There is a completely crazed article by Simon Tisdall in the Guardian – worryingly its “most shared” – calling for “direct, in-country military support” by western powers in Ukraine against Russia.
While Tisdall outlines well the many catastrophic and wide-reaching effects of the Ukraine war, including tangents such as its effect on climate change, he fails completely to acknowledge the rather more obviously catastrophic possibility that direct western military intervention in Ukraine will lead to full scale nuclear war.
But strangely that is not what I find most wrong-headed in Tisdall’s article. What I find culpably unbalanced is this paragraph:
The broader, negative political impact of the war, should it rage on indefinitely, is almost incalculable. The UN’s future as an authoritative global forum, lawmaker and peacekeeper is in jeopardy, as more than 200 former officials warned Guterres last week. At risk, too, is the credibility of the international court of justice, whose injunction to withdraw was scorned by Putin, and the entire system of war crimes prosecutions.
It is as though the illegal invasion of Iraq had never happened, and had not already dealt the severe blow to the moral authority of the United Nations that helps enable Putin’s actions now. And Why is defiance by Putin of the International Court of Justice a severe blow to its credibility, but British refusal to obey its instruction to return the Chagos islands to the survivors of the British genocide there apparently was not a severe blow?
Putin is merely following British and American example. The failure of liberals like Tisdall (whom I generally respect) to acknowledge this I find infuriating. I condemn the invasion of Ukraine and I have no hesitation in calling Putin a war criminal. However for precisely the same reasons so are Bush and Blair. It astonishes me how very few people in the media are prepared, in the current emergency, to acknowledge this. That is perhaps understandable if not readily excusable. But to claim like Tisdall that Putin’s actions are somehow unique and precedent-setting goes beyond omission to active propaganda and lying.
I am returned from holiday with the family, much refreshed, and have decided to revert to the idea that not every article on this website needs to be long form or profound. Shorter, snappier pieces like this to fill the gaps between highly worked articles are also useful to keep brain cells sparking and conversation flowing.
————————————————-
Forgive me for pointing out that my ability to provide this coverage is entirely dependent on your kind voluntary subscriptions which keep this blog going. This post is free for anybody to reproduce or republish, including in translation. You are still very welcome to read without subscribing.
Unlike our adversaries including the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, Bellingcat, the Atlantic Council and hundreds of other warmongering propaganda operations, this blog has no source of state, corporate or institutional finance whatsoever. It runs entirely on voluntary subscriptions from its readers – many of whom do not necessarily agree with the every article, but welcome the alternative voice, insider information and debate.
Subscriptions to keep this blog going are gratefully received.
Choose subscription amount from dropdown box:
Paypal address for one-off donations: [email protected]
Alternatively by bank transfer or standing order:
Account name
MURRAY CJ
Account number 3 2 1 5 0 9 6 2
Sort code 6 0 – 4 0 – 0 5
IBAN GB98NWBK60400532150962
BIC NWBKGB2L
Bank address Natwest, PO Box 414, 38 Strand, London, WC2H 5JB
Bitcoin: bc1q3sdm60rshynxtvfnkhhqjn83vk3e3nyw78cjx9
Ethereum/ERC-20: 0x764a6054783e86C321Cb8208442477d24834861a
Subscriptions are still preferred to donations as I can’t run the blog without some certainty of future income, but I understand why some people prefer not to commit to that.
Tisdall, whom I generally respect
Please, please, please Craig, explain why you generally respect SimonTisdall. To my eye there is no more unhinged warmonger in the entire British mainstream media, liberal or conservative, something he has confirmed with every article of his since February 24. Please shed at least some light on why you generally respect him because I’m sure I will not be the only reader totally baffled by this admission.
Yes you definitely are not the only person baffled by this. I was shocked; gobsmacked actually, that Craig said he generally respects him. Why?? These warmongers sat at their keyboards who seem to drool at the prospect of more death and misery, make me want to throw up. Was going to say they do this with no personal risk to themselves, but that’s not the case because they put us all at risk of dying in nuclear armageddon. Unhinged and unforgivable.
I read Guardian online very selectively; I generally skip Tisdall’s column. I find his opinions boring and middle-of-the-road. I did read that article though, and I was struck by the reckless tone. I too was surprised to learn that Craig respects him.
I didn’t “make him” as a security-service asset, like the despicable Luke Harding.
I agree with you.
Tisdall and Luke Harding I have long assumed are MI6 assets. The Guardian has for some time been the warmonger paper of choice for hand wringing liberals. I can only assume Craig has met Tisdall and seen a different side to the one we do.
That doesn’t wash though does it ? If people are nasty in public then they are nasty, full stop. It’s like saying ” I met Hitler and actually he was quite a nice chap”.
You will be judged by the company you keep and the opinions you espouse.
Ugh. Luke Harding is a toad. Vile.
Compared to guardian’s stenographer of power, Dan Sabbagh, Tisdall’s positions often do run contrary to those of the political establishment.
He’s surprisingly dovish on certain military interventions, and hawkish about others. He at least gives the impression of assessing things on a case by case basis and forming his own views which is more than can be said for most of the media.
Tisdall’s positions often do run contrary to those of the political establishment
I have no idea what you positions you are referring to. Tisdall is the most unreflective, extreme centrist columnist in a very crowded field. The only sense in which he deviates from conventional establishment opinion is that he far outflanks it in the extremity of his hawkishness towards Russia and China. His output in the Guardian consists almost entirely of demonizing official state enemies and any western politician who questions or “threatens” NATO. He is the very last foreign policy commentator I would have suspected Craig had general respect for. I am utterly mystified by it.
In an article from 21 Aug 2021 Tisdall argued the following:
“Nato – discredited, ill-led, and taken for granted – has had its day, too. A more balanced, more respectful US-Europe security relationship is required. Without it, there may be no western alliance left to lead.”
I guess he flip-flops, creating the impression he isn’t as wedded to parroting official lines as he maybe really is. Having reviewed his columns, he definitely leans heavily towards hawkishness – military interventionism.
He’s certainly more tolerable to read than the Marquess of Lies, Luke Harding, I guess anyone looks majorly better by contrast!
Well yes, at least they don’t have to withdraw half his stories. Although having said that Harding’s reputation remains completely untarnished among Guardian readers and colleagues.
Could it be that “Simon Tisdall” is actually more than one person?
Not a frequent reader of the tediously centrist Observer, but there was (still is?) a commentator called “Barbara Ellen”, who would write column-filling ephemera to order, in true Graun/Obs style.
The photo that accompanied her regular Sunday column hadn’t (still hasn’t?) changed in around thirty years! Which led me to believe that she was either extremely vain, or, given the mundane forgettableness of the name, an invented alias for an ongoing parade of jobbing op-ed writers.
If I’m not mistaken Ukraine, Russia and America are not covered by any juristicton the Press or anyone else feels about being held to account by the International Criminal Court.
America never ratified the Rome Statute.
If I remember correctly, the UK did not ratify either…_
You remember wrong:-
https://asp.icc-cpi.int/states-parties/western-european-and-other-states/united-kingdom
The US signed but never ratified. Russia signed, never ratified and withdrew its signature in 2016.
