Letter from the Forbidden Land 

I am writing from Russia, a forbidden land, which the Australian government tells us is a nation we are not allowed to visit. Most Russians, families, and friends however, come anyway. For Australia, Russia is taboo because of the situation in Ukraine, and so sanctions have hit currency exchange, internet, and banking services. Sanctions however are surreal. The supermarkets overflow with goods, people use Gmail and Google, and have smartphones, and the malls are drenched with the same perfume scents one can find in any Western nation. 

Australia boasts in freedom and democracy, but people have a short memory. Australians experienced three years of martial law under Covid Hysteria (2020-2022), when democratic freedoms, human rights, and freedom of movement and association were curtailed for a virus they spent three years lying about and still do. 

Australia ‘Stands with Ukraine,’ but it is not a pacifist nation and does not support peace. Australians love war. It is a mercenary state. Australians will go wherever they are sent, even if they are not invited. From 1885 to 1965, Australia did the bidding of the British, and from 1966 until the present, Australia does the bidding of Washington. Any political leader or academic who challenges American control over Australia will have a quiet career in obscurity. For years, government officials have been in a state of ecstasy at the prospect of Total War with the People’s Republic of China. They want a slice of the ruins of Beijing or Taiwan or both, which they have been promised by Washington. 

Australia calls it ‘freedom,’ but we know it by its real name: ‘money.’ This is the reason they are also in Ukraine, not for democracy, but for some part of the action in the ‘reconstruction period,’ which we have been told since February 2022 is just around the corner. 

Australia persecutes the Australian-Russian community, especially the children so a small, select group of Australia-based corporations can make a profit when the conflict is over. These benefits and others will flow like a deep river to all the politicians, journalists, church leaders, and others who are on the ‘Stand with Ukraine Gravy Train.’ In the meantime, the state turns a blind eye to various inconvenient truths. There is, for example, an Australian church that has been allegedly sending money for years to the Azov Battalion to aid in their war against Russia, in the name of Jesus, of course. Australia, unlike America, has not designated Azov as a terrorist organization. This large church also demanded their congregation denounce Russian loyalty or face expulsion. Last time I read my New Testament, Jesus is not a fascist. 

Did Australia ‘Stand with Iraq’ when America engaged in an ‘illegal and immoral invasion’ of that nation? Were the churches holding prayer vigils for the Iraqi people? Did Australia cut off banking, credit, and internet services with America? No, of course not. The Pacific’s great mercenary state hurriedly gave troops with the promise of some of the action after Iraq had been sent back to the Stone Age. The late Simon Crean was one of the few politicians who stood against military action outside the UN. His career ended, and others, who supported America’s doctrine of eternal war, flourished. These days, no one is allowed to talk about the War on Terror in Australia anyway. It is taboo. Soldiers and generals alike are mired in allegations of war crimes. 

The West doesn’t really care about the freedom of Ukraine, as they are happily and gleefully removing our freedoms from Washington to Canberra. We in the West face a relentless, persistent, and comprehensive assault on our civil liberties, our freedoms, our beliefs, our faith, and our very existence from a virulent form of neo-fascism that has emerged like a cancer out of our faltering democracy. Soldiers are going to fight for freedoms the West no longer believes in, and when they return, if they are not dismembered, blown to bits, or killed, they will be imprisoned, cancelled, or sued for saying things like ‘Only women can get pregnant,’ ‘Christ is Lord,’ ‘There are only men and women,’ or ‘Sex with animals is wrong.’ 

It is my belief that at some point, Ukraine will be betrayed by America. There are echoes of the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Spanish Civil War in this current malaise, and the ghosts and demons from those dark periods have been awoken from their slumber. If history is anything to go by, the West will not ‘Stand with Ukraine’ forever, and just like South Korea, and South Vietnam, Ukraine will face the cold reality of American strategic realignment. 

