Speaking to the No2Nato meeting on Saturday, I had the challenge of telling a packed and highly motivated audience some things that they very much instinctively disagreed with, from a very different viewpoint to much of what they had heard from some excellent speakers all day.
I had to follow a really effective rabble rousing performance from Chris Williamson which had raised the rafters.
On top of which, I was outlining facts and arguments which have had no discernible place in the public discourse on Ukraine on any “side” and were new to most people there.
I appealed at the start for the audience to listen with an open mind, and I think largely they did.
So here is me, with no notes and no visuals, just talking, giving people my own perspective.
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re: US and its MSM (funny it´s the same term in German) but honestly I am not really fond of it…
from a reader´s comment on THE NATION:
“(…)What is the MSM? On this question Americans largely agree. According to a Pew Research survey it means: CNN, MSNBC, FOX, NYT, WSJ, ABC, and a few others; no surprise.
More importantly, Americans increasingly do not trust the MSM. In 1974, according to Gallup, 72% of Americans had a “great deal” or a “fair amount of trust” in the MSM. The number has fallen steadily. Today, 34% of Americans have a “great deal” or a “fair amount of trust” and of that number only 7% have a “great deal” of trust.
There is a divide between Democrats and Republicans but 41% of Independents have “no trust at all” in the MSM. And people between 18-34 have less trust than people over 55.
Take the bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines. You know the US did it because, ordinarily, the MSM and the intelligence agencies would be in the news shouting obsessively that this was a terrorist attack and they would not rest until the terrorists were brought to justice. Though unlike 9/11, nobody was killed, but the pipelines were crucial infrastructure far more important than the twin towers. Yet, where are the reports from the MSM?
No surprise younger people are turning away from the MSM. I guess we can expect the MSM corporations will lobby hard for more censorship of alternative news sources.(…)”
the corresponding article about Murdoch admitting to use the fraud claims for TV:
“Rupert Murdoch Admits That Fox Pushed Trump’s Election Lies for Profit
An explosive new filing in the Dominion lawsuit shows that the News Corp head knew the ex-president’s 2020 claims were false but kept peddling them to keep ratings up.”, 28.2.23
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/murdoch-fox-dominion-election/
Yes. You are a good man Craig. Apart from the history it is what I say to people. It feels to me that just enough weapons are being supplied to Ukraine to keep the war simmering. I had a cousin in the British Army in WW2. He and his wife later cycled in Germany and made friends with a German ex-soldier. I remember him telling me in the mid-1950s what good friends they were but could have killed each other during the war. All those young men in Ukraine and Russia should have been working to improve the economic life of their countries, not killing each other.
Yes indeed. This seems to me the most terrible part of the tragedy. It is obviously in the interests of Russia, Ukraine and the rest of Europe to work in partnership; they need one another to remain competitive in a world where the US insists on throwing its weight around to protect its interests, China has quietly become an economic superpower and the developing world is quickly catching up.
Instead we have this, the worst of all outcomes barring nuclear war. Apart from the dreadful slaughter and destruction, the pointless loss of life and property, we are on both sides now certain to endure irrevocable economic harm. Mutually assured destruction, indeed.
There will be no winner in this war so it is completely senseless to carry on for both sides, each side is too weak to advance and win decisively..
Just like Craig said, the peace talks will be built on the same issues that were mentioned before and at the very start of the conflict. So the sooner peace talks occur, the better..
The other day, a former military officer from Finland that has trained Ukrainian soldiers criticized Ukraine and the media in the west. In his words, Ukraine cannot really fight at all and the claim that the whole idea of Ukraine is winning is just nonsense.
“Finnish soldiers: Ukraine needs better training to win”
https://yle.fi/a/74-20020197
Yes, Russia lose a lot of people but we never hear how Ukraine lose soldiers or land, making westerners believe the hype that Ukraine is winning the war.
Thanks for this Jack.
I am deeply sceptical of both sides’ accounts of the war for the reasons you mention. I could delve into the minutia of first-hand and eye-witness reports, but even (perhaps especially) these can be filtered, and in truth I have no stomach to see pictures or watch videos of people dying.
So any information from a less partial source is welcome indeed. The officer interviewed is clearly heavily engaged in the war, but seems to have spoken frankly.
Well, it depends where you look. Other accounts are out there, but you never see them if you only get your news from the BBC and big commercial TV channels and big-circulation newspapers.
There’s a channel called ‘Military Summary’ on rumble that seems more objective than the MSM. I’m not saying it’s 100% objective, it seems to have some sympathy for the Russian side, but I think it tries to be more objective than the MSM and I think it succeeds. Try it and make up your own mind.
I just watched the “Military Summary” for yesterday it doesn’t report Russian casualties or losses of armaments only telling us what the Russians say the Ukrainian forces lost. That does not seem very objective: they could at least report what the Ukrainian side is saying.
Tendentious and unfactual.
Craig got many aspects wrong here. He is usually much better.
Remember what they said, all that was written, especially the London Mainstream Media, for if a fraction of it was true, Russia would have by now collapsed.
__________
The Real War has started, the battlefield is littered with thousands of Ukrainian Armed Forces personnel and the Western Media cut their coverage. Remember this – The Russian Armed Forces will take Kyiv. And so . . .
Narrative Collapse – – –
Only when the last American artillery shell has been fired in The Ukraine, only when the last Ukrainian soldier has been killed in The Ukraine and only when the last of Ukrainian state territory has been irretrievably lost from The Ukraine will The Americans and Europeans finally realize that God Favours Russia . . .
https://les7eb.substack.com/p/ukraine-long-proxy-war-vi-god-favours
Russia has no interest whatsoever in occupying western Ukraine. The population would be hostile and it would be a huge drain on resources for nothing.
Russia probably doesn’t want to capture Kiev, though it might possibly consider a temporary occupation in order to force a peace settlement, as it tried to do at the start of the “military operation”.
The maximum Russian aim could be to establish a frontier along the Dnipro river. The Dnipro, being a natural barrier, would make a defensible frontier for both sides. However, even that is extremely unlikely because the area between Kharkiv and Kiev is mostly populated by Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians.
I think the maximum realistic Russian aim is a border running along the Dnipro from Kherson to Zaporizhzhia or Dnipro the town, then northeast to about Izyum and then north to the present Russian border. But to get a negotiated peace settlement, Russia would probably accept a border along the present line of contact between the two armed forces. This would mean that the vast majority of the population, in the area transferred to Russia, want their territory to be in Russia anyway. It would leave many cultural Russians on the “wrong” side of the border – the Kiev government would force them to learn Ukrainian and be assimilated – but it’s impossible to avoid that completely anyway, there is no clear demarcation between areas which are culturally Russian and areas which are culturally Ukrainian, they blend into each other.
An article published by counterpunch on the 28th Feb by a Left wing Ukrainian exile provides an internationalist view of Putin’s Russian nationalism. Some may find it interesting.
Liquidating the Legacy of Revolution: Ideology of the Russian Invasion, by Andriy Movchan
You mention Poland lost territory to Ukraine but not how.
Between 1943 and 1945 Stepan Bandera’s Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) massacred up to 100,000 Poles, mostly women and children. Many of the victims regardless of age of gender were tortured before being killed; the methods included rape, dismemberment and immolation. Bandera and his crew also participated in the “Holocaust of Bullets” that destroyed Kiev’s Jewish population at Babi Yar ravine in 1941.
Especially since the coup of 2014 Stepan Bandera has been lionised by Ukraine’s political elite who have attempted to portray him as the greatest-ever Ukrainian.
Ukrainians see him as freedom fighter.
“There are no written laws for those who fight for freedom.”
(c) Melnik, Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany.
Ukrainian Ambassador to Germany: Stepan Bandera was like Robin Hood (YouTube, 2m 29s)
Tell the Poles that Bandera was like Robin Hood, perhaps it may make them happy.
clarification, the former Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to Germany (2014-2022).
I’m curious, if he was addressed as his excellency the honorable Melnik? 🙂 I’d love to see Herr Scholz’ face, imagine someone reports “Herr Kanzler, you must know that his excellency the honorable Andrey Melnik called you ‘offended liverwurst’ 🙂
anyway, ex-ambassador in November 2022 became the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine
Tatyana, you´re right: Mr Melnik did say some ´impolite” words about Mr Scholz, and others. At least he´s fluent in German, whereas Germany´s foreign secretary finds it difficult to read from a handed script, she travels hundreds of thousands of kilometres to countries not close to Berlin, states that every person exhales giga tons of CO2; Watch out: she is is about to implement ´feminist foreign policy” . Whatever the MSM utters … it IS nothing but the truth. Therefore: no Azov, Kiev is winning, no hit list, Navalny was poisened by ? himself) – all this is believed by so many people, in academia as well.
The White House Press Secretary today: ” The People´s Republic of Russia “
That woman said Putin must make a 360 degree turn 🙂
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2023/02/sy-hersh-and-the-way-we-live-now/comment-page-6/#comment-1035072
TATYANA
you do know Baerbock migh have lost out to Scholz in the election (I guess we could call ourselves lucky) because she apparently plagiarized in her latest book, a “scandal” that erupted just a few months before election night.
Back then I didn´t care and in fact I still think they were pushing these issues not for the love of academia, but for self-serving profit-per-Ad-reasons. And in fact it is mostly banal, I assume ( I did not check it out.)
However if you want to: Here the German scholar aka “plagiarism hunter” is analysing the plagiarism in detail, case for case.
https://plagiatsgutachten.com/blog/plagiatsvorwurf-gegenueber-annalena-baerbocks-buch-jetzt-wie-wir-unser-land-erneuern/
Shortly before it was “uncovered” (again I think these things are telling about not just her but the system itself) that she had given incorrect info in her CV:
A German article but you can translate it easily that goes into detail.
All of this of course has long disappeared in the memory hole.
https://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/gruenen-kanzlerkandidatin-angaben-im-lebenslauf-und-plagiat-diese-vorwuerfe-bringen-baerbock-in-erklaerungsnot_id_13447673.html
The whole thing (interview) was worse than I expected – and I kind of heard of Bandera, Galicia, etc.
“There are no written laws for those who fight for freedom.” I can kind of understand but not approve.
This is not killing some PoW or retribution. This was the policy from the Top.
If you didn’t post the link I would be, let’s say it, skeptical and triple check it (usually I double check).
Isn’t the commentary on this site extremely informative?
As to triple check, ha 🙂
I became interested in what is happening in the big world, when Skripal was so unsuccessfully poisoned with the most deadly poison on the planet and survived. I joined several discussions before landing at Mr. Murray’s. In every place I met distrust.
Sometimes it was even offensive, for example, something like “Tatiana, today this is mentioned in our media, so you are vindicated.” And I’m like thinking to myself, “What do you mean, vindicated?” So I realized that the Western people trusts their media and consider Russians to be liars by default.
I had to grow thick skin to not take it personally. And I had to deal with different types of lies in order to recognize manipulation. It also improved my knowledge of English a lot, I now even watch videos without subtitles. Filled in gaps in history. Met wonderful people. Learned that Americans are amused by the way the British pronounce “a bottle of water.” The difference between whiskey and whisky. See the benefits? There’s no better place than Mr. Murray’s blog, highly recommended 🙂
As to triple check, ha ?.
The most crazy statements and opinions I have to triple check if they are quotes!
I do not mistrust Russian lady called Tatyana (because she is Russian) but I can not believe that some high ranking people would say so many stupid things. Here in your link the Ambassador was talking crazy stuff.
I still don’t know what’s the problem in my comment.
I will refrain to comment on your posts and will take all your comments as a Gospel.
I joined this blog about Skripals as well!!!!
now Skripal is not Litvinenko, but does anyone remember “Eastern Promises”?
A polit-thriller/drama by Canadian film director David Cronenberg?
In an interview back then Cronenberg said, shooting the film in London was a literal thrill since at the very same time the Litvinenko case unfolded in a hospital just few blocks away from their film set.
Besides – and I liked that very much about Cronenberg in fact – he said, that most likely Putin ought to actually like that film of his because it was pro-FSB and anti-Russian Mafia.
I think it still is a nice specimen to prove in what ways only the “arts” can explain and comment complex matters in a very realistic grown-up manner without being clumsy or propagandistic. Given their creators are wise people.
But then I am reading – out of sheer masochism – a German anthology of Ukrainian texts called “Maidan!” from 2014, by known British, German and of course West Ukrainian writers (West: Snyder, Michnik, Garton Ash, ) – and I have to admit – no chance that in Germany the intellectual academic public by 2014 and lest so today had been able to be enlightened regarding Ukraine.
It´s just not in the cards.
It were posible had German kids in school learned about Russian /Soviet history since 1989 properly.
Had German media, or British or US media (since we are English talking people) done a proper job. But that was also inconceivable.
Don´t know where that leaves us. Nicolai Petro at least is an optimist. He says it will be played out anew with the next generation. They wouldn´t care much about our problems. May be he is right.
> Between 1943 and 1945 Stepan Bandera’s Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) massacred up to 100,000 Poles, mostly women and children.
At the time, Bandera was locked up in a German concentration camp.
That was a good talk, Craig, all the better for being unscripted. Thank you. I too would like to see the killing halted now, with a permanent ceasefire broadly along the line of actual control. Both sides have made their point, and the combatants have already suffered too much.
You suggested that “…the negotiated outcome will be much the same as it could have been at the start.” Up till about 17 February 2022 a possible outcome could have been the restoration of the whole of Donbas to Ukraine, together with all the other points of the Minsk 2 agreement, which was then still on the table.
But Minsk 2 is now dead and I find it hard to imagine the Russian side voluntarily withdrawing from any inhabited areas of Ukraine that they now occupy. They have seen what happened, or what they believe happened, in Bucha after Russian forces withdrew from the Kiiv region, leaving local sympathisers to be subjected to revenge attacks – murders – by Ukrainian forces. They won’t let that sort of thing happen again, as demonstrated by the wihdrawal from Kherson – inhabitants were given the opportunity to be evacuated across the Dnepr river before the Russian troops left.
Whoever makes the decisions on the Ukrainian side seems determined to fight on until…well, maybe until there are no more Ukrainians left willing or able to fight. And then what? Sure, there will be negotiations, but if the Russian side is in a position to dictate terms, they may insist on an unconditional surrender.
Sad but very realistic comment Coldish.
Yesterday afternoon I watched interview with Colonel MacGregor many of us here know who he is and he said some( for me disturbing/ worrying ) opinions not expressed before so blatantly.
Redacted: Col. MacGregor: Ukraine has been DESTROYED and there’s nothing left (2 Mar 2023) – YouTube, 14m 49s
Pigeon English
thx a lot for the MacGregor.
unimportant, but it´s new to me that US forces turned the tide in WWI.
We do know that German Empire was about to collapse any day.
And if someone had made a difference it was not the US Boys (how typical) but French-Anglo-Italian soldiers in the trenches.
Anyway.
It´s all just a damn travesty. Wonder what plans my friends in Kiev have if they get out of this alive.
And at the same time the German Foreign Secretary is jet-setting.
Fuck her.
one thing regarding CMs speech:
at least from what little I can read in German media – diplomats who were part of the OSCE teams re: Donbas and especially the Minsk negotiations have apparently been selected according to their anti-Russia sentiment.
I assume this is not representative (I hope so) but the few interviews that have been made public with diplomats involved are, mildly put, upsetting. So there SEEMS to exist a structurally prejudiced anti-Russia bias among the EU personel for diplomatic missions responsible for Russia.
If this is true it would be tragic (but honestly, not surprising at all.)
From my admittedly limited experience with German diplomats I have a rather irritating view of these people.
Whenever I encountered them they embodied they worst and most cliché-filled image of what Germany can possibly be.
Having said that – same applies to the arms control teams from the West, if I take their Twitter channels at face value.
The stupidity, of some of their statements at least, is shocking.
Especially considering the delicate nature of their field of expertise.
I don’t know enough either to agree or disagree with your line but I do think you put it well. Congratulations.
War is so horrible that it would be best to avoid almost all wars. The trouble is “best for whom”?
In the first world war the iron and steel business of the family of the politician Stanley Baldwin made good profits. After the war Mr Baldwin donated 20% of his wealth to HM Treasury.
Later he became Prime Minister. They don’t make PMs like him nowadays.
Indeed, and Harold Macmillan spent time in the trenches during WW1, getting shot in the thigh after crawling out into no-man’s land attempting to take down a machine gun, and then spending the best part of a day waiting in a shell crater with his wounds.
