I could not believe Putin really would invade Ukraine, because I could see no sensible outcome for him. I still cannot. Initiating a war on this scale has no legal justification, and no moral justification either. Russian troops are in areas which have no wish to be ruled by Russia.
Those of us who opposed the illegal invasion of Iraq must also oppose the illegal invasion of Ukraine. Whether the Ukrainian government is obnoxious or not is as irrelevant now, as the obnoxiousness of Saddam Hussein was irrelevant then. I am as fed up now with being asked if I support Ukrainian Nazis as I was then with being asked if I supported Saddam Hussein.
It is simply illegal to wage a war for regime change, without the endorsement of the UN security council.
I have great sympathy for Russian security concerns about encirclement by NATO and forward missile deployments. But seeking regime change by invasion in Ukraine could not possibly be the answer. I still have not the slightest idea what Putin seeks to achieve. It is simply impossible – and has been since the annexation of Crimea – that a democratic Ukraine is voluntarily going to elect a pro-Russian government. After this invasion, the only way a pro-Putin regime could be maintained in Ukraine would be by extreme authoritarianism, going well beyond the prevailing system in Russia itself.
Let me put it starkly. This can only finish with a government in Kiev which absolutely hates Putin as now do the Ukrainian people, or with Russia maintaining a puppet regime by extreme repression. There isn’t a way out with a peaceful, neutral Ukraine. Once you try to resolve matters by pure force, you lose that option. If I were Ukrainian, there is no way now I would be agreeing to the demilitarisation of my country.
As for denazification – which certainly is needed in Ukraine – Putin has given the “heroic anti-Russian nationalist” meme of the Ukrainian nazi groups a massive boost. While labelling the entire nation and government as Nazi is just wrong.
I did not think Putin would invade, for all those reasons. I did not even think he would acknowledge moving troops into the Donbass. I was unsure what to argue about that if he did. The Kosovo parallel with the newly acknowledged Donetsk and Lughansk republics is arguable. As a supporter of Scottish Independence, I am open to arguments from self-determination, and you can read Murder in Samarkand on the capriciousness of former internal Soviet borders. But this has gone far beyond that.
Yet we have seen nothing like the simply massive civilian casualties the West inflicted on Libya, Iraq or Afghanistan. Not anything like the same order of magnitude. In the town of Sirte, Libya alone NATO bombing killed 15,000 people. Casualty figures being given for the whole of the Ukraine so far are still in the hundreds, and thank God for that.
Sirte, Libya, after NATO bombing
Either Putin has not entirely willed the means, or his armed forces are resisting obeying his wishes. Russia has not unleashed anything like the kind of firepower that would need to be unleashed to subdue Ukraine. Western media has gone into full war porn mode, but the extent of real fighting is uncertain. There seems to be a great deal of shadow boxing.
I do not know the explanation for this. It seems very possible Putin has underestimated Ukrainian morale, and really believed Ukraine would crumble. In fact, Zelensky is playing a blinder in terms of maintaining morale, however staged his photo-ops. The more pressing question is whether Putin overestimated the willingness of his own military to kill Ukrainians, or whether Putin himself lacks the will. In Grozny, he was directly responsible for civilian casualties on a truly terrible scale, but is he like the West in putting much less value on Muslim lives?
Grozny Destroyed by Russia
To date, Kiev has faced nothing like what Sirte faced from NATO or Grozny faced from Russia – but not because Russia lacks the capacity to do it.
If Putin is himself ready for massive Ukrainian deaths, is his military pulling its punches? I am reminded of the War of Slovenian Independence, where the soldiers of the massively superior Yugoslav army just refused to kill Slovenes. In that case, many of the Yugoslav troops were initially told it was just a live fire exercise, which lends credibility to the idea the same is happening with Russian troops here.
Putin has not improved his negotiating position. My own friends and allies on the left are suggesting that the answer is for there to be a ceasefire and Western agreement to no further expansion of NATO, and a new arms control treaty governing missile deployments. That would certainly be ideal but it is not going to happen.
You have to understand the realpolitik of the Western elite. They will never damage their own interests. That is why the sanctions that would really hurt Putin, targeting companies like BP and Shell over their Russian interests or the real oligarchs like Usmanov, Deripaska and Abramovic, will never happen because they would damage the interests of the British elite. It is why the UK government fly Ukrainian flags but will not let Ukrainians come without visas. They don’t really care about the ordinary people at all.
The NATO leadership now see Putin in a position where he either has to back down and retreat, or inflict massive casualties on the Ukraine and get bogged down there for decades. If they wanted to save the Ukrainian people, this would indeed be the time for West to negotiate. But the lives of ordinary Ukrainians mean nothing to them.
So rather than find Putin a ladder to climb down, they will strike heroic poses, wave Ukrainian flags and send more weapons. I fear Putin will go for the mass deaths scenario. Macho is his entire brand, and his speech last Sunday was worryingly fundamentalist. I do wonder if he is losing the room at home – he spoke of the end of the Soviet Union as a calamity, but Russians under forty cannot even remember the Soviet Union at all. Nobody under 50 can remember it in any kind of functioning order.
One final thought for now. I applaud those brave people in Russia who have demonstrated for peace. Almost 2,000 have been arrested. But remember this – under the Tory government’s new policing bill, taking part in a demonstration in England and Wales not approved in advance by the police could bring up to ten years in prison. Just one example of the rife hypocrisy submerging us all at present.
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Wally, They are not ‘stoopid’ in the way you think they are.
We are at the nest stage of the great game as set out by the old British Empire – and inherited by its successor American Empire.
The aim, as set out by Halford MacKinder in 1904 or thereabouts was to control the World Island – Eurasia linked to Africa (hence the strategic importance of controlling Palestine and the Balfour declaration and all that flowed from it).
This entire strategy was laid bare by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Grand Chessboard: American Primacy And Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997).
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Grand-Chessboard-American-Geostrategic-Imperatives/dp/0465027261
NATO is the instrument of that US imperial policy – they thought they had nailed it when they duped Gorbachev by reneging on a commitment to keep NATO out of former Warsaw Pact countries and installed (so they thought) the drunken buffoon Boris Yeltsin (all leaders called Boris are buffoons) – but even he outsmarted them by transferring state assets to the oligarchs, whose man Putin is.
You can read about how they tried to strip Russia bare using Chicago school economics in Naomi Klein’s excellent The Shock Doctrine.
