Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

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blindpig
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Tue Mar 08, 2022 10:15 pm

Do not call the conflict in Ukraine a war
colonelcassad
March 8, 18:58

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On the topic of zrada in the UN.

UN bans staff from calling Russia's invasion of Ukraine "war"
UN staff received emails with rules of communication and duties to maintain impartiality.
"Use 'conflict' or 'military offensive' rather than 'war' or 'invasion' when talking about the situation in Ukraine," recommends the letter, which The Irish Times quotes. The organization's communications department also instructed workers not to describe the situation as war and not add the flag of Ukraine to personal or official profiles on the network.

Here is such a thing.

1. The Russian Federation did not declare war on Ukraine. The Russian Federation conducts a special operation in Ukraine.
2. Ukraine did not declare war on Russia.
3. Therefore, from the point of view of international law, since no one has declared war on anyone, then this is not a war, but a conflict.
4. The situation is not new. Turkey, for example, conducts operations in Syria and Iraq to solve its problems and does not declare war on Baghdad and Damascus. They don't announce either.

So officially it's not a war. And from the point of view of international law, this is also not a war. Although we see high-intensity combat operations in a vast theater of operations.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7482389.html

Russians love irony but I suspect Boris's comment will not be properly understood by some people.

Briefly about Ukraine. 08.03.2022
colonelcassad
March 8, 19:44

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Briefly about Ukraine.

1. Mariupol. The evacuation through the humanitarian corridors never started. Only a few people get out of the city. In some areas of the city, the cleansing continues. There is also no mass evacuation from Volnovakha.

2. There was also no special evacuation from other cities where the “Day of Silence” was announced today - whoever could, tried to get out by train from Kharkov, the terrorists released only foreign hostages from Sumy. In the direction of the Russian Federation, they are trying not to let anyone out. The total number of hostages in the hands of Ukrainian terrorists, according to the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, is more than 4,000,000 people. 4. Raisins. The situation is not entirely clear. Locals say the Russian Armed Forces took the city, but this has not yet been officially confirmed. The city center was severely damaged.

3. Kharkov. Fighting continues around the city. MLRS of the Armed Forces of Ukraine work directly from city blocks. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are also trying to strengthen themselves in the Chuguev area, which they heroically recaptured from themselves 2 ago.



5. Kyiv. The RF Armed Forces are expanding their zone of control to the west of Kyiv, plus they are building up forces on the outskirts of the Brovary area. The Armed Forces of Ukraine claims that there is an accumulation of forces for an early assault.

6. Nikolaev. The Governor urges to prepare for the imminent street fighting. The RF Armed Forces continue to accumulate forces near Nikolaev. There were clashes to the north of the city.

7. Odessa. No major changes. The Nazis are preparing for all-round defense in Odessa, realizing that after Nikolaev they will come for them. The recently shot down Romanian MiG-21 appears to have been shot down by a Ukrainian air defense system operating in the Odessa region.

8. LPR. Fighting continued in the area of ​​Rubezhnoye and Zolotoe. There are also reports of ongoing fighting in Popasna.

9. DPR. Donetsk-Gorlovskaya agglomeration without significant changes. The enemy continues to shell the settlements of the republic.

10. Zaporozhye direction. Fighting was reported in the Gulyaipole area. There is no advance to Zaporozhye itself through Kamenskoe yet. On the territory of the Kherson and Zaporozhye regions, events in the spirit of the CTO in the Caucasus are gradually being promoted - the collection of weapons, the identification of the organizers of speeches, the capture of employees / agents of the SBU / GUR MOU.

In general, after today's disruption of humanitarian corridors and the refusal of the Zelensky gang to discuss the recognition of Crimea and the LDNR, the answer to the question of further actions of the RF Armed Forces seems self-evident. Let's add to this the US ban on Russian energy carriers, which promises new shocks in the market tomorrow. The conflict continues to unwind, as for the United States and for the Russian Federation it is of a fundamental nature. Ukraine is just one of the theaters of the ongoing Cold War. At the moment, the hottest.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7482679.html

Syriaization course
colonelcassad
March 8, 23:05

The disruption of humanitarian corridors and the actual refusal to release the bulk of the hostages clearly confirmed the thesis that the terrorist practice of using a human shield is systemic and carried out from the very top. This is not an initiative, but a conscious policy.

