Putin's war

Here’s one of those other opinions written by a lefty who does not follow the mainstream storyline.

All of your favorite words: proxy war, installed government, etc.

https://mate.substack.com/p/by-using-ukraine-to-fight-russia?s=r&fbclid=IwAR0yxhzJmcywpJF-JXek0Nglrpll6wL5j_N4l66Qd2M5cwz84vkvIri52LU

Excerpt:

By using Ukraine to fight Russia, the US provoked Putin's war
After backing a far-right coup in 2014, the US has fueled a proxy war in eastern Ukraine that has left 14,000 dead. Russia's invasion is an illegal and catastrophic response.

More from the article by Aaron Mate:

The coup government encouraged assaults on Ukraine's Russian-speaking population, who took up arms to defend themselves with Moscow's support. Rather than pressure its client in Kiev to implement a negotiated settlement under the 2015 Minsk Accords, the US has instead poured in weapons and military advisers to assist Ukraine's fascist-infused armed forces in the proxy war that it helped initiate. While now hailing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky as a national hero, the US has sided with far-right Ukrainian nationalists over the peace platform that Zelensky was elected on in 2019.

The US policy of using Ukraine as cannon fodder has accompanied a bid to incorporate it into NATO. Compounding the dangers of a hostile military alliance on Russia's borders, the US has also methodically dismantled the Cold War-era arms control treaties that limited the arsenals of the world's two top nuclear powers.

Since 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly warned that US policies in Ukraine and other former Soviet states were crossing Russian red lines, and would force a Russian reaction.

After years of US-driven escalation, Putin's warnings have been realized in the form of an illegal invasion that has placed the world in one of its most dangerous moments since the Second World War.

Continuing Mate’s article:

In the United States, the Russian invasion is widely portrayed as a campaign by Putin to colonize Ukraine and subvert its effort to join the European Union. If that is indeed Putin's goal now, then he is doing so only after a years-long effort, led by the US, to force the deeply divided country into the Western orbit. By its own accounting, the US has spent $5 billion on this crusade since 1991, complemented with tens of millions more from the European Union.

The US agenda was made plain in September 2013, when Carl Gershman, head of the CIA-tied National Endowment for Democracy, declared that "Ukraine is the biggest prize." If Ukraine could be pulled into the US-led order, Gershman explained, "Putin may find himself on the losing end not just in the near abroad but within Russia itself." In short, in Washington's eyes, regime change in Kiev could redound to Moscow as well.

An opportunity to claim the prize arrived two months later with the outbreak of Ukraine's Maidan protests. The Maidan is commonly described in the US as a "democratic revolution." That is a fair term for its initial weeks, when tens of thousands of Ukrainians gathered in Kiev's Maidan square to protest rampant government corruption and to support European integration. But these protests were soon co-opted by Ukraine's far-right forces, who turned a people's movement into a violent campaign for regime change. Maidan culminated in what George Friedman, head of the US intelligence-tied firm Stratfor, reportedly described as "the most blatant coup in history."

The spark for the Maidan protests was a decision by President Viktor Yanukovych to back out of a trade deal offered by the European Union. The conventional narrative is that Yanukovych was bullied by his chief patron in Moscow. In reality, Yanukovych was hoping to develop ties to Europe, and "cajoled and bullied anyone who pushed for Ukraine to have closer ties to Russia," Reuters reported at the time. But the Ukrainian president got cold feet once he read the EU deal's fine print. Ukraine would not only have to curb its deep cultural and economic ties to Russia, but accept harsh austerity measures such as "increasing the retirement age and freezing pensions and wages." Far from improving the lives of average Ukrainians, these demands only would have ensured deprivation and Yanukovych's political demise.

I know what you mean!!! Just like the way the US forced the Germans to murder 5 million or so Jewish! Or the way Calvin Coolidge forced Joe Stalin to starve 20 million or so Ukrainians in the Twenties.

What's wrong with you?

More of Aaron Mate’s article on US’ recent dabbling in Ukraine:

Russia capitalized on Yanukovych's jitters by offering a more generous package of $15 billion and threatening to withhold payments if the EU's terms were accepted. Contrary to subsequent Western narratives, Russia did not demand "a commitment to join the [Russian-led] customs union or any other evident quid pro quo," according to the New York Times.

Unlike its Western counterparts, Russia also did not demand that Ukraine abandon its European ambitions. Yanukovich, the Times reported in December 2013, "has insisted that Ukraine would ultimately move toward Europe and even consider signing the accords at a later date." But there was one obstacle: "a senior European Union official has said those discussions have been cut off."

