIED, DON'T you?

You Call This "Three-Dimensional Chess"? Putin's Boneheaded Invasion Of Ukraine Exposes U.S. Elites' Fatuous Blather

 

 

                                                         Putin: Chess Genius or Boob?

Over the years, a favorite propaganda trope of U.S. media "pundits," imperialist foreign policy apparatchiks and  "experts," and politicians scoring points against other politicians and presidents of the rival political party, has been that "Russia is playing chess" and the U.S. is playing checkers. Then imperialist yakkers trying to stand out in the babbling "foreign policy" mob hyped it up to "The Russians are playing three-dimensional chess," outclassing the asleep at the switch U.S. (This as the U.S. dominates the world, as it has done continuously since 1945.)

Well, if we're talking political strategy, Russian ruler Vladimir Putin is no chess Grandmaster. Incredibly, he has invaded Ukraine- for real this time. Western propagandists and politicians refer to this actual invasion as "another" invasion,  pretending Russia "invaded" the secessionist regions of Ukraine when in actuality they sent in small forces and aid to help defend the regions from attack by the Kyiv regime, which targeted apartment complexes and other civilian targets. Two new states were declared in 2014, which Russia only now recognized, putting U.S. president Joseph Biden into a state of high dudgeon. 

Unmentioned was the fact that for years, Russia has tried to bring about an accommodation between the Kyiv regime and the newly-declared Republics, whereby those Republics would be part of Ukraine but with some autonomy to protect their language and culture.  The Kyiv regimr signed the Minsk Accords, which called for ceasefire, yet the Kyiv regime has never stopped its military attack on the breakaway regions, killing over 10,000 people, committing many war crimes- targeting apartment buildings for shelling and bombing. (The twisted Western media refers to this as "Russian invasion" and a war forced on Kyiv!) 

Another tortured use of the word "invasion" is now even occasionally being applied to Russia and Crimea. Apparently calling it an "occupation" or "annexation" is too feeble a denunciation. Crimea is the site of a vital Russian naval base, which after the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia leased from Ukraine. After the U.S. coup of February 2014 and the installation of a regime which immediately targeted Russian-speaking Ukrainians for repression, local Crimea parliament and then the citizens both voted to reunite with Russia. (The people voted 97% in favor, with the Tatar inhabitants, 15% of the populace there, boycotting the referendum.) AFTER that, the Russian Duma voted to reunite with Crimea. (Crimea had been part of Russia until 1954, when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev transferred it to the Ukranian Soviet Socialist Republic, part of the U.S.S.R.)

Russia is landlocked for virtually its entire southern border. Crimea is on the Black Sea, through which ships can navigate to the Mediterranean Ocean and hence to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. Geostrategically, Russia had NO CHOICE but to make sure Crimea stayed in friendly hands. [To understand this, see my article with maps:  FOOTNOTE 1 BELOW.]

Why was it so dumb for Putin to invade Ukraine? I mean really invade. Because even if the Russian army successfully occupies it, it will have to stay there in force to prop up whatever government Russia installs. And it will be subjected to endless guerrilla warfare funded and armed by the U.S. and its Eurolackeys. It will be a bleeding wound, just as Afghanistan was for the Soviet Union. (Does Putin's pining for the defunct SU extend to its debacles?) And the "sanctions"- economic warfare- being waged by the U.S. and its lackeys will significantly damage the Russian economy and hurt its people. In fact, bringing misery to people is the main point of U.S. sanctions. The goal is to create discontent with the government and undermine it, hopefully to overthrow it, as the U.S. is trying to do to Venezuela and Iran, North Korea, Cuba for 60 plus years, and whoever else gets in its way or displeases it.

Ukraine as another Afghanistan brings to mind another interesting parallel. It has emerged that the U.S. WANTED the Soviets in Afghanistan to bleed their army and weaken the Soviet regime. Likewise, the invasion of Ukraine can only be destructive for Russia. The U.S. and its lackeys are doing much to wreck the Russian economy right now. And billions of people are being subjected to saturation, non-stop anti-Russian propaganda which is putting a saintly glow of plucky martyrdom around Ukraine, hiding the key role played by actual neo-Nazis in the regime and its wars. 

The truth is, the U.S. practically forced Russia to invade Ukraine. For weeks leading up to the invasion, the Russians reiterated the same demands they've been making since 1999, when the U.S. double-crossed them and expanded NATO into more nations, violating a deal made with Mikhail Gobachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, in 1989. The U.S. publicly, adamantly refused to budge; Biden himself rejected the Soviet demand to keep Ukraine out of NATO. The U.S. had NATO announce in 2008 that Ukraine (and Georgia) would be welcomed into NATO. Infuriatingly, U.S. propagandists ignore what Putin actually "wants" and invent imaginary goals for him.