Humanitarian corridors and negotiations around them were used only to try to buy some time to strengthen the defenses of the besieged cities, where they were hastily trying to bring weapons and mercenaries.

Statements by the United States and Zelensky’s entourage leave no doubt that a course has been taken for further “Syrianization” of the conflict in Ukraine, using the Ukrainian population and the remaining Ukrainian units as cannon fodder for the “war to the last Ukrainian”, and Nazi formations and foreign mercenaries will become a tool support this war, acting as the Ukrainian analogue of ISIS (banned in the Russian Federation) and An-Nusra.

Even if Zelensky wanted to (which is doubtful), he can no longer stop this train. It was well known that Ukraine was an expendable item for the United States, it is now obvious to most sane people that Ukraine is indeed an expendable item for its real owners.

In light of this, the inability to negotiate Zelensky and his entourage make it inevitable that the Russian Armed Forces will step up their operations to demilitarize and denazify Ukraine.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/29714 - zinc I will write

about the prospects for the implementation of this scenario separately.
So far, the main beneficiary of what is happening is China, since it will suffer less than others from the conflict in Ukraine (and the US, EU and Russia are already bearing serious costs). We'll see how it goes in the long run.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7482898.html

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 09, 2022 2:15 pm

Ukraine: Russian Humanitarian Ceasefire Comes into Force

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People leaving Ukraine, March 9, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @PolskieRadio_UA

Published 9 March 2022 (1 hours 11 minutes ago)

Moscow proposed to Kiev to establish continuous communication mechanisms to exchange timely information on the progress of the evacuation process of the civilian population.

Although the rounds of talks between Russia and Ukraine have failed to stop the conflict, both parties have committed to facilitating the exit of people from Ukraine through humanitarian corridors. Below are the main developments of this conflict as they happen.

MARCH 9
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A new humanitarian truce comes into force in Ukraine for the evacuation of civilians. Russian Defense Ministry Spokesperson Igor Konashenkov reported that a new humanitarian truce came into effect this Wednesday in Ukraine to allow the evacuation of civilians.

"A regime of silence is declared and humanitarian corridors are established for the safe evacuation of civilians from Kiev, Chernigov, Sumi, Kharkov, and Mariupol."

Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk confirmed a 12-hour ceasefire to enable these humanitarian corridors. The ceasefire declared by Russia began to work from 10:00 Moscow time. Russia proposed to Ukraine to establish continuous communication mechanisms to exchange timely information on the progress of the evacuation process of the civilian population.

Turkey rejects "a witch-hunt" against the Russians. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan stated that his country does not approve of actions that appear to be "a witch-hunt" against Russian scientists, academics, athletes, musicians, or artists.

"Just as we would not leave Ukraine, we also do not accept actions similar to a witch hunt against the Russian people, literature, students or artists," he said, as reported by the AA agency.

The Turkish president affirmed that these forms of rejection of the Russian special military operation resemble "fascist practices" that feed a "climate of hatred and resentment and sow new grievances."

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ukr ... -0001.html

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https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7483389.html

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Ukraine’s Ruling Party: New Proposal for Security Guarantees

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Ukraine is proposing a treaty on security guarantees to develop a compromise with Russia. March. 8, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@UltrascanMena

Published 8 March 2022 (12 hours 26 minutes ago)

Ukraine's ruling party has suggested a new document containing guarantees from the United States, Turkey and Ukraine's neighbors, including Russia, to substitute the 1994 Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances.

The ruling political party, Sluha Narodu (Servant of the People), said that the new proposal for security guarantees would implicate Russian recognition of Ukrainian statehood. However, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that it has no place at this moment, given the current situation in Ukraine.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov commented on Monday regarding the need for Kiev to recognize Crimea's status as part of Russia and the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky stated that he would be willing to discuss to reach a compromise on these issues.

According to the party's statement, it will be necessary to guarantee peace in Ukraine, so its armed forces will continue to fight the enemy. In this regard, the party noted that it would be essential for Russia to guarantee Ukraine's sovereignty. In return, Ukraine joining NATO would be removed as a possibility, for the time being, the party said.

The statement also expressed that what matters is to ensure the security of Ukraine. As long as the U.S.-led alliance is not ready to accept the country as a member, it is crucial to bring about a formal agreement that will provide specific political, economic and military steps of the guarantor states concerning Ukraine's security.


Such statement from the Sluha Narodu party follows remarks by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to U.S. media expressing his willingness to engage in conversations with Russian President Vladimir Putin about Crimea and the Donbass region.

