I would object to the terminology of Russian 'invasion' and 'violation of international law'. There are many ways to approach this topic, but the most salient is that Russian launched her 'Special Military Operation' not to take territory but to prevent a literal Ukrainian invasion of the Donbas. From 2014 onward, the Ukrainians were guilty of invading and occupying territory in Donbas whose people had simply rejected the (fascist) government in Kyiv. I would say that in this case, the Russians actually implemented the 'Responsibility to Protect' which the West had misused in egregiously in Serbia and in Libya, and no one called it out for "violations of international law."
Thanks this comment, & your close reading of Helmut's piece. We liked the piece v much, enough to publish it, of course. At the same time we, like you, paused over those passages you mention.
We let a 100 flowers bloom here, and while we, too, disagree with Helmut's position, found it it, defensible--meaning considered as against ideological.
These kinds of repeated lies and the casting of unfounded aspersions on "the enemy" are blindingly obvious - as you point out - to anyone who has a skerrick of historical knowledge - especially on the propaganda of the so-called West. Those media people are actually the cause of most of the political consternation of the moment - they need being charged with fostering/enabling wars!
First of all, good info in Patrick's article on the blatant lies and falsehoods about Russia by the NATO vassals of Imperial America. I think the only normal and sane head of state in Europe is Victor Orband of Hungary who is pulling out of the EU and joining the BRICS nations.
To Tedder130 and Feral Finster;
Enough with what came first, the chicken or the egg. You are both intelligent enough and have a good grasp on current events, especially pertaining to the U S sponsored war in Ukraine, and reading your comments below, most of which are valid and provable, should not turn into an intellectual quarrel. I don't have all the answers either, but learn from others as they learn from me.
In my opinion, I agree with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts who also feels, (like I do) that Putin and the Russians waited too long to intervene in Ukraine, and about 14,000 Russian speaking civilians in the Donbas region were killed by the UKO Nazis the West, including the Zionists in the US and Western Europe waged war on.
Long story short? I think it was 9 or 10 years ago, and in the End of the Year speech by the Kremlin, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation said that "We don't attack other countries but respect their sovereignty, but if they attack us, we will use thermonuclear bombs on them in retaliation. Words to that effect.
And by the way, what governing body in the world gave my country, the USA, authority to impose sanctions on any country which doesn't yield to our demands?
The plan, the real plan, was ever always only the same - the United States to ride to the rescue. Whether the US simply jumps in or has to save its european catamites is irrelevant in the end. Russian timidity and indecision have only caused NATO to smell blood.
Similarly nobody cares that NATO is lying and has lied about this war or other wars in the past. What matters is whether NATO gets results. As Goebbels put it, if the Third Reich wins the war, nobody will care that the Gleiwitz Incident was an obvious false flag. Nor will it matter if German loses.
Your characterization of "Russian timidity and indecision" does not align with reality, unless you advocate Don Quijote de la Mancha. In 2014, Russia was not prepared for Western sanctions, nor did she feel capable of marching on Kyiv. By 2022, all that had changed.
Because Russia only had eight years to prepare and was still only able to muster a "just the tip" style of war?
Stop kidding yourself. In 2022. NATO feared to even send old Soviet stockpiles of ammunition. Now they openly talk of direct intervention as NATO munitions hit Russia with total impunity.
Your comment is absurd. Do you think that Russia really wanted to go to war? It is true that she prepared for war, as who wouldn't when threatened by NATO? As for the course of the war, the first phase was a gamble to bring Kyiv to the negotiating table, which almost worked except for Western sabotage. The following phase of the war has been the hard slog against defenses built up with American money over eight years. At this point, most of those defenses are destroyed and due to Russia's "war of attrition", the Ukrainian army is very low on soldiers. It will not be much more time for all of Donbas to be liberated, then all of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, followed by Nikolaev, Odesa, Sumy, and Kharkiv.
If you think that NATO will 'intervene', I suggest you knock off the KoolAid.
Of course Russia didn't want this war. It is equally obvious that this war was coming. And we've been hearing for three years that Ukraine is out of everything from men to burrito coverings but the army is still fighting, much i may wish otherwise.