Thank you…_
I’ve certainly never experienced such suffocating propaganda from British msm.
On today’s do-list; cancel my annual subscription to Private Eye after 38 years.
Looking beyond Ukraine. Russia won’t need to invade Poland and Romania to defend a large population of ethnic Russians. Any Nato bases there about to station nuclear capable cruise missiles ( as Scott Ritter mentions) in my opinion will be wiped out.
When nuclear missile bases start getting ‘wiped out’ it means a nuclear war is imminent already in process. I am gobsmacked at how many people put cheering for their preferred side, whether Russia or NATO, over their own self-interest and the continued survival of the human race.
Have you all gone mad or are you just not serious people? Spending massive amounts of time reading news, propaganda, tweets and opinion pieces is frying your brains. Take a break and log off. Go outside, pet a dog or a cat, talk to a real person. Reacquaint yourself with the world in which you actually live.
Covid (or SARS-CoV-2 as we”re not to call it) has reduced the collective IQ of the planet and increased “Executive Dysfunction” (more likely to make a bad risky move) according to various studies.
So yes perhaps we have all gone mad.
Meh, neither Russian or Western mega-yachts will have an easy time sailing through a nuclear sunset. I am ready to call their bluff, the stage is too obvious. We doth protest too much, and we have 2 years worth of pandemic protesting to catch up to. What better time to sacrifice some poor folks and threaten the rest with nuclear holocaust?
It will escalate after the Sarmat-28 goes into the silos, probably near election time. I’d suggest you also get out and smell the roses more often, just cus the West’s narrative is unraveling doesn’t mean we have to as well.
SARS-Cov-2 is the name of the virus; Covid is the name of the disease caused by the virus.
Although there is some suggestion that, like the HIV>AIDS progression, what is now known as ‘Long Covid’ is itself the real disease – which can attack certain immune cells and cause chronic pain, fatigue, and damage to the brain and cardio-vascular system – whilst the initial fever and cold symptoms are merely the manifestation of sero-conversion.
Not cheering, by any means; but we need to think about how we should respond if Putin pops a nuke. Like, he’s repeatedly warned that it’s in his playbook; in general, at least in regard to longer-term projections, he does what he says he’s going to do. And first use of nukes in a conventional war has long been part of Russia’s playbook.
No doubt NATO military planners have a response worked out. But it’ll be a secret; I think it needs to be discussed publicly, so that NATO planners understand public feeling. Public discussion doesn’t have to mean revealing secrets.
If the man with his finger on the button of the largest nuclear arsenal on the planet is threatening a first-use attack in his speeches, then it’s not “frying your brains” to think about what options the west has in terms of a response.
Like, how do you respond to a single 5Kt nuke dropped on a field in rural Ukraine? I don’t think NATO has any nukes that small. If they don’t respond, NATO is finished. Alternatively they can respond with serious conventional force; or they can dick around with nuclear game theory. I think that’s all the choices there are.
I think it’s regrettable that these choices are being made for us in secret, by generals and spies; we need to talk about this stuff. TV news hosts should be raising these issues in interviews. And I haven’t “taken sides”, other than that I’m against advising people not to think, and instead stroke a pet.
I stopped reading it years ago but my husband still subscribes and reads it. I can imagine some of the guff being written about Ukraine. Apart from Ian Hislops’ obvious loathing of Jeremy Corbyn, and consequent smearing in Private Eye, a lot of other stuff became a real turn off.
What tipped you over the edge with the Eye, Vivian?
I’ve cancelled it once or twice over the years, but like an old bad habit, missed it and picked it up again. I did cancel for a year or so after their “tribute from Corbyn” bit concerning the Manchester pop concert bombing.
I have to admit, the cartoons have always been truly superb. But not, IMHO, worth the risk of unintentionally glimpsing some of the written material.
Wholesale, unquestioned propagation of the “babies on bayonets” bullshit being put out by the Ukrainians, State Department & British security services.
Specifically, a couple of cartoons in the current issue, subject matter, Bucha. Hislop is intelligent enough and should be well informed enough to know at the very least that the events at Bucha are sufficiently uncertain that lending credence to Western propaganda makes his publication irreconcilably compromised.
The Guardian reported that, according to 18 European experts, the civilians in Bucha were killed by artillery fire:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/24/dozens-bucha-civilians-killed-flechettes-metal-darts-russian-artillery
This still leaves the possibility that the shells came from the Ukrainian side (both sides use mostly the same Soviet-made D30 and even the older D20 howitzers with the same munitions) but cancels the execution version.
@Yuri,
“The Guardian reported that, according to 18 European experts, the civilians in Bucha were killed by artillery fire.”
No, the report says that dozens were killed by artillery fire.
Hear, hear.
Thanks Vivian. I haven’t looked at the cartoons in the most recent edition, I may be forced to come to the same conclusion, from your description here. Sad.
When a satirical magazine, whose reputation still rests on supposedly exposing the crimes and misdemeanors of the upper echelons of the establishment, printed no more than one small cartoon in response to the Snowden revelations, it was time to cancel the sub in disgust.
It was then that it dawned: what better cover for an intelligence operation than to infiltrate (or set up from the very beginning?) a muckraking publication, to which all and snitching sundry will willingly send in their gossip and intel about the great and good of business, politics (national and local), media, publishing, medicine, agriculture – and even chess?
Willy Rushton’s corruscating caricatures of the fortnightly subjects of Bookworm were exceptional and are missed, as are Paul Foot’s investigations, but sadly, Rushton and Foot are no longer with us.
And Lord Gnome is no longer with me.
Yes a honey pot trap.
Same went for Amnesty International, Establishment,
Peter Cook was an exception and turned into a drunk when he saw what he was being used for.
TWTTW,
The most insidious was Esther Rantzen and the BBC cover up of PIE with ‘Childline’
The whole Pop Industry.
Johnny Rotten could tell the tale …he has hinted at it.
A simple litmus test
How many arrests trials and convictions came from that child catcher? How many got buried or bought off for phoning up? The stats have not been reported.
They completely ‘missed’ the biggest Savill. How many were induced into phoning in so they could be bagged up? A couple of little fish got flushed down the loo but the Edifice and its PIE affiliates were preserved.
The Child Abuse Inquiry has been stalled.
The ‘Free Press’ has been destroyed by the Levison Inquiry being equally shelved.
The Guardian turned into rabid Mail – which has actually preserved some semblance of journalism – but that’s for Middle England readership purposes.
It has never acknowledged or atoned for its Nazi supporting proclivities last century.
Anyway … back to current affairs.
Yes, Vivian; it was with much regret that I cancelled my subscription to “Private Eye” after reading it from cover to cover ever since its first issue in, I think, 1961 (and, before that, “Mesopotamia”). It was never the same after Ian Hislop became editor; and when the current batch of neo-imperialist wars began in 2003, I was appalled by its editorial policy of always supporting the West. About as satirical as “Punch” was back when Peter Cook and Richard Ingrams used to mock it for having no principles.
Nowadays I would as soon study “The Guardian” or listen to the BBC. Or eat a dog’s vomit.