Prime minister Herbert Asquith lost his eldest son in the war, while another two carried on serving.
I very much doubt that any of today’s political class, enthusiasts for war all, have the slightest connection to actual danger for themselves or their families. In the documentary “Fahrenheit 911”, Michael Moore gets a serving uniformed soldier to accompany him to the Senate, asking the US leaders to encourage their own sons to sign up for the Iraq war they were so keen on. He got a lot of horrified looks, but no takers.
forgive me for being the bad sport, but half of Germany´s and Italy´s fascist nomenklatura had served in WWI, many of them “veterans”.
In ancient times when heroism was considered a legitimate concept, the horrific experience of war was not necessarily a prerequisite for political wisdom.
But I do remember that scene in “Fahrenheit 9/11” and I was thinking back to it in the context you decribe.
p.s. which is not intended as a critique of Harold Macmillan, whom I hardly know, or Baldwin for that matter (but giving away 20% to Treasury means exactly what?)
“giving away 20% to Treasury means exactly what?”, nowadays it means just paying the basic rate of income tax. So, in reality it probably means FA.
Fair point, AG. One notable participant was affectionately known as “The screamer”, by his colleagues (with their famous national sense of humour), after he had a testicle blown off while serving in the trenches on the opposite side of us. Didn’t seem to diminish his own enthusiasm for war that much.
Strikes me that giving away 20% means keeping 80%… not bad for a bit of war profiteering.
It was also Harold MacMillan that rebuked Margaret Thatcher and her privatisations, calling them “selling off the family silver”.
Shows how successful they have been with the post-war stealth Naziism and how far the Overton Window has been moved to the Nazi end.
Yes, a very apt observation. Though this hasn’t stopped leaders with experience of war still trying it on, Suez debacle, Vietnam etc. But I think it did help resolve the Cuban missile crisis to have leaders like Kennedy and Kruschev at the helm. (though I don’t think Kruschev was an enlisted soldier, he was active in Stalingrad during the siege)
Like all Russians in Stalingrad during the battle, Khrushchev was in effect on the front lines, subject to enemy bombardment.
glenn_nl
“I very much doubt that any of today’s political class, enthusiasts for war all, have the slightest connection to actual danger for themselves or their families.”
So you don’t think Lieutenant colonel in the 77th Brigade, Tobias Ellwood, is the sort of chap who’d fearlessly charge into no man’s land? /S
On how to judge warcrimes in this war: one should understand that human rights organisation (HRW, Amnesty and so on) do not visit Russian occupied territories – they do not heed calls from Russia to do this, thus they turn a blind eye to the warcrimes that occur when ukrainian missiles hit these very regions/civilians in lets say Donbas area. They only investigate crimes against ukrainian side commited by russian artillery.
People in the west thus believe that it is only Russia that somehow commit warcrimes which in turn cause a terrible bias in their minds.
Not to play down warcrimes by Russia, but if there were western media reports of constant warcrimes by Ukraine, people in the west would not be as supportive of Ukraine and would call for peace talks rather than a prolonged war.
People see this too black/white, it is amazing how gullible people are and how tribal they become in times of war.
Overall western media have turned a blind eye to anything negative from the ukrainian side.
I have never before witnessed this awful self-censorship of things in the western media, truly frightening. It is like 1984 anyone calling for peace is considered a russia-bot/troll/agent.
Just take the chant and popular social media hashtag of “Slava Ukraini”, a chant popularized by fascists/neo-nazis some 80 years ago, the same people that warn about alleged useful idiots for Russia, do not realize that they themselves are useful idiots for extremists in Ukraine.
Indeed, and when an organisation like Amnesty International to have the temerity to report something less than praiseworthy about Ukrainian activities…
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-08-08/amnesty-international-apologises-but-stands-by-ukraine-report/101310292
… they get slammed so hard it’s unlikely that they or anyone else will make the same “mistakes” again by reporting an unwelcome truth.
Remaining objective and neutral is difficult. Society is divided between those who know the full story of Ukraine’s recent history, and the vast majority who think this all started in 2022, when Putin decided to invade, on a whim. There’s a good discussion from yesterday, between Seymour Hersh and Aaron Maté : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b8QRWPxWP0o
Hersh discusses how the media have changed for the worse over the decades since he was at the New York Times. And also how what was once very good US political oversight, basically fell apart under GW Bush and his hyper aggressive veep Cheney, after 9/11. If he’s right about Victoria Nuland, Jake Sullivan, then a few people have concentrated unfettered power, to play their dangerous games in pursuit of geostrategic advantage. Creating mayhem around the world, even at the risk of bringing things to the brink of a existential crisis for humanity and triggering WW3
The sad thing is MI6 and possibly UK Special Forces are latched on to this US caravan of craziness as junior partners. We can’t do anything about Russia, China, but I think politicians here are obligated to scrutinise what UK special forces are doing. On 2nd November 2022, Ben Wallace said this in response to a request from the Chair of the Parliamentary Defence Select Committee for access to the Hereford home of the SAS : “No” …he went on… ” this committee does not have oversight of Special Forces or its operations”
And that was that. The UK, is the only western country with no oversight of special forces, the US, Canada and Australia all have oversight : deployments to active combat zones; mandates and strategy. The British public and their elected representatives have no right to know according to Wallace.
goose, Hereford does not report to the MoD.
They report to Buckingham Palace.
The only person with the sort of oversight you desire is now King Charles, while for the past seventy years it was Queen Elizabeth (both of them!)
At that same Committee hearing ,Ben Wallace also implied they were too ‘busy’ at Hereford with operational work to meet members? So how does he know?
It’s hard to believe SOF would be doing anything not in line with govt policy and the govt is supposed to be democratically accountable. We’re not still living in the Middle Ages with medieval kings doing as they please by divine right, are we?
We already have intel agencies playing the ‘national security’ card. Reported on Newsnight, that the retired judge, John Saunders, who led the Manchester Arena attack inquest, was unable to reveal information to the families of the deceased. He had to insist on closed hearings, with more officers quizzed to even get that (still secret) information, after MI5 initially tried to fob him off with the [sic] “corporate line.”
We had three terror attacks ‘slip through’ in the run-up to 2017’s General election. An election in which Theresa May was playing up her ‘national security’ credentials, as were the Tory press; contrasting them to Corbyn, “the friend of terrorists’. Corbyn’s Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, remember, had previously signed a petition calling for the disbanding of MI5.
“We had three terror attacks ‘slip through’ in the run-up to 2017’s General election. An election in which Theresa May was playing up her ‘national security’ credentials, as were the Tory press;”
Given that, at that time, so many European elections were almost routinely preceded by a terror attack, It’s hard not to think that the only way that the Manchester Arena bombing went wrong was that so many were killed.
Bayard
The implications are too dark to ponder, therefore I don’t assume these attack dogs were somehow let off the leash deliberately in order to hinder Corbyn’s bid, that would be sick. But I do find ‘three’ in succession, an incredible coincidence, given the relative rarity of such events. How many since?
Goose
Are you endorsing the default position of the British junta?
In 1980, during an appeal by the Birmingham Six (who were later acquitted), Denning judged that the men should be stopped from challenging legal decisions. He listed several reasons for not allowing their appeal:
“Just consider the course of events if their action were to proceed to trial … If the six men failed it would mean that much time and money and worry would have been expended by many people to no good purpose. If they won, it would mean that the police were guilty of perjury; that they were guilty of violence and threats; that the confessions were involuntary and improperly admitted in evidence; and that the convictions were erroneous. … That was such an appalling vista that every sensible person would say, “It cannot be right that these actions should go any further.”[90]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Denning,_Baron_Denning
John Cleary
“Are you endorsing the default position of the British junta?”
I just can’t believe there’d be no one with the basic humanity for the truth not to leak out. Look at what Seymour Hersh revealed about Nordstream; people within the CIA were so sickened by the administration’s callous disregard for allies, someone broke ranks to tell him about this agency disquiet. These people aren’t robots, they have empathy and a sense of right and wrong too. Fear and intimidation only work if everyone within an organisation accepts what they are doing is righteous and justified.
I am still waiting for someone to officially “remember” that the Libyan terrorists were given carte blanche to travel to and from Libya in pursuit of regime change in that country by – now, who was it? – oh yes, Theresa May was home secretary at the time. America, as ever, was panting in the wings and Cameron was keen to notch up his Iraq in competition with Bliar. As ever the West’s politicians are treated as pure as the driven snow – only official “enemies” are in the wrong. Double standards make me sick.
Bramble
I’ve not followed the case too closely. Novara media did a section on it last night. Yes, the Home Secretary dropped control orders on extremists in 2011, with some even *encouraged* to go to Libya by security services.
Aaron Bastani also suggested the bomber, Abedi, may have brought the detonator he used back into the U.K. via Libya. Which if true, is staggering.
Bramble
Blair traveled to the US a year before the Iraq invasion in 2002. Cameron to the US a year before the attempt at ‘regime change in Syria, in 2012. Always concerning when a British PM is summoned for a face to face. They don’t trust discussing such things on the ‘secure’ line for various reasons.
BRAMBLE @ 18:27
Mr Salman Abedi was a freedom fighter and needed all the support we could provide.
Yes some mistakes were made but we can not disclose due to national security.
Sorry for the inconvenience it may have caused.
Mr Bramble we would like to inform you that the 15 year old, at a time, extremist girl can not return to our country!
We take security very seriously.
Regards from
Your honest government.
“The implications are too dark to ponder, therefore I don’t assume these attack dogs were somehow let off the leash deliberately in order to hinder Corbyn’s bid, that would be sick.”
If Salman Abedi had been caught in the act by security forces who just happened to be in the area and shot dead, like that incident on the bridge, the desired effect would have been achieved and no-one, apart from Abedi, would have been hurt.
Wasn’t it also when Blair was on one of his visits to Washington that David Kelly was murdered?
Denning was getting in touch with his inner Himmler.
My own view, is that there is possibly a case for operational secrecy in the SOF preparatory stages, or for ongoing operations. On the basis that leaks will almost certainly endanger lives.
But not allowing elected representatives to review operations at all, is an open invitation for a massive abuse of power. For example, If Seymour Hersh had claimed Special Boat Services (SBS) had been involved in blowing up Nord Stream, no one in parliament would know whether it was true or not, such is the lack of oversight.
If WW3 ever happens, it’ll almost certainly be as a result of some abuse of executive power and secrecy, originating in the West.
This morning (6/3/23) Kirsty Wark spoke to three witnesses about the Iraq war. One was Emma Sky now of Yale university Jackson school of Global affairs,Gordon Carrera BBC reporter, and an Iraqi/Bagdhad author and witness to events.(name unpronounceable).
I took three points out of the programme (It will still be available on BBC sounds).
1. Bearing in mind that she is a BBC NEWS “heavyweight” Kirsty Wa*k is a truly hopeless investigator/journalist.About as penetrating as a waft from a feather boa, about as incisive as a scaffold plank. Third rate does not come close to capturing the abject (lack of) quality of her work.
2. Emma Sky, now in a position of some status at Yale, while probably not an unpleasant or insincere person, is very unconvincing as any kind of authority. She recounts how she ‘volunteered’ to go to Iraq in the aftermath of the war, was flown to Iraq apparently knowing no more, (unbriefed) than the average street punter who watched the news. Basically she ended up in Kirkuk as a coalition ‘lead representative/governor'( not sure of her official position) but her account suggests she was in the key position because the Yanks at Head office didn’t know what to do with her.
At one point in the prog she said the Yanks had about 95% control, the Brits about 3% and the ‘rest’ of the coalition about 2%. Emma S came over to me as a very ‘nice’ woman of ordinary intellectual attributes who found herself in a strange place without a clue what to do(strategically speaking) and more or less powerless. I guess she was OK in day -to- day admin activities-signing orders, sending reports to Whitehall, hiring local typists, receiving coded instructions etc etc. She was probably an oxbridge graduate who had become some kind of diplomat/FO wallah by accident.
Gordon Carrerra was ok, made his points, but I doubted the value of his insights (More or less he repeated the standard story) and the Iraqi/Bagdhadi guy provided a number of insights as a witness to events at the time but Kirsty Wark(I am really struggling not to call her Kirsty Wa*k) completely failed to give appropriate cues or provide useful questions for the witness, to allow him to make useful observations or make a meaningful contribution.
The distilled essence of the prog was the grotesque murderous ineptitude of the Yanks(Please give me credit for not resorting to the obvious tempting pejorative typo ). The British appear to have been equally murderously inept but being powerless, perhaps??? more excusable than the Yanks, , but the amateurishness seems to be on a criminal scale. It recalls Evelyn Waugh’s excoriating satires about the start of WW2 and Joseph Heller’s “catch 22′ doesn’t even come close to the idiocy revealed by this programme. It really was an act of criminality and it should inform us all in our confabulations re the current Ukraine war. We can say with certainty and assurance that behind the veil around the Ukraine war, the same dimwit, greed and status governed. egomaniac numpties (Ben Wallace/Johnson) and media warmonger pundits (Tisdall of the Graun) and opportunistic mediocrities (Emma Sky) are busily not having a f’ing clue, while extinguishing lives becomes the norm. (Biden was a notably influential presence in the later stages of the Iraq monstrosity). His unnerring, unique, style of dumbassness was one of the main factors that led to to the rise of ISIS.
Thanks dgp – you made it sound, overall, like it was not worth watching! It sounds the same as the last time I looked in, fifteen years ago.
Don’t get me started on kwark. – I think you have said enough to satisfy my sense of accuracy of memory. One of those bejewelled, spectacular insects from the tropics, pinned to an dissection board, waving its arms and legs and opening it’s mouth (though not necessarily at the same time), going nowhere, saying nothing. Just another cypher in the panopticon of our lives……. Sorry I got started.
dgp
The unidentifiable Iraqi was Ghayth Abdul-Ahad, who used to write for the Guardian at the time of the war. I didn’t know he was an architect before the war
Emma Sky was self-justifying in this programme, as usual. How she managed to end up in a senior position in Kirkuk is never explained. In order to do so, she had to close her eyes to a great deal of massive corruption among the Americans. It is hardly surprising that she’s been able to negotiate American politics subsequently to become a senior fellow at an establishment think tank at Yale.
” Hereford does not report to the MoD. They report to Buckingham Palace. ”
I’m sorry too have to tell you that UKSF reports very directly to MoD Main Building, not at all via the mostly uninhabited Buck House.
“War Crimes”. Just means the ‘justice’ the victors mete out to the losers. At the Nuremberg trials a few Nazi’s were hung, but a greater number were relocated to the victorious nations where their expertise was used to progress the agendas of the victors. So we have a Nazi who used slave labour advancing USA space technology and being rewarded as a hero. We have big Pharma built on the foundations of Nazi medical experiments and the use of gas chamber chemicals. We have countless security services built using Gestapo staff and expertise. We have luxury German cars built on the expertise gained using slave labour.
Who really were/are the war criminals ? The expendable few who were not/are not needed by the victors !
Not to mention Klaus Barbie, the “butcher of Lyon”, employed by the Yanks to go after communists after WWII. Or that Nazi General Heusinger, who ran NATO in the 1960s, a good friend of Hitler and planning occupations in NL among others. Take a look at the record of this bastard :
https://www.elciudadano.com/en/the-story-of-the-nazi-general-who-ended-up-becoming-head-of-nato/06/28/
Sure, the Russians have nothing to worry about with NATO!
“the Russians have nothing to worry about with NATO!”
Back in 2014, because of Crimea, NATO stopped cooperation with Russia, including a joint mission to destroy Syrian chemical weapons. In 2016, NATO declared Russia the main threat. They stationed a British battalion in Estonia, a Canadian battalion in Latvia, a German battalion in Lithuania, and an American battalion in Poland. Then constant military exercises began, the importation of weapons, some strange systems were installed in Romania, Ukraine was literally stuffed with weapons. The region became very unsettled.
Today, strange unexplained events occur. Do you know about Transnistria, the largest USSR weapons depot and Russian troops there? Today the parliament of Moldova voted to make Romanian language the state language, instead of Moldavian. And, Ukraine is reported to gather its military near Moldavian border. Looks like Transnistria will be seized and Moldavia going to merge into Romania.
ok that´s new.
The last about Transnistria that I heard via Moon of Alabama was not to worry because 90% of the people wanted peace and it would make no sense for the AFU tu attack the Russian peace keeping force there. Allegedly if the Russians decided to blow up the depot you mention it would be a minor nuke because it has so many arms. It could equip the entire AFU.
