"Empire apologists will also argue that saying Russia was provoked into invading by the US empire is like saying a rape victim provoked her rapist by wearing a tight skirt, or a battered wife provoked her abuser by disobeying him. "
More like "take these weapons and threaten your neighbor and abuse your children by him. We totally have your back and when you're done, we might let you join our gang!"
I think it is inevitable that whenever the fighting stops, Ukraine will be as economically lame as Iraq. If Ukraine remains in the U.S. orbit, it will be owned by the IMF. And the neocons want that to be Russia’s fate as well.
To say the Russian presence in Ukraine was unprovoked is ludicrous, absurd, but to claim it was "unjustified' is not much better. It's like saying as they did before the laws on marital rape and spousal abuse that there was no such thing as the former, and the latter was a private matter under the "it takes two to tango" principle. The tango principle also figures in the "stand your ground" laws: no one is completely innocent of anything. But that is patently untrue there are lines, there are qualitative difference and quantitative differences that qualify as qualitative. Russia took too many hits from encirclement by NATO along with policy statements proposing the division of Russia into three states by the West for their control and pillage. No country in the world would not draw the line there, and certainly not the US. Britain made a huge fuss over the distant Falklands not long ago. What utter hypocritical obscurantism.
Right, and I think as a rationale for Panama, they claimed some of their personnel, with no right be there in the first place, were harassed or killed. Fourteen thousand ethnic Russians in the Donbas were killed, and brutally, and after the 2014 US coup, before Russia said, "enough".
No, that is not clear at all: there was no war, there was no military engagement, but a coup instigated by the West to remove a democratically elected head of state, not hostile to Ukraine's neighbour, Russia. Are you going to defend the 2014 coup as the natural outcome of differences, and the US, Newland, Biden, and other Americans played no part in the instigation and violence and choice of Yatsenyuk as head of state, so must bear responsibility for the Nazification of Ukraine?
You speak of yourself in the conjectural rant department and it is truly unhinged to deny the murder of 14,000 ethnic Russians in the Donbas - it is denied only by the totally biased and uninformed. As for what you stand for, I wouldn't be bothered to find out, but I doubt it falls far from my "conjectures".
Are you saying that preemptive strikes are justified by the encircling of a nation by a hostile alliance, if that alliance is sufficiently malicious in its intent and sufficently well armed?
Because I mean, I'm not sure I agree, but its a fantastic defense of Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
I don't want to get into Yom Kippur at this time, but the situation is somewhat if not glaringly different. Israel's claim is based on biblical history: alternatives considered included a wide range of other countries, including Argentina. Palestinians were driven forcibly out of Palestine by Israelis and many atrocities committed. How can that be compared with Russia and it's position and history with Ukraine? With NATO? With the 2014 coup against a legitimate president? With the Nazification of Ukraine specifically against Russian ethnics? Etc., etc..? Yes lots of irony, but little common ground.
I think that there are a great number of parallels you may be declining to see because it is inconvenient.
If we were to compare Russia to Israel's position, it matches almost all the criteria you just listed. It committed attrocities in Ukraine throughout the 20th century. Decossakisation, Dekulakisation, and of course the Holodomor. Lets be very clear, these were Russian intellectuals ordering these killings in a state which they had subsumed in a civil war.
They then spread communism there, an ideology which is the only competitor to nazism for deaths in the world caused by it.
If we are to believe Russia, they are surrounded by a western coalition which has massive superiority over them, backing a puppet in the state of Ukraine (as you claim) which is illegitimate.
Russia, citing its encirclement by a hostile block, struck first. This is a 1-1 parrallel of Israel thusfar.
I totally disagree with everything you state as fact. There were Ukraine Nazi militia fighting Russia in WWII, and there were Ukrainian brigades fighting for and with Russia. Have you ever heard of Stepan Bandera? Look him up: he goes back a long way in Ukraine history and is still celebrated today. Of course, we have our own Nazis and tradition, although a little less limelighted. The Holodomor, a very tragic event, was not perpetrated by Russia: there was a severe famine 1922, 23, and many Russians also died. On the subject, have you ever heard Winston Churchill's quote re the famine in India caused by the Britain's confiscation of India grain crops? "They brought it on themselves - they breed like rabbits." And the Russia civil war : it takes chutzpah to blame Russia for atrocities: 12 countries, Western or at their behest attacked Russia on their soil- my father was there as a young British soldier. These troops refused to fire on Russian workers. How about that?
My personal feelings about what Russia was forced to do in Ukraine just now, is profound sadness. And I blame the West and capitalist exploiters for the whole thing. Russia was in the right and had no choice. They aren't perfect but the the best (most moral/ethical) players on the scene right now. By far.