[ Mod: Sockpuppet – ‘Logical Analyst‘ ‘ (aka ‘Nick’, ‘Fairness’, ‘RealityIsNotPleasant’, etc.).
The adoption of multiple identities is not allowed. Please use a consistent name and email address. ]
—
Private Eye used to have two serious functions: pointing out, lampooning, the hypocrisy and general corruptness of the rich and powerful (including politicians); and performing the same service on the mainstream media.
Today, Boris Johnson’s gang is bleating about “democracy” and “freedom of speech”, while supinely preparing to hand over Julian Assange to its masters in Washington for daring to publish truth about American war crimes. Meanwhile, the mainstream media publish NATO press releases and government briefings as “news”. Earth to Boris: “democracy” does not mean “doing whatever Washington wants”; freedom of speech includes freedom to publish the truth – not just freedom to lie all the time.
But you’d never learn this from Private Eye. It still has one or two funny cartoons, and my wife and I like doing the Cyclops crossword together, but nowadays that’s about all it has to offer. I’ll let my current subscription run out but I’ll cancel auto-renewal.
My subscription to the Eye went some years back when it emerged that their awful Ratbiter was in truth the awful Nick Cohen. How many of their other contributors are similar? So much for an alternative outlet.
I remember Hislop moaning about the Rothschilds being worth 900 trillion about 15 years ago on HIGNFY, and my first thought was he will pay for that. Low and behold, after a suitable delay he fronts a program called When Bankers Were Good which included a sycophantic interview with Jacob Rothschild. It is worth watching just to see Hislop struggle to say “You tithe …”
Hislop is well enough connected to know quite well what is going on. He also knows to vent his spleen on only the lower aspiring climbers and leaves the big boys well alone.
Good to see you back in the chair and that your passport was eventually restored.
Look forward to more short pieces – couple of suggestions: your take on chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal and where it’s at now; juiced up as it is now with the coup in Pakistan immediately followed by air strikes being reported on Taliban?and mass civilian protests wholly ignored by the media here – with the large diaspora in the U.K. and end of Ramadan, I wonder if protests could spread here?
I haven’t had the strength of stomach needed to actually imbibe from that rag sheet , Guardian for a week or so now as it would have ruined my Easter. I see I made the right choice.
I look forward to the UN deciding it is not itself fit for purpose and votes for dissolutions by a majority/unanimous vote based on populations. No vetoes!
I doubt the 15% that is the Western World will be able to retain its hold – even by withholding all the obscure funding
It would be better if the new body for this century was constituted and placed elsewhere from the flesh pots of New York and the US. Somewhere that straddles the world would be ideal.
How about Libya? Or Lebanon?
This must be a priority to replace the corrupt Rules based Exceptionalism with actual Law and Courts for All.
International Law and Institutions set up by the ” World Powers ” after WW1 and WW2 only reflected the Might is Right principle. Ask the populations of Central and Latin America who suffered from US backed dirty wars. Ask the populations of Africa, Asia, Vietnam, Cambodia Indonesia and Arabia. Ask Palestinians and those in Gaza. Russia in my opinion is CONFRONTING with military force this Imperial Order. Lavrov tried to reason with International Law, UN Treaty Obligations ( Minsk ) OSCE commitments about security being indivisible, that no countries security should be at the expense at anothers. All to no avail. The host of countries US and Nato invaded were not an extetential threat to US, UK, France and the Collective West. Pilger points out the encirclment of Russia and China by our bases and missiles. We have literally killed millions of civilians in our regime change wars for economic domination. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council who hold veto powers, US, UK, Russia, France and China. The billions of poor people in the Global South look at this list made up of Colonial powers and see it as a ridiculous hypocritical circus. Never mind! The economic power is shifting to the Global South and the Military strangulation of US Nato UK and France is being exposed as a has been by Russia.
Yet again, may I urge everyone to study the Melian Dialogue, as documented by Thucydides in “The Peloponnesian War”? As a student of history – and especially military history – I have never seen the basic principles stated with such stark and unhypocritical clarity. Questions of “right” come into consideration only between acknowledged equals in military power. Otherwise, the strong do whatever they wish, and the weak do whatever they are told. The only reason the UN has had any meaning at all has been that the USA and the USSR (latterly Russia and China) are equals in power and thus neither side can be sure of winning by violence. Therefore they talk and make treaties – which, however, the West never has any intention of keeping.
None of this has changed one iota in 2,400 years; nor can it possibly change as long as men are men.
The trouble has always been that the Americans and British persist in believing that somehow, in defiance of all the facts, they are entitled – magically, or through the will of God, or whatever – to rule and loot, and that everyone else was created as dust beneath their feet. They continue to think that even when they know that a few Russian or Chinese ICBMs would destroy them and their entire nations. It’s very difficult to deal with paranoid psychotics, as Mr Putin and Mr Lavrov know from bitter experience. (Mr Shoigu could certainly deal with them, but we would all be very sorry).
Here is the relevant passage.
Athenians: “For ourselves, we shall not trouble you with specious pretences – either of how we have a right to our empire because we overthrew the Mede, or are now attacking you because of wrong that you have done us – and make a long speech which would not be believed; and in return we hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must”…
Melians: “You may be sure that we are as well aware as you of the difficulty of contending against your power and fortune, unless the terms be equal. But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust, and that what we want in power will be made up by the alliance of the Lacedaemonians, who are bound, if only for very shame, to come to the aid of their kindred. Our confidence, therefore, after all is not so utterly irrational.”
Athenian: “Of the gods we believe, and of men we know, that by a necessary law of their nature they rule wherever they can. And it is not as if we were the first to make this law, or to act upon it when made: we found it existing before us, and shall leave it to exist forever after us; all we do is to make use of it, knowing that you and everybody else, having the same power as we have, would do the same as we do”
— The Melian Dialogue – Thucydides (“Peloponnesian War”)
Tom the problem is that reliance is on Greek Ancient History as expounded through European upper echelon education as being the acme of philosophy and politics and war.
I read some Jesuit site last night suggesting Chemistry was Invented by Europeans!! Just as they refuse to acknowledge Islam bringing universities and astronomy and Arabic numerals and mathematics Al Gebra, to us dumb Europeans.
The Roman Empire over centuries failed to develop science and left hardly any real tangible thinking.
The appropriations go on and the liars refuse the acknowledge the canard of Euro-Hellenic supremacy.
It is yet again being challenged by the even older non Euro cultures civilisations and peoples from the pacific to the Atlantic. Across EurAsia and Africa who are in the process of having to deal with the childish tantrums and entitlement clams of the young culture of the west with Aryan allusions.
It is hard to smite your own child but if you don’t he/she will grow up knowing nothing and being a wastrel.
That slap and emotional crying we hear in our media daily ensuing from it is the ancients speaking.
You are correct and I agree with your comment.
It would be more remarkable if a Guardian hack acknowledged the precedent, but Western crimes in Syria, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Panama etc etc etc are not even to be hinted at just now. Just as Assange barely exists while random deaths of Russian journalists a decade or more ago are to be salivated over. Even Tommy Robinson, our own Navalny clone, seems to have been faded out lest the many parallels be picked up on.