But Putin – as they found out – was no pushover, so they continued to surround Russia with hostile bases.
As Jeffrey St Clair writes in the current Counterpunch:
“The US has 850+ military bases “over there”. There were US troops occupying Afghanistan for 20 years and Iraq for 17. There are US troops in Germany & Japan 77 years after the end of World War II. There were “boots on the ground” in Syria for a major raid just a few weeks ago. Between the Gulf and Iraq Wars (two escalated phases of the same war), the US had time to go to war against Serbia. Yes, the US uses drones. It also uses cruise missiles, MOAB bombs, M1 tanks, Apache and Cobra attack helicopters, B-52 bombers, F-18 and F-16 fighters, M4 and M16 rifles, and the M249 and M60 machine guns. You need to use them all to keep the contractors happy.”
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine should spell the end of NATO or at least NATO expansion, since any aspiration to join the organization is more likely to get you invaded. Ukraine made the mistake Libya did when Qaddafi relinquished his nuclear program. He trusted the West and then, without a deterrent, they took him out.”
The US/NATO (they’re the same thing) deliberately surrounded Russia with NATO and US weapons – and DELIBERATELY left Ukraine out.
This was an open invitation to Putin to invade. And he has taken the bait. Putin is a low-rent gangster kept in place by the real oligarch gangsters who were gifted the state assets of the old USSR (and which fuel the City of London and the Tory party and a whole raft of bankers, lawyers, real estate crooks in London).
Just listen to the the drooling war-porn commentary on the BBC and other faux ‘free’, ‘unbiased’ Western sources.
Repeated discussions of how NATO has pushed this (encircling Russia, encouraging Ukrainian proxies) – and now having lit the fuse, standing back, and letting Ukraine take the pain – or rather the ordinary people of Ukraine.
There is much talk of Putin over-extending himself – and speculation that he is acting against the advice of his generals. Or that he is barking mad. Actually, within his own and oligarch-controlled Russia he is acting rationally – if dangerously!
Some of these commentators can hardly suppress their glee – behind crocodile tears for the “poor people of Ukraine”
I’ve actually heard a BBC ‘journalist’ in Kiev say; “So far the Russian attack is working out just as the NATO chiefs have been warning”
“Quel surprise” – as they say in the NATO HQ in Brussels!
Supposing these various interlocutors are right – then the MacKinder plan Chapter 4 (the playbook never changes) moves on:
Putin over-extended – Afghan-like quagmire, discontent at home, Putin deposed. Suitable New-Yeltsin installed. Get the vodkas ready!
It’s almost as if they planned it!!! Meanwhile oil prices blast off – the Wall St Roller-coaster goes into action – and we all know who benefits from volatile stocks and asset prices!
Let’s hope they don’t back Putin into a corner.
It is one bloody huge gamble – and where I am sitting just 40 miles from Faslane – we in Scotland will reap the ‘benefits’ of the willy-waggling British Establishment’s desire to play with the Big Boys in the Security Council of the busted flush that is the UN.
This is where we get when the world is run by a gangster-state in the US – facing off a gangster state in Russia.
God help the Ukrainian people – God help us all!
Maybe the Russian invasion is be sabotaged by the Russian military – they want to make it fail so that someone in Moscow removes Putin and replaces him with someone who is less likely to trigger global annihilation.
Jon Musgrave
Of course it is tempting to take Johnson’s Vlad the Mad headlines as a clue to the situation in Ukraine, for want if other information. How come Vlad defeated the combined efforts of Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, Israel, Turkey, the EU and Britain to destroy Syria?
How come none of these bad actors have yet succeeded in preventing China’s bid to rebuild what they did succeed in destroying? The answer to this question is that Putin not only understood Lies and propaganda and replaced them with more honest politics, but he also understands the West’s Lies and propaganda and he sees a great thirst in both every country in the West for an antidote to those Lies and tripe.
He might annoy a few vox pops on the BBC and he might get bitten by a rabid Boros Johnson, but he doesn’t care because he sees no evidence of popular support for Johnson or Biden or any other Western leader from their own electorates. The world is his oyster. Frank Gardner of the BBC who was severely paralysed and disbled by Saudi government thugs thinks he’s the Bees Knees.
I also think it might be sabotaged. I don’t see why Kadyrov’s Chechens to Kiev except because nobody else would go. But I do not think that global annihilation is a real risk, there must be other reasons.
oh you mean a NATO puppet. i dont think that is going to happen, Jon.
I do not really understand how this cynical game is played. To my understanding that would rather belong to the last millennium.
I see that there are two layers, the
where I see the connection of these layers in City of London and Wall Street.
Given that globalists as represented by the WEF (and Trilateral Commission and others), they control governments as seen in the handling of the recent “pandemic”. Why would one bother with so much geopolitics if countries can be infiltrated and controlled from within? Also, the imperialistic and banking layer (as I call it) is necessary for supporting the globalist layer. So why would I risk to destroy the declining current system by war and counterproductive sanctions that may accelerate its decline?
A lot of the persons that player might be called retarded, certainly. But not all. So are we all up for a deadly distraction? What is the real game?
(1) Zbigniew Brzezinski, The Grand Chessboard, some discussion here https://theduran.com/ukraine-in-the-big-chess-game/
(2) Michael Hudson, Super Imperialism, summary https://michael-hudson.com/2021/10/3rd-edition-super-imperialism/
(3) weekly report, many around the “globalist” theme, corbettreport.com
(4) https://unlimitedhangout.com/2022/02/investigative-reports/technocracy-the-operating-system-for-the-new-international-rules-based-order-1/
Jonathan Cook does a good job explaining the evils of American/British imperialism and NATO here: https://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2020-11-27/us-war-machine/ It is actually very scary to think they have got away with it for soooo long! Why are we so blind?
Jonathan Cook and Craig Murray are both truly independent journalists.
Thanks Rosemary, good article from JC. He puts the dots together.
Nevertheless what I miss is the connection of how the globalists class (just it that) interacts with the traditional imperialists class. Who is calling the shots? AFAI remember there was some interview of Chrystia Freeland at the WEF where she complained about the wrong class of oligarchs (I guess the traditional class had too many resentments — but I might have got that wrong.)
If a new pan-national power class had entered the world state, why would we see wars against nation state (as a simplified idea)? I would rather assume that the “war” against the public is accelerated. If that makes sense?
Excellent analysis.
