excellent. not a mention of peace. a wholehearted push towards more death and destruction making the whole of ukraine warzone, promoting the interests of the usa and with a promised finish line of an american puppet regime in ukraine busily pocketing misappropriated (or intended to be appropriated that way) funds stolen from the dumb american electorate.
this until the whole western world crumbles to poverty beneath this mismanagement.
unless the intent is to make all out war on russia and conquer it?
i could believe any insanity.
when did watching real life wars take precedent over reading books, watching movies?
entertainment for the masses: villains produced to order - mass simplification of issues - wholesale condemnation of whole populaces - death and destruction everywhere..
brilliantly promoted and assisted by this venue...
Glenn Greenwald has a similar take. I disagree, more or less and only for now. We need to pile on in order to convince the Russians that they cannot win. It must end. Once it ends, stop the money flow. The justification for NATO is at an end.
I fear it won't come down that way. Billions will be misspent. If they coincidentally end the war it will not be totally wasted.
As for the greenwald thing about USA Congress and the money well that's insanity raised to the power of what - 3? 4?
The USA cannot afford a penny never mind billions.
The money is largely a direct transfer not to Ukraine but to the profiteers in the USA, of course. A billion 'to Ukraine' means, as with most 'foreign aid' that Ukraine gets to 'buy' a billions dollars of US materiel for free. That's 'aid'. And the billions dollars the materiel costs is paid directly from the USA taxpayer into the coffers of the arms manufacturers, lobbyists, interested parties, cronies, leeches, hangers-on etc. right there in the USA.
Some 'billions' without doubt if traced, which could happen in today's computerised financial world I'd expect but won't, will be earmarked for and will go directly into the pockets of certain individuals within and without Ukraine. Bribes and payoffs.
Many of the 'billions' that actually get there will be more of a hindrance than a help, piled up in warehouses and on docksides with no one to handle it nowhere to store no one to maintain it no idea of what to do with it.
Hastily constructed 'special purpose' squads, companies, equipped hastily with all this. new gear will rush boldly off to their deaths for lack of training or expertise or adequate officer and non-com leadership. Top command embarrassingly in receipt of a plethora of equipment and nowhere and no one to give it to and no experience or plans for the handling of it.
This very clearly - does anyone doubt it? - makes the whole of Ukraine a war zone. That is clearly the intent.
Putin has not been 'invading Ukraine'. A country wide invasion is a very different thing. A very different thing. All the armchair experts clamouring around shouting advice like punters round a dogfight should be able to tell everyone that much.
But fill the Ukraine with billions of dollars worth of munitions moving in trainloads all over the country from all sides, travelling in conveys, being stored in towns and cities and villages, landing in airfields.... what's Russia to do? What would you do?
And:
“about $6.5 billion, roughly half of the aid package, will go to the US Department of Defense so it can deploy troops to the region and send defense equipment to Ukraine.”
See that? 'Deploy troops to the region'. They're already there I have no doubt.
We simply await the day which they think suitable to announce their presence on some pretext or other at the same time as announcing they, these valiant peace loving US troops, got killed by some vicious Russian attack and we're there:
Official declaration of war on Russia by the USA.
And note all that hooha and drum banging and conspicuous insane expenditure but not a word about helping the Ukrainians and Russians who right now are dying and suffering in this insane 'war'.
The greenwald thing is definitely good overall. I don't mean to deny that.
I think America is getting everything it wants. Everything. And what it wants is to fill its pockets as quickly as it can before the ship goes down.
For 'America' is not America. The American people have been left in the dust a long time ago. Silly enough to believe in two parties and waste their time fighting each other of 'democrat' or 'republican'.
It is not America that is doing this: the America of 350 million people.
It is 'America' of a few dozen or a few hundred or even a few thousand - they haven't been called out, I don't know - insane power mongers and manipulators who use Biden as a puppet and twist and torment the country as they please always in the interests of feathering their own nests.
They, I believe, can see clearly what we see: A bankrupt country going down the tubes at breakneck speed. A country with nowhere to go but down.
So THEY plan to 'bail out'. They're sinking the USA in this last fling and they don't much give a damn what happens. In all the commotion and the massive spending and furore they'll get theirs and salt it aware and be home free.
That's why the actions of the USA seem so insane. Because it is like we're looking at a schizophrenic. There's two of them: the people, and the manipulators.
You write "Putin has not been 'invading Ukraine'". If this is not an invasion, I would be hard put to describe what one is. He did, in fact, attempt to invade pretty much the whole country. He simply didn't have the resources. He has rained missiles everywhere.
You absolutely cannot justify what Putin has done. You could not claim he has negotiated in good faith. Once it was clear that Ukraine would not roll over, he has not negotiated at all. This must be settled by force of arms. I am grateful to the US and its NATO partners for those arms. This is the war they spent 70+ years preparing for. In light of the trillions upon trillions spent over those decades, these tens of billions are cheap. Even though, as you note, they will as always be misspent.
Yep well I won't argue with you. The whole thing is too sad for that and what difference would our little argument make. Putin of course has the resources and if that was what he wanted to do he would have employed them.
He has been trying to defend his interest in Ukraine. Still is.
You'll not accept that. Okay. I won't argue it any further.
I hope you don't find out what a full scale Russian invasion would be like.