FYI, journalists are being killed or “disappeared” in Russia all the time. Western press doesn’t always report on that, unless in high-profile cases, but local activists in Russia are trying to keep track of such cases. Assange is but one shameful case in the West – in Russia, this is a daily reality.
What for?
Journalists or spies and western foundation trained hoods like Zaghari Wiman?
Who bleat when caught and sentenced to jail.
Disappeared – doesn’t send any messages- being caught, tried and jailed does.
Who is disappeared, when and why? Any such REAL extrajudicial crap should be condemned and loudly shouted about. Do give us details.
Those who dare to criticise the government of Russia must certainly be foreign spies. Or mentally ill, like in the Soviet Union which routinely locked up opponents in mental hospitals. Yawn.
you forgot the who, where, when and why. yawn.
“Who is disappeared, when and why?”
The answers you seek are readily available on the web.
You could start with the extensive list on Wikipedia: List of Journalists killed in Russia under Putin – each with a name, occupation, media company, as well as the date and place of death/disappearance.
You can view the online spreadsheet of Journalists murdered in Russia since 2000
The Committee to Protect Journalists has an online database with various filters you can use to refine your search. The benefit of this one is that you can click on the names to read the story of their demise.)
It’s also worth consulting the Politifact page entitled Does Vladimir Putin kill journalists? (4 Jan 2016), which has an analysis as well as a list.
There are many similar resources, easily found via a simple web search.
I don’t believe you, kashmiri. Could you please give us some sources for your unfounded and highly improbable claim? (Other than “Russia bad”).
A certain Craig Murray (recently, quoting an article from 2007) gave some details of the case of Ivan Safronov :
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2022/04/each-of-us-is-striving-to-process-the-truth-of-the-disaster-in-ukraine/
Well, that’s one *claimed* case. One. Kashmiri asserted that “journalists are being killed or “disappeared” in Russia all the time”.
Mr Safronov was charged with treason for giving military secrets to foreign nations potentially hostile to Russia. The USA has actually executed people for doing that.
Mr Assange has been persecuted because, once secret information had been leaked, he published it – an entirely different matter.
The problem, Tom Welsh, is that people like you never accept any criticism of Russia and its leadership. You pounce on anyone who dares suggest that Russia is far from perfect in how it conducts its affairs.
What you’ve done is swapped faith in the west and uncritical acceptance of western propaganda, wars and justifications for a fantasy Russia that you’ve built in your mind. And nurturing this fantasy every day for years on end has made it part of your identity.
You and your cohorts are like members of a tightly knit religious community and you reflexively and fanatically defend and reinforce your world view because it gives your life meaning and makes the world seem less frightening and chaotic.
Cult members are not interested in truth, nuance or context and can’t be reasoned with. You are the flip side of the NATO cheerleaders at the Guardian and Atlantic Council. The only difference is the side you’ve chosen to support and blindly defend at all costs.
People who persist in believing things I don’t are useful to have around. They are prone to ask questions I wouldn’t. Sometimes they elicit answers I would never have otherwise considered. None of us are so creative on our own as we like to think.
Why pretend to psychoanalyse them over the internet?
And if persecution of journalists in Russia is so rampant as kashmiri says, then it seems to me that Tom Welsh does a public service here by requesting more information on the topic, from someone who purports to know so much about it.
One thing a Western audience might wish to keep in mind: Good journalism is hard work. Great journalism can get you killed.
And so, if there are more severe cases of persecution of journalists in Russia than in some Western country, the reason might simply be that Russia produces more great journalists.
Projection much?
Baalbek by name ..
Ah too easy. I’ll make a new comment.
That we know about
The war need never have started if the US had told their puppet Zelensky to abide by Minsk II accords. I think Russia had no choice but to take action as they have done to protect the Russian speaking population of east Ukraine, where the Kiev government has killed over 14000 people and terrorised millions more since the US coup in 2014.
All that is happening now is Ukrainian military being needlessly slaughtered to appease US power projection. Zelensky is a coward and a murderer telling the army not to surrender and to fight to their own deaths. Very sad. I am also sick to death of the propaganda in the western mainstream media, where the BBC and Guardian are among the worst culprits. I would never give a penny to the Guardian begging bowl, and resent being forced to pay £15 or what it now is a month for the BBC that I now refuse to watch.
On Minsk: Video from 2019 appears to show Zelensky eye-rolling/chuckle when Putin talk about making peace between the 2 nations. He is really one big phony actor this man.
https://twitter.com/pl4ma/status/1507668521651941379
Craig, if you are saying that we need to un-unravel an international order based on rules and without double standards, I fully agree with you. How do you think this can be achieved?
it is very difficult indeed; western governments appear to have abandoned any genuine commitment to international law as anything but a propaganda tool against their enemies. There has undoubtedly been a decline in the prestige and effectiveness of international law and its institutions, with little sign of effective moral leadership in developing nations either.
I think this is inextricably linked to the undisputed hold of neoliberal governments and abandonment of ideas of social justice. I don’t think one problem can be tackled without the other; and I am, frankly, rather in despair at the decline of social values.
One noticeable trend in the MSM after the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the USSR was the replacement of the mealy-mouthed euphemisms used to describe the “Western system” by the more direct terms Capitalism/capitalist. The reason for this shift? Simply that the distinction signalled by the former (“Western democracies” v “Communist dictatorships”) was no longer useful or meaningful: the West had “won”.
There was, of course, a short period of “ideological lag”, during which the fiction of a “democratic”, “civilised”, law-abiding West acting as the “world’s policeman” could continue to be spun to the public via the ever-helpful MSM, but its past as a resource-pillaging war machine wasn’t going to disappear overnight just because Eastern Europe had “joined the club”.
And so, today, there is no longer any need for pussy-footing: if you don’t like the system, WTF are you going to do about it, citizen? Don’t like the war we’re planning? Go ahead and march in your millions and see how effective that is. Don’t like the lies we spout and the truths we conceal? We’ll censor your only means of countering/revealing them and call you a hatist, racist or fascist for even trying. As the capitalist system becomes ever more desperate as the neo-liberalist “solution” to mid-70s stagflation crashes and burns in front of our eyes, the gloves are off. There is no “voting your way out of” this shit creek.
“The gloves are off” of course refers to Capitalism: the idea that there is any real revolutionary fervour amonst the Western population (or has been since the 1920) is laughable.
To my mind the real rot set in on 22nd November 1963 in Dallas. Destiny denied, indeed.
Glad to see you reining in your prolixity, Craig, as I advised on this forum in response to your most recent magnum opus on the war in Ukraine. Brevity is the soul of blogging, but it has to be said this post is too brief and reads more like a letter to the Guardian. Obviously you’re still getting back into the swing of things after your well-earned family holiday. Once you’ve shaken the sand off your sandals, I suggest you aim at an optimal length and ramp up the frequency of your reflections. Hope you find this helpful and enjoyed your break.
Blimey, Professor! There’s no pleasing some people.
I’ve thought for a long time now that the Guardian isn’t a serious newspaper, it’s a satirical publication. It has to be. Some of the stuff I’ve read there is absolutely atrocious IMO of course but they know it. That’s why they’ve stopped ‘Comment Is Free’.