If the first phase was a "gamble", that was foolish to gamble, and "almost worked" is another way to say "failed".
"If you think that NATO will 'intervene', I suggest you knock off the KoolAid."
At every NATO escalation, we hear that escalation is reckless, unpopular, impossible, etc.. NATO escalates anyway. They want Russian blood and will accept nothing less.
You can assess however you wish, but yours is a bit gloomy. Of course the negotiation gambit failed, but that was not due to Ukraine and the Istanbul treaty almost worked. If it weren't for US/UK intervention, many thousands of lives would have been saved—worth the attempt.
When people speak of "NATO intervention", the conventional sense is boots on the ground, planes in the air. We all know that Ukraine's army was built, armed, trained, and paid for by NATO, but neither Europe nor the US have the resources or the will to actually field an army against Russia.
The sad fact is that "they" don't want Russian blood as much as Russian resources; the appellation of 'enemy' serves political purposes and justification for military Keynesianism, but the true motive is predation.
Hell, if saving lives were the goal, a Shock And Awe campaign would cost fewer lives than the endless slog we have seen for three years.
Similarly, we hear at every stage of NATO escalation that NATO doesn't have the will.
Anyway, if Russian resources were the end goal, easier and cheaper to simply buy those resources, which Russia was happy to sell. The end goal is the destruction of Russia, the elimination of a rival and threat.
"The plan, the real plan, was ever always only the same - the United States to ride to the rescue."
I don't understand this. Where's the money in this scenario?? I can see two ways to follow the money:
1) The US MIC makes a killing (re-)building stockpiles of armaments, and selling weapons to the Euros and their new 5% of GDP military budgets.
2) If they succeed in destabilizing and breaking Russia apart, the West generally (including the US, maybe even principally the US) makes a killing exploiting Russia's natural resources.
Allen Dulles definition of requirements for "American security" were curiously different than those you might have got by polling average Americans of those days.
Judging by his actions, a widely inclusive and broadly representative form of democracy certainly weren't among them.
Why does the USA NEED power & what does it DO with the power it acquires?
Judging by where we've gone & what we've done, the USA uses their power to control world wide natural resources (deciding which will be extracted, dictating by whom & influencing where they will go).
Merely buying up resources is insufficient, we needed not just to prevent their access by competitors but to severely curtail their use by & for the those peoples who merely happened to live where desirable natural resources were located.
If USA wasn't ready to take them just yet? Resources should stay in the ground. Letting too many escape to the benefit of other societies/countries is inevitably a loss in a closed system (planet earth IS pretty much a closed system, we are playing a zero sum game here). Of course, such "escaped" economic activity had the potential to create near peer competitors, this is demonstrably anathema to the ends of post WWII US foreign policy.
The think tanks, NGOs and foundations who had studied the whole planets resources over two world wars made projections of trends in population & resources then formally drew up & published the above conclusions within a couple of years of VJ Day, nothing has changed their end goals since the later 1940s.
These ends CAN'T be changed, short of finding massive and uncontested sources of cheap energy & easily extracted natural resources (not happening on Earth any time soon) or some basic changes occuring in human nature.
The USA's ownership class grabbed this tiger's ears more than 75 years ago and can't let go without losing that which they will NEVER voluntarily surrender (or share).
Don't make the mistake of assuming a government/country/corporation must be doing what they do out of some form of insanity. By their own lights, they generally are using what they believe rational methods to achieve their idea of some desirable effects/ends
Of course it looks batshit crazy if you don't have the same set of beliefs, prejudices & desired outcomes + run your world views using the same flavor of news/propaganda/PR they're navigating by.
Europe is an asset of the Empire and assets are for spending
----------
Granted, money is largely a token of power. Why does the USA NEED this power & what does it DO with the power it acquires?
Judging by where we've gone & what we've done, the USA uses their power to control world wide natural resources (deciding which will be extracted, dictating by whom & influencing where they will go).
Merely buying up resources is insufficient, we needed not just to prevent their access by competitors but to severely curtail their use by & for the those peoples who merely happened to live where desirable natural resources were located.