Shiploads of American weaponry and heavy vehicles arriving on a regular basis in Wilhelmshaven to be transported to various military bases in germany or elsewhere.
TATYANA
may be this helps.
Haven´t read it yet. It´s 4 days old.
https://bmanalysis.substack.com/p/bma-and-slavyangrad-joint-opinion
Of course it´s difficult to double check.
But your Russian is better than mine. 😉
Some of their stuff in the past made sense. Some of it was playing little Napoleon Bonaparte on the gameboard.
this just because I bumped into it on Telegram
Its about Kosovo bombing campaign 1999
“(…)
Olesya Orlenko, author of the Telegram channel @aigle_o, wrote an article for @ukraina_ru :
❗️25 May 1999, NATO press conference.
Question from a Norwegian news agency about the bombing of Yugoslavia:
“If you say that the army [Milosevic] has many backup generators, why are you depriving 70 percent of the country not only of electricity but also of water supply?” After all, he [Milosevic] has many sources of backup electricity, and he uses it anyway. That said, are you saying that you’re only targeting military targets?
Jamie Shea, NATO Speaker said :
“If President Milosevic really wants his entire population to have water and electricity, all he has to do is accept NATO’s five conditions.” And we will stop this campaign [of bombing]. But until he does, we will continue to attack the infrastructure that provides electricity to his armed forces. “If it [bombing] captures civilian targets, that’s his problem.”
These were the kinds of arguments NATO was making at one time. Only the reactions of world politicians and the media to them were quite different. By the way, even then, the German Greens took a pro-NATO stance.
(…)”.
T
Slavyangrad Telegram channel can entertain you the entire day it seems. If you fancy that material.
First time I looked into it
e.g. this piece on prisoner exchange (as long as such things are taking place the war parties are at least still talking to each other):
“(…)
Since the beginning of the war, Russia and Ukraine have carried out more than 30 prisoner exchanges. At the same time, the procedure remains as closed as possible. The parties do not disclose the number of prisoners, do not maintain open lists, and rarely publish details of the exchange. Relatives of prisoners often do not know if their loved ones are alive in captivity, and are forced to look for them themselves.
Before each exchange, the parties negotiate and form lists. The number can be unequal, sometimes the status of prisoners affects: for example, during the largest exchange since February 24, which took place on September 21, 55 Russian soldiers and politician Viktor Medvedchuk were exchanged for 215 Ukrainian soldiers: according to Zelensky, initially Russia offered to extradite 50 “Azov” , but Ukraine managed to quadruple that number. Another well-known case occurred in March: then nine Russian prisoners of war were exchanged for the mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov.
It is impossible to say in advance who exactly will be on the list. Theoretically, any prisoner can apply for an exchange, but for this it is necessary that the Ministries of Defense know that the person is alive and in captivity.
Often the relatives of a serviceman learn about his capture faster than this information reaches the government agencies, but the defense ministries of the two countries do not give official explanations of what to do in such cases.
Against the backdrop of an almost complete lack of information about the fate of the relatives of the captured, various public initiatives are emerging to search for the missing and organize the exchange of prisoners.
For example, a former soldier of the 56th brigade, Nadezhda Simonova, who fled to the Russian Federation, acquired connections in various ministries there and allegedly pulled her husband Denis Shcherbakov out of captivity. Now she publishes various videos on her channel about the release of the Armed Forces of Ukraine from Russian captivity .
However, there are no similar initiatives that would facilitate the exchange of prisoners of war in Ukraine. Only SBU and GUR work directly with relatives of Russian prisoners of war. The reason why this did not appear in Ukraine lies in the taboo of any contacts with the official structures of the Russian Federation under the threat of a long prison term.
Therefore, relatives of Ukrainian prisoners of war limited themselves to rallies and informational protests in the Ukrainian media, which did not help release their relatives from captivity.
Why are we writing this. At the very beginning of the war, in the Ukrainian and Russian telegram segment, there was a well-founded opinion that the Russian Federation was much inferior to Ukraine in working with information and propaganda. Now, a year later, we can conclude that in the information war, the Russian Federation is firmly stepping on the heels of the Ukrainian CIPSO.
(…)”
I thought that the Moldavian language is the same as Romanian, only written in the Cyrillic alphabet.
T
first piece on Transnistria in Responsible Statecraft, by Anatol Lieven
Just for the sake of it.
mainly about the genesis of conflict:
https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2023/03/07/a-looming-crisis-in-moldovas-breakaway-state/
(It is always interesting how this works: Anatol Lieven is not an idiot. There are things that he knows. Still there is this non-suspension of disbelief, as how the world is supposed to work in terms of right and wrong. Thus “Georgia” is “our guy” and thus “an American ally”. That in itself appears rather awkward, to not ask a single question, why Georgia of all countries is “our ally” – and is it actually? or do we not just use them? Lieven would never assume that the US is not a benign power. The goals Washington is possibly aiming for are by definition positiv. And therefore it is not strange to call an alliance with Georgia totally normal. Wonder what Lieven would say would Russians call, you have made that point already, Mexico “a good friend and ally.” Or in earlier decades, Canada. I guess Washington would order DefCon 1.)
Dear Craig,
You and I would not agree on quite a few things. I would view you as a Lefty Idiot on many matters. But I find myself entirely in agreement with you on all the important things, including this. Funny old world, eh?
Keep up the good work 🙂
SomeBlokeFromCambridge
The Telegraph reporting AFU retreating from Bakhmut
“Ukrainian troops detonating bridges before withdrawal from ‘encircled’ Bakhmut
Yevgeny Prigozhin claims ‘pincers are closing’ as Ukrainian troops prepare to surrender eastern city known as the ‘meat grinder’
https://archive.ph/aYybU#selection-1209.4-1213.135
p.s. considering that just a few days after this war had started there were talks between Moscow and Kiev to settle it all peacefully – only to be disrupted by the EU – I am sorry but cannot but make our governments heavily co-responsible for the death of 150.000+ Ukrainian soldiers.
For absolutely no reason, at all. A disgrace.
And these people in nicely heated parliaments really believe they are fucking heroes. Because they voted in favour of arms shipments which they most likely don´t even have to pay for. In some cases they profit from them.
(and my instinct tells me even more, because – and I know UN charter wil not support my emotion – NATO does not endanger the EU with their latest B61-12 and a nuclear war machinery so far modernized by several trillion dollars in the last decade.)
My head is spinning.
A political consensus made possible by the preexisting paranoia about Russia that started in earnest when Hillary lost in 2016, followed by the endless ‘Russiagate’ Trump nonsense in the US. Everything flowed from that.
The same paranoia infected Europe, and the EU, ably fanned by certain intel agencies. The wild claims of massive Russian online influence activity, had already resulted in scores of new ‘research groups,’ NGOs, determined to uncover this Leprechaun’s gold. Online ‘fact checkers’ and so-called ‘disinformation experts’ sprung up everywhere. Supposedly tasked with countering this tidal wave of malign Russian interference (interference that if it existed at all, wasn’t Russian as the Twitter files revealed). When Putin invaded these people turned their energies to becoming propaganda mouthpieces and countered anti-war views, calling anyone calling for peace talks a Russian bot or Vatnik.
The truth is, no politician dare speak out for a different approach, unless they want to risk being branded as a Putin apologist, or worse, a traitor, and hounded by these scores of pro-war online anti-Vanik vigilantes.
the causes for this I fear, lie much deeper than 2016.
Myths and fairy-tales and pseudo-theories that feed
fears, racism, prejudice against the East.
What Edward Said wrote about the colonized and colonizers´ minds is as well true now of the German/Western European elites vs. Russia.
Culture and imperialism as categories of analysis are as apt for Eur/asia as they were for understanding the Empire´s writers of yesteryear and the ever on-going struggle for coining the terms with which power expresses itself.
The emptiness of argument, the lack of true knowledge and serious data have taken over.
Anybody can now spread any lie about how fascist, evil, genocidal and beastly the Russian heart and mind is.
This reality can only be called manichean.
2016 did do one thing – it watered the seed that had been sown long before.
(but by this I do not mean Nazism. So please no Brechtian quote. That´d be way too easy.)
AG
Obama chastised his presidential rival, Republican Mitt Romney in 2012’s presidential election debate, for saying Russia was a threat! : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1409sXBleg
This Russophobia, particularly in the US Democrat party is relatively recent. It stems from 2013 when Russia frustrated US regime change efforts in Syria and gave Snowden asylum. Putin wasn’t going to give up Russia’s Tartus naval facility in Syria, and Russia genuinely believed Assad wasn’t responsible for the Ghouta CW attack – claiming they had irrefutable evidence to prove the regime’s innocence. 2016 election loss sent the US Democrat’s Russophobia into overdrive, as Hillary saw Russia as the perfect antagonist to blame for her defeat.
A small intervention for the sake of intercultural exchange: the word Vatnik originally denoted a type of warm clothing, made of thick cotton textile quilted with cotton wool as a filler. Because of its affordability and convenience, it was a popular wear.
My grandfather had this when he took me fishing, and such a padded jacket served as a warm and soft blanket for me in the motorcycle cradle. It was my father’s clothes for working in the garden or in his apiary. In such clothes, my cousin repaired his car, then the padded jacket also served as a rug for working under the car body. Affordable sustainable working class clothing, 100% eco-friendly, btw 🙂
Now it has become part of the hate speech, pejorative, with slightly national and much bigger social meaning. A person who contemptuously calls you a Vatnik wants to emphasize that, unlike you, he is a privileged member of society and does not engage in dirty manual labor.
The author of the meme ‘Vatnik’ was the deputy head of the municipal economy in Novorossiysk. He referred to himself as a ‘creative class’. In an interview to “the Snob” media he said that his inspiration are the Founding Fathers of the US, Andrei Sakharov, Valeria Novodvorskaya and Margaret Thatcher.
btw, it was Novodvorskaya who launched the phrase “you are all metally ill and not getting your medical treatment, and I am the only smart one among you standing beautiful in a white coat”. Now we have a special term ‘white coats’ to describe snobbery.
https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/k_semiruchkina/16302181/156747/156747_600.jpg
When your head has stopped spinning AG, I hope you’ll realise that 150,000+ Ukrainian soldiers can’t have died in the war/SMO because that would mean that at least 300,000 would have been wounded, meaning that almost all of its professional army had been taken off the battlefield, leaving its defence largely down to territorial defence forces who would have been unlikely to hold Bakhmut for six weeks let alone six months. The true figure will be about 50,000 tops and probably a lot less than that.
In addition, NATO can’t have spent ‘several trillion dollars’ on its nuclear deterrent over the last decade because the combined defence budget of the US, UK & France over that timespan was only around $7 trillion equivalent, and there was the War in Afghanistan plus carpet bombing over ISIS territory in Iraq & Syria etc to fund. The total cost of the B61-12 programme is forecast to be around $10 billion:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1177/0096340214531546
Lapsed Agnostic
if I may, the 150.000+ I am aware are debated. For the simple reason know one truly knows 100%.
I am also aware of the major difference between the numbers being floated in the net. 150.000 were I believe an assessment made on basis of Russian High Command´s 400 KIA per day and the 300 KIA per day mentioned by the Ukrainian High Command in the summer. American Armed Forces even mentioned 200.000 dead this year.
Whatever it is, I am merely quoting what I read. And it is mostly by people who have names and mostly I try to take numbers that have multiple sources.
As to armies: “They say” that AFU has already lost “2” of its armies, now it is no. 3. that´s dying. If this war is, what others who have studied it unlike me, a so-called “war of attrition” and Russian artillery does in fact shoot 60.000 shells per day in contrast to 6000 shells from Ukrainian side, then the ratio of shells being shot will effect in some corresponding ratio of KIA on both sides.
The 15 trillion of modernization of course were referring to the US nuclear arsenal´s modernization decided upon by the Obama Administration for a span of 10-15 years. (which would mean that alone for these wepaon the US would outspend Germany´s extraordinary 100bn annually by a ratio of I guess 10 to 15.) And NATO in itself has no nuke capability since it is US nukes under NATO Command only. The Nukes in Germany are under US command I think.
The B-61 I only mention because they embody the bulk of current nuclear forces in NATO core countries that have no nuclear capability of their own: FRG, ITA, NL, TUR. And the latest B-61 has been delivered this passing winter with a warhead that has a variable yield of 0.3 kt – 50 kt. I don´t have to tell you what that means in strategic terms and risks of escalation.
AG
The Western backers will know precisely, well to the nearest 000.
They are just hiding the figures for two reasons i. Western public opinion may turn against supplying arms if an horrific Ukrainian death/ injury toll is revealed , and ii. they don’t want Russia to have information deemed highly sensitive i.e., due the relative imbalance in available troops between the two countries. Even Ursula von der Leyen’s relatively anodyne statement was redacted to exclude the 100,000 figure she gave.
Thanks for your reply AG. It’s true that nobody knows 100% what the exact casualty numbers are, but we can make some educated guesses – or at least be sceptical of outlandish figures. The Russian High Command has an incentive to exaggerate Ukrainian deaths by two to three times, the same as its Ukrainian equivalent does with Russian deaths. The latter also doesn’t release figures on its own casualties.
The Ukrainian ground forces are organised into brigades rather than armies. At its peak, the Russian artillery was firing around 50,000 shells per day, but that has declined substantially due to barrels wearing out etc. It’s probably only 10-15,000 per day now. Most Russian shells have just made holes in the ground.
Your exact words: ‘a nuclear war machinery *so far modernized* by several trillion dollars in the last decade.’ [my emphasis] – unfortunately I’m not a mind-reader. Anyway, the estimated cost of the US’s Ground-based Strategic Deterrent to replace the Minuteman-III’s, which were built in the 1970’s, is around $260 billion over a 50-year lifecycle, so I’m not sure where you’re getting these trillions from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGM-35_Sentinel
The nukes in all NATO countries apart from the UK & France are under US command. Officially, UK & France have independent nuclear deterrents. Of course, the UK’s Trident II’s have almost certainly been programmed by their US constructors to land somewhere in the world’s oceans if ever launched in anger – but that’s not true of French SLBMs. The US has the means of delivering a tactical nuclear weapon to almost anywhere in the world (the radar cross-section of a B-2 stealth bomber is about 0.1 square metres) so it wouldn’t matter whether the tactical nukes are in Germany or New Germany, Minnesota, the risks of escalation are the same – provided the Russians are thinking rationally, of course.
Enjoy the rest of the weekend.
Lapsed Agnostic
thx & good WE to you too!
” but that has declined substantially due to barrels wearing out etc. It’s probably only 10-15,000 per day now.”
They may have replaced the barrels with new ones made in their many factories.
Thanks again for your reply, AG, and for your kind sentiments. I did enjoy the weekend as Celtic beat St Mirren 5-1, despite being 1-0 down at half-time (I thought at one stage they might do the double on us). Funnily enough, Man U were also 1-0 down at half-time to Liverpool, but then proceeded to lose 7-0 – their biggest loss to them ever, I think.
Thanks also for your reply Johnny. I can’t imagine these scores of Russian barrel-replacement factories with their thousands of barrel-replacement workers will have had too much to do these past 30 years. I guess in the past few months though they’ve come into their own.
Even so, there could be other reasons why the rate of Russian artillery fire may have been considerably reduced compared to what it was in the early stages of the war/SMO: e.g, Russian artillery pieces being destroyed / damaged beyond repair by Ukrainian counter-battery fire, drone attacks etc; their shell deliveries taking longer to get to the frontlines due to ammunition dumps closer to them being obliterated by guided M31 missile attacks from HIMARS / M270 MLRS etc; stocks of certain shell calibres possibly running low, though they should still have millions of 152mm ones left, many of which will have been made in post-independence Ukraine.
” I can’t imagine these scores of Russian barrel-replacement factories with their thousands of barrel-replacement workers will have had too much to do these past 30 years.”
Perhaps they have been making barrels to expand the russian military.
” I can’t imagine these scores of Russian barrel-replacement factories with their thousands of barrel-replacement workers will have had too much to do these past 30 years.”
And then there’s the export market and the modernisation and replacement of soviet weapons.
Pigeon EnglishLapsed Agnosticas I am trying to grasp my most likely embarassing mistake with 15 trillion spent on nuclear arms – I guess in the heat of the night I completely mixed things up and pushed the decimal in 1,5 trillion unnecessarily into a wrong direction – as German billion and trillion are higher than their English literal equivalents – false friends.
