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Vin LoPresti's avatar

Max Blumenthal expressed it as " the US is willing to fight this war to the last Ukrainian." Proxy war is always useful to the empire, even if it does risk nuclear winter.

Missing from most of the historical discussions is the "East of the Oder" mentality, that is Europe to the west of the Oder River (current Germany-Poland border) have long looked with disdain on the Slavic untermenschen (sub-humans) to the east of the Oder, including the Balkans. A now-deceased friend who grew up on the Adriatic coast of Mussolini's Italy once expressed it this way. When he was a little kid during WWII, he and his friends would collectively urinate into the Adriatic, imagining themselves "pissing on Albania" to the east across the sea. The Ukrainian Nazis, who were seen by their German counterparts as especially intense devotees of Fascism were likely motivated partly by a determination to rise above that sub-human status by proving their Aryan creds through their Fascist violence against Jews, Romani and anyone else they deemed lacking pure Aryan credentials. Ignore this history at your peril; it underpins this entire fiasco.

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Midge's avatar

What we all have to get through our skulls is that Ukraine is not Russia's enemy, NATO is. That's why this won't end there. As soon as the operation in Ukraine becomes a matter of mopping up pockets of resistance and instituting anti-insurgency measures, Russia will probably go on a peace offensive. I expect that it will re-present the security guarantees treaty it proposed in December, which, thanks to what is in effect a Western news black out, few in the West are aware even of. Russia should make clear to the entire world that all that is required to end hostilities is to give ALL Europeans security, Russians included, by returning NATO militaries to their 1997 dispositions. No one in Europe felt insecure then, so why should returning their militaries to those positions make anyone feel insecure now? With the world’s attention focused on Russia, it will be much harder for Western media to keep Russia’s terms from their populaces. This will allow anti-war people as well as those in pain from the economic consequences of the sanctions war to focus their protests/resistance where it belongs: on creating a new security structure in Europe acceptable to all. The only other condition Russia should insist on is the removal of all sanctions, which, as I understand it, are in any case illegal under international law unless approved by the UN Security Council.

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