Ukraine was not asked to 'roll over' - it was asked to honour agreements.
NATO, the West, the USA, asked for honour.
Stupid ask, wasn't it.
Yep, 70+ years preparing for. The West, coached by the USA, never gave Russia a chance. It has wanted this for 70+ years.
Now its got it and its true nature is fully revealed for as I've said before, as anyone can see, ALL the rhetoric is about kill, kill, kill, hate, hate, hate, munitions etc, etc, war, war, war - never a word for peace.
How much of the 60 Billion for peace initiatives?
How many lamenting that?
If you were a parent and your children were fighting and one kid was screaming that you wouldn't let his brother hurt him but the brother had been kicking him under the table all the time and now he was going to punch that brother out...
And they were into it, swinging punches left and right...
You'd give one brother a knuckle duster?
You'd not apologise to the first brother for reneging on your promise?
You'd not shout 'stop, stop, stop'?
No you wouldn't.
You'd act like a responsible parent.
Like a grown up.
But there's no grown ups in the room now.
And nobody wants them.
Everyone is enjoying the fight.
Except, of course, the 'collateral damage'. We're deeply indebted to the USA for that phrase. They have a whole lexicon of words and phrases ready for incidences such as this. After all, they've been here before. This is their stock in trade. This is what they do.
You write as if Russia had been playing nice. Since the time of the Mongols they have never played nice. They have always been difficult to negotiate with and have broken agreements with impunity. They bully their neighbors, who have always lived in fear of them. Every one. Throughout history.
Europe and the Anglosphere have lived in peace - at least with each other - for longer now than for any period in history. The US has cohabited tranquilly with its neighbors and for the most part with its whole hemisphere. Give us credit. We respect one another's warmaking capabilities and settle our differences peacefully.
In that time the USSR and now Russia have had armed conflicts internally (Chechnya, and earlier within their satellites) and on their borders with China, Georgia and Afghanistan. They live by the sword.
There is a difference in natures here which is both obvious and impossible to overlook. This war is Russia's. It is in their nature to start such wars, and they did. It is now up to us to end the hostilities in the only way Russia will understand, and on terms that ensure there will not be an encore.
We do not want their land. We want only that they leave everybody else's alone.
Graham, I should maybe not comment. I have no expertise, I have no training, I have no knowledge of history. I speak in forums such as this simply as an interested layman.
I justify that by thinking that there's more of us than anyone else and it would seem sensible to know how we see things...
Like I put forward my view, without pretensions to high authority or supposed claim to certain truth.
And as part of that I'm constantly open to persuasion.
O.K. ?
So that being said I'll give my response to that and probably I should fall silent then until ever I have an epiphany or something. :)
Well it seems to me
. The history of Russia is not how we decide this issue. Nor the history of any other place. The USA say. Or even the recent history of the Ukraine.
. Broken agreements seem clearly here to be on the part of the West and NATO and the USA.
. Europe and the Anglosphere may have lived in peace but the Anglosphere has not lived in peace with the world. If anyone has lived by the sword it has been the USA. In fact the Anglosphere has not lived in peace with Europe if we count Russia in with Europe, which is where it should be. The whole effort has been to exclude Russia. It is shameful and stupid. It has brought us to this. As I think you said, 70 years working precisely towards this.
. Any country with borders as long as Russia's is prone to border conflicts. When you consider those who inhabit some of those border regions they'd seem inevitable wouldn't they? Talking about living by the sword: China? Afghanistan? Even the Chechens. The whole Isis thing calling into question Muslims everywhere and incensing them one way or the other everywhere.
. I see no difference in natures. It is axiomatic or at least a frequent mantra that no one fights like brothers fight. That's what I see.
. They started the war? My understanding is that after 2014 the Ukraine started shelling Russians in the Donbas immediately. That the duly elected President had to flee in fear of his life, not from the populace but from a radical minority espousing a philosophy of hate and violence reminiscent of those Isis I just mentioned.
. You do want their land, so to speak. The two breakaway republics were recognised by Russia and the declared aim of Ukraine was to overwhelm them.
Those are my reactions to your points.
To return to my single point:
There should be a constant focus and strong effort on finding paths of peace and avoiding this escalation and doubling and redoubling of the capacity for violence.
In the minds of the 'warriors' this is stirring manly stuff, proud and exultant, fearless, noble and shining.
In the bodies and minds of those women and children killed and maimed by the violence brought by those 'noble warriors' it is something else. It is a visitation of hell on earth, sometimes of unbearable agonies, of the destruction of all that is sane and sensible, of a fearsome blight that strikes their lives and destroys all now and the effects of which will be with them for the rest of their lives.
Manly pride keeps this going.
And the sly urgings of the American profiteers.
Make no mistake: it is they who profit, they and only they.
In the casino only the casino profits and gamblers are self deluding fools.
America is crumbling like a dried out rotten cheese but nevertheless it still contains the expertise and motivations and abilities of some of the world's most devious, ruthless and greedy manipulators and profiteers.
"never gave Russia a chance. It has wanted this for 70+ years" - Oh there have been chances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika was an opening that began considerable US investment in Russia. H.W. Bush didn't quite do enough. Sadly Yeltsin was not able to open even more and when Putin took over he cancelled much progress to openness. In the process both nations lost good chances for improvement.
