Category: Russia

Check Out an Intelligent Conversation About the US War with Russia in Ukraine (Yep, It’s a Needless Proxy War Threatening Nuclear Annihilation)

Below is as worthwhile conversation between Judge Andew Nepolitano and Professor John Mearsheimer about the current war in Ukraine.

Mearsheimer opens by explaining the two competing perspectives on this war. He then explains why the prevailing Western/US perspective is not only wrong-headed but extremely dangerous.

The US public is the #1 financier of this needless bloodbath — to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. It is well worth your time to hear what Professor Mearsheimer has to say.

After listening, I urge you to call your elected representatives and urge them to insist that (1) all parties to the conflict begin immediate peace negotiations, and (2) the US stop funding Ukrainian weaponry and intelligence.

John Mearsheimer Analyzes the Ukraine War

John Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of political science and international relations at the University of

WASHINGTON, USA – FEBRUARY 21 : John Mearsheimer speaks during a panel organised by Foundation for Political, Economic and Social Research (SETA) Foundation in Washington, United States on February 21, 2019.
(Photo by Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)

Chicago.

He provides a rare, sane voice in the American landscape disagreeing with the pro-war, pro-Ukrainian, anti-Russian propaganda dished out day after day by mainstream news networks.

For a well-balanced perspective integrating factors typically ignored or covered up in US broadcasts, check out Mearsheimer’s analysis here.

His most recent article appears here. It is titled, “The Darkness Ahead: Where the Ukraine War is Headed.”

Here is Prof. Mearsheimer’s most recent YouTube interview with one of my favorite, award-winning journalist, Aaron Mate.

Medea Benjamin Explains the War in Ukraine and How to End It

Medea Benjamin is a cofounder of the activist organization CODEPINK. She has recently published a good book investigating the various forces at work in the current war in Ukraine.

She has also released an excellent video covering in the same ground in under 19 minutes.

If you are still wondering how this war began; why the US continues to send billions of dollars in military support; what is motivating Vladimir Putin; and how this war came be brought to a peaceful end; then, by all means, you will find the answers to all your questions in Medea’s video.

What if Putin Had a Plan for Breaking Up America?

How would you react if you discovered that the Russian government had a plan for controlling the US and dividing the country into smaller regional units, with the goal of limiting American influence in the rest of the world?

I suspect that we all would be outraged. Anti-Russian sentiment would surge.

Well, guess what. Many American foreign policy experts in Washington DC have long had exactly such plans for Russia!

And, of course, Russian leaders have always known about these plans, even if they have never been adopted “officially” as US policy towards Russia.

Knowing these facts should help everyone understand — and sympathize with — Putin’s aggression sparked by NATO’s expansion to Russia’s western border.

This does not excuse Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But sympathetic understanding is essential to successful negotiations for anyone hoping to end a war.

Mike Whitney’s article, “Washington’s Plan to Break Up Russian,” explains the problems well at The Greenville Post.

Click on the title above to read the entire piece. Here is an excerpt:

Washington’s animus towards Russia has a long history dating back to 1918 when Woodrow Wilson deployed over 7,000 troops to Siberia as part of an Allied effort to roll back the gains of the Bolshevik Revolution. The activities of the American Expeditionary Force, which remained in the country for 18 months, have long vanished from history books in the US, but Russians still point to the incident as yet another example of America’s relentless intervention in the affairs of its neighbors. The fact is, Washington elites have always meddled in Russia’s business despite Moscow’s strong objections. In fact, a great number of western elites not only think that Russia should be split-up into smaller geographical units, but that the Russian people should welcome such an outcome. Western leaders in the Anglosphere are so consumed by hubris and their own blinkered sense of entitlement, they honestly believe that ordinary Russians would like to see their country splintered into bite-sized statelets that remain open to the voracious exploitation of the western oil giants, mining corporations and, of course, the Pentagon. Here’s how Washington’s geopolitical mastermind Zbigniew Brzezinski summed it up an article in Foreign Affairs:

 

“Given (Russia’s) size and diversity, a decentralized political system and free-market economics would be most likely to unleash the creative potential of the Russian people and Russia’s vast natural resources. A loosely confederated Russia — composed of a European Russia, a Siberian Republic, and a Far Eastern Republic — would also find it easier to cultivate closer economic relations with its neighbors. Each of the confederated entitles would be able to tap its local creative potential, stifled for centuries by Moscow’s heavy bureaucratic hand. In turn, a decentralized Russia would be less susceptible to imperial mobilization.”