I like reading the football results there and Blind Date, but that’s it. Simon Tisdall and the rest may as well come from a different planet as far as I’m concerned.
‘Comment is free ‘ is anything but these days.
They fell for Carol Codswallop’s mind rot paranoia, that Russia must be influencing discussion – all discussion.
The nonsense that has spawned a ‘thought police’ patrolling western social media platforms like digital Brownshirts, only they operate under the guise of being the innocuous enough sounding ‘Fact Checkers.’
Many will remember the noughties when the guardian’s ‘Cif’ used to be lively and a good place to debate; moderation was light-touch. Nowadays they see all dissent as ‘wrong think’ and quickly remove comments lest their readership’s precious minds be polluted by the dissonance of said ‘wrong think’, reiterating their comment terms and conditions to those baffled by their censorial practices. Criticising Starmer, Israel, NATO, the EU bureaucracy,… an ever growing list is simply verboten. I despise what the guardian has become under Viner.
[ Mod: This is a response to Tom Welsh’s (suspended) recommendation of an obvious Russian propaganda piece by John Helmer. ]
—
> However I think that, on balance, unbiased readers will accept it as true.
But it’s all rumour and speculation. I accept as true the report that there is such rumour and speculation; but even the author isn’t stating it as fact.
I’m sorry I read the article; I feel dirty now.
Well, double standards apply at the Guardian on official enemies versus official friends. When this is done in a particularly blatant fashion, perhaps it is a cry for help.
But it was not so long ago that NATO’s nuclear missiles were targeting military and civilian sites in Ukraine, so pardon my doubt that any NATO minister cares anything for Ukrainian lives. The UK is cagey about just which cities it targeted with nukes, but it may have been poised to wipe out the population of Kyiv, for example. But with the annexation of Crimea, perhaps NATO nukes retargeted that region, even if the official position is that nukes are ‘de-targeted’ (are we to believe that coordinates will be fed in during a nuclear conflict?).
A more reasonable explanation for joining NATO is the hope that NATO’s own nukes will be targeted away from its members’ territories. Yet, even if NATO nuked Russia, how would Ukraine escape the conflagration and fallout from its weapons? Plus, you know, genocide and ecocide. I think the Guardian was condemning culturecide in Ukraine, not sure why it would support nuclear weapons in that case.
And perhaps serial killers commit their crimes as a cry for help. But that doesn’t forgive them, or make them any less horrible.
One reason why the Russians do their best to avoid thermonuclear war (or other exchange of WMD) is that they don’t like the prospect of everyone in the world dying. Whereas some, at least, of the Western players, seem to have the Dr Strangelove-like idea that as long as everyone on both sides died, at least it would be a draw – which would be better than a defeat such as not being allowed to loot Russia’s natural resources.
It’s simply a matter of being sane – or not.
One reason why the Russians do their best to avoid thermonuclear war
An excellent way of *not* avoiding thermonuclear war is to announce to the world that you are putting your nuclear forces on high alert, and then threatening to use them in a conventional conflict.
With respect to Russians doing their best, I’d say “could do better”.
If I remember right (?), I believe that Russia put their nuclear forces on high alert following a statement by the Ukrainian clown that he was going to obtain/re-activate nuclear weapons.
We now have Nuland and the other Psychos beating the nuclear drum. Putin ignores the nutters at his own peril.
IIRC, Putin also pointed out that Lizz Truss had just called for “regime change” in Russia.
Taking NATO’s bait and launching an invasion that, in addition to the death and destruction it is inflicting, is breathing new life into the organization and strongly reinforcing US control over Europe as well as bringing the world closer to nuclear war is not Putin’s finest moment. But don’t expect Tom Welsh and his ilk to admit that their grand strategist, 5D chess player and lover of all humanity seriously fucked up and scored an own goal that has champagne corks popping in Brussels and DC and all the neocon and liberal interventionist ghouls crawling out from under the woodwork more convinced than ever that they are correct about everything.
The entire western military industrial complex, the clickbait and spectacle driven media and every person and organization advocating US and western supremacy owe V. Putin a massive debt of gratitude.
If the West is now in the catbird seat, why this tsunami of wall-to-wall hysteria?
As I see it, this is a disaster for the West. When one side in a confrontation is prepared to put boots on the ground and take casualties and the other side isn’t, the outcome is pretty much preordained. NATO’s credibility is in tatters across the world and my guess is that those countries now seeking to join are only doing it because it’s clear NATO won’t do anything for non-members. Not that it’s ever been certain that the US would do much for a member state either. I’m not advocating Western boots on the ground which could lead to the disaster Craig warns of but, looking dispassionately, that’s the way it is. In terms of why Russia has gone ahead with this invasion, the support they are getting from China has to be a big factor. China gains a captive supplier of raw materials and, I expect, an enforcer along its Belt and Road.
Simon Tisdall sounds a bit unhinged, rather like that General in Dr Strangelove….
“I’m not saying we wouldn’t get our hair mussed, but I do say no more than 10 to 20 million killed, tops.”
— General Buck Turgidson, Dr Strangelove.
welcome back craig, I for one will continue to look forward to all of your articles whether short or long.
Mr. Murray, I must confess I’m mystified why you respect Simon Tisdall – have you read a reasonable cross section of his output in the MI6 house journal? I completely agree with the main thrust of your argument though. I would have no objection to seeing Mr. Putin “up before the beak” in the dock of the ICC but they would have to construct a very big structure in order to accommodate co-defendants Blair, Brown, your old adversary Straw, Bush jnr., Cheney, both Clintons, Obama, Netanyahu, Kissinger and last but not least, M.J.’s current pin-up poster girl, Madeleine “it was a price worth paying” Albright if she were still alive. And that is by no means an exhaustive list.
“the false equivalence between Russian aggression and the acts of Nato” is the underlying mantra. These are Starmer’s words directed against Corbyn but equally true of the general tenor of the current war propaganda which seeks to restrict its analysis to favour an open-ended conflict that is likely to cost many more lives! Sure Putin is a war criminal, but weren’t Truman, Johnson, Nixon, George W. Bush, and Blair? If you are selective enough in your focus, then you can ‘prove’ anything, but the reality is that post-1945 the West has been responsible for far more deaths in illegal acts and foreign wars than anyone else. Some “false equivalence”.
There is NO credibility of the international court of justice:
….US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on March 17 threatened two staff members of the International Criminal Court (ICC). He called them out by name, claimed they were putting Americans at risk, and intimated that the US could act against them, as well as other ICC personnel and their families …..
https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/19/us-again-threatens-international-criminal-court
So western world complain to Russia that they should respect deepening Ukraine/Nato ties, but the western world themselves are now furiours when the Solomon islands chose to deepen ties with China!
Australia Calls for War Readiness as Solomon-China Pact Triggers Tensions in Pacific
“Australia has issued a warning over the Solomon Islands-China security pact following significant efforts by the US and its allies to thwart the deal. On Monday, Defence Minister Peter Dutton said that Australia could only preserve peace by preparing for war.”
https://sputniknews.com/20220425/australia-calls-for-war-readiness-as-solomon-china-pact-triggers-tensions-in-pacific-1095027765.html
Yes but this is not the same thing. Give me a few minutes and I’ll explain why. ….Can I get back to you next week?
