The U.S. president told reporters at the White House that Putin has made up his mind to attack and will be unable to “change the dynamic” in Europe, writes Joe Lauria.
Biden at White House press briefing on Friday. (Ruptly screenshot)
By Joe Lauria
Special to Consortium News
President Joe Biden said Friday he’s convinced Russian President Vladimir Putin has decided to invade Ukraine in the coming days and that Russia would fail to create a new system in Europe that takes its security into account.
“As of this moment I’m convinced he has made the decision” to invade, Biden told a reporter in response to a question at a White House press briefing. Asked how he knows this, Biden said, “We have a significant intelligence capability.”
Biden also flatly asserted that the capital, Kiev, would be attacked:
“Russian troops currently have Ukraine surrounded. We have reason to believe Russian forces are planning and intend to attack Ukraine in the coming week, in the coming days. We believe they will target the capital Kyiv, a city of 2.8 million innocent people.”
If such a horrific scenario were true, wouldn’t Washington have sent its military to defend its ally? That the U.S. hasn’t, undercuts the credibility of U.S. intelligence.
“We also will not send troops in to fight in Ukraine, but we will continue to support the Ukrainian people,” he said, apparently as they are being slaughtered in their beds by Russian bombs — the only conclusion that can be drawn.
For Biden, supporting the Ukrainian people translates into $650 million spent by the U.S. in the past year to “bolster Ukraine’s defenses,” and U.S. arms manufacturers’ profits. Even with all this hardware, the Ukrainian military is no match for Russia’s, as the U.S. would be.
“The United States and its allies and partners will support the Ukrainian people,” Biden said. “We will hold Russia accountable for its actions. … The entire free world is united” against Russia and sanctions will be imposed once this invasion happens.
If you were Ukrainian, living in Kiev, how would you feel if the president of the United States just said he’s convinced your city will be bombed by a major military power in days and all he’ll do for you is punish your attackers by hitting their finances? Or maybe you are like some Ukrainians, including your president, who thinks this invasion is a figment of Biden’s imagination (and who has left the country just before his nation is supposed to be attacked!)
NATO at the Crux
You might also conclude that this isn’t about you at all, but about the U.S. and NATO not allowing Russia to say enough to NATO’s threatening expansion towards its borders. Instead of sending U.S. troops to defend you, the U.S. sent more troops to Eastern Europe, nowhere near the expected theater of war.
“The United States and its allies are prepared to defend every inch of NATO territory from any threat to our collective security,” Biden said at the White House, though the U.S. is not claiming that any NATO nation faces attack.
Russian troop deployments near Ukraine happen regularly. But this time the U.S. cried “Invasion!” Why?
Because this time the Russian troop movement coincided with Moscow presenting draft treaty proposals to the U.S. and NATO drawing a deep redline after decades of objecting to the Western military alliance moving ever closer to Russia, a country that was invaded by and defeated the largest European powers of the 19th and 20th centuries.
The U.S. reacted to these bold proposals by changing the subject. It went on offense, accusing Russia every day of planning to invade Ukraine.
Russia’s draft proposals would see:
- NATO roll back forward troop deployments from former Warsaw Pact states, now NATO members;
- NATO would not admit Ukraine and Georgia as members and
- The U.S. would remove long-range missiles in Romania and Poland and not deploy new ones in Ukraine.
The direct response to the first proposal was the opposite of what was demanded: more NATO troops were sent to the former Warsaw Pact states, instead of sending U.S. troops to defend Ukraine. Ukraine does not need to be a NATO member to request U.S. forces. Ukraine has never made this request because it doesn’t believe an invasion is imminent.
Perhaps the most significant thing Biden said on Friday is that Putin “believes he has the ability to change the dynamics in Europe in a way that he cannot.” Translation: the U.S. will never sign those treaties to roll back NATO deployments, remove long-range missiles in Eastern Europe and keep Georgia and Ukraine out of the alliance.
The key word in a White House readout last week after a Putin-Biden phone call was “diminish,” as in Russia will be “diminished” if it invades Ukraine through both sanctions and world condemnation. Diminishing Russia is Washington’s aim. Neither will happen without the invasion.
The Donbass Offensive
Biden also shot down the notion that Ukrainian government forces are planning an offensive against Donbass.