Forced to do is a chilling kind of term, as it seems to imply that there is such strategic excruciations which necessitate attacking a nation who's sovereignty you swore to uphold in a treaty during which they handed over their nuclear weapons. I do wonder, with I admit some trepidation, what you think you might be forced to do if ever placed at the levers of power. I take solace in how unlikely that is.
The mass murder perpetuated by the communist government of Russia, both with rifles, and with hunger, is not disputed by serious historians, and still has living victims. Disputing it as a natural disaster is an argument on the same level of seriousness as disputing the holocaust as a matter of broken supply chains and a wartorn country; It is an excuse. The root cause of the famine was a mix of bad agricultural policies perpetrated by incompetent Bolshevik cadres, the relentless push for industrialisation, and a calculated policy of extermination-through-hunger of politically inconvenient Cossack peoples.
We can talk all day about the famine in India, and I'm happy to have that discussion, but your attempt to deflect blame in this situation borders on the dishonest. Right now we're talking about what Russian and other soviet communists did in the Ukraine, and what it was was genocide. That is a material fact. Go and visit the mass graves. Ask the people who still survive it, or their children. Ask any serious historian. The Holodomor was an anthroprogenicc catastrophy, entirely engineered either through bloodlust or incompetence by the workers soviets.
If you insist however on bandying the Nazi word whilst denying another genocide of the 20th century, may I encourage you to watch any video of Ukranian soldiers liberating towns in the North recently? You'll note the population greets them tearfully. In Russian.
That isn't a coincidence, and it shows the illegitimacy of the claim that the population was nazified against the Russians, if that Russian speaking populace is desperately greatful that the Russian government thugs had been hurled out.
It will be an academic issue soon however. Russia is on the backfoot and breaking fast. I'll gleefully return here when that long process winds down. I hope it does so soon, so that the bloodshed may be kept to a minimum.
I thoroughly disagree, and many reputable historians don't support your opinion. Of course there are mass graves, but what was the cause, and how come the West didn't lift a finger to help either Ukraine or Russia? I believe your knowledge of history is tenuous, at best.
Irrelevant to the point. If I wanted to cherry-pick historical examples, I could say that Russia is the equivalent of the United States because of the colonization of Siberia and also the legacy of serfdom and none of it is relevant to the point.
Nobody said that Israel isn't surrounded by neighbors that wish it ill. The question is whether Israel's existence in its present location is justified in the first place.
Its not irrelevent because it demonstrates a double-standard in moral justification. Israel, in highly similar circumstances to the one Russia now finds itself in in Doris' own worldview insofar as they have presented it to me is criticized and illegitimate, Russia is spared. Russia is the 'best of a bad crowd', and its preemptive strike, supposedly justified. Its selective hypocrisy.
Since nobody is trying to use dekulakization or whatever other sins of a state that no longer exists to justify Russia's role in the conflict in Ukraine, it's irrelevant.
"Legacy of Serfdom"? That doesn't even equate with US capitalism through slavery: without captured slaves from far off Nigeria there would have been a different US and no US capitalism. And are there no serfs in the Western world right now? No beleaguered workers working 3 jobs, with no health coverage, or inadequate coverage that could precipitate bankruptcy at any time? What of the 2 1/2 million slave/inmates working for industry in prisons in the US? Many incarcerated for very minor, artificial crimes complicated by plea-bargains - and being black. Americans should have the grace to shut-the-fuck-up on Russia.
You are certainly right: there is no valid compassion between Israel and Russia, although Israel is now a fact and must be acknowledged as such.
Anyone paying attention in the build up to the war saw NATO and the US state department make fun of Putin's and Lavrov's attempts to negotiate peace. They publicly said that the peace process was a joke and that the Minsk accords from 2015 are unenforceable yet they never even tried. It is incredibly obvious that this war was provoked.
I also remember Zelensky saying Ukraine should have nuclear weapons about a week before the invasion. The fact then was they absolutely had the infrastructure to make good on this threat. I think that was a major contributing factor to the start of the war. Jimmy Dore had a good segment on the money side of all this yesterday also. The elites have been using the Ukraine as a supremely huge money laundering scheme. It's basically cui Bono? Why are all these EU countries torturing their citizens for the most corrupt country in Europe? How do billions of dollars appear over and over again for Ukraine for the last 8 years?How is the media 100% on board with the narrative and never the truth? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Kind of ironic that Ukraine enter into the Minsk agreements by giving up all its weapons. And then before this last war’s beginning Zelenski wants nuclear armaments from the west?! He ran an anti corruption and peace campaign. Sounds kind of like the Biden administration. How’s this about integrity? He needed to save his people by letting the Donbass region be self governing and getting rid of the Asov battalions from his rule, which were a threat to Russians who lost 26million or more in this same Ukraine region to the Nazis in WWII. The msm never tells you this part of history. Why PBS?