The arrangement we’ve entered into with AUKUS and particularly with the United States and the United Kingdom and now with Japan and India, these are all countries that want peace and the preservation of that peace in our region”
Given the sterling record of the USA supporting its “allies”, (Kurds, Marsh Arabs, Georgia) if I were Australian I would be very nervous. Especially as India does not look all that happy with the US.
Jack,
“So western world complain to Russia that they should respect deepening Ukraine/Nato ties, but the western world themselves are now furiours when the Solomon islands chose to deepen ties with China!”
Or to turn it around, if you think Putin is justified in invading Ukraine to “defend” itself against deepening Ukraine/NATO ties, you must also think the US would be justified in invading the Solomon Islands to “defend” itself against deepening Solomon/China ties.
Personally, I’d condemn both. How about you?
“The UN’s future as an authoritative global forum, lawmaker and peacekeeper is in jeopardy … At risk, too, is the credibility of the international court of justice”
Strangely these risks worry me not at all. It’s the risk of mass human death and misery that worries me, not the disappointed career ambitions of a bunch of international bureaucrats.
‘ should it rage on indefinitely ‘ wish wish.
‘ At risk, too, is the credibility of the international court of justice ‘ wish wish
The Guardian presstiutes specialise in compressing totalitarian Tory speak into cognitive English prose.
Which I find extremely unnerving having exactly the same education as Guardian presstitutes but opposite opinions. They seem to have worked the English language into a weapon of mass futility, whereby nothing they ever say is either logical or truthful, while still appearing to make sense.
When we had an empire I’m sure it was the same. Everything was referenced to Empire and it was possible to satirise, like Lewis Carroll’s :
But answer came there none —
And this was scarcely odd, because
They’d eaten every one.”
I heard Elon Musk’s space rockets which blew up on launch compared to Lady Penelope’s Thunderbird.
Surely the only way to deal with a mind-set that is referenced to one dogmatic world view is satire.
Oh whoops, it was Craig’s satire à la Yes Minister which got him, deliberately unacknowledged by PTB, locked up in prison. Truth not only hurts, but enfuriates the idée fixe of the imperial class.
This war was caused and wanted by the US, and could have been avoided. It could also be ended tomorrow if the US so decided. The Ukrainian government, secret service and military is in the pocket of Nazis and the US: the Ukrainian people themselves wanted and want peace. The end game will be the majority russophone area south and east of a line roughly Karkiv to Transnistria will be ‘Russian’, and the people there will mostly be very glad about it. The Russians have no interest in Kiev or the western ‘Bandera’ neo-nazi area.
The situation is already lost militarily, the Russians are grinding down the Ukrainian army built up in West Donetsk. Despite the 24/7 wall-to-wall war propaganda you will already have noticed that the news is bad. The US does not care: it is fighting to the last Ukrainian for its geopolitical aims. More arms from NATO will just increase the damage to Ukraine and Ukrainians. We could still avoid the deaths of 60,000 young Ukrainian men caught in a hopeless situation, but time is running out.
“the people there will mostly be very glad about it. “
and will be severely punished if they aren’t.
” The Russians have no interest in Kiev or the western ‘Bandera’ neo-nazi area.”
I thought one of the key objectives of this war, sorry special military operation, was the ‘de-Nazification’ of all Ukraine. When did this change?
you think there aren’t nazis in Ukraine?
I don’t know why anyone would take the Grauniad seriously these days.
It’s a rag.
Either journalists don’t believe that the US/UK committed crimes by invading Iraq etc or, worse, feel they can’t say so. Either way this means that their articles become little better than propaganda for those who wish to push their own agenda. Good point about the UN, it seems it has little power against the larger nations. It IS at least something that it can, sometimes, act to stop problems in smaller nations although I am hard pushed to remember them successfully doing so before there were widespread atrocities. I’m no expert on this so I’m sure someone could correct me.
It seems that this will go on for as long as Ukraine has the manpower as the US in particular, seems willing to arm them with everything they need. I haven’t heard much about any progress on a negotiated settlement either. Perhaps the US could intervene on helping there as much as with arms? I don’t think they have the desire though and want to make a point to Russia and are quite willing to sacrifice Ukraine’s young men in order to do so. It’s hard not to think of WW1 and the loss of a generation, I fear this could happen in Ukraine..
‘Putin is merely following British and American example.’
– That’s rubbish, Craig, Putin rightfully sent the military into ukraine to protect the Donbass people, of whom over 700 000 have Russian citizenship; to remove the threat of shitze getting nukes, & to clear the country – sorry, colony of the usg – of biolabs. And of course, to denatzify & demilitarise it and hopefully prevent it from becoming a hato member.
‘It astonishes me how very few people in the media are prepared, in the current emergency, to acknowledge this.’
Why, Craig? You STILL do NOT understand that the western msm is corrupt and controlled, and as Paul Craig Roberts has said, almost all of them are liars and presstitutes, with a mix of cursed warmongers.
Correction: as Paul Craig Roberts has referred to them as presstitutes; almost all of them are liars, with a mix of cursed warmongers.
So you admit the purpose of the invasion was regime change which, without a UN mandate, makes it as illegal as the invasion of Iraq?
I do not remember that Iraq, at the time of the invasion, was fighting a civil war that credibly threatened genocide on part of the population, many of whom held US citizenship.
Jrkrideau
USUK start “”” civil “”” wars by recruiting disaffected young people and training them to annoy the leader they want to overthrow.
This happened in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and now Ukraine. But in Ukraine they stupidly recruited Nazis, that we spent two world wars fighting against.
This is a massive mis- calculation by USUK, because our population remembers the trauma of those two world wars. The only way they can make this stupidity not back fire is to flood the Msm with jingoist war porn. But they are playing with TNT, not dynamite.
We had a civil war in Northern Ireland funded, organised and managed by the Security services. It backfired badly and Britain will soon lose Northern Ireland.
Ukraine will also backfire on USUK security services when Getmany and France’s manufacturing economies fail for lack of gas and oil. The oil reserves of Iraq, Somalia, Scotland, Libya Yemen and North Africa will be accelerated by 50 years to cope with sanctions against Russia.
Dozens of proxy jihadist miniwars will be started to effect this essential coup. Meanwhile Europe will be divided by latent right-wing neo nazi politics. Mini civil wars.
The next generation is hungry and mean enough to rebel against their comfortable home -owning parents’ ideas . The security services are playing with fire.
Pears, what part of the facts I stated do you simply not understand? Together with the warmongering shit yank govt doing regime change in ukraine, leading to the current crisis?
Did you copy the rationale of the Iraq invasion here?
Yeah, of course, Iraqi oil didn’t matter, much like Donbas’s huge mineral deposits are non existent, correct?
Russian propaganda tends to be quite crude, those who nonetheless believe in it must be really thick.
You lose all credibility when you resort to name calling
Big development potentially for all journalists and bloggers, is the news today Twitter are reportedly “set to accept” Elon Musk’s offer to buy the company.