Well I don't know enough detail I'd be happy to see it. If Putin cancelled progress I'm of the opinion he would have had good reasons for it. He's often pointed to lopsided agreements just as Trump did in the USA in other contexts.
And talking Trump: as recently as that I saw Putin willing to join together when Trump mooted the idea and I saw the American sheep coaxed and herded into absolutely insane frenzy of opposition. Now that's a simple fact. The USA behaved the way we think perhaps nations behaved during those witch trial Inquisition days and that's just a fact.
So yes there may well have been 'chances' here and there that were not taken up or were mishandled but I think it is a slam dunk: the USA violently and persistently and irrationally demonised and victimised Russia.
Putin's war objectives, given on Day 1, were to "demilitarize and denazify Ukraine."
We know what demilitarize means. "Denazify" assumes there are Nazis here. There are no self-proclaimed Nazis. If Putin gets to name them, which he is doing via "filtration," nobody is safe.
No country in the world would accede to absurd demands like these.
You're at least partially right there, I know, I remember reading something like that somewhere. I need to get to the source of it.
It severely damages my faith in Putin if it is all true as baldly put. It does.
However it doesn't one whit alter my attitude towards my own govt. and the West's attitude and behaviour which I consider completely beyond the pale right now and for the last couple of decades at least and with respect to Russia for 70 years.
I might be left with no one I can have faith in.
Which would leave me where I started: a common man with essentially a faith in the common people and pleading against us being divided against ourselves and killing ourselves.
p.s. I've thought of an angle might help me: Demilitarize and Denazify might not necessarily mean what we instinctively take them to mean: occupation and control of the whole country. I stand by the observation that the attack on Ukraine simply doesn't look anything like that.
It could well be a reference to getting at those far right extremist Azov battalions and their political influence. It is they who brought 2014 undone. It is they who spew the torrents of hate. It is they who said they'll wipe out the Donbas states.
It is they who've 'militarized' the Ukraine.
It well could be his goal at the same time as not being what we assume it to be.
"what's Russia to do? " - Easy answer, stop interfering in Ukraine. They agreed to independence in 1991, abide by that. As it stands Russia has created a proxy war with the West, well beyond the US. We can hope it doesn't escalate but the West must not be intimidated lest Russia demand even more.
well i'm with those who believe Russia was provoked continually for 70 years and more particularly in the last 7. It is not a question of Russia interfering in Ukraine's affairs - it is a question of the USA interfering in everyone's affairs.
As usual. It is not Russia v Ukraine. It is Russia v USA and the USA via it's bumbling puppet President has apparently made that very clear.
And I imagine Putin shrugs.
For it has always been clear to him. Over the years I've seen and heard him say it numerous times.
He had no way out. Sooner or later. The USA was closing in. Using proxies of course. And dupes. Don't be duped. What you're watching is the USA having its way with the Ukrainians and the Russians.
It wants Europe fragmented and no threat to it - in particular no conjoint Russia/Germany - and it got that.
It wants Russia marginalised. And it got that.
It wants a perpetual state of war to feed its Military Industrial complex and it hopes to get that but I think it will finish up with only a demilitarised zone as in North/South Korea.
It wants to distract world attention from the wickedness of the covid scam and it got that.
It wants to funnel more money into the pockets of the manipulators and war profiteers and it has got that - to the tune of 40 Billion they announce now on top of what has already been spent.
But a hollow victory I think. For all the 'profits' are profits in $US and the worth of the $US is sinking fast and they are sinking it themselves. The petrodollar was the bastion of their economy, along with munitions etc. Now they force the world to have two camps - a petrodollar and some other one. Rubles perhaps, well certainly if Russia can manage it.
It was for suggesting they might use something other than the petrodollar that they killed Hussein and Gaddafi and tried to kill Assad.
Now they're bankrupt and the world knows it. Even their own dumb believing population begins to know it. No way foreseeable of servicing their debt.
And their reputation for probity, integrity, justice, truth, freedom, free speech, honesty.... well, you'd know. It is gone. Gone.
I think they'll find themselves standing this side of an iron curtain holding an empty bucket.
Russia demand more? Russia is demanding nothing. The USA is demanding the whole of Europe bends the knee to it. That's where the demands are. You can't see that?
The West IS intimidated. By the USA. Has been for a long time. This debacle may possibly mark the end of it, though.
I can see the bias. Bits of fact littered with opinion.
I might point out that nearly every nation remains near bankruptcy. Somehow they will all need to correct their economies. When the dust clears I suspect the dollar will remain dominate. The innovations of the past will return and is the real mark of US culture; that coupled with high productivity has made the US an economic powerhouse.
I think such thinking misses the point. It is not Ukraine v Russia to be solved by Ukraine v Russia military confrontations.
It is the USA v Everyone else.
In particular the USA v Europe as in, in particular and most potently, Russia + Germany in Europe - an incredibly potent force that would be that would leave the USA in the dust. Which they terribly fear.
That was my take.
Coincidental on reading this I came across Tom Luongo's take on it which has the same overall idea: that it is in fact a USA v The rest thing but with a far more detailed and 'scholarly' look at it all.
It'll take me a few reads maybe to understand how he's put it all together but the main thrust is simple enough.