The link between the layers is straightforward.
Financial Power can’t control things directly – they need state players. These have a ‘legitimate’ legal and power structure – and ‘lawful’ lethal force.
Governments are now wholly owned by Finance Power and are their well-rewarded proxies.
Liberal ‘Democracy’ is a myth and a legitimising cover-story.
We are all at the mercy of the Money Power who are calling the shots. Quite literally.
Looks like the end-game.
“Looks like the end-game.” — That makes me worry.
“So why would I risk to destroy the declining current system by war and counterproductive sanctions that may accelerate its decline?”
Destroying the current system will lead to a catastrophic world crisis and the people of the world will accept the ‘solution’. A centralised digital banking system, set up in the same way as the Chinese social credit system. Everybody’s debt written off, with the ‘international bankers/globalists/WEF etc” having absolute control over the reset and who gets what… As the WEF states clearly in their manifesto: “By 2030, You will own nothing and be happy.”
Jordan I find your cited authors mostly suspect.
Well to be precise 1. The Godfather of neocon wars that was the foreign policy formulated of that peanut farming rube Carter who has plenty of blood on his hands.
He was more a player than an author.
3 & 4 – Davis the new kid on the Red/Brown block joins Corbett – who along with ‘old’ agitprop deepstate stooges the RCP and its organ ‘Spiked’ and the others in that crowded field – the OafGuardian hoodwinkers to the GB news crew etc a veritable flotilla of DeepState propaganda and PR wonks.
Davies was flogging anti-Covid crap at these places that also were very big on 5G being mind control. His pieces appear to be full on PR constructs designed to convince by sheer volume and pretty graphs. – he did not retract any of ‘his’ dodgy analysis about Covid Excess deaths when I tried to take it up with him directly a few years ago – which I can prove.
Corbett a full on limited hangout merchant – never really offering new stuff but adept at jumping on the horses that have bolted – bathes in their warm piss and garners ‘kudos’ from his Japanese Eyrie – think these US-owned pussies would let a genuine anti-US voice function if he was genuine?
2. Hudson – as far as I know he maybe straight; I haven’t read him regularly enough yet to form a final judgement but he seems to appeal to many a ‘leftist’ – does he to their stablemate ‘rightists’?
It is important to be discerning of the siren voices that lure us upon their rocks. That is all.
I’ve just experienced blocked textfield, making it unable to write a comment. I think something like this is well expected in a time like this.
RepublicofScotland, you asked about my ‘weeding’ 🙂 Not sure it was intended, or ‘wedding’ you had on mind, my ‘weeding’ is on YouTube
https://youtube.com/shorts/19LNaY1lEbk
and ‘wedding’ on Instagram.
I got used to you, folks. Please, keep in touch if I suddenly stop commenting. Simply click my nickname, my linktree shows with my e-mail and phone. If I survive and find myself cut off the Internet, I’d be happy to hear from you.
Your comments are valuable Tatyana, I cannot imagine what stress you live under having ties to the zone of conflict. Be strong!
An advice, to all, is to take pauses during the day from watching the news, one only get exhausted, sad and angry from too much viewing.
My advice is to try and ignore the MSM as much as you can – if you absorb 4hrs a day of that you will either start believing it or going off your trolley. Use sources that are not Western Propaganda – they are out there and give more balanced coverage.
I have barely watched the MSM in 5 years and I still managed to stay as up to date as I ever was – which is not perfectly so, since I am not getting 100,000 people gathering information to put on my desk.
Apologies Tatyana, eyesight not that great, I of course meant wedding, thank you for the link keep safe.
Von der Leyen: RT, Sputnik ‘Will No Longer Be Able to Spread Their Lies to Saw Division in EU’
Must have gotten that from Turdeau. There goes the freedom to hear as well.
Many urged Craig to leave the country to be free to write. The banning of RT and censorship will complete the capture of of information. It was chilling when the Judge at Craig’s appeal hearing alluded to his further imprisonment for questioning his conviction.
I can relay trying to access RT is an exercise in patience and likely to be rewarded with a message:
No Can Do – Server problems
I was lucky to get a copy of the report (below).
Neoliberal is the new fascism, it would seem. Only the imminent systemic collapse would need such absolute distraction to cover the event.
Formerly T-Bear,
Go to the search engine ‘Dogpile’ – then insert ‘RT’ – then find this site https://wwitv.com/tv_channels/b1527.htm – and you will get to ‘RT’
Von dey Leyen was a warhawk before she got appointed to the EU leadership job she now rule. Absolutely crazy to give power to such people. And what does that even mean? Will EU block internet access to RT and Sputnik?
Well either way, EU journalits, outlets could now equally be banned from russian public how about that Von der Leyen?
The warmongering hysteria is disgusting, People in power need to cool down before something worse happen.
Amen to that. The Germans of all people should realize the optics of their sending weapons to Ukraine and also where trying to utterly humiliate and devastate your opponent could lead.
Didn’t a French general say about the Versailles Treaty that it’s not a peace treaty but a ceasefire for 20 years?
But when you have an infantile person like Baerbock as foreign minister, you start to despair.
Baerbock and Truss are sisters clad in the same cloth, both ambitious and not well chosen for the jobs they are doing/did in the past, Akos.
The PTB that chose them are delighted in their infantile ignorance – that’s why they chose them.
The PTB deliberately choose people to sabotage the lives of ordinary people – they are our enemies, not ordinary Russians or Ukrainians.
My God.
Watching her speech, Ursula von der Leyen thinks it’s 1922.
The EU’s answer is to supply ever more lethal arms and hope for the best? Is this really the best the EU can do? Where’s the intense EU diplomacy? Ursula’s talk of supplying the brave resistance is fine, but she should realise the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
An uncompromising ultra-nationalist Russian leader vs an inflexible EU / NATO full of its own moral righteousness.
Who is going to take the heat out of this?
There has to be some peace demonstrations organized in Europe by us citizens. Demanding negotiations, Russia stopping its invasion, and no weapons shipments to Ukraine.
It is so sad that they cannot even pretend to be pro diplomacy, also where are all these weapons suppose to arrive at, airports? If every EU nations is about to send this mass of arms, obviously Russia will surveil, rush and eventually destroy these arms cache.
This arms export will of course only make the conflict even harder to solve. One can only imagine how this news will be taken in Moscow.
And that is before Russia put their nuclear arms on high alert…
Again, Russia did it wrong but EU really putting fuel on the fire now.