(1 English Billion would equal 1 German “Milliarde”. 1000 English Billion/1 Trillion would equal 1 German “Billion”. And 1000 English Trillion/1 Quadtrillion would equal 1 German “Billiarde”. The real German “Trillion” would come as late as the English “Quintillion”.)
But unless you are working for U.S. Treasury or Pentagon you won´t have to care much about this problem.
Forgive me: I mixed up “Lapsed Agnostic” with “Pigeon English” [ Mod: FIFY ]
(I seem to mix up a little bit too much lately…)
Thanks for your replies Johnny. Let’s have a look at the main self-propelled artillery being used in Ukraine, shall we:
2S1 Gvozdika: Produced: 1971-91
2S3 Akatsiya: Produced: 1967-93
2S4 Tyulpan: Produced: 1969-88
2S5 Giatsint: Produced: 1976-91
2S7 Pion: Produced: 1975-90
2S19 Msta: Produced: 1988-present
(Data from Wiki)
So, apart from the Msta, they are no longer being made in Russia, be it for export or not. Most of them would have typically only fired a few hundred rounds a year in training exercises, so would probably have been able to go for at least a decade without any barrel replacements – but 2022 was not a typical year for the Russian artillery. Fun fact: Apart from the Msta, they are also all named after flowers.
(A while ago, I came across a chart on Twitter detailing the exact numbers of each being possessed by Russia & Ukraine at the start of the war/SMO, but I can’t seem to find the URL unfortunately.)
——————-
Thanks too for your reply, AG. Several decades ago, a billion was generally considered to be million million, and a trillion a billion billion, where I live in the UK as well – but that changed in the 1970’s when, as with many things, we went over to the US system.
thx MOD!
(I honestly didn´t know the meaning of FIFY. Now I do.)
A perfect speech
I have watched the speech again and it is compelling. I agree with all that CM says in that. There are obviously many more things he could say if he had more time and had prepared a lecture.
So I am not going to pick any arguments but make some observations, which are certainly not as robust, sorry.
The thing about massive oligarch control of the world’s resources in corrupt countries – I dare say there is as much if not more here in the Collective Waste, as CM points out, just as I’m sure there is in the global South, Africa, Asia, Americas – is that it’s OUR oligarchs who covet their resources; at least it’s Russian Oligarchs doing it to their own. Not the Old Western elites who own and run the modern East India Companies and Banks – Exxon, BP, Shell, Blackrock, CocaCola, Raytheon, etc.
Let these disparate ‘Russians’ sort it out themselves.
Let the Scots sort out their independence themselves.
Why ask the English?
The Russian Empire predates the English one afaik, Victoria wasn’t declared Empress until a long time after Catherine, is that not so?
This all happened through the convulsions of monarchies of Europe. Mostly related. All allied to the European elites. Their imperial seaborne dreams.
England only took control of India after the globalist privateer pirates of the day, the East India Companies, had filled their boots, before that imperial dream of the sun never setting on it was finally a ‘Empire’. Russia’s was more authentic, in my view.
The Tartar question is wholly valid. So is Russian corruption. But not more so than our Western Anglo-Saxon history and therefore guilt.
Yes, land masses and movements of Peoples across them are never ending through history. Where do you draw that line? The Greeks, Romans, Genghis, The Khanets, The Ottomans … The Tatars ?
The last 2, 5 or 10 generations?
I’m not a learned historian like Craig or professors of our Eurocentric history (written, as we know, by winners). But I do know that Nazism is not good. That 20+ millions of Russians and Soviets died defeating it. That our elites had a big part in creating Hitler and the current Banderists, many in high offices now of our Western governments, fighting their lost wars again with OUR resources and peoples for THEIR old causes.
Fuck ‘em.
Not in my name.
If I had to choose between fascists and Nazis in the 1930’s and WW2 and those they attacked, I would have chosen Stalin and the Commies then over Hitler’s Nazis. As we publicly did then.
I choose the same lesser evil NOW. Putin over Nazi banderite actor ‘elenski, who bans letters of the alphabet, language and culture, calling for extinction of Russians. He is nothing but a rich muppet. Like almost all our politicians.
Russians may be without us European ‘allies’ of WW2 now, but they have China, SCO, dysfunctional BRICS, a fluid Global South and the model of a multipolar world order to tempt us against the terminally jaded unipolar Gardeners of the Collective Waste’s few elites and made-up-as-you-go-along Rules, that only apply to that old conquered world. That’s the current only game in town.
So , I’m sorry if CM or anyone else here in the West doesn’t like it – I’m siding against Nazis and that Old World Order. I know I am not alone.
Stop War. The Many against the Few. Sanity and Humanity. Save the Environment and Life on Earth.
“The thing about massive oligarch control of the world’s resources in corrupt countries – I dare say there is as much if not more here in the Collective Waste, as CM points out, just as I’m sure there is in the global South, Africa, Asia, Americas – is that it’s OUR oligarchs who covet their resources”
It’s fairly obvious, if you think about it, that all countries are oligarchies. No one person can manage the complicated thing that is the modern state, nor can the people of that state. One is too few and the other are too many, so all “autocracies” and “democracies” are really oligarchies, the only difference between the two is an illusion of control by people other than the oligarchs.
Would you classify Switzerland as an Oligarchy ?
Its set-up does seem to be rather unique with more power available to the people through the canton governments and the use of referendums. OTOH the governance system is heavily integrated with the military through lifelong drafting of the citizens.
All other nations can more easily be identified as Oligarchies even the socialist ones !
About 4 Referendums per year in Switzerland
“”
Federal referendums were held in Switzerland on 7 March, 13 June, 26 September, and 28 November 2021?
“Would you classify Switzerland as an Oligarchy ?”
Aristotle would, and he should know, “It is accepted as democratic when public offices are allocated by lot; and as oligarchic when they are filled by election.”, but yes, there is more democratic control of the oligarchs in Switzerland than there is in most other countries.
Provoking this war was about far more than just padding the arms profiteers. Politicians in Washington are saying quite openly it’s about full-spectrum US dominance: neutralizing Russia in order to isolate China. They are not hiding their motivations at all.
Roosevelt and Churchill built into the architecture of the United Nations the principle that the US and UK are above the rules for all time. They accorded themselves permanent seats on the Security Council, the only United Nations body with any authority, and gave themselves a veto on decisions of the Council. The result is that they can engage in aggression against other states, as and when they like, without fear of a slap on the wrist by the Council, let alone being subject to economic sanctions or military action mandated by the Council
Article 23 of the Charter grants five of its Members
permanent seats on the Security Council, and Article 27 gives each of them a veto over decisions of the Council. Clearly, all Members are equal, but some Members are
more equal than others.
Academic lawyers in their thousands may protest that taking military action against Iraq was illegal because it lacked proper authorisation by the Security Council, but it is of no consequence in the real world when there is no possibility of the UK, or its political leadership, being convicted for taking such action. It is meaningless to describe an action as illegal if there is no expectation that the perpetrator of the action will be convicted by a competent judicial body. In the real world, an action is legal unless a competent judicial body rules that it is illegal.
http://www.david-morrison.org.uk/iraq/ags-legal-advice.pdf
U.S. President George Bush today signed into law the American Service members Protection Act of 2002, which is intended to intimidate countries that ratify the treaty for the International Criminal Court (ICC). The new law authorizes the use of military force to liberate any American or citizen of a U.S.-allied country being held by the court, which is located in The Hague. This provision, dubbed the “Hague invasion clause,” has caused a strong reaction from U.S. allies around the world, particularly in the Netherlands. https://www.hrw.org/news/2002/08/03/us-hague-invasion-act-becomes-law
ICC judges can be refused entry to the US, so much for the ICC which can only prosecute small or medium sized countries.
In order to by-pass the 1949 Charter and other counties veto, the US has invented the ‘Rules based order’
Russia also has a seat on the security council and the same powers of veto so they too can ‘engage in aggression against other states, as and when they like, without fear of a slap on the wrist by the Council, let alone being subject to economic sanctions or military action mandated by the Council’.
Pears Morgaine, that’s true as do China, France and UK also, it must be noted all the friends of those countries are immune from International Law as well, for instance Israel can ignore the 50 plus resolutions against them because of the US veto.
The 1949 UN charter being a multinational one is far from perfect, however it is there for all to see unlike the invented US ‘Rules based order’ a unilateral concoction dreamt up by the US to enable them and their vassals to override the 1949 charter.
In other words the US makes the rules the rest of the World follows. OR ELSE.
Craig, I have to disagree with you when you deny that the Russian invasion was “unprovoked”. The language laws in force prior to 2022 were not draconian by any means. True, there was a right wing nationalist element in Ukrainian politics, but no more so than in certain paramilitary organizations in the USA and Le Pen in France. And let’s not forget that Russia has been an uninvited guest in Ukraine since 2014. The fact is that Russia is hated by all its neighbours except China, for solid historical reasons. There were reasons why the Soviet Union broke up: countries like Ukraine, Poland, the Baltic states and Czekoslovakia had had enough, and seized their opportunity for independence and democacy while they could. Although US and NATO interference in the Israel-Palestinian conflict, Iraq and Libya are undeniable, I would rather have the USA as a neighbouring state than Russia.
Further to my comments above, even assuming that Ukraine had been unfair to Russians or Russian-speaking people within its borders, this does not justify full-scale invasion, bombardments, rape and mass deportation. We all feel offended at varous times for various reasons, but we choose how to react.
That’s a new perspective ! Killing tens of thousands of Ukranians just because their first language is Russian is just being ‘unfair’. I guess you think that the nice Mr Hilter was just being unfair when he inadvertently killed ~6M Jews and that was absolutely no justification for the full scale invasion of mainland Europe just because a few lefties were offended ?
We’re not offended by your views James, they provide a little laughter in these interesting times. I wish you the best of luck with your GCSEs.
If you’ve proof or evidence that Ukraine was killing ‘tens of thousands’ of its own people just because their first language was Russian I think you ought to share it AND explain how that would justify the deaths of hundreds of thousands of more Russian and Ukrainian speakers.
Pears Morgaine what standard of “proof” or “evidence” would satisfy you? Or are you just being disingenuous to hide that you haven’t done much reading on this topic and prefer to view the world as a good vs evil place that must “justify the deaths” or not?
In 2001 Russian was the native language for about 30% of the population of Ukraine, used for business, legal proceedings, science, artistry, and many other spheres of everyday life.
In April 2019, the Ukrainian parliament voted a new law, making Ukrainian compulsory (totally or within quotas) in more than 30 spheres of public life, including public administration, electoral process, education, science, culture, media, economic and social life, health and care institutions, and activities of political parties.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine
On 19 May 2022, the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Information Policy issued instructions for the Ukrainian Book Institute to destroy all books published in Russia, printed in Russian or translated from the Russian language.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article217312.html
In 2021, Ukrainian “integral nationalists” – “Nazis” according to the terminology of the Kremlin – represented one third of the Ukrainian armed forces. They are followers of a movement founded by Dmytro Dontsov in 1929, the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and are unconditional admirers of the Führer, Adolf Hitler.
The fact remains that these people massacred at least four million of their compatriots and conceived the architecture of the Final Solution, that is, the murder of millions of people because of their real or supposed membership in the Jewish or Gypsy communities of Europe.
In 2011, the mainstream “integral nationalists” succeeded in passing a law banning the commemoration of the end of World War II because it was won by the Soviets and lost by the Banderists (followers of Stepan Bander a follower of Dmytro Dontsov). But President Viktor Yanukovych refused to enact it. Enraged, the “integral nationalists” attacked the procession of Red Army veterans, beating up old men. Two years later, the cities of Lviv and Ivano-Frankivsk abolished the Victory Day ceremonies and banned all manifestations of joy.
From the 2014 coup full nationalist militias were incorporated into the Ukrainian Armed Forces. In their internal regulations, they enjoin each fighter to read the works of Dmytro Dontsov, including his master book, Націоналізм (Nationalism).
In 2014, Ukrainians in Crimea and Donbass refused to recognize the coup government. Crimea, which had declared itself independent before the rest of Ukraine, reaffirmed its independence a second time and joined the Russian Federation. The Donbass sought a compromise. The “Ukrainian nationalists,” led by President Petro Poroshenko, stopped providing public services there and bombed its population. In eight years, they murdered at least 16,000 of their fellow citizens in general indifference.
On July 1, 2021, President Volodymyr Zelenski enacted the Law “On Indigenous Peoples of Ukraine” which places them under the protection of Human Rights. By default, citizens of Russian origin can no longer invoke them in court.
In February 2022, the “full nationalist” militias, which made up one-third of the country’s armed forces, planned a coordinated invasion of Crimea and the Donbass. They were stopped by the Russian military operation to implement UN Security Council Resolution 2202 to end the suffering of the people of Donbass.
https://www.voltairenet.org/article218395.html
“A squad of orcs has been repelled.” This is a line from an official report from Ukraine’s defence ministry – and part of the ever-expanding wartime vocabulary used by top officials, military and media.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/5/3/orcs-and-rashists-ukraines-new-language-of-war
Read what I wrote.
Peter Hitchens represents a strand of reaction in British journalism, favouring policies with affinities to conservatism with both a small and capital c, and a staunch if not uncritical supporter of the Malignant Unmentionable of the Middle East. Yet even Hitchens is willing to contrast the expansion of NATO to a scenario in which a seceded and independence Quebec enters into a military alliance with China and agrees to host nuclear missiles a mere several hundred miles from the American capital.
Today’s posturing on democracy and human rights in Russia and China by the US and its vassals recalls the flagrant hypocrisy at the height of the Cold war when Moscow and Beijing were castigated by the West for their human rights record even though these very critics busied themselves about giving weapons and military training to revolting genocidists like Pol Pot and Suharto and supplied arms to other mass murderers such as Pinochet, Stroessner and Savimbi, to say nothing of Saddam Hussein. The West seems to be hoping that the Russian Federation collapses into a jigsaw of khanates ruled by a succession of tinpot despots who can be played off one against the other as more or less tame clients of the US order, performing a jig to the tune played by the West like smaller versions of Boris the Dancing Bear Yeltsin. Expect the concern of the West as to the question of human rights and democracy in these lands, currently under Russian sovereignty and the miniscule scrutiny of the MSM, to drain away like blood into bathwater.
“rape and mass deportation.”
Where is the evidence for rape and mass deportation?
Congratulations James.
I have read just about all the comments from the top down to here.
Yours is the first one that seems to be grounded in reality.
It matters nought what all of the history up to 24th February 2022 consisted of.
On that date, the army of one sovereign nation crossed an international border and made war against the army and civilians of another sovereign nation.
Whataboutery and sophistry can be discounted. Ukraine did not invade Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine.
John Main
Yes Russia did invade last february because of ukrainians escalated the attacks on ethnic russians in the eastern border region with Russia, something that started 8 years ago – you think the UK or the US would sit still if their compatriots was assaulted for 8 years by a regime in another country? Yeez..they would invade 8 years ago and you would support it..
On top of that west and Ukraine tossed the Minsk agreement and tossed the diplomacy before the war. I am not supportive of the war but surely it was not a surprise that it happend.
“It’s not a situation that you can look at and say these are the goodies and these are the baddies, this is absolute right or wrong, you are looking at the working out of very complex historical shifts and antagonisms and fights for resources over centuries. But the one thing you can say for certain is that the answer to none of these questions is to kill people. War is never justified. My own view is that simply as a matter of international law the Russian invasion of Ukraine was illegal in international law, as illegal as the British invasion of Iraq was illegal in international law. Was it provoked? Yes. Can we understand why it happened? Yes. Was it legal? No. But we are where we are and the question is now how should it stop?”
Above is a transcription of what CM said in the video posted on his blog in this thread from 6:22 approx to about 7:33 (in that video timeline).
@James Chater
“Craig, I have to disagree with you when you deny that the Russian invasion was “unprovoked”
CM didn’t deny it was provoked and specifically says that it was provoked.
CM ” Was it provoked? Yes.”
Perhaps you ought to listen to it again, carefully this time.
Personally, I am not sure I agree that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is as illegal as the Iraq invasion was. I don’t believe Iraq ever presented a credible threat to UK or USA. I think that Russia can more legitimately claim that the build up of NATO forces and weapons so near its borders is a threat. Especially so when the avowed USA/NATO aim is to “weaken Russia.” Whether that was enough to justify war is another thing.
Thanks for that transcription, ET, but I think you’ve misread James Chater’s comment there. He was disagreeing with Craig’s denial that it was unprovoked. (You removed the “un-” negation in your critique, thereby inverting the meaning.) James Chater was actually recognising Craig’s claim that the invasion was provoked, and voicing his disagreement with it. Admittedly, it takes a fair bit of parsing and computation to make sense of that triple negative (which I don’t think isn’t at all unnecessary).