I don't rely on msm including PBS for news. The Soviets lost 27 million total in the war, and I would assume it includes the Jews from all Nazi captured regions who were killed also. I think PBS is very democratically controlled and I strongly expected full escalation beyond where we are now had Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election. The democrats have pointedly gone out of their way to hate the Russians since at least the Obama administration and used the Russia angle to vilify Trump and keep the psyops towards a war with Russia cooking his whole term in office. Bill Clinton was no better with the war in Kosovo, and likely deep state support for the Chechen rebellion, and the initial NATO expansion against previous agreements. PBS and NPR appear to be liberal strongholds for whatever liberal even means now so they are as compromised as anyone. The Minsk agreements didn't cover disarmament from what I know, only deescalation in Donbass, and a degree of autonomy from Kiev. Ukraine repudiated ownership of nukes in 91, yet has (had) the technological capacity to make its own.
Totally agree. I ended with “why PBS” rhetorically and sarcastically. It and NPR are federally funded and claim honest news. Mmmmmm. PBS used to show both sides, but I haven’t watched it since 2019. I couldn’t stand all the media tricks that I taught in secondary and community college media/language arts/ English classes. I was disgusted and joined the roving American reader group in search of less biased or else at least open biased news. That meant reading all over the place and throwing aside the “media bias” review squads opinion, which if you analyzed some of the articles you knew that what the review claimed as a neutral news source, like PBS, was NOT! Just sticking to the facts is hard enough, but making up facts and propagating it like Russiagate, alpha bank, laptop Russia hoax, the crossfire burn, and such bounty like stories is sickening and evil. What did Pelosi call it: “Wrap around.” Msm Journalism i look at suspiciously at best, lies at worst.
40% of those soviets were from the Ukraine, lets keep that in mind. That's about as many Russians as died, too, by the way, with Belorussians, Poles, Siberians, and Baltic peoples making up about 20~%.
The most damning evidence that this war was planned is the 2016 video that has surfaced of two US senators speaking to a group of Ukrainian soldiers, apparently in Ukraine, saying something like: "2017 is the year we help you defeat Putin. We will provide whatever assistance as necessary. Putin must be stopped." It seems something unexpected happened in November 2016 that delayed those plans. Putin may have seen the build-up of troops on the separatist's border and the increased attacks in early 2022 as indication the troops were starting to advance.
Nothing demonstrates the murderous insanity of the US Empire better than the Russo-Ukie conflict. Orchestrated by a cabal of demented psychopaths (how is it that these clinically insane "people" remain in power?). Yes, people warned of this, but nearly all of them are in on it and the plan all along was to kick off this insanity when needed to divert attention from Amerikan criminality.
Like my husband says, "You poke the sleeping Russian bear in the cold of winter, you'd better expect to be mauled when he awakens." I've noticed the over-usage of the word "unprovoked" in the MSM since the start of this whole mess, too. It just shows how much conscious effort is being put into the propaganda spin. So much energy to perpetuate the lies, so much so that eventually someone or something is going to implode or crack open and reveal the truth unwittingly to the world. That day can't come soon enough!
The Ukrainian/Russia war could have been avoided by going back to the table and enforcing the Minsk agreements. Biden never talked about peaceful negotiations between these two neighbors. “Unprovoked” was his and the msm echo. In the beginning, Russia tried to respell the terms regarding an 8 year mess in the Donbass region and the Asov battalions, but there was silence on the Nato/USA side. And After all, our elite administration has painted Russia at fault for all it’s failing. I call it the “Russiagate explosion.” Too bad the propaganda news failed to show two sides, though many of us have gotten more independent news sources from the front lines. The tragedy is, like in all wars, regular Ukrainians and Russians people like myself had to die. It could have been avoided.
Militarism in a nutshell: every problem in the world can only be solved with war i.e. the mass killing of human beings and the destruction of their cities and way of life. And we can see regarding Ukraine, there really has been no serious attempt by the US or its allies to find a diplomatic resolution to the continuing murder and death. And an even greater crime, is how the US media (and those we see every day on the airwaves) hide the killing going on right now in Ukraine - because the obscene, heinous aspect of war is the ongoing murder of human life.
Good post, thanks. It seems we knew what most all people around the world likely should have guessed long ago. Just a bit of healthy skepticism would tell any reasonable person that the globalists have been bent on destabilizing the USA for a very long while. Those in charge of the US government and most other nations are followers of the WEF, Bilderberg, "globalists'. These are people who profit from wars, arms sales, etc and who find it easiest to gain and keep power when nations not 100% cowed are effectively destabilized. No self-respecting kleptocrat likes a stable Democracy.
Adding to your comment, KW, it's becoming more obvious by the day that "de-population" is a big part of the globalist agenda. Deliberately wrecking the food supply and the supply chain, eliminating non-polluting nuclear energy in favor of ugly wind farms that don't work, and, esp., the forced toxic shots are all part of the plan.