They will create nice arm smuggling mafias, like they did during the Yugoslav wars. It took Hungary a decade to get rid of them. There were car bombs, people cut in half and left on train tracks in southern Hungary. But as long as people in Berlin and London don’t have to deal with this shit, who cares.
Ursula van der Leyen is just a puppet for Washington – she is literally trying to bring the German economy to its knees. That’s what the USA wants. Russia cut off from all trade and finance and German industry brought to its knees.
Why on earth doesn’t Europe just do this to the USA? Cut off all trade and finance links to the USA, give every US citizen 72 hrs to leave Europe carrying whatever they can take with them? That might trigger war with the USA, that’s why.
The US has basically said: an economic poison pill or nuclear armageddon from us.
Some friends.
“Why on earth doesn’t Europe just do this to the USA? “
You have to look ar the individuals concerned and whose pocket they are in. Influence campaigns have been run out of all US embassies since the end of WW2.
Now Putin is putting his nuclear weapons on high alert due to “aggressive statements by NATO countries”. What a poor snowflake he is to be so easily upset. Somewhat contradicts his macho-man image (though I think this probably pleased the gay community more than most others 😉
Well, people like you are the other half of the problem. Aren’t you ashamed of your rabid warmongering? Are you shipping out as a volunteer to fight in Ukraine? Or are you as macho as Putin?
The West sanctioned the Diplomat of all Diplomats, Lavrov. They couldn’t bear his reasoning, intellect and contextual responses to dumb journalists and his counterparts silence. The time for trying to educate and inform the West of Russian concerns seems over. Yes, the profits of the arms companies and oil companies will rocket upwards, but the poverty and decline of the West’s own populations will dive.
Provided we even survive. I have never thought I would experience a Cuban missile crises type scare like my parents did. I guess folks like general Musgrave above were also bravely making wisecracks about nuclear willy waving snowflake JFK and his machismo back then.
I honestly don’t understand this mindless escalation on both sides. I expected better from the people who claim to govern the EU in my name. The Ukrainians changed their minds again about negotiating. Hard to imagine this decision is wasn’t influenced by their Western backers.
Gives you chance to feel the taste of an enemy with nukes, doesn’t it?
The only country who used nukes is the US, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Depleted uranium in Yugoslavia. Ah, the latter was unsanctioned by UN invasion and bombing of citizens and their dwelling. Just to be sure this country in Europe will live and thrive, indeed.
On serious note, don’t panic, it’s warning for the White House to lower their rhetoric. And look, it works! US asks China for talks!
Technical point – depleted uranium is effectively a chemical weapon, and not a nuclear weapon. It is highly toxic chemically, but barely radioactive. Less radioactive than natural uranium in the ground.
People seem to think that uranium gets depleted in nuclear reactors. It doesn’t; the uranium atoms split, and become lighter elements. Depleted uranium is the unwanted byproduct from enriching uranium to make it into reactor fuel or nuclear weapon cores.
Depleted uranium is used to make both armour, and armour piercing ammunition, because uranium is a very dense, hard metal. Depleted uranium is used because it is a waste product, and to prevent the proliferation of uranium.
But whether depleted uranium armour is hit by a shell, or a depleted uranium shell hits armour, or both, the uranium gets vaporised and hence dispersed as very fine particles – which is the most toxic form it could be in.
With all my love and good wishes to you, Clark, how does it make former Yugoslavia feel better? Perhaps, NATO now sends everyday postcards with pink unicorn to let people know of NATO’s pain and sorry? Or, the UN may daily work on the issue? Oh, god, of course, noooot! I’m delusional, sorry. Sip on my beverage and back watching US excerising power in subdued Europe, just the way it must be done in a BDSM moovie. Everyone’s pretending they don’t enjoy it 🙂
Tatyana, done is done, I’m sorry to say.
But depleted uranium munitions and armour should be banned as chemical weapons.
Well, ‘barely radioactive’ is a little misleading. With depleted uranium the ionizing radiation emitted is alpha particles. Alpha radiation has the least ability to penetrate surrounding matter, a piece of paper will stop it, so it is relatively harmless when handled. The big problem is when munitions vaporise and the resultant fine particulate matter becomes airborne and inhaled. Alpha particles are unable to penetrate the outer layer of dead skin cells, but are capable, if an alpha emitting substance is ingested in food or air, of causing serious cell damage. Alexander Litvinenko is a famous example. He was poisoned by polonium-210, an alpha emitter, in his tea.
Depleted uranium also used in Kuwait, Iraq, Gaza and Syria.
> Now Putin is putting his nuclear weapons on high alert
I think he spoke of putting them in a “special mode”.
I find that remark perplexing, for at least two reasons:
I read the remark as handwavy sabre-rattling. But uttering blood-curdling threats is what you do when you doubt your own fighting strength, not when you are winning. I worry what Russia might do if they thought they were about to lose. Using small nukes tactically is part of Russian military doctrine.
‘Special mode’ means the electricity bills have been paid on all the silos and the operators have passed breathalyser tests.
Meanwhile, tomorrows topic of pub conversation in certain parts of the UK:
“Who do they think they are, these bloody Ukranians coming over here and taking our fruit picking jobs?”
Giyane – I wasn’t making out that my hatred of war came from my Quaker education – merely I was relating a piece of history relevant to how I came to form an opinion on where the limits of non-violent non-cooperation might exist. I hated war because the schools I went to before that were places were I was regularly beaten up, making my thoughts on violence be coloured by daily humiliations and pain.
To be honest with you, going out into Mrs Thatcher’s Britain in the 1980s with a hyper-tolerant Quaker Education wasn’t really very useful – you have a natural desire to help and everyone around you had a natural desire to asset strip you for their own selfish gain. The ‘normal adult behaviours’ were things which had been in effect proscribed at school. Not very helpful in terms of learning skills in either acting that way or countering it….
I just love this comment about the usefulness of your education. Had a great Quaker great uncle and he kept me sane through the British education system with little notes by post etc., just made its brutality tolerable. I am still loyal to his ethos, earning less than minimum wage, sheltering the homeless on a whim when I see one, etc. despite surviving the education system and its horrors enough (and I agree, horrors) to get a First from Oxford. Homeschool my kids though.
Showing some ignorance here. There isn’t a “British” education system.