I think Craig was invoking a binary notion of illegality. I’m not sure they can be quantified and compared, unless by overlaying a moral judgement on top of the legal one or by appeal to degrees of uncertainty.
On rereading James Chater’s comment Dawg I agree, I have misinterpreted it. Apologies to JC.
I wrote “unprovoked”, not provoked. The triple negative confused you. No worries, I could have expressed it clearer.
In theory International law i.e the 1949 UN charter does exist, but in practice it does not, this was made clear by International law lawyer Christopher Black, a link provided in one of my comments above, there he states that all the wars the US have been involved with, including the Korean war have been illegal.. Have any of the other American wars been legal? None of them All of them are in violation of Article 2(4). The list is long. When I first drafted this I set out all the invasions of nations the Americans conducted since then but to list them here would turn this into a thick book of American crimes, from Korea to Vietnam, from Cuba to Congo, from Iraq to Afghanistan, from Latin America, to Yugoslavia, Syria, Lebanon. But one crime must be added to all their war crimes and aggressions, the crime of hypocrisy. For all of their aggressions were conducted for reasons of domination and exploitation of resources and peoples, for profit. There was never any legal justification ever offered, as there were none. None of them were conducted in self-defence, whereas Russia’s action clearly is.
In my opinion Russia acted in accordance with international law under Article 51 of the UN Charter. https://journal-neo.org/2022/03/08/the-legality-of-war/
For reference, here is the text of Chapter VII, Article 51 of the UN Charter:
“Article 51
Nothing in the present Charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self-defence if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security. Measures taken by Members in the exercise of this right of self-defence shall be immediately reported to the Security Council and shall not in any way affect the authority and responsibility of the Security Council under the present Charter to take at any time such action as it deems necessary in order to maintain or restore international peace and security.”
Did the state of Russia come under armed attack by another state? Of course not.
It can be legal for a member state which is under armed attack to request armed intervention from another state, but the idea that the Ukrainian government might request Russia’s military assistance is preposterous. Article 51 certainly doesn’t apply to requests for help from one faction in a regional dispute, however violent. So, Harry, how do you conclude that “Russia acted in accordance with international law under Article 51 of the UN Charter”?
Further reading on that issue: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is illegal under international law: suggesting it’s not is dangerous (The Conversation, 15 Mar 2022)
A UN Security Council resolution on 16/02/2022 demanded Russia’s withdrawal: it was approved by 11 of the 15 members, with 3 abstaining. Only one voted against: Russia (of course). That’s an example of the same unilateral abuse of Security Council membership that you’re criticising the USA for. (Can you please clarify which definition of hypocrisy you have in mind?)
The problem is that there is no mechanism by which to impose or enforce penalties on Security Council member states which violate the UN Charter. The absence of such a mechanism doesn’t make the violations legal.
Dawg, Every thing the Russian Federation did in Ukraine was legal and in line with International law, as regards Crimea, the residents of Crimea voted for independence as was their right under the UN charter i.e. all peoples have the right to self determination, after the referendum was completed Russia accepted the will of the Crimean people to join the Russian Federation, as my earlier post indicates this is how lawyer Reinhard Merkel sees the situation. In his article, he came to the conclusion that the secession of Crimea and the subsequent referendum were held quite in accordance with international law, and not at all in violation of it, as most countries claim. However, Merkel makes a reservation: both the secession and the referendum were violations of the Ukrainian Constitution. However, this is not a matter of international law, and since the Ukrainian constitution does not apply in Russia, Russia had the right to agree to the entry of Crimea into its composition.
The same principles were applied to the other breakaway provinces all perfectly legal under International law.
As an aside, many observers were of the opinion that after the coup in 2014 the Ukrainian constitution was null and void. Putin also used the Kosovo precedent when both Germany and the US recognized the independence of Kosovo, even without a referendum. https://mickestenssononrussia.wordpress.com/2021/12/24/was-the-annexation-of-crimea-to-russia-an-illegal-annexation/
The inhabitants of Crimea did not vote for independence, it wasn’t an option on the ballot paper. The choices they had were be part of Ukraine, under a deal that had already failed, or become part of Russia. There are also doubts as to how free and fair the referendum was.
The invasion is not supported by international law neither are the looting, murders, rapes, torture and forced deportations.
“The invasion is not supported by international law neither are the looting, murders, rapes, torture and forced deportations.”
You were doing so well up to that point. I would actually agree with you that the invasion of Ukraine outside Donetsk and Luhansk was illegal under international law, to the extent that “international law” means anything when states routinely disregard it except as a stick to beat their enemies with, but then you trotted out the tired old rubbish about “looting, murders, rapes, torture and forced deportations.” that has been the go-to propaganda for warring states for the last two hundred years if not more.
Pears Morgaine March 4, 2023 at 21:09 “The choices they had were be part of Ukraine, under a deal that had already failed, or become part of Russia.”
Incorrect and misleading to suggest “become part of Russia” as if Crimea never was, when in fact the word used was “reunification” an entirely different meaning to “become”:-
Choice 1: Do you support the reunification of Crimea with Russia with all the rights of the federal subject of the Russian Federation?
Choice 2: Do you support the restoration of the Constitution of the Republic of Crimea in 1992 and the status of the Crimea as part of Ukraine?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Crimean_status_referendum#Choices
Types like Craig Murray also like to point out that Israel started the 1967 six-day war – i.e. that there was no provocation from its Arab neighbours. However, when it’s one of their favoured foreign nations, such as Russia, doing the same, then it suddenly becomes a necessary war.
Israel was created by western imperiaists in the heart of the Arab world against the objections of every Arab. Types like Jeff think it preposterous to consider that in any way provocative.
Israel did start the 1967 war; it’s not in question. I think it was Ariel Sharon who admitted that there was no actual threat of an Arab attack.
” But the one thing you can say for certain is that the answer to none of these questions is to kill people. War is never justified.”
If you can’t use force to prevent people being killed you might as well make killing people legal.
James Chater
Talks about banning the russian language is like a western european state would call to ban arabic.
You can imagine the uproar.
You cannot compare Azov, Right sector neonazi/fascists group with Le Pen or Trump or what-have-you.
These are armed, violent right wing extremists that have the backing of ukrainian state.
This is like nazis-light version.
Poland was not part of the USSR
and majority of Ukrainians actually wanted to keep Ukraine in the USSR
“Do you agree that Ukraine should be part of a Union of Soviet Sovereign States on the basis on the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine? Yes=81%”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Ukrainian_sovereignty_referendum
Russian language wasn’t banned, just not used for official business. Some Oblasts banned Russian books etc after the invasion which is hardly surprising.
You can’t compare Azov with the armed and more numerous right wing extremists who make up the Wagner Group either and yet they have the support of the Russian state and represent its interests in Syria and central Africa as well as Ukraine.
Poland wasn’t part of the USSR, it was however a satellite state controlled by them.
Independence wasn’t an option in the March ’91 referendum which referred to a new treaty which in the end was never adopted. The overwhelming majority of voters backed withdrawal from the USSR in another referendum in December ’91, approving a declaration of independence with a sizeable majority.
@ Pears Morgaine
Oh dear me Pears, still covering for Neo-nazis and Neo-con psychopaths?
I think this is at least the third time i’ve called you out for your support for Nazi’s. I recall you blamed the murder of over forty civilians in the Odessa massacre by members of Right Sector on those that were killed.
I can’t speak for the Wagner group (I will look into it) but they’ll have to go some to out-do the Azovs, just one of the many Neo-nazi groups in Ukraine of course, as this Stanford University study, also quoted below, amply demonstrates:
https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/azov-battalion
I have also previously pointed out to you your ‘error’ in denying the extent of the banning of the Russian language and culture by the Nazi influenced Kiev regime, so just to remind you again:
“2019 Law on Protecting the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language – Status: In force
The law “On Protecting the Functioning of the Ukrainian Language as the State Language” made the use of Ukrainian compulsory (totally or within certain quotas) in the work of some public authorities, in the electoral procedures and political campaigning, in pre-school, school and university education, in scientific, cultural and sporting activities, in book publishing and book distribution, in printed mass media, television and radio broadcasting, in economic and social life (commercial advertising, public events), in hospitals and nursing homes, and in the activities of political parties and other legal entities (e.g. non-governmental organizations) registered in Ukraine. Some special exemptions are provided for the Crimean Tatar language, other languages of indigenous peoples of Ukraine, the English language and the other official languages of the European Union; as languages of minorities that are not EU official languages, Russian, Belarusian and Yiddish are excluded from the exemptions.”
As I also pointed out to you previously, this particularly nasty piece of legislation was seen into law by the Parliament Chairman, Washington favourite, and famous Neo-nazi Andriy Parubiy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine
There, fixed that for you.
It should be stated: there was no forced annexation of Crimea to Russia — after the coup d’etat, a referendum was held, in which 83% of the residents who had the right to vote took part, and about 80% were in favor of joining Russia.
The referendum was followed by the proclamation of state independence, and only then the Autonomous Republic of Crimea submitted a request to join the Russian Federation, which it satisfied. Thus, it was the peaceful separation of Crimea from Kiev Ukraine, in whose parliament fascists are still present. https://mickestenssononrussia.wordpress.com/2021/12/24/was-the-annexation-of-crimea-to-russia-an-illegal-annexation/
The choices on the referendum were as follows:-
Choice 1: Do you support the reunification of Crimea with Russia with all the rights of the federal subject of the Russian Federation?
Choice 2: Do you support the restoration of the Constitution of the Republic of Crimea in 1992 and the status of the Crimea as part of Ukraine?
No mention of independence and no campaigning for Choice 2 was permitted.
The far right coalition in Ukraine have one seat in parliament and got 2.15% of the vote. Far less than many other European nations and less than Russia.
https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/if-russia-serious-about-de-nazification-it-should-start-home
Both sides were shooting and throwing petrol bombs at each other; in Odesa the fire in the Trades Union building started on the third floor by somebody trying to throw one out.
Wagner Group:-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/20/russian-mercenaries-in-ukraine-linked-to-far-right-extremists
https://adf-magazine.com/2022/05/evidence-mounts-of-wagner-group-atrocities-in-the-car/
https://news.un.org/en/story/2023/01/1133007
Yeah they sound like the good guys.
“No mention of independence and no campaigning for Choice 2 was permitted.”
The second option was not the status quo, it was for a much larger degree of autonomy than Crimea enjoyed before 2014. In 1992 Crimea had attempted to become independent, but had been strong-armed by the Ukranian government into remaining part of Ukraine. The “1992 Constitution” started out as the constitution o an independent state, but the Crimean parliament was forced to amend it so that it included Crimea as part of Ukraine.
“The far right coalition in Ukraine have one seat in parliament and got 2.15% of the vote. Far less than many other European nations and less than Russia.”
Yeah, right, so the fact that there are no far right MPs in the parliament means that there is no far right in the country. Just remind me, how many MPs UKIP managed to get elected to the UK parliament before achieving its aim of removing Britain from the EU. Also it really should have occurred to you by now that quoting sources like the RUSI or the Guardian just shows where you get your propaganda from, it’s not any form of convincing argument about its veracity. Would you be convinced by a quote from TASS or RT?
Pears Morgaine
There is a bigger assault on the russian language that started after Maidan coup of 2014.
While majority in Ukraine speak russian, it was degraded by the new regime from official language. It is nothing but discrimatination.
These measures was applied the weeks BEFORE the invasion:
“A language law came into force in Ukraine on January 16 that requires all national print media to be published in the country’s official language, Ukrainian, in a bid to push back against the use of the Russian language in the public sphere.”
https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-language-law-russian/31656441.html
“In risky move, Ukraine’s president bans pro-Russian media
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has unplugged three television networks he accuses of spreading Kremlin-funded ‘propaganda’, a development the EU has reprimanded.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/2/5/ukraines-president-bans-pro-russian-networks-risking-support
Wagner is not incorporated in the russian army, that is however Azov. That is like the UK military would take in armed neo nazis.
Would you support that? Of course not. But in Ukraine you suddenly support it.
Yes Ukraine voted for independece in 1991 but by 1991 Ukraine was a close allied to Russia.
Today Ukraine is more split. Many in the southern, eastern regions obviously support Russia and seek more autonomy.
Some ukrainians miss certain aspects of the USSR to this day.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1128076/ukraine-opinion-on-dissolution-of-the-ussr-by-age/
“numerous right wing extremists who make up the Wagner Group”
How so?
The Slava Ukraini lot pretended to be absolutely appalled by the far right when Trump was in power and by antisemitism when Corbyn was leading the Labour Party. That was their entire performative self-identity for half a decade.
We now see very clearly that are not actually horrified by the far right at all. Not even by literal Nazism.
@ James Chater
James, assuming you are here in good faith (there are some who aren’t) you seem to still place your trust in everything you’re told by the mainstream media (MSM). If so, I’m afraid your trust is very sorely misplaced. It was clear from the start of this conflict (I mean Feb ’22) that we were/are in the midst of the most comprehensive lying propaganda campaign at least since WW2, or so I thought then. It now seems to me more likely that it is the biggest propaganda campaign since WW1, quite shocking. Have you not noticed that all critical, questioning and contesting views and voices have been all but extinguished from the MSM – the BBC in the forefront.
There is no doubt whatsoever that this conflict was not only provoked but was planned, engineered and deliberately sought by the neo-conservative (neo-con) cabal that has gained power in Washington, Trump aside (whom I don’t support except on this), across both parties.
For a concise review of what lead to this war listen to Scott Ritter’s first answer in this interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEIBTCljjz0
The Rand Corporation document he refers to, laying out in detail how the US could undermine and overextend Russia using Ukraine is here:
https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
The current Director of the CIA’s memo from 2008, when he was US ambassador to Russia, in which he warns the then Bush government of what would happen in the country and how Russia would react if Nato expanded into Ukraine – they knew exactly what they were doing – is here:
https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
You say you think the Neo-Nazi problems in Ukraine are no different to such problems in other European countries. Well that’s what the BBC and all the rest of the MSM would have you believe but that could not be further from the truth.
The BBC had been reporting for years on the shocking extent, history and influence of Nazism in Ukraine but once this conflict started they went into full denial. Several Neo-Nazi groups were centrally involved with the US in overthrowing the democratically elected government in 2014. There reward from the US was to be placed at the heads of several government ministries. See here:
https://www.channel4.com/news/svoboda-ministers-ukraine-new-government-far-right
I am pleased to be able to say that neither in the UK nor any other country in Europe, to my knowledge, is there anything like the Azov organisation who are just one of the many virulent Neo-Nazi organisations in Ukraine:
https://cisac.fsi.stanford.edu/mappingmilitants/profiles/azov-battalion
It is widely believed that Neo-Nazi groups have threatened to murder Zelensky if he agrees a peace deal with Russia which it is believed, and confirmed by Israeli and Turkish sources, he almost did in Spring of last year. The Neo-Nazi threats were backed up by Boris Johnson rushing to Kiev to warn him that western support would be withdrawn if they agreed a deal. On top of that, one of the other Ukrainian negotiators was murdered/assassinated/executed (take your choice) by the Ukrainian security services and accused of being a Russian collaborator.
You speak of Ukraine being “unfair to Russians or Russian-speaking people within its borders”. “Unfair” doesn’t come close.
One of the Neo-Nazis given a ministerial position is Andriy Parubiy, a particular favourite in Washington. All Neo-Nazis fervently hate Russia of course, Parubiy had the job of banning the Russian language and Russian culture in Ukraine. You call this “unfair”?. An equivalent would be if the SNP banned the use of English in Scotland alongside banning all English culture, Shakespeare for example, in Scottish schools. Unfair? Fascistic would be more accurate.
Understandably, Eastern Ukraine wanted nothing to do with this government and sought autonomy for the region. That was what lead to the civil war when Kiev sent in the army and the Neo-Nazi battalions and militias took the law into their own hands.
The figure of 14-15,000 dead before Russia intervened is bandied about inaccurately. It is an accurate figure of the number who had died in the civil war but they were not all civilians. The figure is split roughly equally in three between civilians, Ukrainian army/militias and Donbas militias. Still, in the civil war initiated by Kiev over 3000 civilians, nearly all ethnic Russians or Russian speaking Ukrainians were killed – before Russia stepped in. Putin had been under pressure to step in for a long time before he actually did.