The leaders of two largely ethnic Russian breakaway provinces in eastern Ukraine on the border with Russia earlier Friday asked their civilian populations to flee to Russia because of an impending offensive from government forces in Kiev. That could draw regular Russian units in to protect civilians, giving the Americans the invasion they seem to be begging for.
Monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), who are on the ground, reported 222 ceasefire violations and 135 explosions in Donetsk on Thursday and 648 ceasefire violations and 519 explosions in Lugansk.
Biden acknowledged there’s been a “major uptick” in ceasefire violations. But he blamed them all on “Russian-backed fighters attempting to provoke Ukraine in the Donbass.” Biden said there’s “more and more disinformation being pushed out to the Russian public, including Russian-backed separatists, claiming that Ukraine is planning to launch a massive offensive attack in the Donbass.”
“Well look,” Biden went on, “There is simply no evidence of these assertions and it defies basic logic to believe the Ukrainians would chose this moment, with well over 150,000 troops arrayed on its borders, to escalate a year-long (sic) conflict.” Biden said this was “consistent with the Russian playbook that has been used before, to set up a false justification to act against Ukraine.”
Of course if a U.S.-backed offensive has begun in order to draw Russia in, Biden would cover it up by calling talk of an offensive Russian disinformation. Biden praised the “great restraint” of Ukrainian forces at the contact line. “They have refused to allow Russia to bait them into war,” he said.
But who is baiting whom?
Joe Lauria is editor-in-chief of Consortium News and a former U.N. correspondent for The Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, and numerous other newspapers. He was an investigative reporter for the Sunday Times of London and began his professional work as a 19-year old stringer for The New York Times. He can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter @unjoe
People often say that,” Wisdom comes with age.” I am wondering where that wisdom is for Biden, Blinken and the military.
It seems, as if the GOP won’t help with Congress accomplishing much— maybe the GOP is the true enemy of the moment? It does seem sad and ridiculous when the Congress is paid to work—but apparently not to do much for the People. Why is that?
Does anyone know if ‘The Russian Playbook” is available on Amazon?
It is. It’s written by some American guy. Oh yeah, that’s it, it’s by C. I. Andserson.
It looks like Biden really wants and needs a war. Every day he yells wolf. He ignores the fact that Ukraine is not a NATO MEMBER, has not been attacked and not a single NATO country has been attacked, that includes the USA.
Russia is a European power, and really suffered huge losses, and the last thing Putin and the Russian people want would be to turn Europe into the battlefield for American interests. The US/UK would destroy Europe with bombs, their method of waging war, then turn their backs on Europe and brag about how heroic and great they are turning the whole continent into ruins and ashes, not counting the millions killed, women and children included. Iraq and Afghanistan can tell us.
NATO countries should tell Biden ” without us” What do they have to lose with a friend like the US?
I agree and I think it is time that the US realize they have to work on their States and not “export democracy” that is “export war” everywhere in the world. We disagree with the last american Presidents, always fighting in the world but in their countries democracy is very far from freedom and equality. It’s time they understand they are not the pioneers who colonize the world and it’s time to work and consolidate the human rights in their countries where black people are killed like flies or birds during a hunting day.
One of the main points about the spin put on these events by the Western “free media”. is the complete lack of any tiny difference among any of the outlets, and the refusal even to allow any reply by the Russians. This is “advanced democracies”, allowing different points of view to be debated rationally? I remember the “Skripal novichok ” saga, when the accusation by the rabidly Russophobic Theresa May government was immediately used to punish the Russians with no reply allowed. The “highly likely” theme, refusing to consider the obvious lack of reasons Russia would act in this way, continued with offensive UN accusations etc for a year, and of course it was never proven. This is exactly, on a worse and bigger level, we see now. Since the USA?UK and their allied media lie (I am in France,and they are word for word repeats of the same accusations with no evidence) they assume the Russians do as well. Thousands of hours of videos of Putin explaining so many issues would show a fair observer that he does not lie. Seems impossible! Why not at least let him be listened to.
I remember that too and Theresa May had the BBC World Radio repeating her propaganda!
Our sad media let her get away with lies and disinformation, which seems to be the way Tory PM s
get away with anything!
Just listening to Boris, today, being interviewed by the BBC and using his Eton taught clipped speech, but never giving an answer…demonstrates, that they think they are superior, but, its time for them to go, before Boris joins Biden, to murder thousands of people..as they did in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria! They are warmongers, who love their weapons of mass destruction!