I mean “British” in the normal sense it’s used in, as an adjective relating to Great Britain / the UK. That education system, which certainly exists!
I think you would find, if you did some detailed research, that the distinctions between English and Scottish state system are cosmetic. The research that informs education policy are common, the initiatives are, likewise, common or transferable, even if these are given a little local post transcription flavour.
Rhys
I was educated in a Soviet school. Besides strong point on intellectual education – they really gave us all the humankind’s achievement available – we were not educated on ‘phylosophy’ side at all.
It only in the university that I learned the wider cultural and historical legacy of the modern world we live in.
Dare I say, the most prominent input into my education was made by my father. He was born 1947 and remembered well the hardships of the time. He said they had only one coat in the house and only one pair of boots – my grandfa’s soldier boots made of ‘kirza’, sort of fake leather. Well, kids were on queue to wear the coat and boots to be ‘well equipped’ to get to the school. They shared textbooks, and also dining at those families who could afford a dinner for kids was a sort of, I don’t know, norm?
My father gave me good understanding of the importance of education.
Tatyana – I also learned things from parents, grandparents and others outside of school. However, parents are often less able to understand the realities of the next generation since they lived in the previous one. I wish I had come across Kahlil Gibran’s poem ‘On children’ as a child. I love the line:
‘You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.’
My parents’ experiences related to post war conditions which Mrs Thatcher ripped asunder. The world had changed and my parents’ financial stability meant that they didn’t have to change with it, coming toward a comfortable retirement just as ‘Thatcher’s Britain’ ripped up the rule book and set Briton against Briton. I’m not saying that’s good or bad, I’m just saying that it was a step change.
My father was also subliminally a self-starting ‘conservative’ with a small c. He believed in self-reliance as much as possible, indeed he was still fiercely independent in his 90s. However, he was constantly preaching ‘socialism’, because he was in love with the 1945 Labour Government, whose task was to rebuild a bombed-out country, requiring far more central control and planning than a well-functioning peaceful entrepreneurial ecosystem of functioning high streets. I didn’t relate to all that philosophy when he had nothing to say about finding an individual niche in society. All I got there was ‘XXXX was a YYYYY’, as if XXX had the same skill set and temperament as me. Nobel Prize winners are the rarity, as are virtuoso concert pianists. Of 128 entrants into a Wimbledon main draw, only 1 becomes the champion. The world in 1980 had about as much relevance to 1945 as I had to Siamese twins. 1945 wasn’t going to help me understand 1980.
Every child has their own talents and challenges. My challenges were practical in nature – I found all the intellectual book work so easy it frightens me, but in many respects I was an awkward, unco-ordinated child sneered at by teachers jealous of my intellect and glad to find a weakness in my make up. My weaknesses were as big as everyone else’s, they just weren’t exposed by 8hrs a day in a classroom doing sums, learning to read etc. Put me in a workshop with wood or metal and I was the proverbial dumb cretin!
So my ‘guiding light’ turned to be an Austrian violin Professor in Salzburg who gave me more life confidence in 50hrs over 9 months in 1982/3 than everyone else combined. He showed me what being an apprentice to a master was like, how my hard work linked to proper guidance produced stellar results. He gave me self-confidence and he gave me independence of mind and spirit. A very dangerous combination to have in a top-down totalitarian country (which Britain has always been, despite all its nonsense about ‘having the vote’). What he didn’t give me was the ability to briskly dismiss unpromising circumstances quickly, simply because with him the circumstances were, looking back, as good as I could ever have found in my life. And he gave me what he gave me with my ‘german language’ hat on, since I was living and dreaming in my second tongue, not in English.
I’ve also experienced having to choose between eating and socialising during my PhD studies in Glasgow, Tatyana. Back then, the payment of PhD stipends had been held the same from 1973 to 1986, despite inflation rates turning an appropriate stipend for 21 yr olds into a national disgrace. To save my soul, I needed human contact. So I sacrificed my physical health a bit in the hope that I could recover it in better times (which I duly did). And I happen to think that the sight of PhD students not getting their hair cut for 18 months, coming to work with holes in their jeans (it wasn’t trendy to do that back then) and ending up sick in bed for 14 days due to depressed immune systems give me the only serious bouts of flu I’ve ever had in my life finally shamed the comfortable Establishment middle class into raising stipends 100% for those that followed us. It didn’t raise my esteem for their leadership qualities, seeing them need that kind of disgrace unfolding before their eyes before they would actually DO anything…..
The other lesson I learned in Austria is that there are always multiple viewpoints on international affairs. In the UK, I gave up history as soon as I could because all it seemed to me was dates of kings, wars and Acts of Parliament. In Austria, I experienced a class on ‘modern imperialism’ by a Viennese history teacher that covered from about 1900 to 1945. I learned the viewpoint of WW I from that of the Austro-Hungarian empire viewpoint, the viewpoint of why Versailles Treaty brought about conditions in Germany favouring the rise of Hitler etc. I’ve always known since then that the UK view was an arbitrary one, something that made me a thorn in the side of ‘Do what you’re told or else!’ UK greasy pole climbers.
So my view on education is simple: ‘the intellectual is a synthesis of daily practical inputs over several years’. I’ve learned experientially that the brain starts by absorbing like a sponge, then starts engaging naively to gain experience of being a participant, then after a period of time doing that, the syntheses useful for real life start to emerge.
So if you want your children to develop useful wisdoms, always make sure that if they have practical challenges that you either find a way to overcome them or shift them into arenas more suited to the kinaesthetic aptitudes which they have. Just don’t force them for a decade to do things they can’t do, don’t enjoy and suffer socially for being forced to do.
Rhys, I put it here to let you know your comment appreciated. I have to read it once more carefully and google the things I’m not familiar with.
Here is RT report on EU banning:
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Sunday that the EU will ban the Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik accusing them of spreading “harmful disinformation.” She did not specify whether this ban will apply solely to television broadcasts, or whether RT and Sputnik’s websites will be affected.
In what she called an “unprecedented” step, Von der Leyen announced that “we will ban in the European Union the Kremlin’s media machine.”
“The state owned Russia Today and Sputnik, as well as their subsidiaries, will no longer be able to spread their lies to justify Putin’s war and to sow division in our union,” she continued. “We are developing tools to ban toxic and harmful disinformation in Europe.”
Von der Leyen’s move comes a day after the Association of European Journalists called on the EU to implement a bloc-wide ban on RT, and have its journalists “removed.” It also comes several days after the EU sanctioned RT’s editor-in-chief, Margarita Simonyan.