By that point, rather than help broker a compromise, the US had swung its weight behind far-right opposition figures who had taken command of the Maidan.

As far-right groups occupied government buildings across Ukraine, Washington's bipartisan Cold Warriors swept in to claim the prize. Senators John McCain and Chris Murphy visited the central protest encampment in Kiev and stood beside Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the far-right Svoboda party. Tyahnybok had once urged his supporters to fight the "Muscovite-Jewish mafia running Ukraine."

"Ukraine will make Europe better and Europe will make Ukraine better," McCain promised the crowd. Giving away the game, Murphy told CNN that the Senators' mission was to "bring about a peaceful transition here."

The Senators were joined in Kiev by senior State Department official Victoria Nuland, who now occupies a similar position under Biden. On February 4th, an intercepted phone call, presumably recorded and released by Russian or Ukrainian intelligence, exposed Nuland's plan for bringing the "transition" about. Speaking to Geoffrey Pyatt, the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Nuland laid out how the US would back a new Ukrainian government, fronted by Maidan leaders and handpicked by Washington. The State Department responded to the leak by dismissing it as "Russian tradecraft."
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I’ll let readers decide if they want to read the rest at the link.

That weak attempt at shutting down opinions you don’t like it SO TIRED. Grow up.

Russia's diplomatic mission in Poland will have to do without dozens of staff in the future: As Poland's Interior Minister Mariusz Kamiński announced on Twitter, 45 diplomats from Moscow will be expelled from the country. The Polish government is acting decisively to eliminate "the network of Russian services in our country", Kamiński said.

The expulsion had previously been urged by Poland's domestic intelligence service ABW. According to its own information, the ABW had unmasked dozens of Russian diplomats as spies. A list "of 45 persons working in Poland under the guise of diplomatic activities (...) and in reality carrying out espionage activities directed against Poland".



[Polish] Special Services: 45 Russian ‘diplomats’ to be expelled

Just like the weak are shutting your little fascist friends down in Ukraine. Be honest: does the truth just burn your ears or does it make you regret your entire life full of lies?

You are the ultimate victim blamer. Shame on you.

I think the fact that I’m the only one actually seeking the truth should answer that for you.

I can’t imagine how fearful you are of the truth to go to such ridiculous lengths to stop other people from offering different perspectives or opposing ideas.

What makes you the thought police? Why does the truth make you act so crazy?

I would think you are the sole barbarian at the gate and the guards are laughing you.

Funny stuff. Out of ammunition and trying to shut the thread, aren't you?

Talk to yourself for awhile.

While you're listening to a revised Clash song, I get the feeling Lash is listening to one by the Kaiser Chiefs.

Rouble, rouble, rouble, ah ah ah.

For anyone who finds it difficult to see the world in terms of white hats and black hats, who wants to at least read what brilliant, unbought and unbossed journalists are writing, Chris Hedges.

https://scheerpost.com/2022/03/14/hedges-waltzing-toward-armageddon-with-the-merchants-of-death/?fbclid=IwAR1469OMyQWZADby3XwDCHrbjq2uMQQfW-sRtGG-ge3YVeC3FM7PunCam3o&amp

Waltzing Toward Armageddon With the Merchants of Death
By Chris Hedges

The Cold War, from 1945 to 1989, was a wild Bacchanalia for arms manufacturers, the Pentagon, the CIA, the diplomats who played one country off another on the world’s chess board, and the global corporations able to loot and pillage by equating predatory capitalism with freedom. In the name of national security, the Cold Warriors, many of them self-identified liberals, demonized labor, independent media, human rights organizations, and those who opposed the permanent war economy and the militarization of American society as soft on communism.

That is why they have resurrected it.

The decision to spurn the possibility of peaceful coexistence with Russia at the end of the Cold War is one of the most egregious crimes of the late 20th century. The danger of provoking Russia was universally understood with the collapse of the Soviet Union, including by political elites as diverse as Henry Kissinger and George F. Kennan, who called the expansion of NATO into Central Europe “the most fateful error of American policy in the entire post-Cold War era.”

This provocation, a violation of a promise not to expand NATO beyond the borders of a unified Germany, has seen Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, and North Macedonia inducted into the Western military alliance. This betrayal was compounded by a decision to station NATO troops, including thousands of US troops, in Eastern Europe, another violation of an agreement made by Washington with Moscow. The Russian invasion of Ukraine, perhaps a cynical goal of the Western alliance, has now solidified an expanding and resurgent NATO and a rampant, uncontrollable militarism. The masters of war may be ecstatic, but the potential consequences, including a global conflagration, are terrifying.