Back in March of 2014, Chris Ernesto outlined Brzezinski’s overview of Ukraine’s strategic importance to Russia. This article summarizes some of Zbig’s opinions, excerpts taken from his infamous 1997 book, The Grand Chessboard. Since 1997 there have been several changes to both the technological and geopolitical(military) posture within the Eurasian region. For example; Russia no longer requires the mineral resources of Ukraine, because the Chinese BRI will eventually be a conduit that will provide rare earths for high tech finished products like computers and cell phones. The Taliban have already invited China to play a role in (true) economic development and in principle have negotiated plans that accelerate the BRI initiative. The Chinese-Taliban alliances will ensure mineral and rare earth deliveries to Russia.
Russian naval access to the Black Sea via the Ukraine is of diminishing importance since efforts have begun to expand their naval port in Tartus as well as the Hmeimim air base in Latakia Syria. They are currently in the throes of constructing a floating dock (port) at its naval base in Tartus that will be completed by the end of this year. Warm water access is now guaranteed. This new posture is coupled with the very recent deployment and testing of the Zircon anti-ship hyper sonic cruise missile and the RS-24 Yars ballistic missiles. The Zincon can destroy any aircraft carrier with one salvo and the RS-24 serves as the Russian arm of Armageddon, much like our sub launched D-5’s do.
Zbig, that old cold warrior and the many, “Check-Point Charlie(s)” of the past, are just that- in the past. The hatred and animus in Brzezinski’s psyche for anything Russian is clear enough and it seeps into his interpretations and historical perspectives. Tho, it must be acknowledged here that, Poles hating Germans and Russians hating the other two probably lie just beneath the skin of so called- western Europe’s “civility”. There was and remains a European predilection towards warring with their immediate neighbors, so it goes…we here in the USA had our “civil war” In effect, we “had it out” amongst our own brothers and cousins, thus will never return to repeating old and prejudicial mistakes, nor flirt with secession (as Texan’s often do) However the EU has yet to evolve as successfully as the USA has among its differing cultures. I’m referring to peoples south and north of the Mason-Dixon line. That said, someone with great power and influence? assumed that a monetary union, a Euro EU economic integration plan run by the un-elected, Oberführer(s) who do the bidding of Banksters- aka Brussels, could (somehow) accomplish what all the intricacies and fruits of the American Civil War did however that effort and its conspiracies simply petered out. Example; the Germans like to hoard their own Euro’s and skip anything fiat, or anything else, from southern Europe.
What, might spell real trouble for world peace and security? Most likely it won’t be in the Donbass, rather those events that immediately follow a collapse of the EU/Euro. The initiating catalyst will be France. Then everyone will witness what the real problem was in the first place, a collision between monetary systems and their developmental policies (nation building). Wall Street, London, Brussels, Japan, Rothschild and FR banking cartels are now in direct opposition to the Yuan-Ruble both backed by enormous gold reserves. I had hopes that crypto-Bitcoin would come to the rescue, perhaps mitigating between this new bi-polar world but there’s just not enough Bitcoin to influence either side.
Nice to know old Joe still says there’s such a happy place as “the free world”, and we’re in it, hooray for us. What a fine compensation for being excluded from what George Carlin called “the big club”, where the power is.
There is an intriguing symmetry in the Washington regime’s current blather about Putin scheming a “false flag” op to justify invading Ukraine, when it was in fact Putin who sabotaged Obama’s attempt to use a false flag chemical attack in Syria to start a bombing campaign against that unhappy country, in that awful unfree world.
The reason why there is no large-scale attack on DNR/LNR by Ukraine according to Biden (from the text of the article): „There is simply no evidence of these assertions and it defies basic logic to believe the Ukrainians would chose this moment, with well over 150,000 troops arrayed on its borders to escalate a year-long (sic) conflict.”
Well, here, Biden may be on to something. As long as a similar number of Russian troops is on the other side of Donbass, the large number of Ukrainian troops is less likely to attack the unrecognized Donbass republics.
But then he should also come to the plausible conclusions that
– deterring an Ukrainian attack is the main goal of the presence of relatively large troops in Rostov and Voronezh districts
– if Russia really drastically reduced the number of troops im that area, as some in the West demand (as if they could demand which Russian troops should be stationed where in Russia) the risk of war would increase because the deterrent against an Ukrainian attack on Donbass would be weaker.