Yes, of course. But didn't add that particular "crisis" in as it is affecting nearly all countries who vaccinated, used toxic measures, etc. Depopulation seems like an effect of the things I listed as well, including energy "scams". But yes, it is a concerted, planned and very intentional deliberate attempt to gain control by any measures they deem "intelligent".
In the scheme of things Russia is only moderately destabilized by comparison to the “Western” powers. Europe, Canada, the US are suffering destabilization from the deliberate attacks on their own citizens from economic forces including energy & food, from uncontrolled immigration, from invasion of criminal forces such as the cartels, from weakening of the major cities, from the insanity of “Wokeness.” There is a very long list.
You are entitled to your perspective, but it leaves me unconvinced. The destabilization of the western countries, you attribute to “globalists,” but why not just say the American government is the culprit, investing $7 Trillion annually in “defense” and letting the populace shift? Germany has prioritized its citizens much more than the U.S. has, and yes, it’s Ukraine position has exacerbated its destabilizing events, but it is at least putting up a proactive agenda to mitigate the pain. Germany is in America’s SOI, so its Ukraine policy is self-damaging, and most likely not representative of a majority of its people.
World Economic Forum, Bilderberg, nearly all current national leaders. Look up WEF website for all their partners. Hard to find a current leader who is not allied with these folks.
Aren’t these folks who promote specific global policies and political strategies the same people who own the western commercial media, and the DNC and RNC? I would refer you to C Wright Mills’ The Power Elite, which shows that capitalists protecting their class rank don’t need to conspire to find their class allies doing the same thing.
Call them globalists, billionaires or nihilistic fucks who hold democracy in contempt and are leading the world to ruin, but I think focusing on their ideology let’s their minions off the hook. Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Trump, McConnell, Cruz, et.al are writing and passing laws that are legalizing theft and fraud. They’re all neocons or neolibs who embrace American unipolar domination. This is the tip of the sword, and their deep-pocketed brothers and sisters who support their aims matter less than the traitors carrying their water.
Yes, to the western commercial (corporate) media. Many in the media are known partners of the WEF. As far as C Wright Mills and Capitalism as the issue, well sure, along with a whole bunch of other types of economic systems such as China. The daring of the WEF & buddies appears to be China right now. As far as the political people you mention - yes they are all associated with these international forces. it is a very complex area and there are those far better equipped than I to write about them. But for a place to start from the perspective I am coming from you could read this:
There's a very short list. You mean, 'capitalism'.
"Wokeness"? What scares you about those who demand peace and justice? Are they the 'threat' to the same 2nd amendment weirdos Chomsky puts in the dock?
Except 'provoking' Russia involved the murder of Russian speaking civilians, including over 130 children and when Russia eventually intervened, it very likely prevented the wholesale ethnic cleansing by the ultra-nationalist battalions something they had been openly threatening for years. It was Kiev that started shelling the Donbas, breaking a ceasefire on the 16th February...it took the dove Putin a week to react. After waiting 8 years of fruitless and duplicitous negotiations on the part of the western powers and 14,000 lives, he finally moved to stop the war on the Don Basin once and for all and Ukraine sealed its own fate.
Trying to say Russia was 'wrong' to invade despite being provoked is perversely absurd. Wrong in what way? In a Bible conscientious objection way? Mathew 26:52? No, I didn't think so. In what way then? International law? Putin followed international law to the letter. He waited for the Republics to invite him to help, just as he did in Syria. The fact that the corrupt west doesn't recognise the Republics in their new 'Rules' based world order is a joke. Whose rules? Their ever changing rules of convenience. Which is the road to world chaos which in their hubris, they are now forcing us all down.
"This is to say nothing of the US empire actively fomenting a violent uprising in 2014 which ousted Kyiv's sitting government . . . "
Or, to be precise, " . . . actively fomenting a violent uprising in 2014 which ousted Kyiv's democratically elected sitting government "
"Empire apologists will also argue that saying Russia was provoked into invading by the US empire is like saying a rape victim provoked her rapist by wearing a tight skirt, or a battered wife provoked her abuser by disobeying him. "
More like "take these weapons and threaten your neighbor and abuse your children by him. We totally have your back and when you're done, we might let you join our gang!"
I think it is inevitable that whenever the fighting stops, Ukraine will be as economically lame as Iraq. If Ukraine remains in the U.S. orbit, it will be owned by the IMF. And the neocons want that to be Russia’s fate as well.
The neocons have made it plain that this is intended as an existential struggle for Russia.
Defy the evil top dogs at your peril.
🎯
The Finster aims to please.