If Musk is true to his words about ending the hidden algorithmic bias and shadow banning, it’ll be a big step in the right direction for rolling back this pernicious, creeping authoritarianism in the west. Of course, the liberals in the US (in the UK centrists) who are these days the chief proponents of political censorship of opponents, will howl with outrage, as they lose their inherent privileges for controlling discourse and crushing dissent. As Glenn Greenwald has pointed out, one of the main reasons the Bush-era Neocons have attached to these illiberal liberals is they share a desire to control information, and wish to enforce a regime involving the suppression of inconvenient facts.
It’s not even a political left vs right issue. More one of social authoritarianism vs social libertarianism.
Goose
Arianism. Noun. The ideology of white, middle – class, pigs, that their ideas, needs and wishes supercede those of any others on or off the planet.
The MSM are dog-whistling for this far right wing Labour/ Democrat and Tory/ Republican governate, that Scandinavian – derived human beings have exclusive rights over this planet and the space above it. It is a very nasty ideology which we have to fight.
State sponsored manipulation & sock puppetry have become so ingrained in the West (US & UK) those involved probably think that episode of Homeland : Season 6; Episode 9 ‘Sock Puppets’ casts them in a positive light.
The furore over Musk buying Twitter is revealing; of course hate speech and incitement to violence will remain forbidden, quite rightly. But what some are scared of is tweet equality, and an end to hidden (from users) algorithmic manipulation – replaced (hopefully) with a level playing field for all. Promoting certain narratives over others needs to end.
“It astonishes me how very few people in the media are prepared, in the current emergency, to acknowledge this.”
Simply put, they write what they’re told. Establishment control of the MSM whorehouse has been clear for some time now.
I find it very hard not to conclude that this entire situation is being engineered in, and orchestrated from, Washington. From the provocation of the war, to the unprecedented, full-scale economic warfare, to the astonishing, unprecedented propaganda campaign. This is all too much of a piece, and fully in keeping with the psychopathic dreams of the neoconservative Project For The New American Century, for this not to have been long in the planning.
Similarly, I find it hard to believe that the similarly unprecedented descent of the BBC into crude neo-Nazi supporting, pro-war, war-porn propaganda, in direct contravention of its public service broadcasting remit – the final nail in its coffin as a trustworthy news source – is not being directed or demanded from Washington. The British Establishment of its own volition wouldn’t lay the BBC so low, would it … ?
More darkly and disturbingly still, of course, is the increasing fear that we are closer now to a third world war than at any time since the Cuban Missile Crisis. And with feral insanity ruling in Washington and unhinged commentaries like Tisdall’s increasing here, perhaps even more so now than then.
The Project For The New American Century ‘thinktank’ collapsed in 2006. A casualty of the Iraq war.
Pears,
Do you by any chance get paid for you ideological work? You certainly come across very professionally in your support for this war.
So professionally in fact, that I would imagine that you understand very well that whilst the ‘thinktank’ may have wound up, its world view and ideas are very much alive and kicking in the American Establishment, especially in the MIC.
Planning for war with China, planning fully taken on board and seemingly well advanced now, was just one of the lunacies I recall emanating from PNAC.
“A casualty of the Iraq war.”
You seem to have got that the wrong way round. What you must have meant (cough) is that Iraq was a casualty of the PNAC.
So what are they calling themselves now?
Right, Pears, and all its members gave up and turned into angels, despite the fact that it was to have lasted for 100 years.
Meanwhile, they moved to other organisations, and continued their project in fact, with their continued warmongering, causing mayhem around the world.
they write what they’re told.”
But, it’s more insidious than that isn’t it ?
The MSM is not told what to write, however, they only employ people who know what to write.
It’s a form of peer pressure and bullying. You want a job with the MSM ? Sorry Mr Murray and Mr Assange there are no vacancies at the moment. You want to join the Journalist’s union, sorry Mr Murray you don’t meet the criteria.
this would explain why i would much prefer to read craig murray then the blather that comes out of the msm…
Stevie Boy,
“… they write what they’re told.”
“But, it’s more insidious than that isn’t it ? … they only employ people who know what to write.”
Hmmm, the Andrew Marr meets Noam Chomsky moment.
I don’t work in the MSM so I can’t speak from experience, but the control seems so complete now that I would have thought both factors are in play.
You need a tight hand to keep so many individuals in order.
Listening to R4’s Today one morning last week, one of their ‘journalists’ was reporting from Donbas. The report was as you’d expect about the Russian bombing of the area. Then the reporter unexpectedly said “amazingly, the people here support the Russians.” The report was abruptly cut and his comment not mentioned again or returned to while I was listening – about another 30 minutes.
In any news organisation what is expected and wanted will be clearly understood and policed, but as much as they try to select for conformity there will always be the possibility of tensions arising with that. The BBC news production for instance is now heavily centralised and editorially controlled from the top and clear expectations and boundaries are set, but yet that reporter snuck through half a sentence counter to the dominant narrative.
So I take your point completely but think both factors apply.
You may have seen the Marr-Chomsky interview already, it’s pretty famous. Watch here from 10m 40s:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GjENnyQupow
Ben Wallace announces Britain is sending Stormer missile launcher vehicles. This is serious military hardware.
Really pushing at a line and close to declaring war on Russia, aren’t they? It’s widely rumoured UK special forces and US Delta forces are on the ground in Ukraine – if so, there’s been no debate about the wisdom of this here. UK Special forces (SAS), uniquely among western democratic states, have no operational democratic oversight, not even in the form of review post-action, i.e., the MoD is like a law unto itself, answerable to no one.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/apr/24/special-forces-need-to-face-scrutiny-from-parliament-say-mps
They may be suffering losses(?), which drives the resultant escalation, with the public and parliament completely in the dark.
Recall. JFK, was forced to confess to the French ambassador that he was not in full control of his own intelligence agency.
The CIA still does what it wants, and so the MoD. We are in a very dangerous position when the MIC and Security Services, can and do, do what they want. Boris will be removed if he strays from the script, and the script writers are in Maryland.
US ‘wants to see Russia weakened’, says defence secretary.
Note. not “we want an immediate ceasefire and all sides to seek a peaceful resolution.’
The US’s lack of support for the diplomatic efforts of France and Germany prior to this invasion, and language throughout this conflict, betrays their true feelings and desired protracted outcome. I think they see Ukraine’s population as wholly expendable, against the ‘bigger picture’ of weakening geopolitical foe Russia.
If this doesn’t escalate into WW3 then the US will have achieved major geopolitical wins: i. Weaken Russia military and economically (sanctions) and degrade its military capability, ii. Refresh, renew and expand NATO – Sweden and Finland joining. iii. Boost US arms sales to Europe iv. Boost US energy exports – LNG to replace Russian gas in Germany and Finland et al.
Looks like Putin fell right into a trap designed in Washington. Cynical view, but the people involved are capable of such plotting which would seem insane to ordinary folk.
STILL all part of the NOT defunct PNAC, & the original yank neocon wolfowitz doctrine.
Putin/Russians will have been well aware of the trap, but all factors considered clearly felt they had no choice but to act when they did. Given what was going on in Donbas prior to the invasion (+ documents that,are hard to refute and I think also POW testimony), it seems highly likely if they hadn’t acted when they did, within a week or so Kiev would have launched a large scale offensive compelling them to do so anyway–So the same trap but starting from a weaker position.
