JOE LAURIA: [Putin] restored the sovereignty of this country, the dignity of Russia, and that pissed off a lot of people on Wall Street and in Washington

[Putin] restored the sovereignty of this country, the dignity of Russia, and that pissed off a lot of people on Wall Street and in Washington.  --Joe Lauria

@NakedHedgie, @TFL1728, You of course know this, but a good tidbit it is, anyway.. https://t.co/i7XJeOb5ue

— Jan F. Solvberg (@JanFSolvberg) September 29, 2024

The speaker is Joe Lauria, a contributor to Consortium News.

00:00. And now we see a revival of that because the Neocons are pushing to send missiles deep into Russia which could cause a nuclear exchange.  So they are then infused with this idea that they could use nukes, we can do it, the same sick world-dominating mentality.  Before this event, we were having a chat, we did a round table, and Scott was saying that the US is the rabid dog in the world.  The United States is seen by us . . . it's very hard for people to realize that we could be the bad guys, that our government is bad, and that gives a lot of advantage to the government.  And through the media pushing their public or noble lie that we are special people, we are exceptional, we bring democracy to everyone, we only care and only want to do good in the world that's only those bad guys, those Russians, those Iranians.  What a coincidence that those are the really ugly countries, the ones that the US wants to get out of the way for various reasons.  Because Russia, if you see, and I'll get to this . . . .  In 1948, the US made a deal with Mikola Lebed, a right-hand man of Stefan Bandera, who was the fascist Ukrainian leader during the war.  He killed thousands of Poles and Jews.  They brought him to New York City, and they set him up in an office in 1948, a year after the CIA was born, and they put him in that office.  Then they sent him to Ukraine for sabotage and propaganda operations.  Now Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, of course, so they went to Soviet Ukraine to work to undermine the Soviet Union.  They wouldn't touch Bandera by the way.  The British did, and MI6 worked with Bandera and, of course, the KGB finally assassinated him in 1959.  But the Americans worked with this guy, Lebed, until 1991, until Independence in Ukraine when the Soviet Union collapsed.  And when the Soviet Union collapsed, Wall Street rushed in and saw an incredible country.  The resources of Russia were beyond any other country, the territories large with gold, gas, oil, and all kinds of other minerals there.  This is a prize, and they went in there and they acid-stripped a formerly state-controlled and state-owned economy and then enriched themselves unbelievably in the process, created this oligarchy class and impoverished the Russian people.  I went to Moscow in 1995 under Yeltsin.  I couldn't believe what I saw, a Wild West.  Hundreds of people living in front of the train stations burning fires trying to survive outside.  Cops taking bribes right in front of me on a cab that I was in from the cab driver, they didn't care.  Two guys saw my camera, and they came running after me. I had to ditch them in the Moscow Metro.  Wild scenes.  Exactly 20 years later, that was October 1995; in October 2015, I went back again to Moscow.  It was a complete coincidence, that exactly 10 years later, I'd left Berlin and I thought I was still in Western Europe.  Clean, orderly.  Why? What happened?  This is not the crazy country that I . . . .  Putin, who we don't have any real right to say whether he should rule this country or not; that's up to the Russian people.  [Putin] restored the sovereignty of this country, the dignity of Russia, and that pissed off a lot of people on Wall Street and in Washington.  His 2006 Munich Security Conference speech, listen to that.  He says, "they [the U.S.] were not supposed to expand NATO, and now you're expanding NATO.  You're just playing us for fools.  We're not going to take it anymore."  And guess what?  From 2006 to 2022, 16 years, he did take it, but he didn't take it anymore.  And that's what led us to this invasion, the overthrow of [Viktor] Yanukovych, and then the launching of a civil war against Russian speakers in the east of Ukraine, who were defending democracy.  They had voted for Yanukovych, and it was overthrown in a coup.  [The West] called it a revolution.  Tell me one revolution where a democratic-elected government was overthrown.  Revolutions [war against]  kings and dictators.  This was a coup that the US organized.  Why?  Because Yanukovych decided he was going to take a Russian economic package and not the EU one, so they overthrew him and then a Civil War was launched.  Thousands of people were killed over 8 years in Donbass that was launched with U.S. help, and they were training Ukraine forces; NATO was training the Ukrainian forces, arming them.  It was a defacto NATO State already.  And we then learn from Angela Merkel after she left office, the German Chancellor, that they purposely did not implement a deal that the Russians worked very hard with the Germans and the French to sign, which was the Minsk Accords.  The UN Security Council endorsed it unanimously. The US voted for it.  This was supposed to allow eastern Ukraine to remain inside Ukraine [and] have autonomy, and Merkel admitted that they never took that seriously for a minute.  They used the time.  They were buying time to arm Ukraine.  Then in 2021, of course, in December, the Russians offered a treaty to NATO, and a treaty to the United States to create a new security architecture in Europe.  [The Russians] couldn't put up with this anymore.  They tried that in 2008.  It failed.  They repeatedly tried this, and now, after that failure, Putin said "If you don't take these deals or negotiate these deals, we will take military-technical measures."  What does that mean?  They wanted, the US wanted this invasion.  Biden needed it, he said so in Poland.  The aim here is to overthrow Putin.  Lloyd Austin also said it's to weaken Russia.  They needed to do this through an economic war and an information war and a ground proxy war.  They're losing all three.  Only people in the United States and Western Europe believed any of the crap about Ukraine, sorry.  And why?  Because the history is not there.  It's being excised, it's being taken out, and the Russian point of view is being removed they are de-fanging journalism on purpose because we are meddling with the state narrative, the noble lie.  Speaking of which, I invited Howard Zinn, the Great American historian, late now, great historian, to the UN to address UN correspondents, and I asked him then, what is the American Noble lie?  Without any hesitation, he said Democracy.