de-mo-cra-cy VS democracy.....

US claims Russia threatened by ‘democracy’
Washington has rejected Moscow’s call to address “root causes” of the Ukraine conflict

State Department spokesman Matthew Miller has rejected Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s call for resolving the “root causes” of the Ukraine conflict, arguing that Moscow illegitimately fears a “functioning democracy” in Kiev.

Lavrov spoke at the UN Security Council in New York on Tuesday, describing Russia’s military action in Ukraine as the consequence of a security threat by the US and its allies.

“The problem with the formulation from the foreign minister is that there’s no one in Europe that is threatening Russia,” Miller said at a State Department press briefing. He insisted that there is no military threat to Russia by NATO and that no one has threatened to take Russian territory.

“What Russia seems to see as a threat is a democracy functioning on its borders. And that’s just not a legitimate view,” Miller added. “We reject that view.”

Miller did not specify which country he considered a functioning democracy. Multiple US officials and foreign policy pundits have described Ukraine that way in the past, especially following the 2014 US-backed coup in Kiev.

The new Ukrainian authorities, “midwifed” into place by US envoy Victoria Nuland, sicced nationalist militias to kill and intimidate dissidents in Odessa and Kharkov, while triggering a civil war by sending tanks to pacify Donetsk and Lugansk.

Since Russia intervened in February 2022, Vladimir Zelensky’s government has suspended all elections and banned most opposition parties, while taking control of all TV stations. Zelensky’s own term expired in May.

Last month, at the so-called “Peace for Ukraine” conference in Switzerland convened by Zelensky, Polish President Andrzej Duda called for dismembering Russia, describing the federation as a “prison of nations.”

“Russia remains the largest colonial empire in the world,” Duda argued, advocating for his neighbor to be “decolonized” among some 200 ethnic groups living there.

In late 2021, Moscow sent the US and NATO a comprehensive security proposal in line with existing international treaties. In February 2022, Washington and Brussels rejected it, ignoring what Russia described as its “red lines,” at which point Moscow said it would have no choice but to resort to “military and technical measures.”

Russia also considers Ukraine to be unlawfully occupying parts of the Donetsk People’s Republic, Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, all of which voted last September to join Russia. President Vladimir Putin has conditioned any ceasefire talks on Kiev’s withdrawal from the administrative borders of these regions and a legal commitment to never join NATO.

https://www.rt.com/news/601180-washington-rejects-moscow-root-causes/

fascist NATO....

Here’s why NATO no longer works

The US bloc is accelerating the decline of the West

By Timofey Bordachev, Program Director of the Valdai Club

History has seen many military alliances. But none has ever had such a clear imbalance as NATO. When it comes to the security of the bloc’s strongest country, the capabilities of other members are of negligible importance.

The arrival of nuclear weapons has freed the powers with significant atomic stockpiles from seeing coalition partners as a necessity rather than a choice. This ultimately defines the dynamic of any alliance they lead.

NATO – which has just celebrated its 75th anniversary at a summit in Washington – was created for two reasons. The first was to prevent serious internal political changes in its member states and the spread of communism in the countries of Western Europe and Turkey. After the end of the Cold War, membership of the bloc was seen as a safety net for the new authorities in Eastern Europe and the Baltics. Ukrainian nationalists viewed joining NATO as the best way to permanently deprive the country’s Russian-speaking population of the ability to determine its own destiny.

Secondly, NATO’s job was to turn Western European countries into an American bridgehead in case of a direct confrontation with the USSR. For this purpose, infrastructure was created and procedures for deploying American forces in Europe were set in place.

NATO has generally been successful at both tasks. This was especially the case when America and its allies were attractive to developing countries that wanted to solve their socio-economic problems by joining the global market economy. The West could offer them investment and technology in exchange for shunning its strategic adversary in Moscow.