To say the Russian presence in Ukraine was unprovoked is ludicrous, absurd, but to claim it was "unjustified' is not much better. It's like saying as they did before the laws on marital rape and spousal abuse that there was no such thing as the former, and the latter was a private matter under the "it takes two to tango" principle. The tango principle also figures in the "stand your ground" laws: no one is completely innocent of anything. But that is patently untrue there are lines, there are qualitative difference and quantitative differences that qualify as qualitative. Russia took too many hits from encirclement by NATO along with policy statements proposing the division of Russia into three states by the West for their control and pillage. No country in the world would not draw the line there, and certainly not the US. Britain made a huge fuss over the distant Falklands not long ago. What utter hypocritical obscurantism.
Shit, the United States invaded Panama and Grenada for less, not to mention threatened WWIII over Cuba.
Right, and I think as a rationale for Panama, they claimed some of their personnel, with no right be there in the first place, were harassed or killed. Fourteen thousand ethnic Russians in the Donbas were killed, and brutally, and after the 2014 US coup, before Russia said, "enough".
No, that is not clear at all: there was no war, there was no military engagement, but a coup instigated by the West to remove a democratically elected head of state, not hostile to Ukraine's neighbour, Russia. Are you going to defend the 2014 coup as the natural outcome of differences, and the US, Newland, Biden, and other Americans played no part in the instigation and violence and choice of Yatsenyuk as head of state, so must bear responsibility for the Nazification of Ukraine?
> Yanukovich as democratically elected head of state
> not hostile to Ukraine's neighbour, Russia
> Yatsenyuk as head of state
> Nazification of Ukraine
wow, you it's amazing how badly informed you are on topic and you still speak up.
You speak of yourself in the conjectural rant department and it is truly unhinged to deny the murder of 14,000 ethnic Russians in the Donbas - it is denied only by the totally biased and uninformed. As for what you stand for, I wouldn't be bothered to find out, but I doubt it falls far from my "conjectures".
Are you saying that preemptive strikes are justified by the encircling of a nation by a hostile alliance, if that alliance is sufficiently malicious in its intent and sufficently well armed?
Because I mean, I'm not sure I agree, but its a fantastic defense of Israel in the Yom Kippur War.
I don't want to get into Yom Kippur at this time, but the situation is somewhat if not glaringly different. Israel's claim is based on biblical history: alternatives considered included a wide range of other countries, including Argentina. Palestinians were driven forcibly out of Palestine by Israelis and many atrocities committed. How can that be compared with Russia and it's position and history with Ukraine? With NATO? With the 2014 coup against a legitimate president? With the Nazification of Ukraine specifically against Russian ethnics? Etc., etc..? Yes lots of irony, but little common ground.
Another interesting point. The question isn't when is Israel justified in military action, but whether Israel is justified in the first place.
I think that there are a great number of parallels you may be declining to see because it is inconvenient.
If we were to compare Russia to Israel's position, it matches almost all the criteria you just listed. It committed attrocities in Ukraine throughout the 20th century. Decossakisation, Dekulakisation, and of course the Holodomor. Lets be very clear, these were Russian intellectuals ordering these killings in a state which they had subsumed in a civil war.
They then spread communism there, an ideology which is the only competitor to nazism for deaths in the world caused by it.
If we are to believe Russia, they are surrounded by a western coalition which has massive superiority over them, backing a puppet in the state of Ukraine (as you claim) which is illegitimate.
Russia, citing its encirclement by a hostile block, struck first. This is a 1-1 parrallel of Israel thusfar.
I totally disagree with everything you state as fact. There were Ukraine Nazi militia fighting Russia in WWII, and there were Ukrainian brigades fighting for and with Russia. Have you ever heard of Stepan Bandera? Look him up: he goes back a long way in Ukraine history and is still celebrated today. Of course, we have our own Nazis and tradition, although a little less limelighted. The Holodomor, a very tragic event, was not perpetrated by Russia: there was a severe famine 1922, 23, and many Russians also died. On the subject, have you ever heard Winston Churchill's quote re the famine in India caused by the Britain's confiscation of India grain crops? "They brought it on themselves - they breed like rabbits." And the Russia civil war : it takes chutzpah to blame Russia for atrocities: 12 countries, Western or at their behest attacked Russia on their soil- my father was there as a young British soldier. These troops refused to fire on Russian workers. How about that?
My personal feelings about what Russia was forced to do in Ukraine just now, is profound sadness. And I blame the West and capitalist exploiters for the whole thing. Russia was in the right and had no choice. They aren't perfect but the the best (most moral/ethical) players on the scene right now. By far.
Forced to do is a chilling kind of term, as it seems to imply that there is such strategic excruciations which necessitate attacking a nation who's sovereignty you swore to uphold in a treaty during which they handed over their nuclear weapons. I do wonder, with I admit some trepidation, what you think you might be forced to do if ever placed at the levers of power. I take solace in how unlikely that is.