RT has previously faced censorship in Europe, with German regulators banning its German-language channel earlier this month. More recently, Google subsidiary YouTube and Facebook parent company Meta demonetized RT’s accounts on Saturday, while Google blocked downloads of RT’s app on Ukrainian territory earlier on Sunday.
Immediately before announcing the ban on RT and Sputnik, von der Leyen revealed that the EU will also close off its airspace to all Russian aircraft, and will supply Ukraine with weapons.
So what ! What difference has it made to western policy when RT was allowed to put the other side of the argument ? None what so ever. Decline and fall of the Old and New Empires continues at a faster pace. Meanwhile, the rest of the world continues to trade, develop, invest in infrastructure, transport, education, bridges and high speed trains. We on the other hand become even bigger arms dealers.
Right. The EU’s complete failure to prevent two devastating wars in the continent in 25 years will surely increase the developing world’s appetite to follow down the path of European ‘civilization’.
Presumably, van der Leyen will also be banning CNN, MSNBC and the BBC for their shameless propaganda and lying about Syria, Libya and Iraq?
We can’t be having CIA rubbish, MI6 rubbish festering around in the 21st century?
If van der Leyen says that any of those three stations are anything other than lying propaganda outlets, she needs to be forcibly locked up in a looney bin and never let out.
According to RT, Turkey restricts Russian navy access. Alex Mercouris (from Duran) pondered some days ago, that this event would trigger the Russians to kick Turkey out of Idlib. We’ll see…
That’s right Jordan but returning naval ships will be allowed access, also Hungary will not supply arms to Ukraine but will apply sanctions, meanwhile Pyongyang chose today to test a ballistic missile, which the West condemned.
And people in the West, including some on this forum, should reflect on the fact that Hungary, a NATO member, doesn’t want to supply weapons to a war waging right across the border. We got screwed by the wars in Yugoslavia. But this one has the potential to be much more serious. Why are people keen on escalating violence in faraway lands?
Akos, the reason is money and the military industrial complex. Why are we in the West supplying arms to Saudi Arabia to slaughter some of the poorest people on the planet? The West has filled Ukraine with arms and is now sitting back, watching the whole deadly scenario unfurl.
“we in the West supplying arms to Saudi Arabia to slaughter some of the poorest people on the planet?”
Who else are they going to slaughter?
Poor people are expendable and defenceless, so easy to kill. Killing them makes little difference in the immediate term.
It’s all about the psychopaths controlling the financial system. They ensure that only their slaves become ‘politicians’: have you come across one single statesperson in the UK or the USA recently?? I mean: Liz Truss, an intellectually subnormal f***wit representing the UK globally? Boris Johnson, an incorrigible liar, fraudster and corrupt lackey as Prime Minister? Matthew Hancock and Sajiv Javid, conmen and banksters in charge of human health?? Not to mention Keir Starmer as the Zionist representative in SW1.
Seriously: the reason for all this is that we don’t elect people who represent US, we let the banking cartels foist those that representing THEM on us.
The banksters and the warmongers make trillions from war. Just look at Germany now spending in the USA on arms. That’s what the banksters want – they have shareholdings in the war industries and they know that government debt balloons during wars: that’s when the banksters make all their money.
Surely the accumulation of wealth is fruitless because it destroys the the things/satisfactions of this world the wealth is intended to ensure access to.
Thats big news. Turkey, a Nato member, denied for decades to join EU, played the West off with Russia because of its control of the waterway. I guess now nations like Turkey and India have to decide and come off the fence. Russia no longer cares to court them. It has its plans and will follow through. One door shuts, another opens for its Black Sea fleet. Turkey’s supply of drones to Russias enemy’s and support for jihadists in Syria and Libya will have been noted. China will be very cautious to act. Russia is not waiting or relying on anyone.
@jordan Interesting idea, I wondered if the Seppoes might stir up trouble in Syria as a distraction. Didn’t occur to me that it might be the other way round.
This seems to be disinformation, as far as I can tell.
Turkey restricts access to the Dardanelles and the Bosphorus for all countries’ naval vessels, under an international treaty. The restrictions are weaker for “Black Sea powers”, which in practice means Russia.
Stuff from RT is often fine, but not if it’s about Russia.
“Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said she supports individuals from the UK who might want to go to Ukraine to join an international force to fight.
She told the BBC it was up to people to make their own decisions, but argued it was a battle “for democracy”.”
Well there you have it an English minister sanctioning UK citizens to go and die in a war to defend Nazism.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-60544838
Higher percentage of votes for far-right parties in Russia than in Ukraine (7+% compared to 2+%). So maybe more nazis in Russia – Night Wolves anyone? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_Wolves
I very much doubt it.
https://forward.com/news/462916/nazi-collaborator-monuments-in-ukraine/
Russia’s “far right” is Ukrainian center.
“Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has said she supports individuals from the UK who might want to go to Ukraine to join an international force to fight.”
Isn’t there a thing called the Foreign Enlistments Act?
One news source is reporting on the double standard:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/27/western-media-coverage-ukraine-russia-invasion-criticism
Liz Truss is encouraging people to go to fight for Ukraine according to the Guardian. Have to say the most sane reporting is through RT, however, I don’t know how accurate it is and most of the comments aren’t worth reading
Another criminally irresponsible Western politician. Flooding our region with mercenaries and other assorted shady elements. We had this already during the Yugoslav wars. An ignorant fool like Truss doesn’t know the consequences of establishing such elements in the region. But we do, because we have first hand experience.
In the 90s, weapon and oil smuggling mafias were operating in the south of Hungary, where my hometown is. There were car bombs and Mexican drug gang style assassinations. I bet most of you have never heard about that. Let’s flood the UK with armed volunteers who fight for Scotland’s freedom.
Rosemary – most of the comments at RT are generated by bots. It’s true at a lot of the MSM sites in the UK too.
