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gus is going to be skinned alive...According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine. But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis.
The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine—beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004—were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by, while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president—which he rightly labeled a “coup”—was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West. This was written in 2014…. Read more:
https://www.mearsheimer.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Why-the-Ukraine-Crisis-Is.pdf
JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER is R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. (see Why Leaders Lie)
"NATO is a cancer, not a cure.”
Jules Letambour
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Now if you are a serious journalist or a reasonable good thinker, put your hat on — and have a few minutes to spare — you should watch a video on YouTube before it is banned(?). Here’s a link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZVIaXFN2lU
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The Great Delusion: Liberal Dreams and International Realities (Henry L. Stimson Lectures)
A renowned scholar argues that liberal hegemony—the policy America has pursued since the Cold War ended—is doomed to fail
Named a Financial Times Best Book of 2018
“Idealists as well as realists need to read this systematic tour de force.”—Robert D. Kaplan, author of The Return of Marco Polo’s World
It is widely believed in the West that the United States should spread liberal democracy across the world, foster an open international economy, and build international institutions. The policy of remaking the world in America’s image is supposed to protect human rights, promote peace, and make the world safe for democracy. But this is not what has happened. Instead, the United States has become a highly militarized state fighting wars that undermine peace, harm human rights, and threaten liberal values at home.
In this major statement, the renowned international-relations scholar John Mearsheimer argues that liberal hegemony—the foreign policy pursued by the United States since the Cold War ended—is doomed to fail. It makes far more sense, he maintains, for Washington to adopt a more restrained foreign policy based on a sound understanding of how nationalism and realism constrain great powers abroad. The Great Delusion is a lucid and compelling work of the first importance for scholars, policymakers, and everyone interested in the future of American foreign policy.
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In his lectures, JOHN J. MEARSHEIMER is advocating the trick of encouraging the “enemies of the US ‘Liberal Hegemony’ to attack some tinpot countries where “nationalism” is going to defeat the invaders… See Iraq, Afghanistan et all. And this is what Zbigniew Brzezinski — Carter evil sidekick — did to the Soviets in the 1980s…
It is possible that the US/NATO did exactly that to Russia presently and Putin took the bait… BUT RUSSIA WON’T GIVE UP THE BONE UNTIL IT IS DE-NAZIFIED AND DE-MILITARISED. Then Russia will retreat and shake hand with Ukraine.
Anyway, only the future will tell. I have been wrong before but WE CANNOT BLAME PUTIN FOR UKRAINE’S TROUBLE. Full stop.
This site, yourdemocracy.net, was created to expose the deceit of the Americans and the West in general. I hope that we are not betraying the future of this planet by exposing more of this deceit. Unfortunately, lives are being taken BECAUSE OF THIS DECEIT. Putin had to take the risk, unfortunately...
One has to remember that the West's leader-in-shit, Biden-the-Catholic is still keeping JULIAN ASSANGE IN PRISON FOR EXPOSING some of THE tricks...
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the dangerous hyperbole...
Not wanting to sound hyperbolic, but I am starting to conclude that the nuclear madmen running the U.S./NATO New Cold War they started decades ago are itching to start a nuclear war with Russia.
Their hypocrisy and nihilistic thirst for death and destruction are so extreme that it boggles my mind. They accuse Russia of starting a New Cold War when they did so decades ago and have been pushing the envelope ever since. Now they act shocked that Russia, after many years of patience, has struck back in Ukraine.
In 2017, Oliver Stone released his four-part interviews with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The Putin Interviews were conducted between 2015, the year after the US engineered the coup d’état in Ukraine installing Nazis to power in that country bordering Russia, and 2017.
Stone was of course bashed for daring to respectfully ask questions and receive answers from the Russian leader who the American media has always cast, like all the mythic bogeymen, as the new Hitler intent on conquering the world, when it is the United States, not Russia, that has over 750 military bases throughout the world and has attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria – the list is endless.
