Over the past three months I’ve authored six articles about the conflict between Russia and Ukraine: that’s six out of eleven installments that have showed up at MY CORNER and then published in such venues as LEWROCKWELL.com and THE UNZ REVIEW.
That may seem excessive—and I acknowledge that. But the issue is, I would suggest, one of staggering significance to the United States and, indeed, to the future of the world.
As you might imagine, I have some friends who disagree with what I’ve written and have taken me to task for my views and assertions. There has even been a suggestion calling into question my use of sources and how I evaluate information and news which comes across my desk top computer. While I freely admit that I have a longstanding predisposition to distrust the standard American sources on the conflict in that part of Europe—and that my reading about and study of post-Communist Russia over the past twenty years inclines me to be more open to the Russian position in this crisis—at the same time I am very conscious that the first thing to suffer and disappear during war time is truth. And that both sides in this gruesome conflict employ propaganda and whatever media sources available to them.
Obviously, the Western media, that is, the major American news organs (Fox, MSNBC, CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, etc.) and their equivalents in Europe are unanimously and zealously pro-Ukrainian. And there are some very important reasons for that, including the fact that nearly the entirety of that media reflects a globalist and neoconservative perspective on the conflict.
Indeed, there is a real symbiosis between the major American media and the political establishment, centered in Washington D.C. That virtual unity includes both the Democrats and the Republicans, who, if anything, are more war like than their supposed opponents. Indeed, a friend of mine commented that he thought it significant that on the war the positions of Fox News and CNN were almost identical; he said that because he believed that since all the major news sources were in agreement, then certainly what they presented was truthful.
But that has not been and is not how I evaluate the news coming out of Ukraine and Russia. Every assertion I write about I try to back up with a variety of sources; I attempt to verify the best I can. Some of the information I present is highly contentious or debatable; I offer it to counter what I consider to be the over-the-top, at times hysterical reporting that shows up on Fox or CNN. As another friend recently said to me concerning the claims of Russian “war crimes”: “Maybe at the end of this thing we’ll see who was right?”
I am certainly willing to continue to evaluate seriously what is reported, and I hope that at some point there will be a final accounting of what is fact, what is mere supposition, and what is indeed fake and propaganda.
Nevertheless, the more I read, each morning dozens of sources from all over the world, the more I seriously doubt the commonly-held mantra of the near-totality of our major news media.
And that, given the critical issues involved in this question, is why I continue to write about it and offer a contrary view to much of what can be seen on Fox News or spewed forth by a Brian Kilmeade. And why I attempt to do that as intelligently as I can.
Just recently I came across perhaps the clearest and most reasonable account of what has been going on in Ukraine. Its importance comes due to the fact that its author, Jacques Baud, a retired colonel in the Swiss intelligence service, was variously a highly placed, major participant in NATO training operations in Ukraine. Over the years, he also had extensive dealings with his Russian counterparts. His long essay first appeared (in French) at the respected Centre Français de Recherche sur le Renseignement. A literal translation appeared at The Postil (April 1, 2022). I have gone back to the original French and edited the article down some and rendered it, I hope, in more idiomatic English. I do not think in editing it I have damaged Baud’s fascinating account. For in a real sense, what he has done is “to let the cat out of the bag.”
In the past I’ve read accounts and reports that either confirm or in some way match the narrative that he offers. Some of these that I’ve written about or cited are by: Dr. John Mearsheimer, Archbishop Carlo Vigano, Glenn Greenwald, Sohrab Ahmari, Colonel Douglas Macgregor, Mike Whitney, and others. But none of these writers has offered the first- hand, in depth, and comprehensive account as Colonel Baud, clearly and knowledgeably, has done.
It is still a bit lengthy, despite my editing. But I urge you to read and ponder Baud’s commentary. Along with the historical accounts of historian John Mearsheimer, it should be required reading for those zealous policy hawks, both in the GOP and the Democratic Party, who are pushing us into World War III:
The Military Situation In The Ukraine cf2r.org/documentation/la...ion-militaire-en-ukraine/
March 2022 BY Jacques Baud
Part One: The Road To War
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