There are personal videos and re-posts on Alinas channel “neuesausrussland”. This statement caught my eye
Richard Moore, https://twitter.com/ChiefMI6/status/1497287654441984007
Russia will be very concerned that the the elites, military leadership, political appointments, think tankers, journalists will soon be completely run be appointed from LGBT only short lists. The Blair babes…..all voted for the wars…
Trumpt addresses UNGA – Twitter, 0m 29s
This is Donald Trump at the UN in 2018 warning about over reliance on Russian energy supplies. The chuckle meisters in the video are the German delegation who knew better. Read the tweets below the video, written at the time by all the enlightened people who know better than the rest of us. All that stuff about eternal vigilance being the price of liberty, etc? It’s all true. Aggressive warfare is a thing of the past because we’ve “moved beyond” that? No. We’re all in this one world together? Wrong again. All the warnings of the old cold warriors? They were right. The philosophy of the One Worlders? Not so much. And here’s the one that’s really hardest to swallow — Trump was right when everybody else was wrong. We’re not in this mess because of Putin, or the “Nazi” sympathies of the Ukrainians. We’re here because we all decided we don’t need people like Donald Trump anymore. And because of that, people like Putin think they can run riot. We need to go back and re-animate all those ideas from the past we started urinating on in the 1960s, because the globalist BS of the left, the idea that indigenous peoples, Asian peoples, and other non-western peoples are the same as us and want only the same things we want is not only outright racist, it’s literally killing us.
DT was right about many things, from being spied on by private IT contractors, the FBI and the CIA both before and after becoming president (the increasingly worrying revelations contained in Durham’s indictments), to Russiagate being both a fake and an attempted “soft” coup against him (and ipso facto far more serious than Watergate), to his questioning of the contemporary raison d’être of NATO (see where that’s got us), to his opposition to neo-liberal/globalist (NOT Leftist) open borders, to the 2020 election result being plagued by corruption, and so on.
On the last point, specifically the Maricopa County forensic audit report, since what little coverage it has received in the “quality” MSM has been sneeringly and calculatedly inaccurate, why not read the results for yourself, spin-free: https://c692f527-da75-4c86-b5d1-8b3d5d4d5b43.filesusr.com/ugd/2f3470_a91b5cd3655445b498f9acc63db35afd.pdf.
No time? TLDR? OK, here are the takeaway points that will probably be new to you:
And so it went on, with claim and counter-claim about missing log-files, the online/offline status of machines during the election, etc., but since these margins of error have now been recorded in multiple other counties in other States, there can be no doubt (for the neutral observer) that the 2020 election result was “bent”.
Read up to the ‘enlightened people’ too much of …
… Oh, I’m not giving you the clue where you’ve failed! Ministry of Truth loyal guard 🙂
I should have pointed out that the audit report was issued in multiple volumes – the above link is only to the Introduction.
Thats a great one that I cosign everyone to watch, read also this, from last month,the author is a close friend of Mearsheimer and have written extensively on this matter:
Liberal Illusions Caused the Ukraine Crisis
The greatest tragedy about Russia’s potential invasion is how easily it could have been avoided.
https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/ukraine-russia-nato-crisis-liberal-illusions/
Unfortunately it is half-closed/payment article.
Good review of the day at theduran.com/massive-escalation-us-eu-sanction-russias-central-bank-live. Right at the start of this video, Alexander (the one with the maroon button — @Tatyana) explains a presumably premeditated attack on the Ruble by the global west. The idea is
Russian Central Bank blocked => Ruble falls
which is shortened at the currency exchange to booster the effect which leads to Ruble inflation. This in turn will lead to unrest which will be exploited in a color revolution to topple Putin.
IMHO this cannot work that simple because the Russians have tight control of trading of the Ruble, if that makes sense. Alex has other opinions but with a similar (non-working) result.
My concern is that we start burying our own currency.
Can anyone provide a citation for the claimed 15,000 Nato-caused deaths in Sirte? Only estimates I can find are in the 100s from HRW and Airwars for civilian casualties of the bombing of Sirte, and 27,000 for total direct deaths in the Libyan war from Nafeez Ahmed.
I’m not in the position to alert you, or in any way to encourage you. I’m just doing in the good faith. I may be mistaken or presenting news in an unusual way.
Folks, watch the event closely. It may turn up to be the largest event ever.
You may witness the Collective East raising up. Don’t want to scare you, but given the amount of pain you brought there…. There might be a will to revenge.
UN emergency council meeting now underway, the Russian rep its getting in the neck from other UN reps they are bleating on about democracy and freedoms, why wasn’t there a UN emergency meeting over the last eight years on the Ukrainian Nazis that have been committing genocide in Eastern Ukraine killing thousand of civilians including children.
The hypocrisy from the UN is staggering
EU just took another escalating step!
“EU Intends to Supply to Ukraine Combat Aircraft as Part of Military Assistance”
— Borrell @sputniknews
EU clearly use Ukraine in their war against Russia, this is heinous!
Indeed, all the weapons supplied to Ukraine thus far are either blown up in their warehouses or captured.
Wikikettle, there’s more on the way.
I think this is a disgraceful way to spend European cash, to fund a a side in a war, that’s not even a Nato or EU member I mean is it even legal?
The European Union will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons to Ukraine for the first time, European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen has announced.
“We are stepping up our support for Ukraine,” von der Leyen said on Sunday, announcing a raft of further measures against Moscow over its ongoing military offensive in Ukraine.
“For the first time, the EU will finance the purchase and delivery of weapons and equipment to a country under attack,” she said.
Before a meeting of EU foreign ministers on Sunday, foreign policy chief Josep Borrell declared that “another taboo has fallen, the taboo that the European Union was not providing arms in a war.”
An EU source told Reuters the bloc plans to spend $507 million (€450 million) on weapons for Ukraine, as well as an additional $56 million (€50 million) on “items such as medical supplies.”
https://www.rt.com/russia/550792-eu-buy-weapons-ukraine/
So, the USA under the guise of NATO, under the guise of the EU, is supplying military aid to an Eastern Bloc country.
Is that about right?
As they did to the Jihadists in Afghanistan and ISIS in Iraq and Syria. Killed a lot of folk but they still had to do a runner.
Well, a surgical strike on the EU buildings in Brussels must be in the scenario planning spectrum of Russia. None of us in Europe will give two flying farts if Borell and Van der Leyen get blown up.
Please kill the politicians, not the people, Russia .They don’t represent the people, they only represent the corporations and the banks.
Richard, Putin has drawn a line in the sand, Ukraine will not join NATO. He will do the same to it as the US has done to Libia, Afganistan, Yeman, Palistine and Syria. and wants to do to Iran. Are you suggesting Ukraine should join NATO and Cuba, Venezuela and the rest of South America should join SCO?
Finally.