A War Foretold in Ukraine

Years ago I was arrested in downtown Chicago for protesting against NATO, an organization that OUGHT to have been disbanded immediately after the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

Its continuous expansion eastward, creeping threateningly country by country toward Russia’s western border, has triggered the current war between Russia and Ukraine — exactly as many had warned.

NATO is continuing its eastward expansion by embracing more Russian neighbors as it is poised to welcome Finland and Sweden into the western, military alliance.

Smart people will recognize the additional threats to European stability found at the heart of these new, senseless memberships being pushed by the US government.

Unfortunately, however, our current crop of foreign policy leaders demonstrate that high SAT scores do not necessarily translate into the considerable wisdom needed to engage in foreign affairs with even a modicum of humility, foresight, and restraint.

How many more times will we throw fuel onto the Ukraine/Russian fire while wringing our bloody hands in feigned innocence and refusing to take any responsibility for our criminal instigations?

As with so many problems in this world, the roots of this war can be traced back to America’s lust for world dominance. Rather than sit down and talk with others about how we might share the global pie, we can’t help but connive in hostile, surreptitious strategies for consuming more and more of the pie for ourselves.

Allow me to add — especially on this 4th of July weekend — that it is much easier for the thoughtful Christian to recognize and identify one’s own nationalistic foolishness — such as belittling Russians, valorizing Ukrainian Nazis, and waving the American flag while imagining that American intervention is the exemplary solution to this world’s problems — once we grasp what it means to “seek FIRST God’s kingdom and his righteousness.”

Once my priorities are properly arranged around the supreme priority of learning to be like Jesus and elevating my KINGDOM CITIZENSHIP above every other loyalty,  I will see excessive patriotism and all forms of nationalism for what they are — IDOLS waiting to be burned in the fires of kingdom living.

Below is an excerpt from a recent article titled “NATO and a War Foretold” by Medea Benjamin and Nicolas Davies, published in Counterpunch.

The entire article is well worth reading as it walks through the history of expert, authoritative warnings against NATO expansion, the very thing we continue to do:

. . . This was indeed a war foretold. Thirty years of warnings and predictions turned out to be all too accurate. But they all went unheeded by an institution that measured its success only in terms of its own endless expansion instead of by the security it promised but repeatedly failed to deliver, most of all to the victims of its own aggression in Serbia, Afghanistan and Libya.

Now Russia has launched a brutal, illegal war that has uprooted millions of innocent Ukrainians from their homes, killed and injured thousands of civilians and is taking the lives of more than a hundred Ukrainian soldiers every day. NATO is determined to keep sending massive amounts of weapons to fuel the war, while millions around the world suffer from the growing economic fallout of the conflict.

We can’t go back and undo Russia’s catastrophic decision to invade Ukraine or NATO’s historic blunders. But Western leaders can make wiser strategic decisions going forward. Those should include a commitment to allow Ukraine to become a neutral, non-NATO state, something that President Zelenskyy himself agreed to in principle early on in the war.

And, instead of exploiting this crisis to expand even further, NATO should suspend all new or pending membership applications until the current crisis has been resolved. That is what a genuine mutual security organization would do, in sharp contrast to the opportunistic behavior of this aggressive military alliance.

But we’ll make our own prediction based on NATO’s past behavior. Instead of calling for  compromises on all sides to end the bloodshed, this dangerous Alliance will instead promise an endless supply of weapons to help Ukraine “win” an unwinnable war, and will continue to seek out and seize every chance to engorge itself at the expense of human life and global security.

While the world determines how to hold Russia accountable for the horrors it is committing in Ukraine, the members of NATO should do some honest self-reflection. They should realize that the only permanent solution to the hostility generated by this exclusive, divisive alliance is to dismantle NATO and replace it with an inclusive framework that provides security to all of Europe’s countries and people, without threatening Russia or blindly following the United States in its insatiable and anachronistic, hegemonic ambitions.

Click here to read the entire piece.