But this most cohesive and well armed military bloc is now on the wrong side of history. Domestic problems in most of its major states are being caused by the desire of the outside world to build its own wealth and power. Not for nothing did Henry Kissinger write that the rise of the China was far more significant than the unification of Germany and the end of the Cold War. Following in China’s footsteps, India, while reliant on Western investment and technology, is defiant towards the US. Meanwhile the West has a dozen other countries – whose combined population is much larger than that of North America and Western Europe – breathing down its neck.

The ill-considered expansion of the space under the Alliance’s control has led to the need to confront very difficult questions in the face of the impossibility of mass mobilisation. To balance the books, NATO elites will have to impoverish their own citizens for a long time to come. Some members of the bloc, such as the UK, are moving in this direction quite rapidly. Others are having a harder time selling the new reality. Such as Germany and France.

It seems the inability of the elites to solve basic economic problems will in itself prepare nations for real war hysteria, as has already happened in Finland, which never found a niche in which to thrive after the Cold War.

Until these goals are achieved, the West’s response to the challenges it faces will be reduced to manoeuvring on both the military-diplomatic and domestic fronts. In the first case, there is a lack of resources; in the second, there is a shortage of breakthrough ideas.

The transfer of priorities in the economic and social structure to the military will, of course, help to restore the position of the industrial sector to some extent and even create additional jobs. But it is by no means certain to succeed, because this will require a complete restructuring of the system of income distribution.

For now, the West still has the resources to go with the flow. But there is no knowing how long they will last in the face of increasing outside pressure. The situation is made worse by the fact that NATO countries have to find answers to these complex questions under the direction of totally unsuitable leaders. This, many observers rightly believe, is the main threat now emanating from the West.

This article was first published by Profile.ru, translated and edited by the RT team

https://www.rt.com/news/601179-heres-why-nato-no-longer-works/

READ FROM TOP.

By Gus Leonisky at 17 Jul 2024 - 3:28pm
Login or register to post comments

BS from gregory....

IN HIS ESSAY FOR PEARLSANDIRRITATIONS, GREGORY CLARK — the first postwar Australian diplomat trained in Chinese, with postings to Hong Kong, Moscow and the UN before retiring in protest against the Vietnam War. After PhD studies at the ANU he became Japan correspondent for The Australian. A spell in Canberra’s Prime Ministers department led to professorships at Tokyo’s Sophia University and presidency of Tama University, before becoming co-founder of the very successful English language Akita Kokusai Daigaku. He has now retired to Latin America (Peru) and Kiwi fruit growing in Boso peninsular south of Tokyo — WRITES SHIT, CRAP, DUNG, PORKIES, STUPIDITY, WITH HIS USUAL RIDICULOUS ARGUMENTS...

IN CONTRAST:

Can Ukraine hold the line in 2024? That would be the best-case scenario—according to John Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago professor and one of the leading proponents of “restraint” in American foreign policy. Interviewed on a recent episode of the “Daniel Davis Deep Dive” podcast, Mearsheimer has claimed that he considers “ridiculous” the idea that Ukraine will be able to take the offensive in 2024 or 2025. He also says he is skeptical that the West can deliver sufficient assistance in the form of weaponry and training to the Ukrainians to decisively turn the tide in the war.

Below is an abridged version of remarks made by Professor Mearsheimer, edited for clarity.

On Ukraine’s Prospects in 2024-25

It’s ridiculous to think that Ukraine can hold the line in 2024 and then eventually take the offensive. That’s just not going to happen. They took the offensive this past summer and it was a colossal failure. And there’s no way that we’re going to arm up and train the Ukrainians by 2025, so that they’ll be in a position to overwhelm the Russians, who are arming up their forces and training their forces more effectively than we are. I think that the best we can hope for is that the Ukrainians maintain the status quo in 2024—I’m talking here about the status quo on the battlefield—and that they can do that into 2025. The real danger is that the Ukrainians are going to be defeated by the Russians over the course of this year and next year. That, I think, is the more likely outcome—that the Russians will just roll back the Ukrainians. The idea that Ukraine is going to launch some offensive in 2025 and turn the tide is delusional.