You/your readers may be interested:
The Real Reason Behind the EU’s Drive to Embargo Russian Oil
Russia invades Ukraine and you characterise it as Putin 'defending his interests'. Ukraine defends itself and you characterise it as the West 'pushing for death and destruction'. Russia starts a war with an invasion and you state that there has been 'no invasion'. And then you go on to blame the USA, for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You characterise helping an invaded nation defend itself as 'warmongering'.
Almost every single thing you say is the opposite of the truth and the opposite of morality. You praise the violent aggressor and condemn the attacked victim. You are a perfect example of the moral failure of the West. The automatic excuse making for foreign, anti-Western dictators and the automatic denigration of everything the West has ever stood for.
Morally and intellectually, you are a repugnant human being.
Ukraine attacks Russia via the Donbas and vows to eliminate the Donbas states and Russia defends against that.
Is what I said.
Russia did not start the war. It was started openly in 2014 when the madmen even chased their President out of the country.
The USA is to blame because they have been behind the pressure on Russia for the last 70 years. Listen - I pass on what I currently believe after reading for some two hours a day everything that I find on only two things: covid and Ukraine. What I find re Ukraine is what I see widely reported even by those who are strongly on the side of Ukraine: that the USA has been behind the pressure from the beginning.
And for very simple and clear reasons.
So every single thing I say is not the opposite of the truth.
And there's one thing I say all the time: virtually, really, the only thing I say: 'Stop the fighting' that certainly is not against morality.
But I note that along with all the Western media etc. that thing I say apparently escapes you as beneath your notice.
Hence if there were perfect examples of moral failure it would be, it is, amongst those who do not have the morality to look for peace or make the smallest effort to find it or even recognise those who speak it to them when they speak it.
Such as yourself.
The penultimate paragraph is diatribe.
The ultimate paragraph is an ad hominem attack and thereby irrelevant and improper and also, incidentally, totally inaccurate. According to my kids. I'm not very nice, true, I can be quite savage and unpleasant. But I'm not that bad. And I am not full of hate, not for Ukraine, not for Russia, not for the USA, not even for you.
Though I would rather not communicate with you further.
"Though I would rather not communicate with you further." - I might assume that comment is based on "you are a repugnant human being" which is a unwarranted personal attack that ought to be edited.
But your error about the Donbas are simply propaganda IMHO. Please research the complex history of the area following the Holodormor. When the Russians annexed Crimea via using aggression, intimidation and ethnic strife, the Ukraine had no ability to regain the area. The Russians had long held a lease for their fleet, peacefully; the Crimea was not theirs for the taking. The vote was coerced. The Russians then started the separatist movement in the Donbas countered by the Azov volunteer forces who had a linage of fighting Russians from WWII. A low level civil war has been in progress for years exploiting Ukraine E-W disputes of long standing. You really do need to understand the history of the region. The counter propaganda may be found https://euromaidanpress.com/2019/01/18/the-rise-and-decline-of-donbas-how-the-region-became-the-heart-of-soviet-union-and-why-it-fell-to-russian-hybrid-war/. Given the 1991 separation agreement the territory belonging to the newly separated Ukraine was established. Changes to that agreement require negotiation that Russia has refused to do but has used force to strip the region away from agreed boundaries.
Crimea is an evenly more ethnically divided area that ought to be fully independent of both Russia and Ukraine (and Turkey while we are at it). But that's a decision for Ukraine to make.
Please stop lying. Ukraine did not 'attack Russia via the Donbas' It was Russia which invaded and seized the Donbas.
You invert the truth, you defend the aggressor, blame the victim, then pretend that you are some sort of disinterested caller for peace. You are a dishonest, immoral posturer whose first response to a brutal war is to try to use it to virtue signal/ How utterly contempible.
"american puppet regime in ukraine busily pocketing misappropriated (or intended to be appropriated that way) funds stolen from the dumb american electorate" - And we know this how? Much of the money seems pointed toward weapons and munitions. There are concerns that Stinger missiles may find their way into the wrong hands. I assume that money is being designated toward refugee supports. In all such matters corruption is always possible so I hope those in receipt are doing proper accounting.
I say those things based on what I've read about the corruption of Ukraine's government. It seems no one has had any doubts about that for a long time. Least of all the Ukrainians.
Just how they steal a dollar from receipt of a howitzer I don't know. Sell it? Have a company that charges the govt (the taxpayer of course) for offloading and managing them for the army?
I don't know. But it worked fine in Afghanistan by all accounts.
But mainly I think the monies are made in and around all the 'transfers'. There are 'associated costs' and 'necessary expenses' and there's always been the need for 'greasing palms' just so that a thing can be done, can be allowed, can be expedited.
I am merely a layman rapidly coming up to speed with the realities of the world I live in. Calling it as I've learned to see it.
Hopefully I'd be entirely wrong.
But I doubt it.
I just saw Pfizer make 33 billion dollars on an untried vaccination that only ever promised a 0.1% improvement on the immune system's natural performance, didn't in the event deliver that, was never needed and did and does deliver as yet uncounted side effects of all kinds up to and including instant death.