The Russians are fighting for what they believe is their homeland, and this is what the West doesn’t understand. In Donbas, they do not believe it is anything other than Russian territory. It is, in fact, not a war against the Ukrainian people, but against American imperialism. When the most recent conflict began, more Ukrainians fled to Russia than to the West. In fact, the largest community of Ukrainians in the world is in Russia. 

The Civil War in the eastern part of Ukraine has its roots in the US-backed coup in 2014 when the democratically elected Ukrainian government was toppled and America moved in. There has been civil conflict since 2014, and the death toll and psychological damage in the Donbas region has been catastrophic, but the Western media made sure none of it made front-page news for almost a decade. This is America’s Ukraine, and Kiev knows it all too well. 

The Ukrainian situation is an extension of Covid Hysteria. Fake news rules the day, defines and shapes the narrative, and silences dissent. We know now that Western troops have been on the ground even before February 2022. Why? We know that sections of the Ukrainian army are avowed fascists and white supremacists, who celebrate men who were responsible for the murder of thousands of Jews in the Holocaust. We know that there are many (some say 130 or so) American-funded biological labs in the Ukraine. 

None of these facts are denied, but they are simply brushed away as ‘not giving us the full picture,’ or as ‘Russian conspiracy theories.’ But like the Hunter Biden laptop fraud, and the vaccine scandals, we will see quiet acceptance of these realities by the media, because the difference between conspiracy theory and truth these days is only a year or so.

Even if there is a hint of fascism in Ukraine, the Russians will see the job is done to remove it. They will not retreat, for anti-fascism is deeply ingrained in their blood. Russia lost 30 million in the war with the fascists and their allies, and there is not a family who was not affected. While Japan still lies about its wartime past, Australia invents its past, and America revises the history of the Cold War, Russia remembers the past. Russians are very good at confronting their past, and have memorials and museums for everything. Russian people are deeply aware of their past. They even have a memorial for the graves of Nazi officers and soldiers who died on Russian soil. 

Russians remember, while we in the West are very good at forgetting. In America, Democrats can scream for four years that Trump was an illegitimate President and there were no consequences. If Trump or his supporters say the same about 2020, they are called domestic terrorists, and criminals. In Japan, most still deny the Nanking Massacre, and forget that it was Stalin’s entry into the war that brought Japan to unconditional surrender. In a year or two, the next crisis will be ‘Climate Hysteria,’ and anyone who tries to talk about the plight of the Ukrainians will be told ‘Shut up, stop talking about it, move on, nothing to see here.’ 

But, it is not all bad news. The 20th century saw the rise of massive national, transnational, and global corporations. The impact of these types of businesses have been minutely studied, and yet, there is much that is still enigmatic. There are two kinds of corporations today, those on the side of liberalism and freedom, and those on the side of tyranny and fascism. There are corporations tied to the state, and corporations that transcend the state. There are those corporations whose goals dovetail with the ideas of freedom and democracy, and those whose purpose is tied to foreign policies. Whether corporations are beacons of light or purveyors of darkness really depends on the context. Without corporate support for liberalism and freedom, the movement will vanish like the morning dew. 

What we are witnessing in America’s war in Ukraine is a much clearer picture of the future of capitalism. Basically, most companies are standing with Russia. I am astounded that so many companies are still here, despite the sanctions and despite the efforts of the American imperial state to curtail their activities as well as the pervasive fake news run by media in places like Australia. It suggests to me that the imperium is unravelling, and freedom may have allies in unlikely places. 

The ‘Stand with Ukraine’ movement is a cynical scam promoted by the corporations pulling the strings of Biden and NATO. It is in fact the largest arms sale in history, with live weapons testing in the towns and villages of a nation that no one in the West really cares about. Even Australia is eagerly giving away its only armored truck to Ukraine for free so their ‘Bushmasters’ can be tested against Russian tanks and missiles. 

Some believe that America’s goal is to bring about the collapse of the Russian Federation so it can move in and sustain its economy that has been in critical decline since the 1970s. There is some merit in this, but I believe the ghost of Franco has been dancing around Kiev. Ukraine is a trial run for war with China. America hopes it can provoke China on Taiwan and in the ensuing conflict, China will fall much like it did in the 19th century, ready to be plundered, I mean given ‘democracy,’ and ‘freedom.’ 