In his Putin interviews, Oliver Stone, a man of truth and honor, lets viewers catch a glimpse of the real Vladimir Putin and the matters that concern him as the leader of Russia. In 2018, I wrote of those interviews:
…he [Putin] makes factual points that should ring loud and clear to anyone conversant with facts.
This is a factual and true statement that should make any fair-minded person stand up in horror. If Russia had such missiles encircling the United States from Cuba, Mexico, and Canada, what American would find it tolerable? What would CNN and The New York Times have to say?
Yet these same people readily find it impossible to see the legitimacy in Russia’s position, resorting to name calling and illogical rhetoric. Russia is surrounded with U.S/NATO troops and missiles and yet Russia is the aggressor.
In the years since those interviews, U.S./NATO has consistently tightened the noose around Russia, including fueling the Ukrainian attacks on the Donbass, killing thousands, all the while pleading innocent and expecting no reply. Now the reply has come.
Although I have no inside information, I get the sense that the Western Empire is planning/initiating counter-measures far more extreme than the highly publicized economic sanctions.
While it is true, as many commentators such as Ray McGovern and Pepe Escobar have pointed out, that a paradigm shift is underway and the once dominant US/NATO bully boys must now contend with the Sino-Russian alliance that has ushered in a dramatic change, nevertheless, as in the past decades, the so-called leaders of the US are a dumb bunch driven by unquenchable demons.
As McGovern says:
Yet, there remain unsettling indications coming from Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland, Antony Blinken, and Jake Sullivan that senior administration ‘dolts’ (copyright North Korean leader Kim Jong Un) in the Washington Swamp still don’t get it.
I’m afraid they don’t and never will. That is what frightens me. While it seems counterintuitive and totally irrational that these people would be planning to use some type of nuclear weapon in this current situation, I am not so sure.
They obviously pushed Russia to have no alternative but to attack Ukraine, and now that they have accomplished that goal, it seems to me that they will up the ante. Diplomacy is not their way; violence is.
Pepe Escobar has just written:
This is what happens when a bunch of ragged hyenas, jackals and tiny rodents poke The Bear: a new geopolitical order is born at breathtaking speed.
From a dramatic meeting of the Russian Security Council to a UN history lesson delivered by Russian President Vladimir Putin and the subsequent birth of the Baby Twins – the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk – all the way to the breakaway republics’ appeal to Putin to intervene militarily to expel the NATO-backed Ukrainian bombing-and-shelling forces from Donbass, it was a seamless process, executed at warp speed.
The (nuclear) straw that (nearly) broke the Bear’s back – and forced it to pounce – was Comedian/Ukrainian President Volodymy Zelensky, back from the Russophobia-drenched Munich Security Conference where he was hailed like a Messiah, saying that the 1994 Budapest memorandum should be revised and Ukraine should be nuclear-rearmed.
As usual, his analysis is correct, but it may fail to grasp the unspeakable nature of the madness that drives desperadoes.
If those running US foreign policy feel that a new geo-political order is being born “at breathtaking speed” as a result of Russia’s move into Ukraine, then they are capable of extreme acts. And they have all the mainstream western media behind them, barking out their non-stop propaganda.
We are inexorably moving toward a global war that will become nuclear if an international movement doesn’t quickly arise to stop it. Most people bemoan the thought of such a war to end all wars, but refuse to analyze the factors leading to it.
It seems so unimaginable, but It happens step-by-step, and many steps have already been taken with more coming soon. It’s so obvious that most can’t see it, or don’t want to.
The corporate mainstream media are clearly part of the continuation of the CIA’s Operation Mockingbird, and those who still rely on them for the truth are beyond reach. We need to use all alternative means to raise the alarm and make sure the ultimate nightmare never occurs.
Perhaps hyperbole is the only way to do so, for it may be closer to the truth than we want to believe.