Thanks to these troops, the risk of war is now relatively small. But by trying to make sure that anything that happens will be blamed on Russia and that any reports about victims of a Ukrainian attack on Donbass are preventively dismissed as „fake“, the US and Great Britain obviously increase the incentive that extremist elements in the Ukrainian forces (e.g. Azov battalion, right sector) would still start a large-scale attack on Donbass and try to involve the rest of the Ukrainian forces.
It is also quite stunning when Western propaganda wants to brand the danger of something that already happened in 2014/15, a large-scale brutal war against Donbass with many victims among the civilian population, as „fake“, while phantastic scenarios with the largest war in Europe since WWII for which it is never explained how they might be in Russia’s interest should be regarded as realistic, likely, and plausible according to that propaganda.
Biden won’t commit any US Soldiers to go & fight in the Ukraine because there’s nothing to steal? American Soldiers are only sent in when there’s something to steal, like the Oil or other Resources in Syria & Iraq & other places etc. America is just a Mafia Organisation run by Gangsters, thieves, Murderers & conmen!
In 2014 and 15 when the nazi Azov battalion and other fascists began attacking the Donbass area and other towns in the east, one could occasionally find an article by an independent reporter who had actually talked to someone in that area and who would tell us what the residents say is going on. That died out fairly quickly as it became apparent that these stories were having a minor but deleterious effect on the main theme the US was providing.
Today, as far as I can tell, no one has interviewed anyone from these eastern towns that are part of the so-called “Civil war”. I find it odd that not a single commentator or reporter has remarked on this fact. I keep looking for a report from a citizen of Donbas or the other town telling us what their version of these attacks are. We know what the Ukraine government says and we know what the US says and we have interviews with people from Germany and France and the UK and even Sweden and Finnland on occasion, but no one has talked to the people who live there. Am I the only person who wants to know what they are thinking and what they want, and how they are surviving?
I think we have a rampant case of what Caitlin calls “the Overton Window” that is best described by this Noam Chomsky quote:
The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow a very lively debate within that spectrum …that gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits on the range of debate.”
The Main Stream Media (MSM) has removed the words “nazi” and “Sevastopol” from the debate. No MSM mentions the nazis in the government and in the Ukraine military, no MSM ever mentions Sevastopol in Crimea which is the prime reason that Russia accepted the Crimean referendum that resulted in 95% of the people asking Russia to take them back. Putin’s government knew that NATO had its eye on Sevastopol and would take it over. It has been a main Russian port for over 200 years, and is the only warm water port that Russia has. But no mention is made of it. And now we have fighting in the Donbass and no one wants to talk to any of the citizens there. I’d say these are three very powerful limits on the range of debate. Wouldn’t you?
Biden said: “The United States and its allies are prepared to defend every inch of NATO territory…”
He appears to think that NATO is a country.
In other words, the US will not defend Ukraine. :-)
The latest headlines concerning the Ukraine crisis:
1. Biden is convinced Putin will invade Ukraine.
2. Austin says Russian Invasion is not inevitable.
3. Blinken says if Russia does not invade Ukraine it is only because he and Biden exposed Putin’s
nefarious plans.
4. Whole world, including Russia, is against Russian invasion of Ukraine.
5. Zelensky says Russian sanctions needed before invasion.
6. Zelensky says security architecture in Europe is broken and it’s time to create a new one.
7. Van der Leyen says Russia blatantly trying to rewrite rules of the international system.
8. China’s Foreign Minister Wang says Russia’s security concerns legitimate.
Donald Johnson: Van der Leyen has proven to be a complete disappointment, an unforgivable coward, out of her depth. America is playing her like a fiddle and she is leading the EU nowhere except further into America’s Cold War embrace. Goodbye and good riddance to her. The sooner the better.
The war mongering that has been going on in the Western MSM would make William Randolph Hearst blush.
I guess it’s time for Russia to start dialing up the “military-technical” operations to make NATO and the EU start feeling some pain. With fracture lines opening up in the NATO alliance, the US needs a war to bring its allies back under control. Shortages of natural gas and petroleum as well as steeply rising prices for both will make many Europeans wonder about their level of concern for Ukraine as well as their fealty to the United States.
