De Onthullende Yoeri Albrecht Affaire 9

Niet alleen bij Femke Halsema is sprake van narcisme, aan het zelfde egocentrisme lijdt tevens de voorzitter van de Europese Commissie, de wegens corruptie opgestapte Duitse minister van Defensie, Ursula von der Leyen, die streeft naar meer economische ‘Lebensraum’ voor allereerst de Duitse industrie die de motor vormt van de Europese economie. Oktober 2022 verklaarde zij publiekelijk:

De oorlog in Oekraïne is niet alleen een Europese Oorlog, maar een oorlog over de toekomst van de hele mensheid. Dus, de horizon van Europa kan alleen de gehele wereld omvatten.

In feite is dit het aloude ‘leitmotiv’ van het Europese kolonialisme dat heerst sinds het moment dat Columbus voet aan wal zette op het continent Amerika, en dat leidde tot de dood van tenminste 80 miljoen van de oorspronkelijke bewoners, die abusievelijk onmiddellijk Indianen werden genoemd. De niet democratisch verkozen Von der Leyen benadrukte dat de EU het Russisch-Chinese bondgenootschap als een wereldwijde bedreiging beschouwt, die dan ook — ik citeer opnieuw— ‘wereldwijd moet worden bestreden.’ In haar toespraak voor een zaal vol ambassadeurs van EU-landen maakte zij duidelijk dat niet allereerst de mensenrechten en de democratie centraal staan, maar  — zoals ook ten tijde van Columbus — het beheer over grondstoffen en markten, het belangrijkste motief van de voormalige koloniale machten. Zij merkte op:

Neem bijvoorbeeld Lithium of zeldzame metalen; zij zijn van vitaal belang voor onze groene en digitale overgang. Geen enkele windturbine, geen enkel zonnepaneel is mogelijk zonder deze grondstoffen. De vraag ernaar zal exponentieel stijgen. Zoveel is zeker,

maar, zo voegde de machtigste Europese ambtenaar hieraan toe: ‘Het niet zo goede nieuws is: één land beheerst de wereldwijde markt. Dat is China.’

Dit is de kern van de zaak. Mevrouw von der Leyen weet net als iedere geschoolde burger dat de koloniale- én de neo-koloniale geschiedenis -- sinds de jaren zestig van de twingtigste eeuw -- het Westen in staat stelde de meeste grondstoffen en markten direct of indirect te beheersen, hetgeen eerst Europa en vervolgens de Europese nazaten in de VS schatrijk maakte. 

In zijn magistrale A People's History of the United States. 1492-present (1980), wereldwijd een bestseller, opent de Amerikaanse historicus Howard Zinn met een fragment uit Columbus’ brief aan zijn koninklijke opdrachtgevers. Na zijn eerste ontmoeting met 'Indianen' schreef de zeevaarder uit Genua over hen: 

They... willingly traded everything they owned... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome features... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out of ignorance. They have no iron. They would make fine servants... With fifty men we would subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.

Zinn merkt vervolgens op:

These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus. Columbus wrote:

‘As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts?’

The Information that Columbus most wanted was: Where is the gold?

Met de zogeheten 'ontdekking van Amerika’ begon:

an era of genocide, cruelty, and slavery on a larger scale than had ever been seen before. We must finally learn to look at that past with open eyes. We must dare abandon our comfortable but false myths, for the sake of our children and their children,

zoals de Amerikaanse publicist Hans Koning vaststelde in Columbus: His Enterprise. Exploding the Myth (1992). Slaven en goud waren vele generaties lang de belangrijkste drijfveren. Omdat, in de woorden van Columbus ‘gold is the most excellent, gold is treasure, and who has it can do whatever he likes in this world,’ maakte hij slaven van de Indianen en liet hen de handen afhakken zodra ze het door hem vastgestelde quotum goud niet haalden. Het resultaat van zijn terreurbewind was volkerenmoord, waarbij de Holocaust een bagatel blijft. Howard Zinn: ‘from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines... Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas.

Op zijn beurt concludeerde de Amerikaanse historicus, schout-bij-nacht, Samuel Eliot Morison, die een Pulitzer Prijs kreeg voor zijn biografie van Columbus: 'The cruel policy initiated by Columbus and pursued by his successors resulted in complete genocide.’