If USA wasn't ready to take them just yet? Resources should stay in the ground. Letting too many escape to the benefit of other societies/countries is inevitably a loss in a closed system (planet earth IS pretty much a closed system, we are playing a zero sum game here). Of course, such "escaped" economic activity had the potential to create near peer competitors, this is demonstrably anathema to the ends of post WWII US foreign policy.
The think tanks, NGOs and foundations who had studied the whole planets resources over two world wars made projections of trends in population & resources then formally drew up & published the above conclusions within a couple of years of VJ Day, nothing has changed their end goals since the later 1940s.
These ends CAN'T be changed, short of finding massive and uncontested sources of cheap energy & easily extracted natural resources (not happening on Earth any time soon) or some basic changes occuring in human nature.
The USA's ownership class grabbed this tiger's ears more than 75 years ago and can't let go without losing that which they will NEVER voluntarily surrender (or share).
Thank you for publishing authors who do the small amount of research required to pop the bubbles of these propaganda campaigns based on false flags or just outright faked information run in and by the dying, sychophantic western Establishment media.
Thank you also for your introductions to contextualize how dangerous these propaganda lies are. The nameless publishers and editors of these pschological manipulations are foundational to the efficacy of these psychological abuses. Their publications deserve the ostracism which such a large component of, particularly the younger generation, of the western public has gifted them.
I would object to the terminology of Russian 'invasion' and 'violation of international law'. There are many ways to approach this topic, but the most salient is that Russian launched her 'Special Military Operation' not to take territory but to prevent a literal Ukrainian invasion of the Donbas. From 2014 onward, the Ukrainians were guilty of invading and occupying territory in Donbas whose people had simply rejected the (fascist) government in Kyiv. I would say that in this case, the Russians actually implemented the 'Responsibility to Protect' which the West had misused in egregiously in Serbia and in Libya, and no one called it out for "violations of international law."
Tedder.
Thanks this comment, & your close reading of Helmut's piece. We liked the piece v much, enough to publish it, of course. At the same time we, like you, paused over those passages you mention.
We let a 100 flowers bloom here, and while we, too, disagree with Helmut's position, found it it, defensible--meaning considered as against ideological.
P. L.
True.
CNN video from 2016, you don't get to see reports like this these days..:
youtube.com/watch?v=1fsMqYqHnN0
These kinds of repeated lies and the casting of unfounded aspersions on "the enemy" are blindingly obvious - as you point out - to anyone who has a skerrick of historical knowledge - especially on the propaganda of the so-called West. Those media people are actually the cause of most of the political consternation of the moment - they need being charged with fostering/enabling wars!
"People don’t like wars, and they need to be fooled into wars. Journalists do this by broadcasting propaganda of their power."
-Julian Assange
"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting."
- George Orwell
First of all, good info in Patrick's article on the blatant lies and falsehoods about Russia by the NATO vassals of Imperial America. I think the only normal and sane head of state in Europe is Victor Orband of Hungary who is pulling out of the EU and joining the BRICS nations.
To Tedder130 and Feral Finster;
Enough with what came first, the chicken or the egg. You are both intelligent enough and have a good grasp on current events, especially pertaining to the U S sponsored war in Ukraine, and reading your comments below, most of which are valid and provable, should not turn into an intellectual quarrel. I don't have all the answers either, but learn from others as they learn from me.
In my opinion, I agree with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts who also feels, (like I do) that Putin and the Russians waited too long to intervene in Ukraine, and about 14,000 Russian speaking civilians in the Donbas region were killed by the UKO Nazis the West, including the Zionists in the US and Western Europe waged war on.
Long story short? I think it was 9 or 10 years ago, and in the End of the Year speech by the Kremlin, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation said that "We don't attack other countries but respect their sovereignty, but if they attack us, we will use thermonuclear bombs on them in retaliation. Words to that effect.
And by the way, what governing body in the world gave my country, the USA, authority to impose sanctions on any country which doesn't yield to our demands?