Regarding the impending conflict, one would assume that the breakaway provinces in the Donbass have been well supplied with weaponry by Russia. Also, I expect that their morale is a good deal higher than that of the Ukrainian forces. Maybe, just maybe, they will be able to repel a Ukrainian offensive without direct the involvement of Russia. If not, Russia’s standoff weapons can do the job without any of its forces taking one step across the border. In any event, Western leaders and media scribes will place all blame for the war on Russia. Only in the aftermath will (some) people learn the truth.
Scott Ritter’s recent post on Consortium News agrees with you that Russian stand-off forces can destroy the Ukrainian advance without taking one step on Ukrainian land. Biden’s notion that Russia somehow wants to invade Ukraine is complete nonsense. Logically, no sane person would want to inherit the mess that Ukraine has become.
Reading the coded message; the Fascist Ukrainian military is now in place on the border with the Donbas to begin Operation Putin’s Invasion by firing on the break away regions thus drawing a reaction from Russia. In other words, Washington has decided to declare a Russian invasion no matter what. Gulf of Tonkin anyone?
Biden is a warmonger and wants us to pay for his fantasy war with Russia. Please turn off his mic, he might hurt someone.
I like Finian Cunningham’s term for U.S. Corps’ behavior since the demise of the Soviet Union and the supposed end of The Cold War: “degenerate conduct” (in his 2/17 Strategic Culture Foundation piece). Continues right up to & including Bido & Co.
Having now shot himself in both feet maybe Biden will have to start shooting members of his administration, hopefully Blinken will be first.
Frankly, all the American BS!!! is more than tiresome, enough to make one puke!!! The all-knowing Yanx…can’t even look after their own country but always ready to stick their noses where it doesn’t belong.
This translates into: “We’ve made Zelensky an offer that he’s (correctly) convinced he can’t refuse, so he’ll be restarting the Ukraining civil war that was the result of our coup of 2014 … the Russian reaction to which will constitute the “invasion” we’ve been promising … errr …. predicting
Potus46 speaks of “capability” from a fearful lecturn;
‘It’s the usa which has Ukraine surrounded and threatens Ukraine and The Bear!
Thankyou for your writing …
Russia, or more specifically, the Soviet Union was defeated! And America defeated it! America is the victor! God loves us! Oh how the neocons and warmongers need to hail and hold close this “victory narrative,” a validation of all their (failed) schemes for world-dominance. So, if America is the victor, where are the spoils? And therein lies the basis of the American state’s fury toward Russian, and specifically toward Putin. Putin robbed America of its dream of looting and pillaging a defeated Russia. I daresay that for many, perhaps most, of this crowd, it is just that utterly trivial. And here we are today. These people who have spent their lives keeping themselves personally out of harms way (great thinkers like them are way too valuable to risk in actual service), are ready to plunge the world into war so that they can pat themselves on the back and think that they are great men, and women, instead of cockroaches. Far better to fumigate instead…
A self-proclaimed neo-Nazi Azov Battalion is currently shelling the territories of Eastern Ukraine in violations of the Minsk agreement I and Minsk agreement II. The Azov Battalion “which recruits neo-nazis from all across Europe is sporting Wolfsangel arm patches straight from the SS, and is now incorporated in Ukraine’s National Guard.
The vast, CIA/MI6 “revitalized” stay-behind networks and … in-progress $10 billion Eric Prince (Blackwater/Academi) scheme of setting up a private mercenary army via a partnership between the Lancaster 6 company and CIA-controlled Ukraine intel.”
A comment: Where is the Jewish Community of the US to condemn the US government and US military support for the neo-Nazis? “The US government stands firmly next to a swastika” indeed. Where are the Jewish Lobby and the ADL to express their opinions of the active and well-documented collaboration with Ukrainian neo-Nazis?
Where is the Jewish Community of the UK to condemn the UK government and UK military support for the neo-Nazis?
“Putin robbed America of it’s dream of looting and pillaging a defeated Russia.” Perfectly stated and you hit the nail right on the head. America despises anyone or anything that refuses to be it’s slave.
Thank you. Yes, totally agree. Speak of the “banality of evil”; starting a war, playing with the lives of tens, hundreds of thousands of people, even worse, beginning a new multi-generational Cold War that will a plague generations of people around the world for who knows how long, or how it will end up. We only escaped the last one intact not by skill, only by sheer, blind luck. All for the sake of the tiny minds and egos of these miserable creatures.