“The US Could Have Prevented This War,” by Caitlin Johnstone

Naturally, the American media continue to pump out false information about the origins and continuation of the war in Ukraine.

Remembering and reminding people of recent history does not make anyone a “Putin-puppet.” In fact, such facile and feeble accusations are a principle indicator that the accuser, without anything more substantive to say, is actually another US government stooge furthering the American party line.

Below is an excerpt from a recent post by the Australian journalist/blogger Caitlin Johnstone. She nails all the relevant issues with precision and accuracy.

Everything she says and documents has been maligned by one US news outlet or another as “Russian propaganda.” That, my friends, is a lie.

But, then, lies are a mainstay of all propaganda, including American propaganda, which is being manufactured fast and furious by the corporate media these days.

A few members of the Nazi Azov battalion which is now part of the Ukrainian military. They have successfully battled the Russian-Ukrainian population of the eastern Donbas region to a standstill. Much of the destruction presented by American media as the result of Russian actions is actually the work of these Russia hating neo-Nazis, who have always been violent ethic-nationalists fighting for a “pure” Ukraine.

The article is entitled “The US Could Have Prevented This War Just by Protecting Kyiv From Nazis.” I encourage you to click on the title above, read the entire article including the highlighted links for background and source information.

Here is the excerpt:

As we hydroplane toward the brink of nuclear armageddon while Bono and the Edge play U2 songs in Kyiv, it’s probably worth taking a moment to highlight the fact that this entire war could have been avoided if the US had simply pledged military protection for Zelensky against the far right extremists who were threatening to lynch him if he enacted the peacemaking policies he was elected to enact.

To be clear, what we are indulging in here is entirely an act of fantasy. In imagining what would have happened if the US had pledged to protect the Ukrainian government from an undemocratic violent overthrow at the hands of fascists instead of waging a horrific proxy war, we are imagining a world in which the US government acts in the highest interest of all instead of working continuously to dominate the planet no matter how much madness and cruelty it needs to inflict upon humanity. A world in which the US hadn’t been taking steps toward the orchestration of this proxy war for many years.

With that out of the way, it’s just a simple fact that for a fraction of the military firepower the US is pouring into Ukraine right now, it could have prevented the entire war by simply protecting Ukrainian democracy from the undemocratic impulses of the worst people in that country.

When he was asked by The Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel last month what he thinks is preventing Kyiv from signing a peace agreement with Russia, John Mearsheimer, whose analysis of this conflict has been prophetic for many years, replied as follows:

I think that when Zelensky ran for president he made it very clear that he wanted to work out an arrangement with Russia that ended the crisis in Ukraine, and he won. And what he then tried to do was move toward implementing the Minsk II agreement. If you were going to shut down the conflict in Ukraine, you had to implement Minsk II. And Minsk II meant giving the Russian-speaking and the ethnic Russian population in the easternmost part of Ukraine, the Donbas region, a significant amount of autonomy, and you had to make the Russian language an official language of Ukraine.

I think Zelensky found out very quickly that because of the Ukrainian right, it was impossible to implement Minsk II. Therefore even though the French and the Germans, and of course the Russians were very interested in making Minsk II work, because they wanted to shut down the crisis, they couldn’t do it. In other words, the Ukrainian right was able to stymie Zelensky on that front.

When Mearsheimer says that the Ukrainian right was able to stymie Zelensky, he doesn’t mean by votes or by democratic processes, he means by threats and violence. In an article last month titled “Siding with Ukraine’s far-right, US sabotaged Zelensky’s mandate for peace,” journalist Aaron Maté wrote the following:

In April 2019, Zelensky was elected with an overwhelming 73% of the vote on a promise to turn the tide. In his inaugural address the next month, Zelensky declared that he was “not afraid to lose my own popularity, my ratings,” and was “prepared to give up my own position – as long as peace arrives.”

But Ukraine’s powerful far-right and neo-Nazi militias made clear to Zelensky that reaching peace in the Donbas would have a much higher cost.

“No, he would lose his life,” Right Sector co-founder Dmytro Anatoliyovych Yarosh, then the commander of the Ukrainian Volunteer Army, responded one week after Zelensky’s inaugural speech. “He will hang on some tree on Khreshchatyk – if he betrays Ukraine and those people who died in the Revolution and the War.”