"corruption of Ukraine's government" - Corruption in governments seems to be the standard these days. But Zelenskyy seems to have support of the people.
excellent. not a mention of peace. a wholehearted push towards more death and destruction making the whole of ukraine warzone, promoting the interests of the usa and with a promised finish line of an american puppet regime in ukraine busily pocketing misappropriated (or intended to be appropriated that way) funds stolen from the dumb american electorate.
this until the whole western world crumbles to poverty beneath this mismanagement.
unless the intent is to make all out war on russia and conquer it?
i could believe any insanity.
when did watching real life wars take precedent over reading books, watching movies?
entertainment for the masses: villains produced to order - mass simplification of issues - wholesale condemnation of whole populaces - death and destruction everywhere..
brilliantly promoted and assisted by this venue...
good for you
:)
well done
Glenn Greenwald has a similar take. I disagree, more or less and only for now. We need to pile on in order to convince the Russians that they cannot win. It must end. Once it ends, stop the money flow. The justification for NATO is at an end.
I fear it won't come down that way. Billions will be misspent. If they coincidentally end the war it will not be totally wasted.
https://greenwald.substack.com/p/biden-wanted-33b-more-for-ukraine?s=r
As for the greenwald thing about USA Congress and the money well that's insanity raised to the power of what - 3? 4?
The USA cannot afford a penny never mind billions.
The money is largely a direct transfer not to Ukraine but to the profiteers in the USA, of course. A billion 'to Ukraine' means, as with most 'foreign aid' that Ukraine gets to 'buy' a billions dollars of US materiel for free. That's 'aid'. And the billions dollars the materiel costs is paid directly from the USA taxpayer into the coffers of the arms manufacturers, lobbyists, interested parties, cronies, leeches, hangers-on etc. right there in the USA.
Some 'billions' without doubt if traced, which could happen in today's computerised financial world I'd expect but won't, will be earmarked for and will go directly into the pockets of certain individuals within and without Ukraine. Bribes and payoffs.
Many of the 'billions' that actually get there will be more of a hindrance than a help, piled up in warehouses and on docksides with no one to handle it nowhere to store no one to maintain it no idea of what to do with it.
Hastily constructed 'special purpose' squads, companies, equipped hastily with all this. new gear will rush boldly off to their deaths for lack of training or expertise or adequate officer and non-com leadership. Top command embarrassingly in receipt of a plethora of equipment and nowhere and no one to give it to and no experience or plans for the handling of it.
This very clearly - does anyone doubt it? - makes the whole of Ukraine a war zone. That is clearly the intent.
Putin has not been 'invading Ukraine'. A country wide invasion is a very different thing. A very different thing. All the armchair experts clamouring around shouting advice like punters round a dogfight should be able to tell everyone that much.
But fill the Ukraine with billions of dollars worth of munitions moving in trainloads all over the country from all sides, travelling in conveys, being stored in towns and cities and villages, landing in airfields.... what's Russia to do? What would you do?
And:
“about $6.5 billion, roughly half of the aid package, will go to the US Department of Defense so it can deploy troops to the region and send defense equipment to Ukraine.”
See that? 'Deploy troops to the region'. They're already there I have no doubt.
We simply await the day which they think suitable to announce their presence on some pretext or other at the same time as announcing they, these valiant peace loving US troops, got killed by some vicious Russian attack and we're there:
Official declaration of war on Russia by the USA.
And note all that hooha and drum banging and conspicuous insane expenditure but not a word about helping the Ukrainians and Russians who right now are dying and suffering in this insane 'war'.
The greenwald thing is definitely good overall. I don't mean to deny that.
I think America is getting everything it wants. Everything. And what it wants is to fill its pockets as quickly as it can before the ship goes down.
For 'America' is not America. The American people have been left in the dust a long time ago. Silly enough to believe in two parties and waste their time fighting each other of 'democrat' or 'republican'.
It is not America that is doing this: the America of 350 million people.
It is 'America' of a few dozen or a few hundred or even a few thousand - they haven't been called out, I don't know - insane power mongers and manipulators who use Biden as a puppet and twist and torment the country as they please always in the interests of feathering their own nests.
They, I believe, can see clearly what we see: A bankrupt country going down the tubes at breakneck speed. A country with nowhere to go but down.
So THEY plan to 'bail out'. They're sinking the USA in this last fling and they don't much give a damn what happens. In all the commotion and the massive spending and furore they'll get theirs and salt it aware and be home free.
That's why the actions of the USA seem so insane. Because it is like we're looking at a schizophrenic. There's two of them: the people, and the manipulators.
You write "Putin has not been 'invading Ukraine'". If this is not an invasion, I would be hard put to describe what one is. He did, in fact, attempt to invade pretty much the whole country. He simply didn't have the resources. He has rained missiles everywhere.
You absolutely cannot justify what Putin has done. You could not claim he has negotiated in good faith. Once it was clear that Ukraine would not roll over, he has not negotiated at all. This must be settled by force of arms. I am grateful to the US and its NATO partners for those arms. This is the war they spent 70+ years preparing for. In light of the trillions upon trillions spent over those decades, these tens of billions are cheap. Even though, as you note, they will as always be misspent.
Yep well I won't argue with you. The whole thing is too sad for that and what difference would our little argument make. Putin of course has the resources and if that was what he wanted to do he would have employed them.
He has been trying to defend his interest in Ukraine. Still is.
You'll not accept that. Okay. I won't argue it any further.
I hope you don't find out what a full scale Russian invasion would be like.
Ukraine was not asked to 'roll over' - it was asked to honour agreements.