But you won’t see or hear any of that on the BBC, or anywhere else in the MSM. Never in my lifetime has the MSM been so tightly controlled – it is a profound cause for concern.
Time for more independent research.
Not everyone at the Beeb has been keeping quiet about Nazism in Ukraine since the war/SMO started, Peter. Ros Atkins from their fact-checking ‘Outside Source’ programme on the News Channel has openly mentioned it, but said it’s still fine for people in the West to support the Azov regiment as they’re “only 15-20% Nazi”, even though he could truthfully, if pedantically, have said that there were no Nazis in Azov since the NSDAP became defunct in 1945.
As far as I can make out, Andriy Parubiy wasn’t given the job of banning the Russian language and culture in Ukraine, and he’s never been a Ukrainian minister, just the Chairman of their parliament from 2016-2019, which I’d imagine is roughly equivalent to the Speaker / Presiding Officer in the House of Commons / Holyrood – so blaming him for suppressing the Russian language and culture is a bit like blaming John Bercow for the Bedroom Tax. In his youth, Parubiy was a leading light in the neo-Nazi Social-National Party, but then in his youth, Bercow was the secretary of the Monday Club’s Immigration & Repatriation committee. People can and sometimes do change for the better.
Here’s something else from the Beeb. Apparently, you now need to have a basic level of Welsh in order to get a new job with the Welsh government – even though most of these jobs will be in places where few people speak Welsh and almost everyone can understand English – because their government wants to increase the number of Welsh speakers to over one million, which will have to come at the expense of the English language. How is this not like what was happening in Ukraine, and does it mean England now has a right to invade Wales to protect the English language and culture?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-57776429
According to the OSCE, the vast majority of the civilians killed in the 2014-2022 War in Donbas(s) died in either 2014 or 2015. In the last couple years of it, only 40-60 civilians were killed.
@ Lapsed Agnostic
I take it from your reply that you’re perfectly happy with the comprehensive propaganda campaign and blanket of deceit that has fallen over the west since the start of this conflict, as well as the BBC’s support for Nazis/Neo-Nazis.
Well done on digging up an instance of the BBC mentioning Nazism. Sadly no surprise whatsoever though that it’s one that provides support to Nazis/Neo-Nazis – by all means make your own pedantic choice of nomenclature.
The Azovs may well only have 20% Nazi membership, though I wouldn’t automatically accept anything from the BBC as a given. Their membership will of course have increased dramatically during the conflict but its leadership remains wholeheartedly and committedly Neo-Nazi. That the BBC chooses to ignore that and promote support for them – I believe the BBC has spoken about “moderate” Neo-Nazis – tells you all you need to know about the contemporary fall and degradation of the BBC.
Regarding Andriy Parubiy, it is of course normal for Neo-Nazis to seek to present themselves as being more respectable now. That the best defence of him that you have come up with is that John Bercow was once in the Monday Club hardly gives cause for confidence. The BBC (before their post-conflict about-turn) were not as easily impressed when they interviewed him in 2015 about his dubious role in the Maidan protests:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mJhJ6hks0Jg
He was of course a so called “Commandant” during the Maidan protests, a role which led to him being given the post-coup government military position of Secretary of the Ukrainian National Security and Defence Council. Hands up, perhaps this is not a ministerial post and I may have mistaken this as being one of the several ministerial positions in the post-coup government that were given to Neo-Nazis.
Parubiy may or may not have had “the job” of banning the Russian language, perhaps that fell to someone else of his ilk, but he certainly had the role of signing it into law which with his background and contemporary fierce Russophobia would have been very satisfying and gratifying to him.
With regard to the Welsh, a more accurate comparison would be if the Welsh government had banned use of the English language in Wales. I think that would be met with a somewhat sterner response.
Absolutely nobody to my knowledge is claiming that the Russians intervened in Ukraine to protect the Russian language. Their reasoning is of course much more complex as has been detailed throughout the commentary on this posting.
With regard to civilian fatalities during the civil war you say:
“According to the OSCE, the vast majority of the civilians killed in the 2014-2022 War in Donbas(s) died in either 2014 or 2015. In the last couple years of it, only 40-60 civilians were killed.”
Is that ok with you then?
So let me see, backing for the BBC’s support for Nazis and all round descent into full-on propaganda mode; backing for the Azov organisation; backing for Andriy Parubiy; bogus Welsh whataboutery; and dismissal of the deaths of 3000+ innocent citizens.
Are you really sure that’s where you want to be?
Thanks for your reply Peter. I assure you I’m far from happy with my licence fee being used to produce propaganda for neo-Nazi militias, but the point I was trying to make was that certain people at the Beeb are perfectly happy to admit on air that Azov contains Nazis. I don’t accept anything that the Beeb says as a given – I suspect the true figure for the percentage of Azov members holding Nazi-esque beliefs to be nearly 100%.
In the 1980’s, John Bercow thought that people who’d been living in Britain for 20 or 30 years should be told that they had to go back to the countries from which they’d come, along with their children, and given a bit of money to help them on their way. That’s a view that in UK politics today would be described as being on the far side of far-right. He has since changed his views.
I don’t know whether the Chairman of the Ukrainian parliament has a vote and can’t be arsed finding out, but whether he did or not, it would have been Parubiy’s job to implement the will of parliament whatever his personal views. Of course there would have been an uproar if the Welsh government had banned the use of English in Wales, not least because Welsh is still a minority language there. Its use, however, is growing, largely because it’s now compulsory for Welsh children to study it up to GCSE level. The aim is to boost Welsh nationalism, which may well work in delivering Welsh independence before Scottish independence. Ukrainian is the majority language in Ukraine, and it’s considerably easier for Russian-speakers to learn Ukrainian than it is for English-speakers to learn Welsh.
He may not have been particularly concerned about languages, but one of the reasons Putin gave for invading Ukraine was to de-Nazify it, which must be why he decided last year to release all of the Azov POW’s (including their top commanders) in exchange for his washed-up, short-arse oligarch mate, Viktor Medvedchuk, whereas some ordinary Ukrainian grunts and marines also captured in the Azovstal works have only just been released, and some are probably still in captivity. So now the Azov ‘living legends’ (copyright NAFO Twitter) can inspire the next generation of Ukro-Nazi lunatics.
I haven’t dismissed the deaths of over 3000 innocent civilians in the War in Donbas, some of which will have been on the Ukrainian side of the line of contact. I just pointed out that comparatively few were being killed in the latter years of the war. How does killing over 8000 more in just one year – and that’s just from missile strikes and those killed in territory that the Ukrainians have retaken – provide them with justice? I’m reasonably content with where I am, thanks for asking.
Enjoy what’s left of the weekend.
“Ros Atkins from their fact-checking ‘Outside Source’ programme ”
Never trust a fact checker.
“does it mean England now has a right to invade Wales to protect the English language and culture?”
Only if they start murdering the English speakers.
Thanks for your reply Johnny. Though not the case in the early years of the War in Donbas(s) when war crimes (on both sides) abounded, in its latter stages, a large majority of the non-militia civilians who died were killed by accident (shells going astray mainly), rather than being deliberately murdered*.
* Worth noting that Thomas Cashman, whose trial begins today, has been charged with the murder of nine-year-old Olivia Pratt-Korbel in Liverpool last year. In fairness, as he didn’t intend to kill her, he should have been charged with her manslaughter – but if that had happened, the ensuing riots would have probably made the Toxteth ones look like the late Queen’s Platinum Jubilee tea-party. Note to any Scousers reading: If you want to help stop kids being shot dead in the Liverpool City Region, stop buying cocaine.
> I have to disagree with you when you deny that the Russian invasion was “unprovoked”.
Oops, quadruple-negative, and hard to parse.
I think you’re saying that you believe the invasion was unprovoked, which is consistent with your subsequent comments.
Just clarifying 🙂
The only thing I disagree strongly with is blaming “the 1%”.
You can get into the 1% (measured by wealth or income or some combination) if you’re bright, and work hard. In 2019/2020, a salary before tax of £180,000/year would get you into the top 1%. (link).
These are not the people who pull the strings in our world. The people who have real influence – the CEO class, the big stockholders, the company-director class, bankers who pull million-pound bonuses, people like the Duke of Westminster who inherited several billion pounds in his twenties, the people whose money is in offshore trusts – regard somebody on £180,000/year as just another pleb. In an unguarded moment, Boris Johnson admitted in a TV interview that £250,000/year is “chicken feed” in his world (the clip is still on youtube, I think).
The oligarchs are mostly billionaires, not millionaires. 0.1% would be nearer the mark.
You are absolutely right about 0.1 %
I believe that the first one mentioning 1% and later adopted/used by everyone (and Occupy Wall Street ) was the Economist
Joseph E Stieglitz . IMO it was a good simplification to make a point about Inequality.
It might be in his book “The Price of Inequality”.
In 2009 there were about 800 Billionaires and now about 2000 +
“You can get into the 1% (measured by wealth or income or some combination) if you’re bright, and work hard.”
That must be why so many coal miners gave up work in the 1980s.
The US were prepared to go to war with the Soviet Union in 1962 to stop Soviet bases in Cuba, they set a blockade to stop Soviet ships entering Cuban waters. This was justified by the Monroe doctrine which is still in force today. No power may build any bases in the Western hemisphere [a huge area] or the US will act [Jake Sullivan present National security advisor].
Why is it so unusual for Russians not to feel threatened by NATO bases with nuclear weapons in Ukraine on Russia’s front porch 5 minutes flying time from Moscow?
Equally and by corollary Russia’s weapons arsenal is the same flying time to Ukraine and other eastern European countries ie. 5 mins. Is Russia entitled to feel threatened when they are not entitled to feel a similar threat?
Chalk and cheese.
We’re talking about NATO, ie. USA and its lapdogs, an organisation whos stated purpose is the breakup and destruction of Russia. There has been no threats from Russia against other countries on her borders with the admitted recent exception of Ukraine whos Nazi government has been provoking Russia with NATOs help since 2014.
You need to wise up to the fact that the USA sees Russia and China as a threat to its global hegemony which requires over 800 overseas bases to enforce and an annual military budget of around $800Bn – the only real threat on the planet is the yankee dogs.
I am well aware of that fact, thank you Stevie Boy. Nonetheless, you cannot gainsay the fact that if it takes 5 mins for a missile to reach Moscow from Ukraine it takes the same 5 mins for a missile to reach Ukraine from Moscow. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander argument. I agree with you that Russia and China are far less a threat than USA full spectrum dominance, something I hope never to see in reality.
Much of the West’s argument is that Ukraine should be able to choose its alliances as it sees fit to and that Russia nor indeed any other country should have a say in that choice. As far as it goes that argument holds only if say Venezuela, Cuba and Bolivia can makes the same choices. We both know USA would never allow that to happen in the present circumstances.
“Much of the West’s argument is that Ukraine should be able to choose its alliances as it sees fit to”
so long as those alliances are with the West, it seems. The fact that the US is involved with Ukraine at all shows that the Ukranian government is not being allowed to choose its alliances as it sees fit.
It’s actually a shit for the goose argument because it overlooks a point the size of a donkey’s walloper:
Russians have every right to fear the US because Americans are taught from the day they are born to hate and despise Russians and treat them as existential foes. Russians and Ukrainians were not taught from the day they were born to hate and despise each other. Get Uncle Sam the fuck out of Europe and there is no reason at all for Russians and Ukrainians to live in peace and friendship.
What so many people seem to forget in all this is that ordinary Russians struggled just as hard as all the other peoples of Eastern Europe to cast of the shackles of Soviet Communism. Their “reward” for that was to find that they had seamlessly slipped into the role of the new “evil enemy” in the minds of the moronic warmongering scum on the other side of the Atlantic. The US economy cannot function without evil enemies to keep the war wheels turning and the war chest churning, and if there aren’t any it will just create some…
Stevie Boy,
> We’re talking about NATO, ie. USA and its lapdogs, an organisation whos stated purpose is the breakup and destruction of Russia.
Can you please provide a link to NATO’s declaration to that effect? I’d like to check the wording of the statement.
That is, of course, an exaggeration, but in NATO’s own words,
“It is often said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization was founded in response to the threat posed by the Soviet Union. This is only partially true. In fact, the Alliance’s creation was part of a broader effort to serve three purposes: deterring Soviet expansionism, forbidding the revival of nationalist militarism in Europe through a strong North American presence on the continent, and encouraging European political integration.”
Or, as Lord Ismay put it, “keep(ing) the Soviet Union out, the Americans in, and the Germans down.”
I don’t think anyone is seriously trying to pretend that NATO isn’t, at bottom, an anti-Russian organisation.
ET
that is an important question.
And that´s why Russia has been suggesting to NATO for many years to reduce missiles in the European “theatre”, by all parties, and to not install ABMs etc.
This was reiterated in the treaty draft sent to NATO by Russia December 2021:
here:
“17 December 2021
Agreement on measures to ensure the security of The Russian Federation and member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization”
https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790803/?lang=en
among others in Art. 4:
“The Russian Federation and all the Parties that were member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization as of 27 May 1997, respectively, shall not deploy military forces and weaponry on the territory of any of the other States in Europe in addition to the forces stationed on that territory as of 27 May 1997. With the consent of all the Parties such deployments can take place in exceptional cases to eliminate a threat to security of one or more Parties”
The year 1997 is being quoted because it coincides with the NATO–Russia Founding Act where both parties agreed to not regard each other as enemies.
All the fuss over INF and ABM treaties et. al. is about this.
What the West commentariat seems to completely block out – NATO never once conceded anything.
They said “stuff” but never acted accordingly (others call that “lie”).
Since 1991 NATO was expanding and building up and expanding and expanding. While Russia was conceding conceding conceding.
Russia was the only party to suggest real value in terms of reduction of forces et al.
NATO said thank you and built up its military instead.
Did they ever say a word about stopping? Or even dissolving?? Or including Russia???
Of course not.
To cover up this inconvenient truth they invented such drama queens as Iran and North Korea as serious threats.
wow.
Now as since 1949 NATO´s only job was to destroy Russia in case of hostilities, why on earth should Russia trust that very same organization which has not changed a bit. i
In fact NATO has even grown since 1949, become even stronger and more aggressive, and at the same time all its military structure did not stop being used.
The nucelar and conventional arsenals in essence became ever more dangerous.
Every school kid would understand the Russian concerns immediately. It´s crystal-clear.
It´s extremely simple.
May be that´s why highly paid folks at posh magazines don´t write about this because it would be embarassing to just admit it.
” Since 1991 NATO was expanding and building up and expanding and expanding. While Russia was conceding conceding conceding. ”
Where? Can you give examples?
Just look at the bloody map!
Pears,
yes, as Bayard says, the map of the various stages of NATO expansion (criticized by Yelzin already)
+ destructive purpose of NATO – (which is enshrined in all of its secret military planning documents and in every single one of those until recently it speaks exclusively of the Russian hostile)
+ the core documents of the US National Security Council since 1950 and the Cold War “founding paper” NSC-68
which is important since SACEUR is supposed to be a US general and strategic and non-strategic forces are usuallly equal with US-made and under US-control.
Therefore critics rightly state “NATO=US”. It sounds a bit simplistic, but its military after all. There is no space for ambiguity among soldiers
– altogether all this lines out the “containing” of Russia (1949-1991) and the “rollback” (1991-2022).
Of course NATO had no necessity to actually wage war for some time since Gorbatchev had conceded with the stroke of a pen 1200 miles of vital former USSR territory.
But no one could ever give a single really sound reason for NATO not being dissolved after these watershed moments.
As we know from frm. Secretary of Defense William Perry the US arms industry was in real fear for the first time since 1945, in the early 90s.
Thus lobbying with Eastern European governments for arms sales became paramount.
And NATO´s internal rule, which calls for compatible war machinery and equipment made it “legitimate” and “sound” to re-arm Eastern Europe, now with Western style weapons.
But of course parliaments and governments could only be convinced if these re-armaments were part of an institutional process. So EU-expansion became the key to the lock:
“Become member of NATO and you might become member of EU.”
That was the carrot & stick strategy (NATO being in part the stick, because surveys in the 90s did prove that in majority populations in Eastern Europe did not want any part of this re-militarisation. This is also true for Ukraine even after Crimea.)
Add to this the modernization of US nuclear arsenals which was solely directed against especially Russian facilities and their weaknesses. (China had no arsenals worthy of mentioning. And even now it is minor.)