The plan, the real plan, was ever always only the same - the United States to ride to the rescue. Whether the US simply jumps in or has to save its european catamites is irrelevant in the end. Russian timidity and indecision have only caused NATO to smell blood.
Similarly nobody cares that NATO is lying and has lied about this war or other wars in the past. What matters is whether NATO gets results. As Goebbels put it, if the Third Reich wins the war, nobody will care that the Gleiwitz Incident was an obvious false flag. Nor will it matter if German loses.
Your characterization of "Russian timidity and indecision" does not align with reality, unless you advocate Don Quijote de la Mancha. In 2014, Russia was not prepared for Western sanctions, nor did she feel capable of marching on Kyiv. By 2022, all that had changed.
Because Russia only had eight years to prepare and was still only able to muster a "just the tip" style of war?
Stop kidding yourself. In 2022. NATO feared to even send old Soviet stockpiles of ammunition. Now they openly talk of direct intervention as NATO munitions hit Russia with total impunity.
Your comment is absurd. Do you think that Russia really wanted to go to war? It is true that she prepared for war, as who wouldn't when threatened by NATO? As for the course of the war, the first phase was a gamble to bring Kyiv to the negotiating table, which almost worked except for Western sabotage. The following phase of the war has been the hard slog against defenses built up with American money over eight years. At this point, most of those defenses are destroyed and due to Russia's "war of attrition", the Ukrainian army is very low on soldiers. It will not be much more time for all of Donbas to be liberated, then all of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, followed by Nikolaev, Odesa, Sumy, and Kharkiv.
If you think that NATO will 'intervene', I suggest you knock off the KoolAid.
Of course Russia didn't want this war. It is equally obvious that this war was coming. And we've been hearing for three years that Ukraine is out of everything from men to burrito coverings but the army is still fighting, much i may wish otherwise.
If the first phase was a "gamble", that was foolish to gamble, and "almost worked" is another way to say "failed".
"If you think that NATO will 'intervene', I suggest you knock off the KoolAid."
At every NATO escalation, we hear that escalation is reckless, unpopular, impossible, etc.. NATO escalates anyway. They want Russian blood and will accept nothing less.
You can assess however you wish, but yours is a bit gloomy. Of course the negotiation gambit failed, but that was not due to Ukraine and the Istanbul treaty almost worked. If it weren't for US/UK intervention, many thousands of lives would have been saved—worth the attempt.
When people speak of "NATO intervention", the conventional sense is boots on the ground, planes in the air. We all know that Ukraine's army was built, armed, trained, and paid for by NATO, but neither Europe nor the US have the resources or the will to actually field an army against Russia.
The sad fact is that "they" don't want Russian blood as much as Russian resources; the appellation of 'enemy' serves political purposes and justification for military Keynesianism, but the true motive is predation.
I am not being gloomy. I am being realistic.
Hell, if saving lives were the goal, a Shock And Awe campaign would cost fewer lives than the endless slog we have seen for three years.
Similarly, we hear at every stage of NATO escalation that NATO doesn't have the will.
Anyway, if Russian resources were the end goal, easier and cheaper to simply buy those resources, which Russia was happy to sell. The end goal is the destruction of Russia, the elimination of a rival and threat.
"The plan, the real plan, was ever always only the same - the United States to ride to the rescue."
I don't understand this. Where's the money in this scenario?? I can see two ways to follow the money:
1) The US MIC makes a killing (re-)building stockpiles of armaments, and selling weapons to the Euros and their new 5% of GDP military budgets.
2) If they succeed in destabilizing and breaking Russia apart, the West generally (including the US, maybe even principally the US) makes a killing exploiting Russia's natural resources.
There's no money in riding to the rescue...
How The US Destroyed Europe (The Marshall plan):
youtube.com/watch?v=-Kvqe2iY0aU
***
"The Marshall Plan… is not a philanthropic enterprise… It is based on our views of the requirements of American security"
-Allen Dulles, CIA director, 1949
@ChatterX
Allen Dulles definition of requirements for "American security" were curiously different than those you might have got by polling average Americans of those days.
Judging by his actions, a widely inclusive and broadly representative form of democracy certainly weren't among them.