NATO, the West, the USA, asked for honour.
Stupid ask, wasn't it.
Yep, 70+ years preparing for. The West, coached by the USA, never gave Russia a chance. It has wanted this for 70+ years.
Now its got it and its true nature is fully revealed for as I've said before, as anyone can see, ALL the rhetoric is about kill, kill, kill, hate, hate, hate, munitions etc, etc, war, war, war - never a word for peace.
How much of the 60 Billion for peace initiatives?
How many lamenting that?
If you were a parent and your children were fighting and one kid was screaming that you wouldn't let his brother hurt him but the brother had been kicking him under the table all the time and now he was going to punch that brother out...
And they were into it, swinging punches left and right...
You'd give one brother a knuckle duster?
You'd not apologise to the first brother for reneging on your promise?
You'd not shout 'stop, stop, stop'?
No you wouldn't.
You'd act like a responsible parent.
Like a grown up.
But there's no grown ups in the room now.
And nobody wants them.
Everyone is enjoying the fight.
Except, of course, the 'collateral damage'. We're deeply indebted to the USA for that phrase. They have a whole lexicon of words and phrases ready for incidences such as this. After all, they've been here before. This is their stock in trade. This is what they do.
Manipulate dupes.
You write as if Russia had been playing nice. Since the time of the Mongols they have never played nice. They have always been difficult to negotiate with and have broken agreements with impunity. They bully their neighbors, who have always lived in fear of them. Every one. Throughout history.
Europe and the Anglosphere have lived in peace - at least with each other - for longer now than for any period in history. The US has cohabited tranquilly with its neighbors and for the most part with its whole hemisphere. Give us credit. We respect one another's warmaking capabilities and settle our differences peacefully.
In that time the USSR and now Russia have had armed conflicts internally (Chechnya, and earlier within their satellites) and on their borders with China, Georgia and Afghanistan. They live by the sword.
There is a difference in natures here which is both obvious and impossible to overlook. This war is Russia's. It is in their nature to start such wars, and they did. It is now up to us to end the hostilities in the only way Russia will understand, and on terms that ensure there will not be an encore.
We do not want their land. We want only that they leave everybody else's alone.
Graham, I should maybe not comment. I have no expertise, I have no training, I have no knowledge of history. I speak in forums such as this simply as an interested layman.
I justify that by thinking that there's more of us than anyone else and it would seem sensible to know how we see things...
Like I put forward my view, without pretensions to high authority or supposed claim to certain truth.
And as part of that I'm constantly open to persuasion.
O.K. ?
So that being said I'll give my response to that and probably I should fall silent then until ever I have an epiphany or something. :)
Well it seems to me
. The history of Russia is not how we decide this issue. Nor the history of any other place. The USA say. Or even the recent history of the Ukraine.
. Broken agreements seem clearly here to be on the part of the West and NATO and the USA.
. Europe and the Anglosphere may have lived in peace but the Anglosphere has not lived in peace with the world. If anyone has lived by the sword it has been the USA. In fact the Anglosphere has not lived in peace with Europe if we count Russia in with Europe, which is where it should be. The whole effort has been to exclude Russia. It is shameful and stupid. It has brought us to this. As I think you said, 70 years working precisely towards this.
. Any country with borders as long as Russia's is prone to border conflicts. When you consider those who inhabit some of those border regions they'd seem inevitable wouldn't they? Talking about living by the sword: China? Afghanistan? Even the Chechens. The whole Isis thing calling into question Muslims everywhere and incensing them one way or the other everywhere.
. I see no difference in natures. It is axiomatic or at least a frequent mantra that no one fights like brothers fight. That's what I see.
. They started the war? My understanding is that after 2014 the Ukraine started shelling Russians in the Donbas immediately. That the duly elected President had to flee in fear of his life, not from the populace but from a radical minority espousing a philosophy of hate and violence reminiscent of those Isis I just mentioned.
. You do want their land, so to speak. The two breakaway republics were recognised by Russia and the declared aim of Ukraine was to overwhelm them.
Those are my reactions to your points.
To return to my single point:
There should be a constant focus and strong effort on finding paths of peace and avoiding this escalation and doubling and redoubling of the capacity for violence.
In the minds of the 'warriors' this is stirring manly stuff, proud and exultant, fearless, noble and shining.
In the bodies and minds of those women and children killed and maimed by the violence brought by those 'noble warriors' it is something else. It is a visitation of hell on earth, sometimes of unbearable agonies, of the destruction of all that is sane and sensible, of a fearsome blight that strikes their lives and destroys all now and the effects of which will be with them for the rest of their lives.
Manly pride keeps this going.
And the sly urgings of the American profiteers.
Make no mistake: it is they who profit, they and only they.
In the casino only the casino profits and gamblers are self deluding fools.
America is crumbling like a dried out rotten cheese but nevertheless it still contains the expertise and motivations and abilities of some of the world's most devious, ruthless and greedy manipulators and profiteers.
"never gave Russia a chance. It has wanted this for 70+ years" - Oh there have been chances. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perestroika was an opening that began considerable US investment in Russia. H.W. Bush didn't quite do enough. Sadly Yeltsin was not able to open even more and when Putin took over he cancelled much progress to openness. In the process both nations lost good chances for improvement.
