For the past week this author has been perplexed by the focussed tirade by BBC and CNN against Russia. The US keeps reminding the world – ostensibly on behalf of NATO – that the Russian invasion could begin anytime now.
Pipeline of discord | UNZ website
This news occupies so much of time that there is just no news about China’s Winter Olympics. Has the media been asked to black out China?
We have seen much of global media succumbing to US pressures when it came to news on Iraq, Afghanistan and even earlier when it asked news channels to black out the Nobel award acceptance speech of Harold Pinter in 2005. That was just around the time when the USA was making a desperate case for the invasion of Iraq.
As he said in his talk, “The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law. The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public; an act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading – as a last resort – all other justifications having failed to justify themselves – as liberation.”
No wonder Pinter’s speech was blacked out.
A similar tapestry of lies is now being woven around Ukraine. One of the best analyses that is available can be found here. It brilliantly points out how the main objective of the US is to scuttle the Nordstream2, a gas pipeline which could bring in oil and gas into Germany using the undersea pipeline route. The US has admitted this. It knows that if it could stage some provocative action to make Russia move into Ukraine, it could tell the world “I told you so”.
But as UNZ points out, “Washington needs to create the perception that Russia poses a security threat to Europe. That’s the goal. They need to show that Putin is a bloodthirsty aggressor with a hair-trigger temper who cannot be trusted. To that end, the media has been given the assignment of reiterating repeatedly, “Russia is planning to invade Ukraine.” What’s left unsaid is that Russia has not invaded any country since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and that the US has invaded or toppled regimes in more than 50 countries in the same period of time, and that the US maintains over 800 military bases in countries around the world. None of this is reported by the media, instead the focus is on “evil Putin” who has amassed an estimated 100,000 troops along the Ukrainian border threatening to plunge all of Europe into another bloody war.”
And then when you look at reports of the sea threat to the pipelines you begin to understand that the purpose behind the naval exercises could be to prevent any damage to the pipeline, which is complete, but awaits clearances from German regulators. The US wants to stop this.
UNZ believes that the target is Germany, and Ukraine is just a decoy. But I believe that the game could be a lot more devious. The real target could be China, which has come to Russia’s rescue and purchased oil and gas from it through a pipeline, thus minimising the oil sanctions unilaterally imposed by the US against Russia (China intends to import fresh water as well from Russia and is building a canal connecting Lake Baikal to its central provinces). China has reduced the impact of sanctions against Iran by purchasing its oil.
But Russia and China appear to have decided to stand together. That is also something that the US does not like. Together, they are a formidable combination.
The US strategy does not appear to be working. Ukraine has been repeatedly saying that it does not think Russia will invade its territory. It refuses to close its airspace. Germany has refused to be part of the aggression against Russia.
Germany wants the Nordstream2. USA does not. USA des not want a strong Russia. It does not want a strong China.
All these games are being played out so that the US can continue to be the boss of a Unipolar world.
(The author is consulting editor with FPJ. He tweets @rnbhaskar1)