Money has nothing to do with it. Money is simply an accounting entry and money can be created in unlimited quantities at will.
This is a question of power.
@Feral Finster
Granted that money is largely a token of power.
Why does the USA NEED power & what does it DO with the power it acquires?
Judging by where we've gone & what we've done, the USA uses their power to control world wide natural resources (deciding which will be extracted, dictating by whom & influencing where they will go).
Merely buying up resources is insufficient, we needed not just to prevent their access by competitors but to severely curtail their use by & for the those peoples who merely happened to live where desirable natural resources were located.
If USA wasn't ready to take them just yet? Resources should stay in the ground. Letting too many escape to the benefit of other societies/countries is inevitably a loss in a closed system (planet earth IS pretty much a closed system, we are playing a zero sum game here). Of course, such "escaped" economic activity had the potential to create near peer competitors, this is demonstrably anathema to the ends of post WWII US foreign policy.
The think tanks, NGOs and foundations who had studied the whole planets resources over two world wars made projections of trends in population & resources then formally drew up & published the above conclusions within a couple of years of VJ Day, nothing has changed their end goals since the later 1940s.
These ends CAN'T be changed, short of finding massive and uncontested sources of cheap energy & easily extracted natural resources (not happening on Earth any time soon) or some basic changes occuring in human nature.
The USA's ownership class grabbed this tiger's ears more than 75 years ago and can't let go without losing that which they will NEVER voluntarily surrender (or share).
https://www.nefp.online/_files/ugd/63d11a_136d0855070647ba803e05cea0bc4c83.pdf
Power attracts sociopaths the way catnip attracts cats.
Don't make the mistake of assuming a government/country/corporation must be doing what they do out of some form of insanity. By their own lights, they generally are using what they believe rational methods to achieve their idea of some desirable effects/ends
Of course it looks batshit crazy if you don't have the same set of beliefs, prejudices & desired outcomes + run your world views using the same flavor of news/propaganda/PR they're navigating by.
Nobody said anything about insanity.
Europe is an asset of the Empire and assets are for spending
----------
Granted, money is largely a token of power. Why does the USA NEED this power & what does it DO with the power it acquires?
Judging by where we've gone & what we've done, the USA uses their power to control world wide natural resources (deciding which will be extracted, dictating by whom & influencing where they will go).
Merely buying up resources is insufficient, we needed not just to prevent their access by competitors but to severely curtail their use by & for the those peoples who merely happened to live where desirable natural resources were located.
If USA wasn't ready to take them just yet? Resources should stay in the ground. Letting too many escape to the benefit of other societies/countries is inevitably a loss in a closed system (planet earth IS pretty much a closed system, we are playing a zero sum game here). Of course, such "escaped" economic activity had the potential to create near peer competitors, this is demonstrably anathema to the ends of post WWII US foreign policy.
The think tanks, NGOs and foundations who had studied the whole planets resources over two world wars made projections of trends in population & resources then formally drew up & published the above conclusions within a couple of years of VJ Day, nothing has changed their end goals since the later 1940s.
These ends CAN'T be changed, short of finding massive and uncontested sources of cheap energy & easily extracted natural resources (not happening on Earth any time soon) or some basic changes occuring in human nature.
The USA's ownership class grabbed this tiger's ears more than 75 years ago and can't let go without losing that which they will NEVER voluntarily surrender (or share).
https://www.nefp.online/_files/ugd/63d11a_136d0855070647ba803e05cea0bc4c83.pdf
To The Floutists' editors (Mr. Lawrence et al):
Thank you for publishing authors who do the small amount of research required to pop the bubbles of these propaganda campaigns based on false flags or just outright faked information run in and by the dying, sychophantic western Establishment media.
Thank you also for your introductions to contextualize how dangerous these propaganda lies are. The nameless publishers and editors of these pschological manipulations are foundational to the efficacy of these psychological abuses. Their publications deserve the ostracism which such a large component of, particularly the younger generation, of the western public has gifted them.
Ukraine in a stalemate with Russia? Cartoon: https://substack.com/@nemopix/note/c-168298006