Sluha Narodu refused the comments made by Russian spokesman Dmitri Peskov on Monday regarding the need for Kiev to recognize Crimea's status as part of Russia and the sovereignty of the Donetsk and Lugansk People's Republics.

The party said that ultimatums are unacceptable, stressing that Ukraine's territorial integrity is non-negotiable. Ukraine is Donetsk, Lugansk and Crimea, emphasized the party, who continued to call for a total embargo against Russian oil and gas in Europe.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ukr ... -0017.html

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MILITARY BIO-LABORATORIES IN UKRAINE AND THE SPREAD OF THE DISASTER
Mar 9, 2022 , 7:55 a.m.

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Distribution of military bio-laboratories financed by the United States around Russia, Iran and China constitute an imminent threat that violates international conventions in almost all cases (Photo: File)

The lobbying movements of the SRI are legendary, it was the main contractor of the Pentagon in the framework of the United States Biological Weapons Program for the research and development of bioagents, with 16 contracts between 1951 and 1962.

It was also a subcontractor on a Pentagon program for anthrax research in 2001 in which the prime contractor was Advanced Biosystems , headed by Ken Alibek, a former Soviet microbiologist and biological warfare expert from Kazakhstan who defected to the United States in 1992.

Between 2006 and 2016, the SRI paid $1.28 million to lobby the US Senate, House of Representatives, State Department, and Department of Defense, the binding node was the former senator, and then Trump-era US Attorney General Jeff Sessions. His assistant on Capitol Hill, Watson Donald, later became a senior director at the contractor.

DISASTER FUNDED EXPANSION FIGURES

As recorded in Gaytandzhieva's investigations, the Pentagon has carried out biological experiments with a potentially lethal result on 4,400 soldiers in Ukraine and another 1,000 in Georgia, whose governments have favored permissive enclaves of the war machine that the Atlantic bloc has wanted to expand to the borders with Russia. The record of irregular events that have occurred around serious communicable diseases is extensive, some of them are:

H1N1 flu : In January 2016 some 20 Ukrainian soldiers died from the flu virus in just two days and another 200 were hospitalized in Kharkiv. Kiev did not report this and as of March 2016, there had been 364 deaths across Ukraine (81.3% caused by influenza A (H1N1) pdm09, the same strain that caused the global pandemic in 2009 which, according to intelligence from the People's Republic of Donetsk, the American biological laboratory in Kharkiv leaked the deadly virus.

Hepatitis A : In the summer of 2017, 60 people with Hepatitis A were admitted to the hospital in Zaporizhia, 19 children from an orphanage were hospitalized in June of that year in the Odessa region, and in November another 29 cases were reported in.. Kharkiv! As of January 2018, 37 people were hospitalized in Mykolaiv, the highly suspicious infection spreading rapidly in a few months across southeastern Ukraine, where most of the Pentagon's bio-laboratories are located.

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Distribution of the military biolaboratories financed by the United States in Ukraine, bordering Russia and managed with null criteria of sovereignty by Kiev (Photo: File)

Cholera : In 2014 Russia (in particular Moscow) was affected by outbreaks of a new highly virulent variant of the cholera agent Vibrio cholera , with a high genetic similarity with strains reported in Ukraine since 2011, as reported by a genetic study of the Institute Russian Investigation Against Cholera in 2014. Local police even launched an investigation into "human immunodeficiency virus infection and other incurable diseases" such as cholera spread through contaminated drinking water.

Botulism : Of this rare and extremely dangerous disease, caused by a toxin produced by the bacteria Clostridium botulinum, 115 cases were recorded in 2016 with 12 deaths in Ukraine. In 2017 , the authorities confirmed another 90 new cases with 8 deaths and reported that the cause of the outbreak was food poisoning, for which the police launched an investigation. Pentagon biolabs in Ukraine were among the prime suspects, as botulinum toxin is one of the bioterrorist agents that have already been produced at a Pentagon bioweapons facility in the United States, as evidenced by a 2012 document, taken offline., but detailed by Gaytandzhieva in her research. There it is stated that the Dugway Test Range Life Sciences Division (LSD) produces and tests aerosolized bioagents at the "Lothar Saloman" Life Sciences Test Facility (LSTF).