Tell a Russian nuclear arms physicist that NATO is not directed against Russia and intended for its possible destruction and he will most likely have a great laugh and invite you to a glass of Vodka for making a great joke.
The same would be true for the US-physicist, were he honest or old enough, handing out a glass of Whisky.
(forgive me the clichés.)
p.s. I am not quite sure, why but for some odd reason many people would expect NATO to write an open letter to the citizens of Europe where it would state “We admit that our goal is to destroy the Russian Federation”. Until this happens they will truly think that NATO is angelic.
This however was not the case for many decades. The less people cared about war the less they knew about NATO. One reason for the crumbling of the peace movement. Which in Germany was one major pillar of civil resistance for a long time.
I was hoping for some examples of Russia ” conceding conceding conceding. “
‘Equally and by corollary Russia’s weapons arsenal is the same flying time to Ukraine and other eastern European countries ie. 5 mins.’
Correct and that’s why a buffer zone is needed and which existed prior to NATO’s expansion into it.
Post Comment Note – If I’d read further I’d have seen the more thorough responses
Three NATO countries have borders with Russia, Latvia, Estonia and Norway, Latvia in particular is not that much further away from Moscow than Ukraine so why doesn’t Russia seem equally worried about them?
Finland is de facto another NATO member bordering Russia.
The Russia/Norway border is remote from population concentrations of either country. Latvia and Estonia are part of the post cold war NATO expansions ie the root of the problem. Same issue with Finland, whether NATO or de-facto NATO
Because they didn’t jump up with the slogan ‘Moskalyaku na gilaku’ (do you know what that means?). At least yet.
here the documentation once more :
drafts of RUSSIA-NATO and NATO response:
“17 December 2021
Agreement on measures to ensure the security of The Russian Federation and member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization”
https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790803/?lang=en
NATO response a leaked by El Pais in Dec.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1pdcsBggwZApeVjafmtq2Jngu0ZsDfL6x/view
RUSSIA-USA – (I lack the USA response):
17 December 2021
Treaty between The United States of America and the Russian Federation on security guarantees
https://mid.ru/ru/foreign_policy/rso/nato/1790818/?lang=en
and to quote Tatyana from 2 days ago
“Two days later, Russia published its proposals, one between Russia and the United States and another between Russia and NATO. “We hope that the United States will enter into serious talks with Russia in the near future regarding this matter, which has critical importance for maintaining peace and stability, using the Russian draft treaty and agreement as a starting point,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2022-01/news/us-russia-broaden-strategic-dialogue
Security proposals
https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2022-03/news/russia-us-nato-security-proposals
”
* * *
And this is the SIPRI database on military expenditure worldwide:
https://milex.sipri.org/sipri
The US instigated coup in Ukraine was regarded as lawful including the UK Foreign Secretary.
I sent an e-mail to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 13th March 2014 and a follow up one on 7th April 2014, asking the Foreign Secretary to correct a misleading statement he made to the House of the new regime in Ukraine. He led the House to believe that the Ukrainian parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, had removed President Yanukovych from power on 22 February 2014 in accordance with the Ukrainian constitution and that therefore “it is wrong to question the legitimacy of the new authorities. It is simply untrue that the Rada followed the procedure laid down in the Ukrainian constitution to impeach and remove a president from power.
Article 108 of the Ukraine constitution has four circumstances whereby a President can be replaced, the powers of the President of Ukraine terminate prior to the expiration of term in cases of:
1) resignation;
2) inability to exercise his or her powers for reasons of health;
3) removal from office by the procedure of impeachment;
4) death.
The procedure, laid down in Article 111 of the constitution, is not unlike that required for the impeachment and removal from power of a US president, which could take months.
Thus, Article 111 obliges the Rada to establish a special investigatory commission to formulate charges against the president, seek evidence to justify the charges and come to conclusions about the president’s guilt for the Rada to consider.
Prior to a final vote to remove a president from power, it requires
(a) The Constitutional Court of Ukraine to review the case and certify that the constitutional procedure of investigation and consideration has been followed, and
(b) The Supreme Court of Ukraine must certify that the acts of which the President is accused are worthy of impeachment.
The Rada didn’t follow this procedure at all. No investigatory commission was established and the Courts were not involved. On 22 February 2014, the Rada simply passed a bill removing President Yanukovych from office.
Furthermore, the bill wasn’t even supported by three quarters of the members of the Rada, as required by Article 111 for the removal of a president from office – it was supported by 328 members, when it required 338 (since the Rada has 450 members).
Justifying UK support for the new regime in Kiev in the House of Commons on 4 March 2014, the Foreign Secretary said:
“Former President Yanukovych left his post and then left the country, and the decisions on replacing him with an acting President were made by the Rada, the Ukrainian Parliament, by the very large majorities required under the constitution, including with the support of members of former President Yanukovych’s party, the Party of Regions, so it is wrong to question the legitimacy of the new authorities.”
The Ukrainian President had not resigned, he is still the legitimate President of Ukraine, therefore the Foreign Secretary’s statement was a calculated deception of the House of Commons, designed to give the impression that the procedure prescribed in the Ukrainian constitution for the removal of a president from office had been followed, when it hadn’t.
Because this statement was fundamentally wrong can I be assured that the Foreign Secretary will tell the House of Commons at the earliest opportunity, and through them the British people, that the statement he made on 4th March 2014, was false.
I await your response
Regards Harry Law.
harry law,
I assume no response?
or how do Brits handle this kind of thing?
AG, Correct.
By absenting himself from parliament Yanukovych had effectively resigned. If you don’t turn up to your job without reasonable excuse you’ll find you’re out of a job too. Under those circumstances there was no need to follow the procedure for impeachment because he’d already left office.
Pears Morgaine, he was hounded out….
Nor has US/EU support for the new regime been inhibited by the fact that the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council is now Andriy Parubiy, who was a leader of the paramilitary forces that controlled Independence Square in Kiev. His deputy is Dmytro Yarosh, the leader of Right Sector, a coalition of ultra-right groups.
In an interview with Die Welt on 18 March [11], Parubiy boasted:
“The Russians miscalculated. They did not realise that we would suddenly be able to hound Yanukovych out of office in a matter of days.”
That comes from the horse’s mouth and gives the lie to the assertion in the resolution passed by the Rada on 22 February that Yanukovych had been guilty of “self-withdrawal … from performing his constitutional duties”, that is, he had voluntarily ceased carrying out his duties as president. According to the head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence Council, he was hounded out of office.
Yes he defied the will of the Ukrainian parliament and went with a Russian deal instead of the EU one they’d voted for. They didn’t like it. Surprise, surprise!
Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko requests the supreme court of Ukraine to declare that his predecessor, Viktor Yanukovych, was overthrown by an illegal operation; in other words, that the post-Yanukovych government, including Poroshenko’s own Presidency, came into power from a coup, not from something democratic, not from any authentic constitutional process at all. http://www.vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3624
thx for the link
here in addition a few pasages from Nicolai Petro´s study “THE TRAGEDY OF UKRAINE”, about the crisis that led to “2014”.
For limiting length I am trying to soundly select (for those who have doubts, everything in this book is extremely well documented via multiple sources, which I however will leave out here)
“(…)
2.6.4 Yanukovych and the 2014 Maidan
A 2007 USAID report triumphantly declared: “the Orange Revolution is considered irreversible. Wherever we went and no matter whom we talked with, everyone agreed that the Orange Revolution had changed the political landscape permanently.”
¹³⁴ Three years later president Yushchenko got just 5.5 percent of the popular vote, and the percentage of Ukrainians who trusted the courts and the parliament was even lower.¹³⁵
Not only had Yushchenko’s propaganda of Galician narratives failed to transform Ukraine, it had spawned a counterreaction.
A 2012 Kiev International Institute of Sociology (KIIS) survey found that, when asked whom they would have supported in World War II, 75 percent said the Soviet Army, and only 8 percent said the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
(…)
After his election, Yanukovych did indeed begin to reverse some of Yushchenko’s pro-Galician policies. He dismissed Vyatrovych and Yukhnovskiy, the chief ideologists of Galician Ukrainian history, and restored the traditional policy of not enforcing a unitary version of Ukrainian identity. On the other hand, just like his predecessors, Yanukovych failed to keep his campaign promise to designate Russian a second official language.
(…)
In July 2012, however, the issue was taken out of his hands by his own party. The Party of Regions pushed through the Rada a law that allowed any region
with an ethnic minority constituting more than 10 percent of the local population, to allow its language to be used for official purposes within that region. Within weeks (and in the city of Odessa, the very next day), thirteen of Ukraine’s twenty-seven regions designated Russian as a second official language.
(…)
For Ukrainian nationalists, however, it was an assault on the Ukrainian language, Ukrainian identity, and Ukrainian sovereignty.
(…)
They were now far better politically organized, dominated several regional parliaments in western Ukraine, and had even captured 10 percent of the seats in the Rada. With each electorate now solidly entrenched in its respective region, Ukraine’s body politic was increasingly being whipsawed, back and forth, over issues of language, religion, and political orientation.
The critical event turned out to be, quite unexpectedly, Ukraine’s negotiations over association with the European Union.
I say unexpectedly because, as many of his critics now acknowledge, Yanukovych seemed to be handling these difficult negotiations quite skillfully. It is worth recalling that it was Yanukovych who, in 2010, had signed the lawmaking EU membership a fundamental aspiration for Ukraine, and who, at the EU summit on February 25, 2013, had reiterated Ukraine’s determination to sign an Association Agreement.¹⁴⁰
At home, however, he was hearing more and more complaints from industrialists and oligarchs about the EU’s insistence that the Association Agreement also meant that Ukraine had to withdraw from the Customs Union, a trade agreement among CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) states. Without some form of compensation, two-thirds of the country’s exports would lose their current trade preferences with Russia – a devastating blow for Ukrainian industry.
But for this negotiating strategy to bear fruit, it needed domestic political support, which Yanukovych’s opponents were determined not to give him. In a telling sign of how frayed social discourse had become, Yanukovych’s refusal to sign with the EU and get an even more advantageous deal with Moscow was interpreted as a betrayal of Ukraine’s only proper “civilizational choice.”
(…)”
Nicolai Petro continued:
“(…)
Less than two weeks into the movement, on December 1, 2013, armed radicals from a little known group calling itself the Right Sector tried unsuccessfully to storm the presidential administration building. Although they denied it at the time, this attack was coordinated with the leaders of the political opposition.
On January 19, 2014 they attacked the police and internal militia on Hrushevsky street. Over the next few days, nearly a hundred people were killed by snipers some of whom, the Ukrainian State Prosecutor’s Office would later determine, were located in buildings controlled by the Maidan protesters.
The very next day, in what the Commandant of the Maidan, Andriy Parubiy, later described as a coordinated effort to throw the regime into turmoil, regional administrations in several western regions of the country were seized by rightwing groups loyal to the Maidan.¹⁴⁸ The arsenals of several police stations were looted, and their contents distributed to the protesters on the Maidan. As Yanukovych dithered, discontent rose in the east and south of Ukraine, with regional assemblies demanding an end to the violence and, if necessary, martial law.¹⁴⁹
Despite the bloodshed, many Western observers, including this author who was in Kiev at the time, still clung to the belief that the country’s regional elites would somehow once again manage to step back from the brink of civil war.
(…)
In retrospect, we grossly underestimated the influence of the Far Right, which was not just seeking to sweep away the current political establishment, but the entire political system.
On February 20, 2014, the foreign ministers of Germany, France, and Poland (later joined by a former Russian ambassador) flew to Kiev to broker a peace deal.
By that time, however, nearly a hundred people had been killed in another round of sniper fire coming, again, it now seems, from the area controlled by the Maidan forces.¹⁵⁰ Two days later, a demoralized Yanukovych relinquished his presidential powers and agreed to early presidential elections. In the interim, the acting head of the opposition party Fatherland, Arseniy Yatseniuk, agreed to serve as prime minister.
This agreement, however, was immediately rejected by the Maidan radicals. They stormed the Rada and, without a quorum, and in violation of the impeachment procedures stipulated in the Ukrainian Constitution, they voted to remove Yanukovych from office and replace him immediately with their own candidate, Oleksandr Turchynov.
As Guzhva puts it, for the first time in modern Ukrainian history, a change of regime had taken place through the assault of one part of the country on the rights of another part, rather than through a compromise of regional elites.¹⁵¹ It is therefore no surprise that the influence of the Galician nationalist agenda soon reached unprecedented levels.
Overnight, the Party of Regions and all left-of-center parties were declared illegal, disenfranchising half the country’s electorate. The new ad hoc government was pointedly staffed by western Ukrainians who rejected the idea of a “government of national unity.”¹⁵² The 2014 Maidan became a watershed moment for Ukrainian politics, the moment when national politics shifted from the pursuit of consensus, to the pursuit of explicit Galician political and cultural dominance. This explains why so many Maloross Ukrainians at the time regarded it as a coup.
(…)”
What comedy gold!
“If you don’t turn up to your job without reasonable excuse you’ll find you’re out of a job too”
“Please Sir! There were eighty NATO snipers trying to get me two days ago. They murdered more than fifty innocents. Here they come again…..can I have today off work please?
Even if that were true, which I doubt, there was no need for him to flee the country.
if you cannot see how violent regime change via nazis is good then you are not a highly intelligent, morally superior liberal and do not respect democratic norms and values.
“By absenting himself from parliament Yanukovych had effectively resigned. ”
Ah, yes, that part of the Ukranian Constitution that only you know about.
” Under those circumstances there was no need to follow the procedure for impeachment because he’d already left office.”
Says the world renowned international lawyer. I’d be interested to see the clause in the UN charter you are invoking, however.
Doesn’t have to be written into the constitution. Basic employment law.
Ah, you are an expert in Ukrainian law as well, are you? Not that employment law has got anything to do with it, anyway.
@Goose, “These people aren’t robots, they have empathy and a sense of right and wrong too. Fear and intimidation only work if everyone within an organisation accepts what they are doing is righteous and justified.”
The problem with that approach, is the assumption that the staff in our security organisations know exactly what is going on. However the secrets will be kept on a “need to know” basis, and therefore most staff will only be given the information needed to do their job effectively. They will believe without doubt that their activities are for the good of the nation and anyone who spreads rumours to the contrary (or of gross wrongdoings) are simply conspiracy theorists with a serious mental problem.
Since Clive Ponting the laws have been tightened significantly, and therefore no one will be able to ‘blow the whistle’ without having access to some devastating intelligence drawn from documents they would not be allowed to see without risking their entire careers.
Those in the USA have a written constitution to fall back on, if the manure hits the fan. In the UK there is no such option. These days, anyone who came out with an allegation of serious malpractice would be vilified by the full weight of the MSM almost without exception; and would need to go into permanent hiding with their families in order to avoid the 24 hour harassment from hundreds of journalists; not to mention vigilantes stirred up by said media coverage (including the plainclothes officers).
How many employees would even consider the righteous and justified approach, given this future scenario?
For an alternative to mainstream, I recommend The Duran on Rumble or YouTube. I’ve been following them since this conflict started, and they’ve been proven correct multiple times.
Dear Craig
the Russians claim that the SMO is indeed legal under SC Resolution 2202.
What say you?
Many thanks
Mark
Craig, in particular and in addition to SC Resolution 2202 which put the Minsk I and II agreements under UN process, why do you suggest Russia did not act in accordance with international law under Article 51 of the UN Charter for the following reasons? ;
• First, the Kiev regime was mounting a major offensive with NATO’s help against the Donbass Republics with the intent of destroying them. Intensive shelling had already begun days before Russia acted, the shelling of civilian buildings and infrastructure, which resulted in scores of thousands of civilians fleeing into Russia.
• Second, Russia itself had been attacked multiple times by Kiev regime forces. Saboteurs were sent into Crimea time and again to carry out raids, assassinate officials, to destroy infrastructure. They even cut Crimea’s water supply, a crime against humanity.
• Thirdly, the deeper issue was the imminent threat to Russia from NATO posed by its continuous expansion to the east, its continuous build up of forces and offensive structure pointed at Russia and the scheduled completion September [2022] of the American missile systems in Poland, Romania and Ukraine which could then be used to launch a nuclear attack against Russia.
• Lastly, the NATO powers have lately relied on their bogus legal doctrine of “responsibility to protect” that they invented after the fact to try to justify their aggression against Yugoslavia. No such doctrine exists, but if NATO can rely on it for their wars of aggression, then surely Russia can rely on it to justify their military action to defend the Donbass, and themselves.
https://journal-neo.org/2022/03/08/the-legality-of-war/
“Responsibility to protect” only applies if somebody cares for other human beings as much as people like Samantha Power and Lindsey Graham do for poor Muslims in the Balkans, North Africa or the Middle East.
