Ukraine & Sy Hersh

 It is now one year since the Russia-Ukraine war began.

All through the murder and mayhem, the wanton destruction of cities and displacement of people that has been happening since 24 February, 2022, one thing has become increasingly clear - the whole thing is what we suspected it to be: a set-up. It is the people of Ukraine who are getting played by its 'friends and allies'. 

The current situation reminds us of the African proverb  - 'When elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled'. The trampling is happening not only in Ukraine but also on the rest of continental Europe. And yet, the amazing thing is that not one newspaper or magazine from the so-called 'free-world' had the guts to speak truth to power, and provide a platform to the most celebrated investigative journalist of our times, Seymour Hersh. 

A few years ago the New Yorker had refused to carry Hersh's story on the truth behind the killing of Osama Bin Laden - it was picked up by the London Review of Books. This time even the LRB chickened out out, so he had to publish it as a blog-post titled, "How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline".

Thanks to this one journalist we now have a better understanding of how this whole tragedy played out. How the US ignored its own tacit agreement with Russia while expanding NATO; how it positioned nuclear missiles closer and closer to Russian cities until it created a situation for an 'unproved aggression'; how it resented Europe's closer economic ties with a rival to a point where it ganged up with Norway to blow up under-sea gas pipelines that belonged to its own close allies! 

Now USA is in a happy situation where it (along with Norway) can sell overpriced fuel to its hapless European allies while at the same time, ramping up its own arms export export industry. Sell energy, sell guns, and go laughing all the way to the bank. So what if a few million Ukrainians and Russians die in the bargain?

Ever since this story came out I have been poring over articles, YouTube videos - anything to understand more about the life and work of Seymour Hersh. What an amazing life!

The United States of America redeems itself - to some extent - by not harming this journalist, and by letting him carry on with his work.

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REFERENCES & LINKS

Substack blog - How America Took Out the Nord Stream Pipeline (2023) - https://seymourhersh.substack.com/p/how-america-took-out-the-nord-stream

NY Public Library (2018) - https://youtu.be/JRvXx-H0b-Y

The Killing of OBL (2016) - https://youtu.be/yyISsqHShlM

LRB Interview (2016) - https://youtu.be/R_zk5b7v9M0