The inevitable end result of our last 56 years

[Matt Allison]

Jim- Ukraine is not a fascist country. Zelensky was elected in a democratic election in 2019, and by a large margin. He is neither corrupt, or a fascist. Kyiv, which is currently being attacked, is not run by, or full of, Nazis.

As far as Putin goes, if once upon a time he was a stable person, that is no longer the case. He is censoring all media in Russia and lying about anything and everything to anyone that listens. His hatred for the United States is his life force. In his mind, it's still 1980, and he's Yuri Andropov. People can debate whether that's warranted or not, but that's the reality.

The Cold War never ended, and he has decided to heat it up this week. 

[Matt Allison]

IMO, a review of this 1991 event can shed light on this week's events:

https://www.rferl.org/a/what-happened-to-the-august-1991-coup-plotters/27933729.html

[W. Niederhut]

Russian missile strikes a residential building in Kyiv.

 

Edited February 26, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Pat Speer]

58 minutes ago, W. Niederhut said:

Russian missile strikes a residential building in Kyiv.

 

The Russians will, of course, lie about it. My Ukrainian friend was in Ukraine when Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was shot down by a Russian missile. The Russians made out that they had nothing to do with it, leaving some to assume it was an over-zealous pro-Russian rebel who'd been given access a Russian weapons system, who was responsible. But my friend--a Ukrainian-speaking Lt. Col. in U.S Special Forces who'd been working with the Ukrainian military for years--assured me that he knew for a fact that the Russians didn't trust the rebels with their weapons systems, and that it was a Russian soldier who'd fired the missile. I just looked up the history of the case on wikipedia, and it appears he was right. The Dutch have brought a lawsuit against Russia over the incident. 

[Benjamin Cole]

One doesn't have to be an isolationist to recognize this:

The US foreign-military-trade establishment is run the security state and the globalist commercial class. Who also control 95% of media content. 

Once you let those guys in anywhere on the globe, they will operate in their interests, not in the interests of mankind, or the US taxpayers, or the broad genuine national interest of US citizens. 

Why does the US spend $6 trillion in Afghanistan, or bomb Libya, or how does a VP Biden end up switching out prosectors in Ukraine, and installing one who does not prosecute a fossil-fuels company from which his son gets $1 million?

I cannot accept what Putin has done in Ukraine.  Putin is responsible for his actions, even if he was triggered by Western actors.  I hope Putin gets a badly bloodied nose and goes home, and bloodshed ends quickly. 

The Ukrainians will not soon forget this.  

And ponder why Putin=Hitler but Xi=Confucius to Western economic elites. 

 

 

 

[Ron Bulman]

An interesting perspective.  An invitation for peace keeping assistance.  

Vladimir Putin wins big, yet again (msn.com)

[Bob Ness]

6 hours ago, James DiEugenio said:

Bob, what i am stating are facts.

The purpose of NATO was to resist an invasion of West Europe through Germany.  This is why it was a big deal for Gorby to let Germany unite. This eliminated that threat.  In return, as Matlock said--and it was he who said it--Gorby got a promise that NATO would not extend beyond Germany.  Jeff Morley just quoted the guy on this. That promise was broken.

Nuclear non proliferation is part of an agreement by a different organization and states like Belarus--which had been part of the USSR-- returned their nukes to Russia.  As did Ukraine.  What was the need for NATO to do that when you had a different body specifically designed for that purpose?

There were fascist groups in the Maidan.  To deny that is to deny facts; they actually had Swastikas on their helmets.  Bob Parry was the only journalist to show those pictures.  They idolized Bandera.  And in fact after they took power, Bandera's statue went up.

Bad news. West Germany wasn't a member of NATO when it was formed. NATO was a defense alliance formed partly to put a stop to European and Soviet adventurism that dragged the US into two world wars.

They're facts for you but not the people who live under these conditions. I promise you they're not all Nazis. I suspect out of the 40 million people in Ukraine there's a cannibal or two but luckily you're not running around claiming they're all chomping on people's legs. You and Carter are convinced and have been for some time that the Ustachi are behind this and it reads like the histrionics of a failed argument. It's patently obvious what is going on and was in Crimea as well. Putin can't afford for his population to perceive the possibility of a Western style democracy in his country. He'd be strung up in a New York minute.