Read more:
https://off-guardian.org/2022/03/01/us-nato-is-in-the-grip-of-a-daemonic-death-wish-the-entire-world-is-threatened/
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india knows the US deceit...
India has had to walk a diplomatic tightrope over Ukraine in the past few days as it tried to balance its ties with Moscow and the West.
Delhi's first statement in the UN Security Council (UNSC) did not name any country directly but it said it regretted that calls from the international community to give diplomacy and dialogue a chance had not been heeded.
It, however, stopped short of criticising Russia. And before the UNSC voted on a draft UN resolution to condemn the invasion, Delhi faced calls from Russia, the US and Ukraine "to do the right thing".
Ukraine and Russia even issued public appeals for Delhi to take a clear stand. India chose to abstain from the vote but a careful reading of its statement suggests that it did go a step further and indirectly asked Moscow to respect international law.
India talked about the importance of "the UN Charter, international law, and respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of states", adding that "all member states need to honour these principles in finding a constructive way forward".
But India's decision to abstain raised questions, particularly in the West, over whether the world's largest democracy should have taken a clearer stand.
Read more:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-60552273
A "CLEARER STAND" WOULD BE ALIGNING WITH THE DECEIT...
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a stupid cartoon...
badtoon
This cartoon by Badiucao or whoever this young man is at the SMH is only 1 per cent of reality. The rest went AWOL... But we are told by the herald that:
“I believe in the power of cartooning so much,” says Badiucao.
That power might be harder to see in Australia, against the background of our busy public discourse. But the artist – who has joined The Age as a regular political cartoonist – was born in China where “art is always used as a tool for propaganda”, he says, and the censor’s axe quickly falls on cartoons expressing dissent.
Read more:
https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/why-the-powerful-should-never-underestimate-cartoonists-20220127-p59rm0.html
SO DO WE. We believe in cartooning so much. BUT CARTOONS SHOULD REFLECT HISTORICAL REALITY, NOT A FANCY BELIEF OF "I AM SO GOOD" for having an opinion that follows the blancmange. Gus has been doing cartooning since 1951 and has published more than 12,000 cartoons on the site you are reading now. NOT ALL OF THEM ARE GOOD OR PLEASANT. Actually none should be pleasant. (some have vanished by the mysteries of electronic transfers). BUT AS FAR AS GUS TRIES, THEY ARE VERY CLOSE TO THE REALITY OF THE PAST, THE PRESENT AND THE FUTURE... say:
jesus!
meanwhile in Syria:
On February 24, the Syrian Arab news agency SANA reported that the United States was sending another military escort to Syria, which again acknowledged Washington’s ongoing occupation policy in this Middle Eastern country. It has been continued since 2014 without any UN sanctions and without any permission from official Damascus authorities.
The US military convoy from Iraq, consisting of 23 transport units, including 18 trucks with weapons, ammunition and logistics equipment, as well as 5 empty tank trucks, crossed the border at the illegal Al-Waleed border crossing. The military convoy headed to the Rmelan district in the north-east of the Al-Hasakah Governorate, where the US military bases, in particular, Al-Tanf, are located. The American convoy was accompanied by two vehicles belonging to the opposition Syrian Democratic Forces, equipped with small arms.
It is assumed that the next batch of weapons delivered by the United States to Syria is intended for the military bases of Kurdish insurgents from the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) located in the north of the country, who regularly receive assistance from the Americans. The tank trucks in the above mentioned US military convoy are, for sure, intended to transport the oil as part of continued Washington’s pillage of Syrian oil resources, most of which are concentrated in the east of the country where the major Syrian oil fields are located: the Conoco, Al Omar, and Al Tanak oil fields are located on the left bank of the Euphrates, in the area controlled by the pro-American SDF. US Kurdish allies are also actively involved in smuggling oil from Syria, and in exchange, the Americans supply them with weapons.