De Zuid-Amerikaanse auteur Eduardo Galeano beschrijft in zijn beroemde trilogie Kroniek van het Vuur. Vijf eeuwen economische exploitatie van Latijns-Amerika (1986) de continuïteit van de gewelddadige Europese/Amerikaanse cultuur die de al even witte elites in Latijns-Amerika gebruikten ‘als louter instrumenten van het internationale kapitalisme, welvarende onderdelen van het wereldwijde raderwerk dat het bloed van de koloniën en semi-koloniën uitzoog.’

En nog steeds gebruikt het Westen onder aanvoering van Washington Theodore  Roosevelt's doctrine van 'Speak softly and carry a big stick,' zoals we recentelijk opnieuw hebben gezien in ondermeer Irak, in Afghanistan, in Syrië, in Libië, en wel omdat:

the idea of negotiating peacefully, simultaneously threatening with the 'big stick,’ or the military, ties in heavily with the idea of Realpolitik, which implies an amoral pursuit of political power that resembles Machiavellian ideals.

Zie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Stick_Diplomacy

De 21ste eeuw wordt de eeuw waarin Azië tot volle wasdom zal komen, tenminste als de NAVO onder aanvoering van Washington geen Derde Wereldoorlog uitlokt, en de Europese Unie haar huidige politieke hysterie laat varen. Een voorbeeld van de almaar voortdurende onnozelheid gaf Ursula von der Leyen in oktober 2022 toen zij met veel fanfare verkondigde dat ‘Rusland’s mislukking alleen de op regels gebaseerde wereldwijde orde  niet [zal] redden. Want het revisionisme van het Kremlin is niet de enige en grootste bedreiging van de op regels gebaseerde orde. De zogeheten onbeperkte samenwerking die door Vladimir Poetin en Xi Jinping is afgekondigd is eveneens een duidelijke bedreiging van de naoorlogse orde, gebouwd op de kernwaarden van het VN-handvest,’ en dus ‘moeten [wij] deze wereldwijde uitdaging een halt toeroepen, wij moeten het vertrouwen in onze wereldwijde doelen herstellen.’ Een onmogelijke klus gezien het feit dat nu 87 procent van de wereldbevolking niet de kant van het Westen heeft gekozen. Von der Leyen’s propaganda mag dan wel de corrupte westerse ‘corporate press’ overtuigen, maar zeker niet de overgrote meerderheid van de wereldbevolking. De door de VS verloren imperialistische oorlogen in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Irak, Libië, Syrië, en nu Oekraïne, mogen als gevolg van de collectieve amnesie van de westerling dan wel uit zijn bewustzijn zijn verdwenen, maar dit geldt zeker niet voor de rest van de wereldbevolking. Die laat zich niet langer meer terroriseren door de westerse macht. Die heeft, in tegenstelling tot het Westen, van de geschiedenis geleerd. 

Ondertussen wordt de radicale gekte onder westerse politici en pers steeds groter. Tijd dus om een echte journalist te introduceren. Zijn naam is Patrick Lawrence,

a longtime columnist, essayist, critic, and lecturer. He was a correspondent abroad (writing as Patrick L. Smith) for many years, chiefly for the Far Eastern Economic Review, the International Herald Tribune, and The New Yorker, and chiefly in Asia. His most recent books are Somebody Else’s Century: East and West in a Post-Western World (Pantheon) and Time No Longer: America After the American Century (Yale). His next book is tentatively titled After Exceptionalism. His website is patricklawrence.us.

Op 6 juni 2023 berichtte Lawrence:

I tell you, serving as a New York Times correspondent these days cannot be easy. You have to convey utter nonsense to your readers while maintaining a straight face and a serious demeanor. You have to suggest the Russians may have exploded a drone over the Kremlin, that they may have blown up their own gas pipeline, that their president is an out-of-touch psychotic, that their soldiers in Ukraine are drunkards using faulty equipment, that they attack with ‘human hordes’ (Orientalism, anyone?) and on and on — all the while affecting the gravitas once associated with the traditional ‘Timesman.’ You try it sometime.

I am reminded of that pithy passage in Daniel Boorstin’s regrettably overlooked book, The Image. ‘The reporter’s task,’ Boorstin wrote in 1962, ‘is to find a way of weaving these threads of unreality into a fabric that the reader will not recognize as entirely unreal.’