Only an imbecile would want to take on China. At least Russia has the Orthodox faith as well as the Old Believers and both share the Christian doctrine of forgiveness. The Chinese have never forgiven Japan, so that should give the West reason for pause. Japan, for some reason is excited to go to war with China again, rearming faster than a squirrel gathers nuts in the fall. I hope Tokyo has a good missile defense system because they are going to need it. They will have bigger problems than contaminating the ocean with their radioactive water in the years to come if they continue on this disastrous path. 

Why Ukraine? Why not somewhere else? For twenty years, weapons manufacturers rejoiced in the bonanza of America’s failed Middle East policies, wars that were never meant to end. Ever since the scandalous and abrupt departure from Afghanistan, these corporations have been searching for a new war, and when Russia realized that the West had betrayed them in the Minsk Accords, the so-called ‘Stand with Ukraine’ was born on February 22. It had been planned for a while. It also suited Joe Biden because under his tenure (with Barack), America’s involvement with Ukraine was accelerated. 

Joe loves Ukraine for some reason. Joe’s family and political history is wrapped up in the Ukraine, a public and well-known history that no one is allowed to talk about. So much for freedom. There is more taboo about Biden’s Ukraine connections than UFOs in America. America refuses to countenance negotiations with Moscow because it helps Joe’s reelection chances in 2024. Maybe Joe will get the Nobel Peace Prize in the process, but by then he probably won’t know what that is. 

While foreign mercenaries are fighting in Ukraine for ‘freedom,’ we in the West are dancing on the edge of a political abyss. Our future will be not unlike what happened in Stalin’s Russia. The parallels with today are deeply disturbing. All it took was an accusation for someone to be sent to the reeducation camps of Stalin. About 1.6 million people were sent to the Gulags, and millions more were cancelled, reported, punished, or killed. 

Like the #MeToo movement, and Cancel Culture, all it took was one accusation, and people saw the opportunity to destroy their enemies, people whom they envied and despised, and even rivals for love. There were few genuine investigations. Millions were unfairly sentenced and suffered. The Orthodox Church suffered terribly. 

I heard of one story about an innocent couple who lived in Belarus a few years before the Second World War, what Russian people call the Great Patriotic War. They owned a cow. They were hardworking people who made a valuable contribution to their village, but someone was jealous that they owned a cow and reported them to the Stalinists for being unpatriotic. They were forced to march across Russia in the middle of winter with their five kids. All the kids perished.

They resettled in the Ural Mountains the backbone of Russian industry and creativity, and rebuilt their lives. Despite the draconian anti-religious policies of the day, their mother used to say ‘The Lord God leads me.’ God gave them more children to ease the pain of losing the others. The parents worked hard and were much more successful in the Ural Mountains than in the west. Their children went onto enjoy productive lives, held in respect by all around them. 

Later in life, they returned home to the dilapidated, ruined village of their youth. Most of the village had been killed during the war. They went to the home of their Judas, a stunted man, living in squalor, filth, and poverty. They only had one question for him: ‘Was it worth it?’ He had no answer, and just stared at them in horrified silence. 

During Covid Hysteria, thousands of people rang up the police to report their friends and family who violated the martial law provisions in Australia. Now, Cancel Culture is rampant, though the #MeToo movement has taken some big hits recently with the legal system standing up for due process. 

Covid Hysteria was not an isolated incident. We, my friends, are at war, not against nations or ideology but against fascism. The old enemy has returned to the world, after decades of slumber. It is an existential threat. The one thing it hates is freedom. I used to think that there was no hope, but standing in Russia looking at all the companies that have rejected directives from the Imperium, maybe I was wrong. 

Maybe there is hope, though the path might be through suffering and pain. It usually is but that is because freedom is worth fighting for. Freedom matters today.