I was there for the first Cold War. I remember the Cuban missile crisis. I remember watching my father and mother moving around like zombies, trying to maintain, to keep up routine while staying glued to the TV and radio, my father filling cardboard boxes with canned foods, water and batteries and taking them down to the cellar. Finally, on the day that the all-clear sounded, I watched as my father sat down in a corner and just cried. It was the first time that I had ever seen my father cry and it hurt and terrified me to the depths of my heart.
Anyone who was not there during the Cold War has absolutely no fucking idea, not a goddamn, fucking clue of the unrelenting horror, every day, every single day, for seventy years. Sometimes out of sight but always in the back of your mind, never far away: Will this be the day? What joy is awaiting everyone who is blithely going along with this, just leaving it to the “experts” (what a joke) who are running the country.
For the parents of today, they can look forward to practicing “duck and cover” drills with their children. From grades 1 to 6, each week, we practiced in school; into the hallway, away from the windows, don’t look at the flash!, crouch, head between your knees, arms over your head, in case a nuclear bomb went off nearby. 70 fucking years of this horror, every, single, day. This is what the Biden team has done. May he and every one of them rot in hell.
Sorry, I said 70 years. That of course is wrong, more like 45. Not that it makes much difference but sorry for the mistake. The end of it should have a new era but those invested in it have worked relentlessly to make sure that it would only be an interlude. And here we are again…
You got it partially right. Credit where credit is due no more no less.
My Mother fell into mental illness at an early age. Manic depressive at an early age, still in her twenties. She had me then a year and half later my brother. I suppose being a new mother with two youngsters was a handful. My father worked at a nearby underground coal mine that claimed many to injury and death. She couldn’t handle the stress and my earliest memories start about age 4. Not good things to remember, breakdowns and such.
Nuclear weapons terrified her. A poor girl from the sticks. She had several electro-shock treatments before she was 35. On meds most of her life she never really got control until later in life, not soon enough to save her marriage.
I do not doubt that the Biden team is in over their heads. Your stubborn resistance to acknowledging the past rests with you though.
I’m blaming a country with a ” head up the rectal ” problem – no need for nukes these days and both parties need to make sure they go away. But neither have the guts to tell the nuclear lobby what to do with those weapons. But I do know with out a doubt I dismantling them is the best for mankind. At least then when these war crazy leaders decide to kill a few hundred thousand people it would not get out of hand.
So can you honestly tell me that you would feel better with Trump and his finger ready on that button. No? I didn’t think you’d go that far. But I’ve been wrong before.
After separating from the Army May 1970 I had grown somewhat jaded with all that nuclear business. I served in Berlin Germany for 18 months. Great duty but the US had nukes there that were not supposed to be there, I was them and my innocence was lost. I had ,as they say in the Industry, learned how to “Love the bomb and stop worrying”. I switched into a raging young man who couldn’t understand living with such a threat. I still don’t!
I still think about nuclear war but not much. A waste of energy better to lobby against all that fall into two categories, nuclear power plant reactor’s, way too much nasty waste that can be used to make even more bombs and naturally all nuclear war heads. My beliefs did not serve me well during the time I worked in a related field. It was there that I learned just how screwed up certain minds are.
NO NUKES they are terrible for plants and all living things. I have the same opinion of both political gangs that are active in the U.S..
Just remember the real reason for the impasse faced today in Ukraine is the dirty work of one GHW Bush, the CIA and the republican’s and their so called opposition the democrats, who do little to provide alternatives of any significance to the republican party of No!
In truth the only thing that might be different between the two parties is who signs the donation checks.
Actually you also have that time period right with 70 years of hell.
In 1952 the U.S. tested it’s first thermonuclear device. From that point on the powers of the world, addicted to really big booms, drove head long into insanity. One party or the other, had they been worth the dynamite to blow them to hell, should have stepped up and put a stop to the maddness, but instead we all got what a crazy Curtis LeMay and egomaniac Edward Teller wanted. The history is there for everyone to read lies and all. Things never had to be this way but those crazy communist haters wouldn’t listen. JFK wanted a different world and you see where that got him.
I’m not sure why 1975 would more like the right date, Vietnam ended then, April 30, 1975, Vets never forget.
Thanks for the therapy session mgr but you rest assured that the Cold War you thought had ended never ever actually did. The was RNC marketing, making a faux hero out of one RONNIE- star wars -RAYGUN.