US Pentagon Says that There is No Evidence that Russia is Intentionally Targeting Civilians

At Consortium News Joe Lauria describes the ongoing battle that has broken out between the Pentagon, the State Department, and Congress over America’s military posture towards Russia.

The Pentagon. photo by Joe Lauria

Guess which agency is fighting the hardest to avoid an all-out war with the nuclear-armed Russian Bear — yep, the military guys at the Pentagon.

Because, as crazy as they may be at times, those military professionals know stuff.

They know about the consequences of nuclear war.

Below is an excerpt from Lauria’s article titled “Pentagon Drops Truth Bombs to Stave Off War with Russia.”

To summarize its conclusion — don’t believe the official, mainstream narrative about Russia’s actions in Ukraine. No, Russia is not losing. No, Russia is not targeting civilians. No, Russia is not currently planning to flatten Ukraine.

Below is an excerpt (emphasis is mine):

. . . But on Tuesday, the Pentagon took the bold step of leaking two stories to reporters that contradict those tales. “Russia’s conduct in the brutal war tells a different story than the widely accepted view that Vladimir Putin is intent on demolishing Ukraine and inflicting maximum civilian damage—and it reveals the Russian leader’s strategic balancing act,” reported Newsweek in an article entitled, “Putin’s Bombers Could Devastate Ukraine But He’s Holding Back. Here’s Why.”

The piece quotes an unnamed analyst at the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) saying, “The heart of Kyiv has barely been touched. And almost all of the long-range strikes have been aimed at military targets.”

A retired U.S. Air Force officer now working as an analyst for a Pentagon contractor, added: “We need to understand Russia’s actual conduct. If we merely convince ourselves that Russia is bombing indiscriminately, or [that] it is failing to inflict more harm because its personnel are not up to the task or because it is technically inept, then we are not seeing the real conflict.”

The article says:

“As of the past weekend, in 24 days of conflict, Russia has flown some 1,400 strike sorties and delivered almost 1,000 missiles (by contrast, the United States flew more sorties and delivered more weapons in the first day of the 2003 Iraq war). …

A proportion of those strikes have damaged and destroyed civilian structures and killed and injured innocent civilians, but the level of death and destruction is low compared to Russia’s capacity.

‘I know it’s hard … to swallow that the carnage and destruction could be much worse than it is,’ says the DIA analyst. ‘But that’s what the facts show. This suggests to me, at least, that Putin is not intentionally attacking civilians, that perhaps he is mindful that he needs to limit damage in order to leave an out for negotiations.’”

A second retired U.S. Air Force officer says:

“I’m frustrated by the current narrative—that Russia is intentionally targeting civilians, that it is demolishing cities, and that Putin doesn’t care. Such a distorted view stands in the way of finding an end before true disaster hits or the war spreads to the rest of Europe. I know that the news keeps repeating that Putin is targeting civilians, but there is no evidence that Russia is intentionally doing so. In fact, I’d say that Russian could be killing thousands more civilians if it wanted to.”

These Pentagon sources confirm what Putin and the Russian Ministry of Defense have been saying all along: that instead of being “stalled,” Russia is executing a methodical war plan to encircle cities, opening humanitarian corridors for civilians, leaving civilian infrastructure like water, electricity, telephony and internet intact, and trying to avoid as many civilian casualties as possible. . . 

Read the entire article here.

Col. Douglas Macgregor Offers Important Insights into the War in Ukraine

Former top Pentagon advisor retired Colonel Douglas Macgregor was recently interviewed by journalists Max Blumenthal and Aaron Mate at The Grayzone.

The Colonel offers a VERY different perspective on the war in Ukraine, Russia, Putin, NATO, and the US role in this conflict than you will ever hear from the monolithic, pro-war, propaganda machine called “news” in this country.

Colonel Macgregor’s interview takes up the first 60 minutes of this two hour video. Max and Aaron discuss the issues in the second hour.

I strongly encourage you to listen to the Colonel’s words. If only Biden were listening…

See the Image of God Shine Brightly in Abby Martin

Our current American moment offers an glaring example of the corporate media’s power to generate, manipulate. and circumscribe public opinion.