IMPUNITY ASSURED: BIOLOGICAL WARFARE SCIENTISTS UNDER DIPLOMATIC COVER

Last Tuesday, March 8, the Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, testified before the Committee on Foreign Relations of the US Senate on the Russian military operation in Ukraine. There she acknowledged the existence of biological laboratories whose contents Washington would like to hide from Moscow, stating: "... we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of these research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces, in the event that they come closer."

He also rejected the accusations that he had been developing biological weapons, calling the complaint a "classic Russian technique to blame some other guy for what they plan to do themselves." Senator Marco Rubio, present at the appearance, referred to "a lot of propaganda and misinformation" about the facilities, warning of their danger, to which Nuland replied that, if there is a biological attack, it will have been the Russians.


Such a statement leaves the door open to a staging like the ones implemented in Syria, where a documentary was even made accusing the government of an alleged attack with chemical weapons in Douma in 2018. Ten months later the BBC admitted that the audiovisual piece "contained serious inaccuracies".

The US biological laboratories funded by the DTRA under a $2.1 billion military program ( PDF ), the Cooperative Biological Engagement Program (CBEP) are located in another former Soviet Union country such as Georgia but also in Middle East, Southeast Asia and Africa through bilateral agreements in which the legal scope of multilateral organizations is short.

In the Ukrainian case, there is the creation of the Science and Technology Center of Ukraine (STCU), an international organization financed mainly by the United States, which has been granted diplomatic status and officially supports projects by scientists previously involved in the Soviet weapons program. biological.

Over the past 20 years, STCU has spent more than $285 million funding and managing some 1,850 projects by scientists who previously worked on developing weapons of mass destruction while U.S. personnel in Ukraine work under cover. diplomacy and is compensated for the deaths and injuries of the local population.

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Bilateral agreements exempt from civil or criminal liability US scientists who participate in the development of biological weapons of mass destruction (Photo: File)

Georgia and Ukraine would not be liable or take legal action and indemnify the United States and its personnel, contractors and contractors' personnel, for damage to property, or for the death or injury of any person in Georgia and Ukraine, occurring as a consequence of the activities carried out within the framework of these Agreements. If DTRA-sponsored scientists cause death or injury to local people, they cannot be held accountable.

These types of agreements are reminiscent of those reached by countries in the global south with big pharma for the sale of anticovid vaccines at the end of 2020, it is the same logic of the global funnel where the narrowest remains for countries that, before being "partners ", become fields of experimentation and platforms to spread a hegemonic stain designed by and for the control of rich minorities.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/bi ... l-desastre

Google Translator

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US urged to come clean on bio-labs
By ZHAO JIA | China Daily | Updated: 2022-03-09 09:25

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Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian. [Photo/fmprc.gov.cn]

China once again urged the United States on Tuesday to make a comprehensive clarification of its biological military activities both at home and abroad, and accept multilateral verification, after US-run biological laboratories in Ukraine have aroused extensive attention.

The US, which knows those laboratories the most, should release relevant information including viruses stored and research conducted as soon as possible, said Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian at a news briefing.

Reports said Russia has found evidence of US-funded bio labs in Ukraine that store deadly pathogens.

And the US embassy in Ukraine on Feb 26 removed all documents about these bio-labs in Ukraine from its website.

Citing figures released by the US itself, Zhao said there are 26 US bio-labs in Ukraine that store dangerous viruses.

The US Department of Defense has absolute control over these laboratories, and all research activities must be led by the US. Without its permission, any information cannot be made public.

For the health and safety of people in Ukraine, neighboring areas and people of the world at large, China called on all parties concerned, especially the US, to ensure the security of these laboratories.

'Tip of the iceberg'

"The US military biological activities in Ukraine are only the tip of the iceberg," Zhao said.

He said the Pentagon controls 336 biological laboratories in 30 countries across the globe in the name of collaborating to reduce biological security risks and strengthening global public health.

Washington also conducts numerous biological military activities in Fort Detrick in Maryland.

Zhao also said the international community has always harbored suspicion over the US' real intentions and what it has done. Yet, Washington has dodged these concerns and even claims questions from the international community amount to the spread of disinformation.

Over the past 20 years, the US has always obstructed the establishment of the verification mechanism of the Biological Weapons Convention and refused to accept verification of its biological facilities both at home and abroad, Zhao said.