Thanks CN
The spoils, such as they are, are in the hands of the CEOs of the great American war machine – the Lockheed-Martins, Boeings, Raytheons, Colt Industries, etc. The rest of us are $30 trillion in debt which our children, their children and following generation will be making payments on forever.
W.R. Knight: Thank you. Yes, absolutely right. These things only continue because someone is willing to make a profit out of the suffering of others. America may not be alone in this but it certainly spawns these vile creatures hand over fist. The utter banality. All the horror of a hot and/or cold war, lobbying for the suffering of others in order to make a few dollars more. And yet, they walk upright. What a sham.
Right you are. It seems the Western elites can never forgive Putin for denying them their plunder–thus the developed animosity and constant demonization for almost twenty years.
Tedder: Thanks, yes. It seems that America has institutionalized this sort of pettiness which also gives an indication of the kind of leaders that American keeps selecting. After all, no one is trying to undo it or change course.
Bedrock American policy seems based on the “ends justify the means.” However, nature does not work that way. In reality, the means are always the ends. Western philosopher, Emmanuel Kant, expressed the moral imperative of ,“Acting in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” To paraphrase, don’t use people as a means to an end but always as the end itself.
As a bedrock policy, the US is always using people, or humanity in general, as a means to its own ends and ultimately that is why it is steadily declining both at home and abroad. Ukraine, I would say, is just another tragic example of that mindset in action. As such, even if the US should “win” in this dispute, doubtful, it will still lose, again…
“Russian troops currently have Ukraine surrounded.” (Looks at an atlas) Interesting. That means there are Russian troops in (clockwise) the Black Sea, Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland and Belarus. Does NATO know about them? Or could it be that President Biden can no longer read an atlas due to an increasing degree of senility?
The Russian government has been evacuating the most vulnerable, beginning with children, from the war zone created by an army of the US client state of Ukraine:
“Is this move an attempt to forestall a Ukrainian false flag operation? –
It is exactly the reason, frontline settlements are being evacuated to avoid atrocity and false flag. The term “Ukrainian” doesn’t apply–Ukraine is under the direct control of the US and does as told.”
The blood of the innocents is on American hands.
By the way, “Blinken was Deputy National Security Adviser when John Kerry, with the assistance of David Cameron, was attempting to use the patent ‘false flag’ sarin attack at Ghouta on 21 August 2013 to inveigle the United States into destroying the ‘Assad regime.’
That is a very dangerous warmonger standing before the American people in that first photo telling them lies impinging on life and death for entire countries with his every breath. He knows that he has been trying to move heaven and earth to goad Russia into defending itself against a continuous escalation of American aggressions be they military, economic or just propagandist. It’s a continuation of the same shameless con that his predecessor, President Obomber, instituted with the American sponsored coup in the Maidan.
Every response by President Putin to a long series of American provocations was totally reactive, understandable, entirely defensive and predicted by the warmonger braintrust who put all the words into this man’s empty mind, starting when he was made viceroy of Ukraine and personally feathered his own family’s nest with sinecures in his new fiefdom. This jerk’s entire presidency has been nothing more than a repeat of President Dubya Shrub’s Big Lie to fraudulently establish an entirely false premise for a war of choice before the entire world, including the theatrical performances put on by both men’s disgraceful secretaries of state before the United Nations. The only difference is that Shrub used NATO troops and this Great Decider is shoveling arms and threats at the show-biz bumpkin chosen to be Washington’s proxy on the battle field.
It was bad enough that this “exceptional country” of poseurs allowed such a travesty to happen once, but to see a repeat performance on steroids rammed through the system less than a generation later is exceptionally insane! If Putin and Russia had actually been guilty of perpetrating malign acts against the USA–or ANY country–the maniacs in Washington might have warranted an audience for their over-the-top allegations, but all the Russians ever really wanted to do was sell their natural resources to neighboring countries who needed them, recover their own economy gutted by foreign (including American) vulture capitalism, develop their technology through mutually beneficial trade and to be accepted and respected as any other normal capitalist country interfacing with Western markets and political systems. Russia certainly does not take over and colonise other countries (especially with military bases) as does the USA. Truly, Washington’s framing of any other country usually comes straight out of “Opposite World.”