The second outrageous provocation was the U.S.-neo-nazi coup in 2014 that overthrew the elected president and replaced the government with one so hostile to everything Russian that it passed laws aimed at oppressing Russian-speaking Ukrainians. 

Here's the echo of Afghanistan: The Soviet Union was lured into invading Afghanistan by a dastardly plot of the Carter regime, masterminded by Carter's "National Security" Advisor, the Russia-despising Pole, Zbigniew Brzezinski. Brzezinski actually went to Afghanistan to put his fiendish plot in motion, and shortly thereafter the Soviets fell for it. Years later, Brzezinski slipped up and blurted out a boast about what he had done to a French publication, Le Nouvel Observateur [Paris], January 15-21, 1998, p. 76.:

Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs that the American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahiddin in Afghanistan six months before the Soviet intervention. Is this period, you were the national securty advisor to President Carter. You therefore played a key role in this affair. Is this correct?

Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahiddin began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan on December 24, 1979. But the reality, closely guarded until now, is completely otherwise: Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention [emphasis added throughout].

Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into the war and looked for a way to provoke it?

B: It wasn’t quite like that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q : When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against secret US involvement in Afghanistan , nobody believed them . However, there was an element of truth in this. You don’t regret any of this today?

B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter, essentially: “We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war." Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war that was unsustainable for the regime , a conflict that bought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported Islamic fundamentalism, which has given arms and advice to future terrorists?

B : What is more important in world history? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some agitated Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So these supremely cynical U.S. imperialist brought the world Islamofascism. And people tolerate their continuance in power, their continued rule over us all.

And next time you hear propagandists and politicians describing Putin as diabolically cunning, remember they are building up a bogeyman to distract the people in the countries they rule and to rally support for their own imperialist aggressions.

Brzezinski interview translated from the French by William Blum and David N. Gibbs. This translation was published in Gibbs, "Afghanistan: The Soviet Invasion in Retrospect," International Politics 37, no. 2, 2000, pp. 241-242.

Original French version appeared in "Les Révélations d'un Ancien Conseilleur de Carter: ‘Oui, la CIA est Entrée en Afghanistan avant les Russes...’" Le Nouvel Observateur [Paris], January 15-21, 1998, p. 76. Click here for original French text.


1]  I published a series of articles on the Ukraine situation in 2014 which are still apropos today.. To see why the U.S. grabbing Ukraine is a dagger aiimed at Russia's vital strategic interests, read "Obama Dictates Terms to Russia To Keep Its Naval Base in Crimea."  When you go there, you can click on "2022" on the side of the page to see my latest essays.
You can search on that page the word "Ukraine" in the search box to pull up all the essays, or use this URL which is the search result: https://jasonzenith.blogspot.com/search?q=UKRAINE

What Is A "Crisis?"

It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Iraq.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Haiti (again).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Haiti (again).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Panama.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Grenada.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Cambodia.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Vietnam.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Cuba (again).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Lebanon.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Haiti.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Cuba.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded Mexico (four or five times).
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded the Philippines.
It wasn't a crisis when the U.S. invaded the British colony that became Canada.
It's a crisis when Russia invades Ukraine.

Understand?

File under "Hyper-Hypocrisy."
And by the way, I've missed some.

Countries have been invading countries for as long as they have existed. War and conquest are thousands of years old.

Ukraine is over 6,000 airmiles from the U.S. at the closest points. Ukraine is right next to Russia. Seems that Russia would naturally have a much greater interest in Ukraine than the U.S. should. Yet the U.S. insisted on making Ukraine a U.S. vassal state with the 2014 violent coup.
Russia was wrong to invade Ukraine- morally and politically. To quote Tallyrand,in strategic terms it's worse than a crime, it's a blunder. But the U.S. created the situation, both with its hostile takeover of Ukraine, and it's treachery towards Russia by breaking its promise not to expand NATO, instead relentlessly pushing it right up to Russia's borders and vowing to bring in Ukraine and Georgia as NATO nations. Russia has said scores of times that this is unaccepotable to them. The U.S. answer is the same as what U.S. apparatchik had to say about the EU in her infamous phone calll to U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Pyass- "Fuck the EU." It's "Fuck You Russia. You're too weak to stop us."

The biggest loser from U.S. arrogance and aggressiveness is Ukraine.