I can’t help but wonder if the weeks of US cries that Russia was going to invade Ukraine were to prepare us to believe Russia was the aggressor in this second scenario, given how surprised the US seemed when Russia picked the first.
Washington/Westminster specialize in laying these kinds of traps (1st world war, and to some degree the 2nd), but it is not at all clear they haven’t overplayed and that the entire West won’t be damaged significantly more than Russia.
Sadly, Europe (and Germany in particular) seem to have been less aware of the trap, which, in the minds of some planners, was no doubt for them too; they may come out worst of all.
Eurasian integration cannot be tolerated.
Washington and Westminster aren’t monolithic. As I said elsewhere, this war looks like a strategic disaster for NATO and the West overall. Hence the hysterical propaganda. But it’s great for arms makers, the Generals will have more toys to play with and the spooks will get even more funding and influence.
> Note. not “we want an immediate ceasefire and all sides to seek a peaceful resolution.’
Problem with an immediate ceasefire is that it would lead to a frozen conflict, with Russia occupying a large chunk of an independent country. They’ve been deporting Ukrainian citizens to Russia. And they’ve made it clear that their goals include regime change AND the deimilitarisation and de-nazification of the whole of Ukraine. A ceasefire would just give Russia time to sort out its logistics problems, leading to a ceasefire violation and a renewed attack.
Putin himself has declared his goal to be a renewed Russian Empire reaching to the Baltic and the borders of Germany. He’s staging elections in Donbas and the south; he obviously intends to annexe the territory he’s occupied, and a ceasefire won’t prevent that.
The Stormer isn’t serious military hardware, it’s junk. The MoD have been selling them off through surplus outlets for years because of that, you can currently pick one up for 15k in the UK. It’s a case of max publicity for Boris at minimal cost.
https://bid.mod-sales.com/past-auctions/witham10068/lot-details/6d39eb58-c1df-41ce-8aa4-a9430101ac64
Direct from the MoD with no warranty says it all.
> The Stormer isn’t serious military hardware, it’s junk.
The Stormer is designed to carry Starstreak missiles, which appears to be a rather effective anti-aircraft missile. In fact this is the first I’ve heard of the UK supplying Stormers; I thought we were going to be supplying MANPAD versions of Starstreak.
It may have originally been designed for that purpose, but the MOD quickly found out it’s no good putting 100k a pop Starstreak’s atop a notoriously unreliable vehicle, that’s why they ditched them on the surplus market. They are junk and the government know it.
connecting the dots are we? or do we wait until a war breaks out to connect the dots?
Meanwhile the same folks like Tisdall have no idea what Zelensky do in Ukraine, oh no, he can do no wrong, and if he happen to do wrong he is right.
“One less traitor”: Zelensky oversees campaign of assassination, kidnapping and torture of political opposition”
https://thegrayzone.com/2022/04/17/traitor-zelensky-assassination-kidnapping-arrest-political-opposition/
Many journos in the West would be scratching their heads if Zelensky weren’t held aloft as a hero, and were the country to descend into civil war post this conflict. If Zelensky had any sense he’d have sought to cut rebellious eastern areas adrift earlier, using the promised referenda on devolution max (to use the Scottish terminology), as laid out in the Minsk accords. Instead Kyiv stubbornly clung on to the idea of reclaiming ‘its’ territory by force, maintaining Ukraine’s territorial integrity and border more important than than the people actually living in Donetsk and Luhansk. A hardline stance at the insistence of ultra-Nationalists in western Ukraine, and supported by the US.
I’m very pessimistic for Ukraine’s future, win or lose – it has an deep, seemingly intractable splits, that this war won’t have healed. The recriminations and persecution against ethnic Russians – who’ll be classed as collaborators and traitors – will be horrendous. Those pictures of battered politicians are a glimpse of the future best case scenario.
Jack this story refers to the link that you gave. Covert Action is a link worth bookmarking
https://covertactionmagazine.com/2022/04/25/cia-behind-secret-plots-to-kidnap-torture-and-assassinate-ukrainian-dissidents-for-president-zelensky-says-ukraine-defector/
To paraphrase Noam Chomsky, if the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war world leader would have been executed.
How we escape this hate-fest against Russia is not going to be easy. My guess is that accepting Washington’s and Westminster’s endless toxic rhetoric will wear thin for two good reasons: (1) People other than politicians and nutjobs get bored with repeats, as they do on BBC’s tv channels. (2) People in Europe are already experiencing financial hardship resulting from the reflected impact of vindictive over-the-top sanctions against Russia, and I doubt if all will be satisfied with blaming Russia uniquely. This impact has only just begun in terms of energy bills, fuel bills and inflation – wait till October for the next energy bill increases and the cold weather.
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s famous and well documented statement that 500000 deaths of children in Iraq were “a price worth paying” remains fresh in many minds. Washington again has defined financial chaos and decline in Europe resulting from the manic sanctions on Russia as “a price worth paying” – when America is not paying the price as much as Europe is, and a lot of us cannot afford even half the price nor would choose to do so.
Even if Washington continues to get away with this Ukraine-based vindictive proxy campaign against Russia, how can it hope to retain solidarity from all its compliant allies when the same strategy is applied to China and Taiwan?
I completely reject the notion that Putin is a war criminal if it is based on the lies coming out of the Donbass. The atrocities that are cited in the mainstream media were committed by the Ukrainian Nazis, and their depredations were occurring even before Russia invaded. I agree that the U.S. and western Europe are in no position to point a finger at Putin, since the United States is responsible for the invasion in the first place. It was always the goal of the U.S. to provoke the events that we now see occurring. To clarify, I am an American who loathes the U.S. imperialist government and its regime change operations. If anyone belongs in the dock of the ICC it is every president since Kennedy, most particularly Clinton for the Bosnian War, Bush for all of the “war on terror” (including Cheney, Rice, Wolfowitz, and Rumsfeld), Obama for eight years of unending war, drone killings, and the destruction of Libya (urged on by the Lady Macbeth of American politics, Hillary Clinton), Trump, and now Biden. I absolutely oppose the Nazi puppet government of Ukraine and do not support it. Contrary to the lie that saving Ukrainian lives is their goal, it is ordinary Ukrainian citizens who will suffer most from the hostilities and ordinary Ukrainian citizens who are being murdered by the likes of Azov.
100% agree.
It is simply impossible to understand the US responsibility in this war without reading the Pentagon financed ‘Rand Report’ on Ukraine dated 2019.
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_briefs/RB10014.html
Sanctions positioning of nuclear weapons, in effect threatening war on Russia.
There was a hope expressed by Scott Ritter that a Le Pen win in France would halt Nato Expansion and hopefully save Europe from a European wide war. That was my hope and many who don’t like Le Pen on other issues. Certainly a Macron win helps Nato expand to Sweden and Finland. I can’t see any end to this runaway war train. US and Australia saying a Chinese base in the Solomons is a Red Line, despite being thousands of miles from them, while Ukraine right under Russia’s nose. Rank Hypocrisy