Peace has been sacrificed for US global hegemony. It has been sacrificed for the billions in profits made by the arms industry. Peace could have seen state resources invested in people rather than systems of control. It could have allowed us to address the climate emergency. But we cry peace, peace, and there is no peace. Nations frantically rearm, threatening nuclear war. They prepare for the worst, ensuring that the worst will happen.

So what if the Amazon is reaching its final tipping point where trees will soon begin to die off en masse. So what if land ice and ice shelves are melting from below at a much faster rate than predicted. So what if temperatures soar, monster hurricanes, floods, droughts, and wildfires devastate the earth. In the face of the gravest existential crisis to beset the human species, and most other species, the ruling elites stoke a conflict that is driving up the price of oil and turbocharging the fossil fuel extraction industry. It is collective madness.
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The balance of the article is at the link.

I’m *adding* to the conversation. You and your downthumbing puppets are the ones trying to *stop* conversation.

I’d be quite happy not to be constantly attacked and lied about by you. I invite you to ignore me forever.

Was that truly a "far-right" coup? – just asking. Pro-Europe doesn't really equal "far-right" nor is Russia in any way "left". Lash, check out the article I posted yesterday about "westsplaining".

Russia will no longer accept payments for its gas deliveries to Europe in dollars or euros. He had decided to establish a package of measures for payment in roubles, said Putin this Wednesday. He spoke of gas deliveries to "unfriendly countries" and thus to all EU states and mentioned a transition period of one week.

The only positive thing about the war in Ukraine is that Lash has finally shut up about Mrs Clinton.

Even she can't twist facts and bend reality enough to make her look guilty.

Another thought-provoking piece by Chris Hedges. Who’s your favorite war criminal?

https://scheerpost.com/2022/03/21/hedges-the-lie-of-american-innocence/
The Lie of American Innocence

The branding of Vladimir Putin as a war criminal by Joe Biden, who lobbied for the Iraq war and staunchly supported the 20 years of carnage in the Middle East, is one more example of the hypocritical moral posturing sweeping across the United States. It is unclear how anyone would try Putin for war crimes since Russia, like the United States, does not recognize the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. But justice is not the point. Politicians like Biden, who do not accept responsibility for our well-documented war crimes, bolster their moral credentials by demonizing their adversaries. They know the chance of Putin facing justice is zero. And they know their chance of facing justice is the same.

We know who our most recent war criminals are, among others: George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, General Ricardo Sanchez, former CIA Director George Tenet, former Asst. Atty. Gen. Jay Bybee, former Dep. Asst. Atty. Gen. John Yoo, who set up the legal framework to authorize torture; the helicopter pilots who gunned down civilians, including two Reuters journalists, in the “Collateral Murder” video released by WikiLeaks. We have evidence of the crimes they committed.

But, like Putin’s Russia, those who expose these crimes are silenced and persecuted. Julian Assange, even though he is not a US citizen and his WikiLeaks site is not a US-based publication, is charged under the US Espionage Act for making public numerous US war crimes. Assange, currently housed in a high security prison in London, is fighting a losing battle in the British courts to block his extradition to the United States, where he faces 175 years in prison. One set of rules for Russia, another set of rules for the United States. Weeping crocodile tears for the Russian media, which is being heavily censored by Putin, while ignoring the plight of the most important publisher of our generation speaks volumes about how much the ruling class cares about press freedom and truth.

If we demand justice for Ukrainians, as we should, we must also demand justice for the one million people killed — 400,000 of whom were noncombatants — by our invasions, occupations and aerial assaults in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan. We must demand justice for those who were wounded, became sick or died because we destroyed hospitals and infrastructure. We must demand justice for the thousands of soldiers and marines who were killed, and many more who were wounded and are living with lifelong disabilities, in wars launched and sustained on lies. We must demand justice for the 38 million people who have been displaced or become refugees in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, the Philippines, Libya, and Syria, a number that exceeds the total of all those displaced in all wars since 1900, apart from World War II, according to the Watson Institute for International & Public Affairs at Brown University. Tens of millions of people, who had no connection with the attacks of 9/11, were killed, wounded, lost their homes, and saw their lives and their families destroyed because of our war crimes. Who will cry out for them?

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Nobody here. You’re not supposed to even mention them here. Ask yourself why.