Boorstin reflected on America’s resort to

imagery, illusion, and distortion as Washington geared up its gruesome follies in Vietnam. The reporter’s task is a whole lot harder now, given how much farther we have wandered into illusion and distortion since Boorstin’s day.  

And now we have the case of Thomas Gibbons–Neff, a square-jawed former Marine covering the Ukraine war for The Times — strictly to the extent the Kyiv regime permits him to do so, as he explains with admirable honesty. This guy is serious times 10, he and his newspaper want us to know.  

Tom’s job this week is to persuade us that all those Ukrainian soldiers wearing Nazi insignia, idolizing Jew-murdering, Russophobic collaborators with the Third Reich, gathering ritually in Nazi-inspired cabals, marching through Kyiv in Klan-like torch parades are not what you think. Nah, our Tom tells us. They look like neo–Nazis, they act like neo–Nazis, they dress like neo–Nazis, they profess Fascist and neo–Nazi ideologies, they wage this war with the Wehrmacht’s visceral hatred of Russians—O.K., but whyever would you think they are neo–Nazis? 

They are just regular guys. They wear the Wolfsangel, the Schwarze sonne, the black sun, the Totenkopf, or Death’s Head — all Nazi symbols — because they are proud of themselves, and these are the kinds of things proud people wear. I was just wearing mine the other day. 

The slipping and sliding starts early in ‘Nazi Symbols on Ukraine’s Front Lines Highlight Thorny Issues of History,’ the piece Gibbons–Neff published in Monday’s editions. He begins with three photographs of neo–Nazi Ukrainian soldiers, SS insignia plainly visible, that the Kyiv regime has posted on social media, ‘then quietly deleted,’ since the Russian intervention began last year. ‘The photographs, and their deletions,’ Gibbons–Neff writes, ‘highlight the Ukrainian military’s complicated relationship with Nazi imagery, a relationship forged under both Soviet and German occupation during World War II.’

Complicated relationship with Nazi imagery? Stop right there, Mr. Semper fi. Ukraine’s neo–Nazi problem is not about a few indiscreetly displayed images. Sorry. The Ukrainian army’s ‘complicated relationship’ is with a century of ultra-right ideology drawn from Mussolini’s Fascism and then the German Reich. As is well-known and documented, the neo–Nazis who infest the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the AFU — among many other national institutions — have made idols of such figures as Stepan Bandera, the freakishly murderous nationalist who allied with the Nazi regime during the war.

This history is a matter of record, as briefly outlined here, but Gibbons–Neff alludes to none of it. It’s merely a matter of poor image-making, you see. In support of this offensive whitewash, Gibbons–Neff has the nerve to quote a source from none other than Bellingcat, which was long, long back exposed as a CIA and MI6 cutout and which is now supported by the Atlantic Council, the NATO–funded, spook-infested think tank based in Washington. 

‘What worries me, in the Ukrainian context, is that people in Ukraine who are in leadership positions, either they don’t or they’re not willing to acknowledge and understand how these symbols are viewed outside of Ukraine,’ a Bellingcat ‘researcher’ named Michael Colborne tells Gibbons–Neff. ‘I think Ukrainians need to increasingly realize that these images undermine support for the country.’

Think about that. The presence of Nazi elements in the AFU is not a worry. The worry is merely whether clear signs of Nazi sympathies might cause some members of the Western alliance to decide they no longer want to support Nazi elements in the AFU. I am reminded of that Public Broadcasting news segment last year, wherein a provincial governor is featured with a portrait of Bandera behind him. PBS simply blurred the photograph and ran the interview with another of the courageous, admirable Ukrainians to which we are regularly treated.

I hardly need remind paying-attention readers that the neo–Nazis-who-are-not-neo–Nazis were for years well-reported as simply neo–Nazis in the years after the U.S.–cultivated coup in 2014. The Times, The Washington Post, PBS, CNN — the whole sorry lot — ran pieces on neo–Nazi elements in the AFU and elsewhere. In March 2018, Reuters published a commentary by Jeff Cohen under the headline ‘Ukraine’s Neo–Nazi Problem.’ Three months later The Atlantic Council, for heaven’s sake, published a paper, also written by Cohen, titled, ‘Ukraine’s Got a Real Problem with Far–Right Violence (And no, RT Didn’t Write This Headline).’ I recall, because it was so surprising coming from the council, that the original head on that paper was ‘Ukraine’s Got a Neo–Nazi Problem,’ but that version now seems lost to the blur of stealth editing. 