EU to now provide Ukraine with fighter jets. It’s no longer just Ukraine vs Russia Europe has joined forces with Ukraine they just haven’t openly declared it yet.
With its S400 surface to air missiles, Russia can impose ‘area denial’ / no fly zones, over most air space NATO tries to venture into. NATO and US sophistication high tech very hexpensive dick waving can’t handle sand snow ice rain and any length of service hours. Communication and GPS via satellites are also subject to Russian electronic jamming.
Hmm. I think Western armed forces have a bit of experience rapidly disabling advanced integrated air-defence systems. Stealth fighters and drones, armed with HARM missiles. Russia deployed S400 to Syria, but it doesn’t seem to have shot down many planes, despite it being a target-rich environment.
I’ve always got the sense that the Russians are reluctant to use the S400/and that everyone else is reluctant to test its capabilities. As in nobody is quite sure how well their equipment will perform against the other’s.
I can’t find anything online that confirms that Nato air strikes killed anything like 15,000 people in Sirte. Can anyone provide a link?
You have to ask whether the Americans and the Russians are cooperating. The Anglo-American media has gone into overdrive in whipping up war hysteria which almost dared Putin to invade Ukraine whilst at the same time making it absolutely clear that they had no intention of helping Ukraine in any meaningful way. So much so that not only EU leaders but also Zelensky appealed for an end to the hysteria as it was making war more likely.
It’s surely the case that once Putin has secured his western flank, the advantages of his de facto alliance with China fall away to a large extent, and he might be willing to cooperate with the Americans to face down China, which is as much of a threat to Russia as it is to the US.
PeerMur. Dream on. Such hubris, after all the sanctions, pressure and decipt, to think Russia would trust the West, and ally with them ! Ask Afghans what they think of US Nato assurances…ha
PeeMur
The advantage of his de facto alliance with China is that it prevents America from destroying both of them. So after facing down China, Russia would be on its own against America that wishes to dismember and loot it.
What would an experienced diplomat advise? Russia has stated that NATO’s expansion constitutes an existential threat. It has attempted diplomacy to persuade NATO to join in mutual security guarantees. NATO has declined and persists in its expansion.. Russia has said that further integration of Ukraine into NATO will be met with force, but the offer still stands of negotiated mutual security guarantees. NATO has declined and continued supplying ever-increasing amounts of weaponry to Ukraine and integrating its forces into NATO. Russia has warned that it sees this as an existential threat to be met with force. NATO has persisted… Is Russia to continue pursuing diplomatic remedies another quarter century while NATO continues to disregard it? What if Russia genuinely perceives this as an existential threat (as we know the US would a similar situation in the Americas – and we know what the US would do)? Does an experienced diplomat advise Russia that it has no legal redress and must therefore simply live under existential threat from those who characterise themselves as its enemies, and trust that its self-proclaimed enemies mean it no harm?
I’ve just spent a few hours ‘ Debating ‘ Ukraine with one of the the Hypnotized..Who thinks Zelensky was democratically selected by 71% of the population. Sigh.
Well, as a Scottish Independence Activist.. I went Off George Galloway …But He is absolutely Blistering on Ukraine tonight –
The Mother of All Talk Shows – Go to 8 mins in –
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QcWy5YRBpK8
I’m struck by the map showing the voting results breakdown from the 2010 Ukrainian Presidential election. How many western politicians realise how divided down the middle Ukrainians were? The coup, followed by making the country solidly pro-west looks at best insensitive and discriminatory.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_Ukrainian_presidential_election
Wonder if Russia’s intention is to reinstall former President Yanukovych? Having held the position before he’d probably have far more credibility than some puppet.
Goose..I was Thinking that Too.
Brian Fujisan. I know how many on Craig’s site can’t stand George Galloway because of his views on Scottish Independence. I do however think it is very important not to cancel him for those views. His show on Sunday evenings MOATS has a huge worldwide audience and he has guests on who question the prevailing narrative and on every other subject, apart from Scottish Independence, I think you will find common cause.
A little earlier I made a post and as I was submitting it the site was down.
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/ireland-to-fund-provision-of-non-lethal-equipment-to-ukrainian-military-1.4813568
RoS has posted part of what I was going to point out relating to the EU:
“For the first time the EU will finance the purchase of lethal weaponry for a third country, a momentous change in the Union’s foreign policy, it announced on Sunday. “
Also, Ireland has pledged “non-lethal” support.
“Although Ireland is not directly funding the purchase of lethal equipment, the move marks a significant shift in Irish foreign policy. For the first time an Irish government will directly fund another country’s military at a time of war.”
I despair. Ireland managed to stay out of WW2 but not this. What the hell is going on? Also all visa requirements have been waived for Ukrainians which in itself is reasonable.
ET..
Yes What Mass deception allows this.
Ireland… Wow.
The Irish state is very Conservative, allowing US to use Shannon Airport for its military. However Clare Daly has been outspoken critic of her country’s actions.
Not so much anymore Wikikettle. Eamon de Valera, Taoiseach (prime minister) at that time and leader of the Irish war of independence when that was happening, made a very famous (in Ireland) radio broadcast in reply to Churchill’s criticism of Ireland’s policy of neutrality throughout the Second World War. Every schoolboy and girl in Ireland has been taught about this speech since then.
Here is a recording on RTE, our state broadcaster.
https://www.rte.ie/archives/exhibitions/eamon-de-valera/719137-de-valera-response-to-churchill/
Neutrality is a BIG thing in Ireland. I am surprised at how little counter-argument I am seeing as yet but that may change. Clare Daly and Mick Wallace are taking flack for abstaining from the EU parliament resolution on the Ukranian situation in December though they had proposed their own fairly sensible motion.
ET, thanks for link.
De-Dollarisation. Closing of the ranks of the remaining few.
Where did that claim of 15,000 dead in Sitre come from?
Dear Craig Murray
From which source do you get the information on the number of victims of the NATO attack on Libya?
thanks for the good articles.
Kersten, the Nato operation in Libya waa an unequivocal triumph that brought freedom, democracy and enlightenment and stuff. Do not believe those like Donald, Huw and JPR who are on here claiming it turned Africa’s richest, best educated country into a Mad Max dystopia with open air slave markets and creates a biblical refugee crisis in the Mediterranean. They are the same people peddling misinformation about Nato having constantly antagonized Russia and being in large measure responsible for the current crisis. Do not listen to them.