Well I don't know enough detail I'd be happy to see it. If Putin cancelled progress I'm of the opinion he would have had good reasons for it. He's often pointed to lopsided agreements just as Trump did in the USA in other contexts.
And talking Trump: as recently as that I saw Putin willing to join together when Trump mooted the idea and I saw the American sheep coaxed and herded into absolutely insane frenzy of opposition. Now that's a simple fact. The USA behaved the way we think perhaps nations behaved during those witch trial Inquisition days and that's just a fact.
So yes there may well have been 'chances' here and there that were not taken up or were mishandled but I think it is a slam dunk: the USA violently and persistently and irrationally demonised and victimised Russia.
Putin's war objectives, given on Day 1, were to "demilitarize and denazify Ukraine."
We know what demilitarize means. "Denazify" assumes there are Nazis here. There are no self-proclaimed Nazis. If Putin gets to name them, which he is doing via "filtration," nobody is safe.
No country in the world would accede to absurd demands like these.
You're at least partially right there, I know, I remember reading something like that somewhere. I need to get to the source of it.
It severely damages my faith in Putin if it is all true as baldly put. It does.
However it doesn't one whit alter my attitude towards my own govt. and the West's attitude and behaviour which I consider completely beyond the pale right now and for the last couple of decades at least and with respect to Russia for 70 years.
I might be left with no one I can have faith in.
Which would leave me where I started: a common man with essentially a faith in the common people and pleading against us being divided against ourselves and killing ourselves.
p.s. I've thought of an angle might help me: Demilitarize and Denazify might not necessarily mean what we instinctively take them to mean: occupation and control of the whole country. I stand by the observation that the attack on Ukraine simply doesn't look anything like that.
It could well be a reference to getting at those far right extremist Azov battalions and their political influence. It is they who brought 2014 undone. It is they who spew the torrents of hate. It is they who said they'll wipe out the Donbas states.
It is they who've 'militarized' the Ukraine.
It well could be his goal at the same time as not being what we assume it to be.
"what's Russia to do? " - Easy answer, stop interfering in Ukraine. They agreed to independence in 1991, abide by that. As it stands Russia has created a proxy war with the West, well beyond the US. We can hope it doesn't escalate but the West must not be intimidated lest Russia demand even more.
well i'm with those who believe Russia was provoked continually for 70 years and more particularly in the last 7. It is not a question of Russia interfering in Ukraine's affairs - it is a question of the USA interfering in everyone's affairs.
As usual. It is not Russia v Ukraine. It is Russia v USA and the USA via it's bumbling puppet President has apparently made that very clear.
And I imagine Putin shrugs.
For it has always been clear to him. Over the years I've seen and heard him say it numerous times.
He had no way out. Sooner or later. The USA was closing in. Using proxies of course. And dupes. Don't be duped. What you're watching is the USA having its way with the Ukrainians and the Russians.
It wants Europe fragmented and no threat to it - in particular no conjoint Russia/Germany - and it got that.
It wants Russia marginalised. And it got that.
It wants a perpetual state of war to feed its Military Industrial complex and it hopes to get that but I think it will finish up with only a demilitarised zone as in North/South Korea.
It wants to distract world attention from the wickedness of the covid scam and it got that.
It wants to funnel more money into the pockets of the manipulators and war profiteers and it has got that - to the tune of 40 Billion they announce now on top of what has already been spent.
But a hollow victory I think. For all the 'profits' are profits in $US and the worth of the $US is sinking fast and they are sinking it themselves. The petrodollar was the bastion of their economy, along with munitions etc. Now they force the world to have two camps - a petrodollar and some other one. Rubles perhaps, well certainly if Russia can manage it.
It was for suggesting they might use something other than the petrodollar that they killed Hussein and Gaddafi and tried to kill Assad.
Now they're bankrupt and the world knows it. Even their own dumb believing population begins to know it. No way foreseeable of servicing their debt.
And their reputation for probity, integrity, justice, truth, freedom, free speech, honesty.... well, you'd know. It is gone. Gone.
I think they'll find themselves standing this side of an iron curtain holding an empty bucket.
Russia demand more? Russia is demanding nothing. The USA is demanding the whole of Europe bends the knee to it. That's where the demands are. You can't see that?
The West IS intimidated. By the USA. Has been for a long time. This debacle may possibly mark the end of it, though.
I can see the bias. Bits of fact littered with opinion.
I might point out that nearly every nation remains near bankruptcy. Somehow they will all need to correct their economies. When the dust clears I suspect the dollar will remain dominate. The innovations of the past will return and is the real mark of US culture; that coupled with high productivity has made the US an economic powerhouse.
I think such thinking misses the point. It is not Ukraine v Russia to be solved by Ukraine v Russia military confrontations.
It is the USA v Everyone else.
In particular the USA v Europe as in, in particular and most potently, Russia + Germany in Europe - an incredibly potent force that would be that would leave the USA in the dust. Which they terribly fear.
That was my take.
Coincidental on reading this I came across Tom Luongo's take on it which has the same overall idea: that it is in fact a USA v The rest thing but with a far more detailed and 'scholarly' look at it all.
It'll take me a few reads maybe to understand how he's put it all together but the main thrust is simple enough.