Then came the Russian intervention, and Poof! There are no more neo–Nazis in Ukraine. There are only these errant images that are of no special account. And to assert there are neo–Nazis in Ukraine — to have some semblance of memory and a capacity to judge what is before one’s eyes — ‘plays into Russian propaganda,’ Gibbons–Neff warns us. It is to ‘give fuel to his’ — Vladimir Putin’s — ‘false claims that Ukraine must be de–Nazified.’ For good measure Gibbons–Neff gets out the old Volodymyr-Zelensky-is-Jewish chestnut, as if this is proof of… of something or other.

My mind goes to that lovely Donovan lyric from the Scottish singer’s Zen enlightenment phase. Remember ‘There Is a Mountain?’ The famous lines went, ‘First there is a mountain/ Then there is no mountain/ Then there is.’ There were neo–Nazis in Ukraine, then there were no neo–Nazis, and now there are neo–Nazis but they aren’t neo–Nazis after all. 

There are a few things to think about as we consider Thomas Gibbons–Neff’s story, other than the fact that it is horse-droppings as a piece of journalism. For one thing, nowhere in it does he quote or reference any member of the AFU — no one wearing a uniform, no one sporting one of these troubling insignia. Various image-managing officials speak to him about the neo–Nazis who-are-not-neo–Nazis, but we never hear from any neo–Nazi-who-is-not-a-neo–Nazi to explain things as a primary source, so to say. I wager Gibbons–Neff never got within 20 miles of one: He wouldn’t dare, for then he would have to quote one of these insignia-sporting people saying that of course he was a neo–Nazi. Can’t you read, son? 

For another, Gibbons–Neff resolutely avoids dilating his lens such that the larger phenomenon comes into view. It all comes down to those three unfortunate insignia in those three deleted photographs. The parades, the corridors of neo–Nazi flags, the ever-present swastikas, the reenactments of all-night SS rituals, the glorification of Nazis and Nazi collaborators, the Russophobic blood lust: Sure, it can all be explained, except that our Timesman does not go anywhere near any of this.

Gibbons–Neff’s story follows by 10 days an even more contorted piece of pretzel-like rubbish published in The Kyiv Independent, a not-independent daily that has been supported by various Western governments. This is by one Illia Ponomarenko, a reporter much-lionized in the West, and appeared under the headline, ‘Why some Ukrainian soldiers use Nazi-related insignia.’

This is the kind of piece that is so bad it tips into fun. ‘No, Ukraine does not have “a Nazi problem,” Ponomarenko states flatly, and this is the last flat sentence we get in this piece. ‘Just like in many places around the world, people with far-right and neo–Nazi views, driven by their ideology, are prone to joining the military and participating in conflicts,’ he writes. And then this doozy, where begins a riot of irrationality:

'It is, of course, true that, for instance, the Azov Battalion was originally founded by neo–Nazi and far-right groups (as well as many soccer ultra-fans), which brought along with it the typical aesthetics—not only neo–Nazi insignia but also things like Pagan rituals or names like "The Black Corps," the official newspaper of Nazi Germany’s major paramilitary organization Schutzstaffel (SS).'

But worry not, readers. It is merely an aesthetic, part of a harmless, misunderstood ‘subculture’: 

In the oversimplified memory of some around the world, particularly within various militaristic subcultures, symbols representing the Wehrmacht, Nazi Germany’s Armed Forces, and the SS are seen to reflect a super-effective war machine, not the perpetrators of one of the greatest crimes against humanity in human history.

But of course. SS insignia, Wehrmacht iconography: Seen it everywhere people admire super-effective war machines. Remember this logic next time some liberal flamer proposes to persecute a MAGA supporter who partakes of this ‘subculture.’

Has Tom Gibbons–Neff given us a rewrite job? Having been around the block for a good long time, I have seen this kind of thing often enough — correspondents scoring off the local dailies to look deep and penetrating back on the foreign desk. It is also possible, assuming for a moment Gibbons–Neff’s editors still read other newspapers, that they asked him for just such a piece after seeing Ponomarenko’s. Either way, we get this in Ponomarenko’s recognizably illogical style:

Questions over how to interpret such symbols are as divisive as they are persistent, and not just in Ukraine. In the American South, some have insisted that today, the Confederate flag symbolizes pride, not its history of racism and secession. The swastika was an important Hindu symbol before it was co-opted by the Nazis. 