The mass murder perpetuated by the communist government of Russia, both with rifles, and with hunger, is not disputed by serious historians, and still has living victims. Disputing it as a natural disaster is an argument on the same level of seriousness as disputing the holocaust as a matter of broken supply chains and a wartorn country; It is an excuse. The root cause of the famine was a mix of bad agricultural policies perpetrated by incompetent Bolshevik cadres, the relentless push for industrialisation, and a calculated policy of extermination-through-hunger of politically inconvenient Cossack peoples.
We can talk all day about the famine in India, and I'm happy to have that discussion, but your attempt to deflect blame in this situation borders on the dishonest. Right now we're talking about what Russian and other soviet communists did in the Ukraine, and what it was was genocide. That is a material fact. Go and visit the mass graves. Ask the people who still survive it, or their children. Ask any serious historian. The Holodomor was an anthroprogenicc catastrophy, entirely engineered either through bloodlust or incompetence by the workers soviets.
If you insist however on bandying the Nazi word whilst denying another genocide of the 20th century, may I encourage you to watch any video of Ukranian soldiers liberating towns in the North recently? You'll note the population greets them tearfully. In Russian.
That isn't a coincidence, and it shows the illegitimacy of the claim that the population was nazified against the Russians, if that Russian speaking populace is desperately greatful that the Russian government thugs had been hurled out.
It will be an academic issue soon however. Russia is on the backfoot and breaking fast. I'll gleefully return here when that long process winds down. I hope it does so soon, so that the bloodshed may be kept to a minimum.
I thoroughly disagree, and many reputable historians don't support your opinion. Of course there are mass graves, but what was the cause, and how come the West didn't lift a finger to help either Ukraine or Russia? I believe your knowledge of history is tenuous, at best.
Irrelevant to the point. If I wanted to cherry-pick historical examples, I could say that Russia is the equivalent of the United States because of the colonization of Siberia and also the legacy of serfdom and none of it is relevant to the point.
Nobody said that Israel isn't surrounded by neighbors that wish it ill. The question is whether Israel's existence in its present location is justified in the first place.
Its not irrelevent because it demonstrates a double-standard in moral justification. Israel, in highly similar circumstances to the one Russia now finds itself in in Doris' own worldview insofar as they have presented it to me is criticized and illegitimate, Russia is spared. Russia is the 'best of a bad crowd', and its preemptive strike, supposedly justified. Its selective hypocrisy.
Since nobody is trying to use dekulakization or whatever other sins of a state that no longer exists to justify Russia's role in the conflict in Ukraine, it's irrelevant.
"Legacy of Serfdom"? That doesn't even equate with US capitalism through slavery: without captured slaves from far off Nigeria there would have been a different US and no US capitalism. And are there no serfs in the Western world right now? No beleaguered workers working 3 jobs, with no health coverage, or inadequate coverage that could precipitate bankruptcy at any time? What of the 2 1/2 million slave/inmates working for industry in prisons in the US? Many incarcerated for very minor, artificial crimes complicated by plea-bargains - and being black. Americans should have the grace to shut-the-fuck-up on Russia.
You are certainly right: there is no valid compassion between Israel and Russia, although Israel is now a fact and must be acknowledged as such.
Interesting point, albeit one that Israel regularly invokes whenever convenient.
n.b. I think you are referring to The Six Day War.
Quite right, I am! Thank you for the correction!
It is the “obligatory qualifier”.
War is peace.
Freedom is slavery.
Ignorance is strength.
Pure gold, Caitlin. Americans who have spent their entire lives up to their nostril in BS will deny, deny, deny. The documentation is hugely valuable.
Anyone paying attention in the build up to the war saw NATO and the US state department make fun of Putin's and Lavrov's attempts to negotiate peace. They publicly said that the peace process was a joke and that the Minsk accords from 2015 are unenforceable yet they never even tried. It is incredibly obvious that this war was provoked.
I also remember Zelensky saying Ukraine should have nuclear weapons about a week before the invasion. The fact then was they absolutely had the infrastructure to make good on this threat. I think that was a major contributing factor to the start of the war. Jimmy Dore had a good segment on the money side of all this yesterday also. The elites have been using the Ukraine as a supremely huge money laundering scheme. It's basically cui Bono? Why are all these EU countries torturing their citizens for the most corrupt country in Europe? How do billions of dollars appear over and over again for Ukraine for the last 8 years?How is the media 100% on board with the narrative and never the truth? $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$
Kind of ironic that Ukraine enter into the Minsk agreements by giving up all its weapons. And then before this last war’s beginning Zelenski wants nuclear armaments from the west?! He ran an anti corruption and peace campaign. Sounds kind of like the Biden administration. How’s this about integrity? He needed to save his people by letting the Donbass region be self governing and getting rid of the Asov battalions from his rule, which were a threat to Russians who lost 26million or more in this same Ukraine region to the Nazis in WWII. The msm never tells you this part of history. Why PBS?