The Kurdish illegal armed groups that appeared in the midst of the civil war in Syria managed to gain support in the United States, which was facilitated by lobbyists hired by the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Rojava) to build links with the American establishment. The names of those people in the USA who promote the interests of SDF in the United States, can be easily found in the database of the US Department of Justice, which contains relevant information provided in accordance with the law about registration of FARA foreign agents.
The Syrian Democratic Forces were formed in the midst of the civil war which began in Syria in 2011, right after the “Arab spring,” their official date of formation is October 11, 2015. The skeleton of this organization consisted of Kurds, and also includes Arabs, Assyrians, Turkmens, Armenians and Circassians. By now, SDF has taken control over parts of the North-East of the Syrian Arabian Republic (SAR). The United States is interested in having the Kurds as the opposition to the official regime in Damascus, and for this reason, in 2013 the administration of the then President Barack Obama took a decision to supply weapons to that armed group. However, in July 2017, when Donald Trump was in office, this “CIA’s secret program for weapons provisioning and training of certain groups of insurgents” who were fighting against the government of Bashar Al-Assad, the Syrian President, was terminated. Already in early 2018, SDF launched their first representative office in Washington, the US mission of the Syrian Democratic Council, which was headed by the US citizen, Ahmed Al-Khendi, having declaredin its US registration documents its goals. The Kurds managed to establish relations with a number of MPs, including a representative of the Republican party, Marco Rubio.
In 2021, with the beginning of Joe Biden’s presidential term in the White House, the US office of the SDF expanded its activity, including mining and sale of illegally extracted Syrian oil with the participation of Delta Crescent Energy, a US-based company registered in Delaware. Up to three million barrels of raw materials are extracted monthly at the fields in the Al-Hasakah, Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor Governorates. About a third of the stolen oil is sold to the Kurdish Autonomous Region of Iraq at a price of USD 35-40 per barrel, with the US support. According to Al-Monitor, this “cooperation” was made possible with the support of the White House and under the protection of the US military.
Hundreds of terrorists in Syria were released to join the US-controlled armed groups, some of which have been delivered to the territory of the Al-Tanf zone. The US intelligence agencies plan to offer to the extremist cells in Damascus and Latakia to commit actions against the Syrian, Russian and Iranian military forces, and try to arrange a media campaign to provoke protest sentiments in the Syrian civil society.
With its illegal activities in Syria, the US military continues to kill hundreds of civilians in this country. At the same time, the United States kept hiding the real data on the number of civilians killed after the air raids in Syria, as well as in Afghanistan and Iraq, as evidenced by the results of the investigation by the New York Times, in particular. So, on February 22, as a result of another armed attack by landing troops in the village of Ad-Dakhla in the east of the Deir ez-Zor Governorate, the US armed forces together with SDF commenced intense and random fire attack at the residential buildings and agricultural land. As a result, the elder of the Al-Bakkara tribe, Ibrahim Al-Omar, was killed.
Alexander Efimov, Russia’s ambassador in Syria, in his interview with RIA Novosti on February 9, 2022, made the following comments on the US presence in Syria: “First of all, I shall repeat what has been repeatedly said: the presence in Syria of the forces of the so-called “international coalition” led by the United States has no legal basis — such as the resolutions by the UN Security Council or the consent of the legitimate Syrian authorities – and this presence should be terminated immediately. Moreover, the United States obviously has not succeeded in combating terrorism in Syria. In addition to the Trans-Euphrates region, there is another “grey zone” that emerged thanks to the efforts of the Americans, and located in the south of the SAR – the Al-Tanf zone, where Magavir Al-Saura gunmen (an organization banned in Russia) do whatever they want, acting in the atmosphere of impunity and permissiveness, in particular, they hinder the overdue resettlement of the Rukban camp for IDPs located there.
In other words, they divide terrorists into “bad guys” and “good guys,” many of them are given a “second start,” and they continue to accumulate power potential and radicalize civilians. And the longer the United States stays here, the more powerful the delayed-time bomb may turn out to be. We shouldn’t forget the fact that Washington continues to support the illegal appropriation of the SAR’s natural resources – primarily oil and wheat in the North-East of the country.