In fact, before the Maidan, American Big Oil still had considerable holdings and projects in the Russian fossil fuel industry, especially up in the Arctic. All that came a cropper when Mr. Trump won the presidency and his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, was forced by Congress to disengage from that synergistic relationship with the now officially loathed Russia. (Yes, citizens of the Donbas will pay for Hilary’s sins of Russiagate as well.) Now America whinges and whines about being shut out of the Arctic. Instead Russia was demonized in every way imaginable no matter how much assistance they volunteered to Washington in its deficient space program (including lack of a shuttle to the ISS and off-the-shelf reliable rocket engines), raw materials shortfalls (including the high sulphur crude from Venezuela that Gulf Coast refineries were explicitly built to refine), and hegemonic intrigues against several other hapless countries (like Venezuela and Iran) targeted with sanctions by the American Deep State, the bipartisan Congressional War Party and the MIC war profiteers.
This has all been shamelessly transpiring out in the open without the flimsiest effort to conceal such depredations and that man with the squinting eyes and deceitful crooked smile wants you and the rest of America to believe that Putin is the bad guy? C’mon, man! Stop all the lying and killing at the behest of your handlers, whoever the hell they may be. You seem to be under the impression that you have some sort of immortal soul, though you’ve been a fraud and phony your entire political career. Perhaps you could still save it if you renounced the evil you now serve before your time runs out. Are you such a fool to think that someone is going to write complementary things about you in the history books for all your corruption and warmongering? You are only succeeding in making Trump look like a choir boy in comparison.
Don’t put all the blame on President Obomber. He was just keeping up the “good work” of his predecessors dating back to the 1920’s. The war against communism, the cold war and all the proxy hot wars were all about American capitalists fighting for the right to continue looting and pillaging the natural resources of other nations while refusing to risk one member of their own families or sacrifice one penny of their own wealth
Beginning as far back as 1823 when President James Monroe declared that European influence in the western hemisphere would not be tolerated, it was interpreted by American capitalists that the all the natural wealth of the western hemisphere was for their exploitation alone. Since WWII, the “Monroe Doctrine” has been expanded to include the entire earth.
By no means would I think of putting ALL the blame on Mr. Obomber. I well know that this country needlessly suffered from both hot and cold wars with Russia starting with the fall of the Tsarist empire and my grandfather’s conscription into the US Army to go fight the Bolsheviks in Mother Russia back in 1919. It was a perverse and futile antagonism that was suddenly and gratefully lifted (or so it seemed) with the formal end to the cold war announced by Presidents Reagan and Gorbachev in the 1980’s after three generations of Americans and Russians had lived through what seemed like an endless morass. We all know how the “peace” following that cold war was thoroughly botched, and not by the Russians who seemed to remain deluded that they were in some sort of “partnership” with America. Their delusions were unmistakably lifted when Obama quite pointedly rekindled the cold war in the immediate aftermath of the Maidan coup that his government deliberately perpetrated.
No, Obama doesn’t personally account for all the years of fear and loathing between two great peace-loving peoples both of whom deserved much better, but he gets the blame in my book for triggering the restart of the cold war. His particularly biting trash talk, personal animosity and insults towards Mr. Putin for reacting in predictably obvious ways to deliberate American provocations convinced me long ago that this was all planned, all intended. In fact, I would venture to guess that Putin must have been quite taken aback at Obama’s telegraphed bad attitude since he had been so helpful to the young American president in cooperating on sanctions against Iran and helping rid Syria of all chemical weapons to prevent an escalation of that war by America.
He was rewarded with what evolved into the present mess (more like a precipice to WWIII) in Ukraine, being accused of meddling in American elections (accusations that have never ended for all the lack of evidence) and “colluding” with an American president (whatever that was supposed to mean, since that president only increased all of Obama’s sanctions by a wide measure to keep heat from the American media off himself). No doubt about it, Obama was the main transformational American president in our lifetimes, and not in a good way. Gimme a break, I voted for the Great Betrayer twice! Fool me three times? No thank you.
“If such a horrific [apocalliptic] scenario were true, wouldn’t Washington have sent its military to defend its ally?” Perhaps the powers in Washington follow the Book of Revelation:
9 And when he had opened the fifth seal, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held:
10 And they cried with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth?
11 And white robes were given unto every one of them; and it was said unto them, that they should rest yet for a little season, until their fellow servants also and their brethren, that should be killed as they [were], should be fulfilled.
Le Nazgul sénile de Washington n’a plu aucune crédibilité, si ce n’est que la méfiance à porter sur un criminel psychopathe débile et meurtier afin de se protéger de ses actes barbares.