I don't rely on msm including PBS for news. The Soviets lost 27 million total in the war, and I would assume it includes the Jews from all Nazi captured regions who were killed also. I think PBS is very democratically controlled and I strongly expected full escalation beyond where we are now had Hillary Clinton won the 2016 election. The democrats have pointedly gone out of their way to hate the Russians since at least the Obama administration and used the Russia angle to vilify Trump and keep the psyops towards a war with Russia cooking his whole term in office. Bill Clinton was no better with the war in Kosovo, and likely deep state support for the Chechen rebellion, and the initial NATO expansion against previous agreements. PBS and NPR appear to be liberal strongholds for whatever liberal even means now so they are as compromised as anyone. The Minsk agreements didn't cover disarmament from what I know, only deescalation in Donbass, and a degree of autonomy from Kiev. Ukraine repudiated ownership of nukes in 91, yet has (had) the technological capacity to make its own.
Totally agree. I ended with “why PBS” rhetorically and sarcastically. It and NPR are federally funded and claim honest news. Mmmmmm. PBS used to show both sides, but I haven’t watched it since 2019. I couldn’t stand all the media tricks that I taught in secondary and community college media/language arts/ English classes. I was disgusted and joined the roving American reader group in search of less biased or else at least open biased news. That meant reading all over the place and throwing aside the “media bias” review squads opinion, which if you analyzed some of the articles you knew that what the review claimed as a neutral news source, like PBS, was NOT! Just sticking to the facts is hard enough, but making up facts and propagating it like Russiagate, alpha bank, laptop Russia hoax, the crossfire burn, and such bounty like stories is sickening and evil. What did Pelosi call it: “Wrap around.” Msm Journalism i look at suspiciously at best, lies at worst.
40% of those soviets were from the Ukraine, lets keep that in mind. That's about as many Russians as died, too, by the way, with Belorussians, Poles, Siberians, and Baltic peoples making up about 20~%.
Fact you say "The Ukraine" makes anything you say after that nonsense and what do you know, straight to trash conspiracy theories
What reply is this to? What conspiracy theory are you referencing?
The most damning evidence that this war was planned is the 2016 video that has surfaced of two US senators speaking to a group of Ukrainian soldiers, apparently in Ukraine, saying something like: "2017 is the year we help you defeat Putin. We will provide whatever assistance as necessary. Putin must be stopped." It seems something unexpected happened in November 2016 that delayed those plans. Putin may have seen the build-up of troops on the separatist's border and the increased attacks in early 2022 as indication the troops were starting to advance.
Here's the story on Yahoo: Dec 2016
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/us-senators-visit-troops-front-171859289.html?guccounter=1
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html
The White Paper so accurate, they had to put a disclaimer on it.
n.b. RAND is very close to the neocon faction.
Nothing demonstrates the murderous insanity of the US Empire better than the Russo-Ukie conflict. Orchestrated by a cabal of demented psychopaths (how is it that these clinically insane "people" remain in power?). Yes, people warned of this, but nearly all of them are in on it and the plan all along was to kick off this insanity when needed to divert attention from Amerikan criminality.
excellent piece thankyou!
Like my husband says, "You poke the sleeping Russian bear in the cold of winter, you'd better expect to be mauled when he awakens." I've noticed the over-usage of the word "unprovoked" in the MSM since the start of this whole mess, too. It just shows how much conscious effort is being put into the propaganda spin. So much energy to perpetuate the lies, so much so that eventually someone or something is going to implode or crack open and reveal the truth unwittingly to the world. That day can't come soon enough!
The Ukrainian/Russia war could have been avoided by going back to the table and enforcing the Minsk agreements. Biden never talked about peaceful negotiations between these two neighbors. “Unprovoked” was his and the msm echo. In the beginning, Russia tried to respell the terms regarding an 8 year mess in the Donbass region and the Asov battalions, but there was silence on the Nato/USA side. And After all, our elite administration has painted Russia at fault for all it’s failing. I call it the “Russiagate explosion.” Too bad the propaganda news failed to show two sides, though many of us have gotten more independent news sources from the front lines. The tragedy is, like in all wars, regular Ukrainians and Russians people like myself had to die. It could have been avoided.
Militarism in a nutshell: every problem in the world can only be solved with war i.e. the mass killing of human beings and the destruction of their cities and way of life. And we can see regarding Ukraine, there really has been no serious attempt by the US or its allies to find a diplomatic resolution to the continuing murder and death. And an even greater crime, is how the US media (and those we see every day on the airwaves) hide the killing going on right now in Ukraine - because the obscene, heinous aspect of war is the ongoing murder of human life.
You cannot reason with a lion when your head is in its mouth.