These facts are sufficient enough to persistently demand the illegal American occupation of the SAR to be terminated.”
This appeal to terminate the US illegal aggressive operation in Syria and to have the presence of the US occupation forces in Syria recognized as illegal by the UN, is a burning issue today, especially in the context of the criticism against Russia by Washington and NATO countries regarding Russia’s military special operation in the Donbass. Recall that this operation is intended to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine, and it was started because no reaction from the Ukrainian authorities followed to stop the policy of genocide of the Russian-speaking population in eastern Ukraine, a policy supported by Kiev militants since 2014, which resulted in killing hundreds of civilians.
It makes one wonder, how come the political demagogues from Washington and Western Europe have the right to criticize other countries, impose unilateral sanctions, at the same time being silent about their war crimes in Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and earlier in Yugoslavia? Thus, they are demonstrating “double standards” in assessing international events and understating Washington’s blatant violation of international norms!
Vladimir Danilov, political observer, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
Read more:
https://journal-neo.org/2022/02/27/why-is-the-west-silent-about-the-aggressive-actions-of-the-us-armed-forces-in-syria/
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the US lackeys...
Washington has succeeded where Europe-conquering dictators of the past have failed, as evidenced by its ability to bend the policies of European governments to its will, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov alleged on Thursday.
“I can't help but make these comparisons. In the past, Napoleon and Hitler had the goal to subjugate Europe. Now the Americans have subjugated it,” he remarked.
As an example of Washington deciding “what's best” for Europe, Lavrov mentioned the lengthy American campaign to torpedo the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline. Berlin suspended certification of the fully-completed project as part of anti-Russian sanctions over Moscow’s attack on Ukraine.
Washington has been trying to stop the project for years, claiming it undermined European energy safety and suggesting that deliveries of American liquified natural gas were a more preferable option, despite its greater price, the Russian minister pointed out.
“The European Union has been shown its place. The Nord Stream 2 story has shown perfectly the real place that the EU has on the world stage,” Lavrov asserted.
READ MORE:
https://www.rt.com/news/551148-napoleon-hitler-lavrov-interview/
Lavrov is correct.
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SEE ALSO: some people...
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practically done...
Russian President Vladimir Putin said on Saturday that he chose to attack Ukraine beyond the borders of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR) to prevent the West from “endlessly” supplying “nationalists and radicals” with various resources, such as weapons and money. He added that the Russian forces were “practically done” destroying Ukrainian military sites, such as air defenses and weapons depots.
The president stated that he had ordered Russian troops to invade Ukraine last week in order to neutralize the “real threat” coming from Kiev and NATO. Moscow has long protested the Western military infrastructure along its borders and Ukraine’s aspirations to join the US-led bloc.
“They began to say more actively that they will admit [Ukraine] to NATO. What will this lead to? All other members of the alliance must back Ukraine in the case of a military conflict,” Putin said. “They will [attack] Crimea, and we will be forced to go to war with NATO. Do you understand the consequences?” The president stated that he wanted Ukraine to become a neutral country.
Crimea voted to leave Ukraine and join Russia shortly after the 2014 coup in Kiev. It was during that time that the DPR and LPR broke away from Ukraine.
“Let’s acquire nuclear weapons, they say [in Ukraine]. We can’t simply ignore it,” Putin said, referring to President Volodymyr Zelensky’s remark last month that Kiev might be forced to reconsider its status as a non-nuclear-weapons state.
Russia invaded its neighbor on February 24, arguing that it was defending the DPR and LPR. Putin also claimed he was seeking the “demilitarization and denazification” of the country.
Kiev said the attack was entirely unprovoked and appealed to the international community for help. Many countries, including the US, the UK, and EU member states, have since imposed sweeping sanctions on Russia.
Read more:
https://www.rt.com/russia/551314-putin-explains-ukraine-tactic/
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