[Apart from manpower problems,] … there are three other problems that the Ukrainians face. First of all, the weaponry issue. We’re going to give lots of money, I believe, to the Ukrainians and the EU will do the same thing, but they don’t need money as much as they need weapons. And we don’t have the weaponry to give them.

Point two, if you look at what’s happened in the air war, the Russians have basically eviscerated the air defenses in Ukraine, so they’re now free to attack all sorts of targets in Ukraine, near the front lines and deep in Ukraine, and to do all sorts of damage. This is a huge force multiplier for the Russians.

And then, finally, if you look at the political situation inside Ukraine, what you see is all sorts of trouble. ... You have this fractious political situation that could even lead to a coup or possible assassination—who knows—inside of Kyiv.

On the other hand, if you look at the political situation in Russia, you remember the days when we used to talk about the fact that the Wagner Group was going to topple [President Vladimir] Putin, and Putin was in a precarious position. Everybody was wondering who was going to replace him and if we were going to live happily ever after as a result. Those days are gone—Putin is in the catbird seat. It’s the Ukrainians who are in deep trouble. So, everywhere you look here, Ukraine is in deep trouble and the Russians are doing quite well.

On Fears of Russia Invading a NATO Member State

I think this is ludicrous. First of all, the Russians are, in effect, stuck in eastern Ukraine. It’s not like they’re on the Polish border now. The big question on the table in my mind is how much territory, if any, they will capture over the next few months. I think they will end up capturing some territory, but the idea that they’re on the verge of decisively defeating Ukraine is not a serious argument.

Furthermore, Putin has made it clear that he has no interest in conquering western Ukraine. He’s now talking about countries like Poland and Romania grabbing territory in western Ukraine that used to belong to them. He doesn’t say, “I want that territory for Russia.” He’s saying, “Romanians are going to want that territory.” I don’t believe that will happen. But nevertheless, it’s just evidence that Putin is not talking about conquering all of Ukraine. He has made it clear that he has no interest in conquering countries in Eastern European, including the Baltic states. And he would be foolish to try to do so. So the idea that he’s going to conquer all of Ukraine, then go on a rampage against NATO and we’re going to have World War III is, I think, a ridiculous argument.

On How NATO Could Respond If the Ukrainian Military Starts to Collapse

The question I think that is very interesting, based on these stories that you see popping up now … is what the West is going to do and, more particularly, what NATO is going to do if the situation in Ukraine deteriorates over the next few months, as I described it. And again, when we talk about deterioration, we’re not talking about all of Ukraine falling under the control of the Russians. We’re just talking about the Russian steamroller, in a sense, moving westward—the Russians capturing territory in Odesa and Kharkiv, and so forth and so on. If that begins to happen and it looks like Ukraine is really going to turn into a dysfunctional rump state, and we’re going to have mud all over our face—we meaning NATO—what will the United States and its allies do then? I think there is reason to worry that we may try to intervene to rescue the situation, especially if it looks like the Ukrainian military is beginning to collapse.

What if the Ukrainian military shatters in June of this coming year? I’m not saying that will happen, but it is a possibility, right? It just shatters. What do we do then? And the Russians start moving westward and they’re on the doorstep of Kyiv. What will the Americans do … [if] the Ukrainian army shatters and we’re deeply fearful that the Russians will move to the Polish and Romanian border? And what we do is we put some troops in western Ukraine and we send a very clear signal to the Russians that we’re not interested in fighting them. Those troops are there purely for deterrence purposes, to keep the Russians out of western Ukraine. And the story we tell ourselves is that deep down we believe the Russians are not interested in western Ukraine. They’ve made that clear. Furthermore, they would end up trying to absorb all of these ethnic Ukrainians who want nothing to do with the Russians and actually hate them. So we could tell ourselves a story that went along the lines that even if we put these forces in, we wouldn’t have to worry about it escalating as long as we communicated clearly with the Russians that we were not interested in reconquering territory or fighting with them. So, it could happen. Again, I think it’s highly unlikely we would do that.