Agree!
Good post, thanks. It seems we knew what most all people around the world likely should have guessed long ago. Just a bit of healthy skepticism would tell any reasonable person that the globalists have been bent on destabilizing the USA for a very long while. Those in charge of the US government and most other nations are followers of the WEF, Bilderberg, "globalists'. These are people who profit from wars, arms sales, etc and who find it easiest to gain and keep power when nations not 100% cowed are effectively destabilized. No self-respecting kleptocrat likes a stable Democracy.
Adding to your comment, KW, it's becoming more obvious by the day that "de-population" is a big part of the globalist agenda. Deliberately wrecking the food supply and the supply chain, eliminating non-polluting nuclear energy in favor of ugly wind farms that don't work, and, esp., the forced toxic shots are all part of the plan.
Yes, of course. But didn't add that particular "crisis" in as it is affecting nearly all countries who vaccinated, used toxic measures, etc. Depopulation seems like an effect of the things I listed as well, including energy "scams". But yes, it is a concerted, planned and very intentional deliberate attempt to gain control by any measures they deem "intelligent".
Did you mean “destabilizing Russia?”
In the scheme of things Russia is only moderately destabilized by comparison to the “Western” powers. Europe, Canada, the US are suffering destabilization from the deliberate attacks on their own citizens from economic forces including energy & food, from uncontrolled immigration, from invasion of criminal forces such as the cartels, from weakening of the major cities, from the insanity of “Wokeness.” There is a very long list.
You are entitled to your perspective, but it leaves me unconvinced. The destabilization of the western countries, you attribute to “globalists,” but why not just say the American government is the culprit, investing $7 Trillion annually in “defense” and letting the populace shift? Germany has prioritized its citizens much more than the U.S. has, and yes, it’s Ukraine position has exacerbated its destabilizing events, but it is at least putting up a proactive agenda to mitigate the pain. Germany is in America’s SOI, so its Ukraine policy is self-damaging, and most likely not representative of a majority of its people.
Who are the “globalists?”
World Economic Forum, Bilderberg, nearly all current national leaders. Look up WEF website for all their partners. Hard to find a current leader who is not allied with these folks.
Aren’t these folks who promote specific global policies and political strategies the same people who own the western commercial media, and the DNC and RNC? I would refer you to C Wright Mills’ The Power Elite, which shows that capitalists protecting their class rank don’t need to conspire to find their class allies doing the same thing.
Call them globalists, billionaires or nihilistic fucks who hold democracy in contempt and are leading the world to ruin, but I think focusing on their ideology let’s their minions off the hook. Biden, Pelosi, Schumer, Trump, McConnell, Cruz, et.al are writing and passing laws that are legalizing theft and fraud. They’re all neocons or neolibs who embrace American unipolar domination. This is the tip of the sword, and their deep-pocketed brothers and sisters who support their aims matter less than the traitors carrying their water.
Yes, to the western commercial (corporate) media. Many in the media are known partners of the WEF. As far as C Wright Mills and Capitalism as the issue, well sure, along with a whole bunch of other types of economic systems such as China. The daring of the WEF & buddies appears to be China right now. As far as the political people you mention - yes they are all associated with these international forces. it is a very complex area and there are those far better equipped than I to write about them. But for a place to start from the perspective I am coming from you could read this:
https://kwnorton.substack.com/p/what-exactly-are-the-world-economic?r=boqs0&s=w&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
There's a very short list. You mean, 'capitalism'.
"Wokeness"? What scares you about those who demand peace and justice? Are they the 'threat' to the same 2nd amendment weirdos Chomsky puts in the dock?
Except 'provoking' Russia involved the murder of Russian speaking civilians, including over 130 children and when Russia eventually intervened, it very likely prevented the wholesale ethnic cleansing by the ultra-nationalist battalions something they had been openly threatening for years. It was Kiev that started shelling the Donbas, breaking a ceasefire on the 16th February...it took the dove Putin a week to react. After waiting 8 years of fruitless and duplicitous negotiations on the part of the western powers and 14,000 lives, he finally moved to stop the war on the Don Basin once and for all and Ukraine sealed its own fate.
Trying to say Russia was 'wrong' to invade despite being provoked is perversely absurd. Wrong in what way? In a Bible conscientious objection way? Mathew 26:52? No, I didn't think so. In what way then? International law? Putin followed international law to the letter. He waited for the Republics to invite him to help, just as he did in Syria. The fact that the corrupt west doesn't recognise the Republics in their new 'Rules' based world order is a joke. Whose rules? Their ever changing rules of convenience. Which is the road to world chaos which in their hubris, they are now forcing us all down.
"Nobody has ever walked out of Shakespeare's Othello thinking that maybe Iago was just an innocent bystander who was trying to help out his friends."
Great line, encapsulates the essay's theme.