Now you're saying that NATO had nothing to do with stability in post Soviet Europe?? What? The reason Europe didn't go all in on proliferation is because of the nuclear umbrella we provided for the stability of the NATO allies. That made it unnecessary in spite of the fact that after the fall THERE WERE AT LEAST THREE MORE NUCLEAR POWERS, most of them highly destabilized in one way or the other.

It's all well and good to entertain theories about how everything should be and salt your arguments with propaganda and oversimplifications. Wonderful. To justify the frightening violence ENTIRELY ATTRIBUTABLE TO PUTIN, is grotesque and fails the acid test, Bob Parry (RIP) or not.

This is it: How do the people in Ukraine feel about your arguments?

I can answer that. They think your arguments are BS, plain and simple.

Even the more enlightened among the Russians are saying that, check the streets. That's a fact.

Edited February 27, 2022 by Bob Ness

[W. Niederhut]

Mad Vlad is ramping up his shelling of civilians in Kyiv and elsewhere tonight, and possibly bringing in thermobaric bombs and flame throwers.

Last time I checked it was a war crime to gratuitously murder non-combatant civilians.

At what point do President Biden and NATO tell the little KGB son-of-a-bitch to knock it off, or else?

It's beyond outrageous.

 

Edited February 27, 2022 by W. Niederhut

[Matt Allison]

"There is no such thing as a former KGB man.“

-Vladimir Putin Responding to Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who called himself a former KGB officer. 
 

Edited February 27, 2022 by Matt Allison

[Ron Bulman]

1 hour ago, Ron Bulman said:

An interesting perspective.  An invitation for peace keeping assistance.  

Vladimir Putin wins big, yet again (msn.com)

I wasn't sure where Ukraine was exactly on the map a week ago.  I'm not real familiar with the history of NATO, though  I thought I knew a few basics. 

Putin should be stopped. 

Given the last few days and this article.  If I was the commander of NATO. . .  As has likely been done amass troops along the borders from Odessa to Estonia.  Tell the world, to prevent further incursion we are doing so.  And find out how many fighter pilots Ukraine has left. Then send several more jets than that to bases along the Poland, Romania, Moldova and Odessa borders.  Tell the Ukraine and the world they're yours to use to defend our countries from further Russian aggression, just get the pilots here.  For starters.

[Ron Bulman]

It's evident by now he's not there to just free the Patriotic Servants of the USSR in eastern Ukraine.  He want's the whole country so there is no dissent from the kapital.  jmho

[James DiEugenio]

The following comment got me almost 40,000 views on Twitter in a bit over a day.

"Am I the only one who thinks Biden could have negotiated a deal to prevent this? If JFK and Nikita could find a way out of the MIssile Crisis then what prevented a solution to this?"

And this is my ultimate argument.  And BTW Matlock made pretty much the same argument on Democracy Now. When he was reminded that the US has an ABM base in Poland one hundred miles from Russia. Similar to the Missile Crisis, 90 miles away, recall. Matlock did translations in the American Embassy in Moscow during that crisis. Matlock added that  its easy to switch defensive to offensive missiles, just alter the software.

Edited February 27, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Benjamin Cole]

 

Well, not Kennedyesque, but maybe rivaling Trump. Love the pumpkins. 

[James DiEugenio]

Bob, my point was not about West Germany in NATO.

My point was the whole basis for NATO in the first place.  It was to stop a Russian invasion of West Europe through Germany. Thus doing two things, one a military prevention program, the other a way to subjugate the German problem of having two opposing nations next to each other.

I am fully aware of the nukes in other places and I am fully aware what happened to them, they went back to Russia.  And it was not through NATO.

I am not going to go into what Ukraine is about today.  Or what forces caused the overthrow in 2014. Anyone who does not know what happened has not read up on it. I will say that no other country in East Europe has the anti Semitic record and the has as many persecutions of the Roma that Ukraine does.

Now, is that the reason for the invasion? No I don't think so. I think the reason was that the USA did not push Ukraine into settling at Minsk. I think that is what the Russians wanted. The assurance that Ukraine would not join NATO and would not employ missiles against Russia.  

In my opinion, that could have easily been done if Biden really wanted to.  IMO, he didn't want to.  

Edited February 27, 2022 by James DiEugenio

[Matt Allison]

Macron engineered a summit meeting and Biden agreed. Putin blew off the idea and invaded.

So no, Biden could not have stopped this.

I'm not sure why people are in denial about Putin's desire to put the old USSR back together.

https://www.reuters.com/world/biden-asked-macron-make-offer-putin-biden-summit-putin-french-official-2022-02-21/