As you know nobody can match the sincerity of that compassion (least of all Russians for their own people), so “responsibility to protect” is rightly reserved to elite DC psychos.
Natasha
good questions
I assume, the points eventually lack hard evidence.
to cross a border with troops as RU did, is just so obvious an “act” as can be. Everything else will have to be regarded as secondary in legal spheres, I guess.
If we have a problem – it is the interior deficiencies of the system itself, which you could call “rigged”.
I already posed the question, what if there was real evidence of a planned attack by AFU onto Donbas, by the Kiev government.
Anything that could “compete” with the Russian attack in size and severity.
p.s. and then there is the issue of racism. Which clearly is deforming media here.
For instance the non-reporting of limited Russian conduct of war for most of the year 2022, the permanent attempts to find a peaceful solution, the denouncing of calls in the West to reject to take up arms just after Febr. 24th – as if we were in the Middle Ages and Ivanhoe was our idol. So fight to the death instead.
Thank you Natasha, Russia did feel threatened, NATO were encircling Russia by encouraging all countries in Europe to join NATO even when the US promised ‘not to move one inch more to the east after Germany was reunited. Professor Mearsheimer blames the US for these provocations. Then the US unleashed the US state department’s Victoria Nuland on Ukraine, she admitted spending $6 billion dollars on NGO.s and other groups to facilitate the coup in 2014. When the US had regime changed Ukraine and installed their own puppets, NATO proceeded to make Ukraine a de facto member of NATO by building bases and pumping in military equipment [to NATO standard] while at the same time backing Ukrainian assaults on the Russian speaking citizens of eastern Ukraine These assaults were all documented by the independent observers [OSCE] It was estimated that 14,000 people lost their lives during this period.
During this period the Minsk accords were set up in order to facilitate an arrangement for the two oblasts to integrate with the rest of Ukraine possibly with some kind of devolution or possibly some kind of Federal arrangement? As has recently been revealed Porehenko, Angela Merkel and Hollande said they regarded these UN backed accords as simply a time wasting exercise in order to allow NATO to build up military equipment and the Ukrainian army, in other words they deceived Putin and they were quite open about it.
When all NATO,s lies, proven over decades are taken into account Russia had every right to feel threatened by NATO, compounded by their legitimate concerns being dismissed by a shrug of the shoulders by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken. Only the Russian leadership are in a position to know what threatens them.
In view of the above [and more] it is logical to conclude that the expansion of NATO and the civil war being waged against the Russian speaking peoples in the east constituted a serious threat to the Russian Federation in breach of 2[4] of the UN charter.
Did the US feel threatened with Soviet bases in Cuba in 1962? Of course they did, and they took action to stop it under their Monroe doctrine.
1. Even if true the Donbas was, and still is, legally part of Ukraine. None of Russia’s business.
2. Any proof of these saboteurs pre-2022? Even if true a matter for the civil authorities. Under international law any country that invades or annexes another is responsible for water and energy supply. Ukraine had no obligation here.
3. What missile systems do you mean? The US has supplied aircraft defence systems – the deployment of which has increased over the past year, so that worked out well.
4. Russia was never under threat from Ukraine. The poorest country in Europe.
That seems to be the opposite of what UN General Assembly Resolution 2022 is about. I can’t find any reference to any Security Council Resolution 2022.
Craig, your personal acquaintance with the region and language underlines your political and historical knowledge. For that reason it is the kind of perspective I value.
One of the insights about the complex politics of the region for me was a book written about the author’s father, born in then Poland, subsequently Ukraine. On his journeys back to his father’s birthplace, he unravels a complex tale of shifting borders and allegiances, which bring to life the dilemmas and ambiguities of living amongst changing political structures. I highly recommend it:
The Taylor Of Inverness (2013), by Matthew Zajac
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Tailor-Inverness-Matthew-Zajac/dp/190873745X/
O/T.
Daniel Ellsberg, who’s best know for releasing the Pentagon Papers has three months to live, he has pancreatic cancer. He’s written many good articles over the years.
He’ll be missed.
https://www.ellsberg.net/ellsberg-on-nuclear-war-and-ukraine/
https://consortiumnews.com/2023/03/02/daniel-ellsbergs-not-yet-goodbye/
hope it´s okay to paste one of Naked Capitalism´s latest posts:
A long interview on the Assange complex with the great Stefania Maurizi:
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2023/03/secret-power-and-the-persecution-of-julian-assange.html
it contains transcript & video
intro commentary by blogger Yves Smith:
“The UK (and US) have managed to disappear Julian Assange just as effectively as Gitmo detainees. Yet those terror suspects, who overwhelmingly were low level individuals who happened to be in the wrong place in the wrong time, were kept successfully in a legal limbo. Here Assange, who hasn’t been found guilty, is being treated on a par with a convicted Hannibal Lechter level serial killer. An objective of his torture during his pre-trial detention appears to be to render him incapable of assisting in his defense.
This interview reviews the case and the effort to enlist Big Media as allies.”
Thanks for that link, AG. This is the last photo of Julian Assange as understood by Caithlin Johnstone who is preparing an arts project on the disappearance of Julian’s image.
https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2023/02/28/the-disappearing-of-julian-assange-in-my-wallet/
The wider bias-compliant media who once used his revelations and republished them are seemingly jealous and spiteful as he replaced their compliant scribbles of the past by showing them what they missed reporting. The international compliance of the MSM in silencing him shows us all what the real world of the Times, Washington Post, der blinde Spiegel, the New York times and many others consist of, i.e. utter tripe.
His coverage of reality in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq, as well as his coverage of diplomatic exchanges worldwide has no equal and we all should be thanking him every day we are bombarded with the one-sided lies and innuendo on the war in Ukraine.
The Assange case serves as an indicator of the reality of democracy and freedom in the West. Any person in authority or holding power who doesn’t speak out about this injustice is 100% complicit, and that appears to include virtually every Politician, MSM employee and business leaders. There are obvious exceptions but they represent a very, very small percentage of the whole rotten barrel of crooks and cowards. The obvious question, assuming participation, to ask any candidate at any of the corrupt election processes is: “what is your position on Assange ?”.
And, as an aside, re. disappearances, whatever happened to the Skripals ? Does anyone really believe in this connected world that two people could so totally dissappear ?
something visual from Pariser Platz Berlin, a bronze sculpture by Davide Dormino of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning, with an empty chair for anyone who has ‘Anything to say’, the name of the sculpture.
That empty chair was taken by a now disillusioned Nils Melzer on 27th. November 2019 to give a brief speech, after the many politicians who spoke before studiously ignored it.
Nils had realised that by investigating the methods and denials of western Governments, the media and the prison systems during his voluntary job as UN rapporteur on torture investigating the persecution of Julian Assange, that he himself had turned into a dissident.
the next time you get to Berlin visit it and take the opportunity to speak out, say No2NATO No2WAR,
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CD604wQWMAA83JA.jpg
I do not know who the man in the picture is, but it could be Davide Dormino himself.
Great Speech Craig
The whole of western MSM are Evil..Their Lies have cost Millions of innocent lives since Iraq wars. ongoing They seem happy to Lie us into Armageddon
Craig mentioned The rabble rousing performance from Chris Williamson ..It is worth a listen to.
So here is Chris –
at 1hr;12mins –
NO2NATO NO2WAR Rally 25th February
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g9ZTcQkZ68g
Craig didn’t comment on the greatest MSM crime of the past year — its uniform silence on the US blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline.
That world-historic attack has destroyed the competitiveness of European industry and released untold quantities of the top greenhouse gas — methane — into the atmosphere.
Usually there’s nothing the MSM loves more than a terrorist outrage, an Attack on the West! But this one has just been silently accepted by Europe’s politico-media class and by all loudmouth environmental so-called activists.
More heat than light methinks.
Well said Craig !
There are some good points about the West/NATO and the role of the military-industrial complex and also the nature of Russia and an understanding of the colonisation process. But I think Craig pulled his punches in this talk, possibly because the audience would possibly not be sympathetic to the implications behind the observations he made, for example:
1) If the Russia invasion is illegal under international law, like the invasion of Iraq, does that not justify resistance against that invasion, as it did in 2003?
2) If Chechnya and Dagestan have the right to independence from Russia, then surely Ukraine does as well, just like Crimea, which Craig mentions?
3) Craig says the end of the war will look pretty much like the situation at the beginning. I don’t quite understand this. In the beginning, Kyiv was about to be surrounded. It looks very different now. That was the result of the Ukrainians fighting back, at that point with very few arms from the West (and during which they lost a large chunk of their air force which I don’t think has been replaced). Surely they were justified in fighting back? In which case, when did that justification cease to be operative?
One thing it is worth noting is that both the left-wing forces in Ukraine (the Social Movement and anarchists) and in (or now refugees from) Russia support the Ukrainian resistance. We should surely take notice of that and take seriously what they say about this war.
> Craig says the end of the war will look pretty much like the situation at the beginning. I don’t quite understand this.
Nor me. I mean, I guess it depends on which war you’re talking about: the one that began in 2014, or the one that started in 2022.
Either way, I don’t see how it can return to the status pro-ante. The Russian public seem to be strongly anti-Ukrainian; whether Ukraine is able to win back it’s pre-2014 borders, or whether they negotiate some line of control, Ukraine is going to have to fortify their borders with Russia and Belarus. Perhaps if they are victorious, they’ll want a cordon sanitaire running 5 miles into Russian territory. Perhaps there would be a peacekeeping force (it would have to be the biggest peacekeeping force ever).
But no way can Ukraine rely on Russian promises not to invade again.
I think Craig is suggesting that a negotiated settlement would result in a line of control that hands Donbas and Crimea to Russia. The only way that Ukraine would agree to that would be if all Western arms support were withdrawn; but if that happened, then Russia wouldn’t agree, because the de-fanged Ukraine would then be exposed to the maximalist takeover that Putin always intended.
Russia has forfeit their right to lease the Sevastopol naval base. If you go to war on your landlord, don’t be surprised if he repossesses the property.
The case of Nicaragua v United states is instructive in relation to International law here is what the ICJ determined…
1. Did the US violate its customary international law obligation not to intervene in the affairs of another State, when it trained, armed, equipped, and financed the contra forces or when it encouraged, supported, and aided the military and paramilitary activities against Nicaragua?
2. Did the US violate its customary international law obligation not to use force against another State, when it directly attacked Nicaragua in 1983 and 1984 and when its activities in point (1) above resulted in the use of force?
3. Can the military and paramilitary activities that the US undertook in and against Nicaragua be justified as collective self-defence?
4. Did the US breach its customary international law obligation not to violate the sovereignty of another State, when it directed or authorized its aircrafts to fly over the territory of Nicaragua and because of acts referred to in (2) above?
5. Did the USs breach its customary international law obligations not to violate the sovereignty of another State, not to intervene in its affairs, not to use force against another State and not to interrupt peaceful maritime commerce, when it laid mines in the internal waters and in the territorial sea of Nicaragua?
The court’s decision…
The US violated customary international law in relation to (1), (2), (4) and (5) above. On (3), the Court found that the United States could not rely on collective self-defence to justify its use of force against Nicaragua.
The US did not accept the court’s decision and just walked away and refused to pay any reparations.
Jimmeh.. “Russia has forfeit their right to lease the Sevastopol naval base. If you go to war on your landlord, don’t be surprised if he repossesses the property”. As we used to say in junior school You and whose army.
You might say a UN army, well the Russians have a UNSC veto.
Could NATO do it, Ukraine is not in NATO.
Maybe a coalition of the willing, how may fools would agree with taking on Russia? World war 3 anyone.
Finally you seem to not accept the UN charter i.e. All peoples have the right to self determination, the Crimeans by nearly 90% voted to secede from Ukraine with out a shot being fired. Do you wish the people of Crimea to be conquered and then repressed by Ukraine? Do you think Scotland or Wales should be forced to remain in the UK and be repressed by the rest of Britain by force of alms ?
You have clearly not read any of the copious links in the comments regarding this subject.
> by force of alms
Is that a reference to government subsidies for the Scottish budget?
“But no way can Ukraine rely on Russian promises not to invade again.”
When has Russia shown bad faith? If Ukraine had honoured the Minsk deal we wouldn’t have war now.
“The Russian public seem to be strongly anti-Ukrainian;” They are anti having russians murdered and having nuclear missiles on their borders. Thanks to The Ukraine and its master’s dishonesty, Russia will require a cordon sanitaire probably including a demiliterised western Ukraine.It depends how near the West wants to put its nuclear weapons.
” When has Russia shown bad faith? ”
Back in 1991 Russia agreed to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty in return for Ukraine giving up ex-Soviet nuclear weapons. Russia has backed and supported rebel groups in the Donbas despite claims to the contrary. Then there’s MH17 and the lies and laughable conspiracy theories Russia has issued to try and wriggle off the hook.
“Back in 1991 Russia agreed to guarantee Ukraine’s sovereignty in return for Ukraine giving up ex-Soviet nuclear weapons.”
No they didn’t, those nukes were never Ukraine’s, they were the USSR’s nukes in Ukraine. When Ukraine left the USSR, the nukes left, too.
If it wished the west could station nuclear weapons in Estonia and Latvia both of which are already NATO members and not significantly further away from Moscow than Ukraine. Why didn’t Putin attack them? Probably because they are NATO members.
Pears Morgaine
You are asking why Russia did not invade before they become nato members? Why should they?
> They are anti having russians murdered and having nuclear missiles on their borders.
I would be too.
But these murdered “Russians”: If they were really Russians, what were they doing in Donbas? If they were not Russians, they were Ukrainians who speak the Russian language, like roughly half of Ukrainians. And I doubt the claims of murder; wherever they came from, they were engaged in an armed insurrection.
And these nuclear missiles on the Russian border: even the bare-faced liar Lavrov has not claimed that there are nuclear missiles on Russia’s border.
You’ve managed to squeeze two made-up things into one sentence.
Jimmeh
You lack knowledge of the region, like most westerners do.
The people in the eastern part are not only speaking russian but are of russian ethnicity. People in the western ukraine do not see this people as ukrainians but as russians that should not be included in Ukraine.
Thousands of them, have been killed for the past years by Ukrainian government soldiers and groups like the neonazis of the Azov brigade.
The only way I can see this war ending is if Ukraine has sufficient military success to either push Russia out or, perhaps more likely, hold on until Russia is politically destabilised and there is “regime change”. Major political ructions in the USSR followed their pull-out from Afghanistan. This wasn’t an actual military defeat, but physical and economic exhaustion. If such changes occur, then Ukraine may be safe from future incursions and invasions.
Saw Bob Geldof on tv today with a caption under his name which eluded to holding a BandAid concert for Ukraine, I don’t recall a BandAid concert for Yemen, or Iraq or Palestine for that matter taking place or even being touted.
Bob knows who butters his bread. Along with Branson, Blair and a number of other unmentionables he showed his true colours during Brexit. A Davos man through and through.
Yeah Geldof was well in with one of Blair’s top propagandists Paul Vallely, Vallely even ghost wrote Geldof’s autobiography, and he (Vallely) travelled across Africa with Geldof.
It’s just Sir Bob being Sir Bob. A devoted British royalist who called the 1916 Rising a nonsense and said “Ireland was better off under the British Empire”.
> who called the 1916 Rising a nonsense and said “Ireland was better off under the British Empire”.
I knew he was a publicity-hungry clown, but I didn’t know he’d said that kind of thing.
Bob Missing his Fame… He should be in jail along with that dick Bono… For helping to rape Africa… Can’t stand them two ego-worshiping non-entities .
I don’t remember the appeals on TV when I was a kid for the Viet Cong.
It is interesting that The Oscars organisers have not facilitated an audience with President Zelensky.
There are the Chosen Ones and the others ( Untermenschen ?) and Lineker is pointing the way as a genuine Liberal to the orientation of this ultra Thatcherite government.
At the moment neither I nor Mr Lineker cannot see the output of RT to see for ourselves whether Mr Putin is mad or otherwise.
We can however take as good coin statistics from the UK and the USA that the baddies are losing and that the goodies can win.
Meanwhile the Labour leadership wets its finger and sees which way the wind blows in order to win power at the next election.
The question for New New Labour is once you get the power what are you going to do with it?
Answer – we promise to not be as bad as the Tories.
Well …….not much.