I think we will have to live with the fact that the Russians will end up conquering more territory. I’ve long argued that they would take the four oblasts west of the four oblasts they control now or have annexed so far. And they may even take a bit more. And I think there would be nothing we could do to prevent that. But we would do everything we could to sort of reconstitute the Ukrainian forces, shore them up, and do what we could to negotiate with the Russians to make sure that they didn’t take all of Ukraine and that this rump Ukrainian state remained intact.

John J. Mearsheimer is the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.

https://www.russiamatters.org/analysis/mearsheimer-where-ukraine-war-headed

MAKE A DEAL PRONTO BEFORE THE SHIT HITS THE FAN:

NO NATO IN "UKRAINE" (WHAT'S LEFT OF IT)

THE DONBASS REPUBLICS ARE NOW BACK IN THE RUSSIAN FOLD — AS THEY USED TO BE PRIOR 1922. THE RUSSIANS WON'T ABANDON THESE AGAIN.

THESE WILL ALSO INCLUDE ODESSA, KHERSON AND KHARKIV.....

CRIMEA IS RUSSIAN — AS IT USED TO BE PRIOR 1954

TRANSNISTRIA WILL BE PART OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION.

A MEMORANDUM OF NON-AGGRESSION BETWEEN RUSSIA AND THE USA.

EASY.

THE WEST KNOWS IT.

READ FROM TOP

By Gus Leonisky at 18 Jul 2024 - 7:48am
Login or register to post comments

fire sale....

View Elsa Boilly

More than half of Ukraine's arable land has been sold at throwaway prices to Western companies.

Ukrainian lawmakers have allowed the sale of agricultural land to foreign investors without restrictions, now allowing foreign companies and individuals to become owners of a significant share of the country's arable land, reports Ukrainian Telegram channel Resident. It is already known that three companies have acquired 17 million hectares of Ukrainian land, which is more than half of all agricultural land in the country (42,7 million hectares). Knowing that land in times of war is sold to foreign companies at greatly reduced prices.

«In the end, this is what we have today: more than half of Ukraine's arable land has been sold off to foreign companies, because it is, firstly, one of the few assets that can bring in some money. money, and secondly, it ensures that companies will lobby for their assets to Western governments.

Even if we hypothetically assume that the conflict ends now, Ukraine has already ceased to be the owner of its lands. What is happening is a purely colonial method, characteristic of the Western world» abstract chain Resident.

In February 2023, the Oakland Institute in the United States published the results of his study “War and Theft: The Takeover of Ukraine's Agricultural Land» (War and Theft: The Takeover of Farmland in Ukraine), which details who owns Ukrainian land.

«The total area of land controlled by oligarchs, corrupt people and large agribusiness companies exceeds 9 million hectares, or more than 28% of Ukraine's arable land. The largest landowners are a mix of Ukrainian oligarchs and foreign interests, mainly European and North American companies, as well as a Saudi sovereign wealth fund» indicated The report. He also mentions that most Ukrainian agri-food holding companies are actually owned by the American NCH Capital, the French AgroGeneration, the Germans ADM Germany, KWS, Bayer and BASF, as well as the Saudis PIF and SALIC.

The main investors of Ukraine's largest landowners are mainly well-known investment funds, including Vanguard Group, Kopernik Global Investors, BNP Asset Management Holding, NN Investment Partners Holdings, owned by Goldman Sachs, and Norges Bank Investment Management, which manages Norway's sovereign wealth fund.

Recall that Ukraine plans to sell 20 state enterprises. According to The New York Times, kyiv hope to get 100 million dollars to support the Ukrainian army, while having enough to pay the interest on the loans taken out.

source: Observatory Continental

https://en.reseauinternational.net/les-terres-ukrainiennes-bradees-sous-couvert-de-la-guerre/