You/your readers may be interested:
The Real Reason Behind the EU’s Drive to Embargo Russian Oil
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/05/11/the-real-reason-behind-the-eus-drive-to-embargo-russian-oil/
Russia invades Ukraine and you characterise it as Putin 'defending his interests'. Ukraine defends itself and you characterise it as the West 'pushing for death and destruction'. Russia starts a war with an invasion and you state that there has been 'no invasion'. And then you go on to blame the USA, for the Russian invasion of Ukraine. You characterise helping an invaded nation defend itself as 'warmongering'.
Almost every single thing you say is the opposite of the truth and the opposite of morality. You praise the violent aggressor and condemn the attacked victim. You are a perfect example of the moral failure of the West. The automatic excuse making for foreign, anti-Western dictators and the automatic denigration of everything the West has ever stood for.
Morally and intellectually, you are a repugnant human being.
Ukraine attacks Russia via the Donbas and vows to eliminate the Donbas states and Russia defends against that.
Is what I said.
Russia did not start the war. It was started openly in 2014 when the madmen even chased their President out of the country.
The USA is to blame because they have been behind the pressure on Russia for the last 70 years. Listen - I pass on what I currently believe after reading for some two hours a day everything that I find on only two things: covid and Ukraine. What I find re Ukraine is what I see widely reported even by those who are strongly on the side of Ukraine: that the USA has been behind the pressure from the beginning.
And for very simple and clear reasons.
So every single thing I say is not the opposite of the truth.
And there's one thing I say all the time: virtually, really, the only thing I say: 'Stop the fighting' that certainly is not against morality.
But I note that along with all the Western media etc. that thing I say apparently escapes you as beneath your notice.
Hence if there were perfect examples of moral failure it would be, it is, amongst those who do not have the morality to look for peace or make the smallest effort to find it or even recognise those who speak it to them when they speak it.
Such as yourself.
The penultimate paragraph is diatribe.
The ultimate paragraph is an ad hominem attack and thereby irrelevant and improper and also, incidentally, totally inaccurate. According to my kids. I'm not very nice, true, I can be quite savage and unpleasant. But I'm not that bad. And I am not full of hate, not for Ukraine, not for Russia, not for the USA, not even for you.
Though I would rather not communicate with you further.
"Though I would rather not communicate with you further." - I might assume that comment is based on "you are a repugnant human being" which is a unwarranted personal attack that ought to be edited.
But your error about the Donbas are simply propaganda IMHO. Please research the complex history of the area following the Holodormor. When the Russians annexed Crimea via using aggression, intimidation and ethnic strife, the Ukraine had no ability to regain the area. The Russians had long held a lease for their fleet, peacefully; the Crimea was not theirs for the taking. The vote was coerced. The Russians then started the separatist movement in the Donbas countered by the Azov volunteer forces who had a linage of fighting Russians from WWII. A low level civil war has been in progress for years exploiting Ukraine E-W disputes of long standing. You really do need to understand the history of the region. The counter propaganda may be found https://euromaidanpress.com/2019/01/18/the-rise-and-decline-of-donbas-how-the-region-became-the-heart-of-soviet-union-and-why-it-fell-to-russian-hybrid-war/. Given the 1991 separation agreement the territory belonging to the newly separated Ukraine was established. Changes to that agreement require negotiation that Russia has refused to do but has used force to strip the region away from agreed boundaries.
Crimea is an evenly more ethnically divided area that ought to be fully independent of both Russia and Ukraine (and Turkey while we are at it). But that's a decision for Ukraine to make.
Please stop lying. Ukraine did not 'attack Russia via the Donbas' It was Russia which invaded and seized the Donbas.
You invert the truth, you defend the aggressor, blame the victim, then pretend that you are some sort of disinterested caller for peace. You are a dishonest, immoral posturer whose first response to a brutal war is to try to use it to virtue signal/ How utterly contempible.
"american puppet regime in ukraine busily pocketing misappropriated (or intended to be appropriated that way) funds stolen from the dumb american electorate" - And we know this how? Much of the money seems pointed toward weapons and munitions. There are concerns that Stinger missiles may find their way into the wrong hands. I assume that money is being designated toward refugee supports. In all such matters corruption is always possible so I hope those in receipt are doing proper accounting.
I say those things based on what I've read about the corruption of Ukraine's government. It seems no one has had any doubts about that for a long time. Least of all the Ukrainians.
Just how they steal a dollar from receipt of a howitzer I don't know. Sell it? Have a company that charges the govt (the taxpayer of course) for offloading and managing them for the army?
I don't know. But it worked fine in Afghanistan by all accounts.
But mainly I think the monies are made in and around all the 'transfers'. There are 'associated costs' and 'necessary expenses' and there's always been the need for 'greasing palms' just so that a thing can be done, can be allowed, can be expedited.
I am merely a layman rapidly coming up to speed with the realities of the world I live in. Calling it as I've learned to see it.
Hopefully I'd be entirely wrong.
But I doubt it.
I just saw Pfizer make 33 billion dollars on an untried vaccination that only ever promised a 0.1% improvement on the immune system's natural performance, didn't in the event deliver that, was never needed and did and does deliver as yet uncounted side effects of all kinds up to and including instant death.
"corruption of Ukraine's government" - Corruption in governments seems to be the standard these days. But Zelenskyy seems to have support of the people.
yep. and right now that's about all I know... :)