If it’s not broadcast on the news, then it does not exist. Corporate editors at CNN, Fox, or whichever newsroom decide what we will care about today.

They only show us what they want us to see, knowing full well that the average American will never look any further than the edited images her favorite news channel shows to her.

The network news room also decides how we will think and feel about the events they have selected for us to see that day. We are all constantly being manipulated by the big business arms of major media outlets.

Tragically, the conservative wing of the Christian church is among the most  easily manipulated because we confine ourselves to the most narrow, like-minded sources of information — Fox News and whichever “Christian” TV and/or radio stations we prefer, all of which are promotional arms of the Republican party.

Thus are we manicured, buffed, groomed, trimmed, and made to fit into the preconstructed box of conventional, American nationalism — including Christian nationalism.

This box guarantees that America always wears the white hat while America’s enemies (as defined by the American government and its communication stooges) always wear the black hats.

Yet, that brand of patriotic, nationalistic identity is as far removed from life in the kingdom of God as is the east from the west, or as far as heaven is removed from hell.

Yet, the wisdom available by way of God’s Image within us, an Image with which every human being is equally endowed, still shines brightly in many.

Anyone who has followed this blog knows how much I admire the investigative journalism of Abby Martin. Her program The Empire Files has long provided a wide-ranging, independent, internationalist perspective on world events. The very perspective that US corporate media will never provide.

Abby was recently interviewed by The Real News Network — another independent outlet I highly recommend — to discuss the Russian invasion of Ukraine as well as the role played by the US and NATO in fostering this conflict.

I suspect that Abby is an atheist or agnostic, although I don’t know for sure. However, her humanistic moral compass points to true north. The following excerpt from her interview provides the most “Christian” analysis that I have yet to hear about America’s relationship to the war in Ukraine.

Abby begins by reminding everyone of the many bombs dropped regularly by the US and our allies around the world every day. The map below was drawn up yesterday. How many Americans are mourning for the brown and black bombing victims in Syria, Yemen, or Somalia?

I’ll tell you:  few, if any.

The media ensures that our national heartache is very narrowly circumscribed, limited to only the “worthy victims” that the US government identifies as the victims of “our enemies.”

It also should be noted that these worthy victims are also white Europeans. People who look like us. That is a large part of what makes them “worthy.”

Ukrainians are not like the brown and black “hoards” fleeing as displaced refugees from the homelands that the US and its allies have demolished in Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Those poor people are “unworthy victims” who deserve to be turned away at the border.

What condemnable, wicked rubbish is fed to us by our corporate masters under the label “news.”

And oh how completely we condemn ourselves by surrendering our loyalty to the deceitful siren songs of national pride and foreign policy preferences.

Now, please watch as Abby Martin reflects more of the mind of Christ regarding world affairs than I have ever heard from the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN).

The Full Story on Ukraine is Being Withheld from the American People, Part 3

I have decided to shift gears in this third part of this series about US propaganda and the Russian attack on Ukraine

American “news” rarely if ever mention the economic factors that have moved both Ukraine and Russia into their current hostilities.

The manipulative intentions of the European Union (together with NATO) , the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank are central to aggravating the relationship between these two countries.

My eyes first began to be opened to these issues years ago when I first decided that I needed to be better informed about US foreign policy. Two books were crucial to that formative education. The first was, John Perkins’ book Confessions of an Economic Hitman, with a new second edition called The New Confessions of an Economic Hitman.

Perkins tells his story of working for the CIA throughout Latin America on behalf of American corporations, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund. It’s a mind-boggling account of how the CIA works on behalf of US corporate powerbrokers by forcing 3rd world governments into perpetual indebtedness.

The second book was David Talbot’s book The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America’s Secret Government.  Talbot traces the origins of the CIA and the formative role played by US corporations in shaping its “mission” around the world.

Rather than explaining more myself, below are 3 conversations, or 3 parts

Journalist Bryce Greene

of a single conversation, with journalist Bryce Greene, a reporter for F.A.I.R. Media Watch discussing the importance of America’s enforcement of neo-liberal economics via the International Monetary Fund (IMF) throughout the world — including the European Union:

The third installment below is called “The History of US Intervention (in Russia and Ukraine)”