If you are going to reach, Tom, may as well reach for the stars.

We have a New York Times correspondent quoting Ukraine’s Defense Ministry and Bellingcat, an intel cutout that is part of a NATO think tank, and then rather too closely, I would say, aping a Western-supported newspaper in Kyiv. Yes, Virginia, I believe we all got ourselves one of them there echo chambers, just the way the Deep State likes ’em.

Last March, Gibbons–Neff was interviewed by The New York Times. Yes, they do this sort of thing down there on Eighth Avenue, where they simply cannot get enough of themselves. It is enlightening. The unfortunate Times reporter assigned as the straight man asked, as our intrepid correspondent self-aggrandized, ‘What have been the biggest challenges in covering the war?’ Gibbons–Neff’s reply is pricelessly revealing. 

‘Wrestling with access and being allowed to go certain places to see things that you need the press officer for, or permission from the military unit,’ the fearless ex–Marine explains. ‘Ukrainians know how to manage the press fairly well. So navigating those parameters and not rubbing anyone the wrong way has always been tough.’

Forget about bombs, missiles, gore, the fog of war, courageous sergeants, trench stench, grenades, or any of the other horrors of battle. Gibbons–Neff’s big problems as he pretends to cover the Ukraine war are maintaining access, getting the Kyiv gatekeepers’ permission to go someplace, and avoiding annoying the regime’s authorities. 

Does this tell you everything you want to know about our Timesman or what? 

It is always interesting to ask why a piece such as this appears when it does. Dead silence for months on the neo–Nazi question, and then suddenly a long explainer that does its best to avoid explaining anything. Always interesting to ask, never easy to answer. 

It could be that a lot of stuff on these awful people is sifting out from under the carpet. Or maybe something big is on the way and this piece is preemptive. Or maybe either Gibbons–Neff or his editors saw the Ponomarenko piece as an opportunity to dispose of one of the Kyiv regime’s most embarrassing features. 

Or maybe the larger context counts here. As mentioned in this space last week, The Times’s Steve Erlanger recently suggested from Brussels that NATO might do a postwar Germany job with Ukraine: Welcome the west of the country to the alliance and let the eastern provinces go for an indefinite period, unification the long-term objective. Late last week Foreign Affairs ran a fantastical piece by Andriy Zagorodnyuk, formerly a Ukrainian defense minister and now, yes indeedy, a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. It appeared under the headline, 'To Protect Europe, Let Ukraine Join NATO — Right Now.' 

Zagorodnyuk’s argument is as loopy (maf. svh) as his subhead, ‘No Country Is Better at Stopping Russia.’ But these kinds of assertions, dreamily hyperbolic as they may be, have a purpose. They serve to enlarge the field of acceptable discourse. They inch us closer to normalizing the thought that Ukraine must be accepted in the North Atlantic alliance for our sake, the sake of the West, no matter how provocative such a move will prove.

This suggest that Gibbons–Neff’s piece, along with the one he followed in the Kyiv paper, are by way of a cleanup job. The Western press, working closely with intelligence agencies, did its best to prettify the savage jihadists attempting to bring down the Assad government in Damascus, you will recall. Remember the 'moderate rebels?' Maybe Gibbons–Neff is on an equally dishonorable errand. 

Semper fi, huh? Always faithful to what?

https://ap.gilderlehrman.org/resource/columbus-reports-his-first-voyage-1493 

Ter verduidelijking: ‘Always Faithful,’ Semper Fidelis is the motto of every Marine — an eternal and collective commitment to the success of our battles, the progress of our Nation, and the steadfast loyalty to the fellow Marines we fight alongside.

Het treurige feit is nu dat zowel de GroenLinkse Burgemeester van Amsterdam, Femke Halsema, als het voltallige westerse regentendom de neo-nazi’s in Oekraïne steunt, terwijl het land ondertussen door Zelensky himself wordt verkocht aan het Amerikaanse megaconcern BlackRock. 

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and BlackRock

 CEO Larry Fink agreed to coordinate investment in rebuilding Ukraine, Kyiv announced Wednesday following a meeting between the two men.

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/28/zelenskyy-blackrock-ceo-fink-agree-to-coordinate-ukraine-investment.html

En dit allemaal gesteund met belastinggeld van de westerse burger. Meer de volgende keer. 

De neo-nazi's van de Oekraiense strijdkrachten.