And those moves have further intensified concerns of the international community, he added.

http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 8b5a3.html

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Victoria Nuland declares US is protecting ‘biological research facilities’ in Ukraine
ANTIWAR DOT COM·MARCH 9, 2022

Days before Nuland’s comment, the Russian military claimed it had uncovered 30 biological laboratories in Ukraine linked to the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency

This article was originally published at Antiwar.com by Dave DeCamp

Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said Tuesday that there are “biological research facilities” in Ukraine the US is concerned Russian forces might seize. She made the comments when asked by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) if Ukraine has chemical or biological weapons.

“Ukraine has biological research facilities which in fact we are quite concerned Russian troops, Russian forces, may be seeking to gain control of, so we are working with the Ukrainians on how they can prevent any of those research materials from falling into the hands of Russian forces should they approach,” Nuland said.


Nuland’s comments came after Russia accused Ukrainian authorities of destroying pathogens studied at Pentagon-linked laboratories. “During a special military operation, the facts of the Kiev regime’s emergency cleanup of traces of a military biological program funded by the US Department of Defense implemented in Ukraine were revealed,” the Russian Defense Ministry said on Telegram.

The Russian Defense Ministry said pathogens that were destroyed include the plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera, and other deadly diseases. The Russian military has claimed that it uncovered 30 biological laboratories in Ukraine linked to the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).

It’s no secret that the DTRA funds laboratories in Ukraine, but Pentagon officials insist the labs are not bioweapons facilities. On February 25, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists published an article quoting Robert Pope of the DTRA’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, who warned the Russian attack on Ukraine risks dangerous pathogens being released from the labs.

“I would say from every facility that we have worked with them in, we have confidence that as long as the electrical power is turned on and the people we have trained are present at the facility, the biosafety officers, that these pathogens are safe and secure to international standards,” Pope said. “Should these facilities be damaged by conflict, that could change.”

Pope said he didn’t think Russia would deliberately target the facilities but warned of possible accidents. “I think the Russians know enough about the kinds of pathogens that are stored in biological research laboratories that I don’t think they would deliberately target a laboratory,” he said. “But what I do have concerns about is that they would … be accidentally damaged during this Russian invasion.”

Pope said some of the labs could still have leftover pathogens from the Soviet Union’s bioweapons program. “Scientists being scientists, it wouldn’t surprise me if some of these strain collections in some of these laboratories still have pathogen strains that go all the way back to the origins of that program,” he said.

According to the article, the US government has worked with 26 facilities in Ukraine and has provided direct material support to six of them.

China has called on the US to release the details of the Pentagon’s biological research programs in Ukraine. “The United States, as the party that knows the laboratories best, should release relevant specific information as soon as possible, including what viruses are stored and the research that has been carried out,” said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian.

https://thegrayzone.com/2022/03/09/vict ... s-ukraine/

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Musings from the Margins
​​​​​​​ Ajamu Baraka, BAR editor and columnist 09 Mar 2022

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Image: Luo Jie China Daily

U.S. determination to be the world's hegemon created the crisis in Ukraine. The impacts are felt by working people in this country, who must look outside for solidarity and leadership as they struggle in a political system that offers them no representation.

“As a radical standpoint, perspective, position, the politics of location necessarily calls those of us who would participate in the formation of counter-hegemonic cultural practice to identify the spaces where we begin the process of re-vision” (Bell Hooks)

+The constant morality play that the U.S. public has been exposed to has resulted in mass support for war. Of course, ordinary people will pay the price, the ruling class will get over once again and Biden achieved his bipartisanship the old fashion way - through war!

+The U.S. corporate media frames the Ukraine conflict as a premeditated, unprovoked attack by the maniacal government of the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin. But from the very beginning of Biden’s administration, it seemed like his agenda was to create the conditions in Ukraine that would evoke a conflict with the Russian Federation. It has turned out to be one of the few objectives of his administration that was met.

+The claims by commentators in the U.S. that war crimes and crimes against humanity that are being committed by the Russian state perfectly reflect the psychopathology of white supremacy, a narcissistic cognitive disorder that renders the afflicted with an inability to see objective reality in the same way as others.

+It is not just gas prices going up. These bumbling incompetents thought they could impose sanctions on a country fully integrated into the world capitalist economy without it hurting consumers in the U.S.- will now have to explain why food prices will go up.

+It appears that along with Russia, consumers in the U.S. will feel the effects of economic sanctions with higher prices and austerity while U.S. energy companies experience windfall profits. Perhaps with those profits that will be realized by the energy companies and the military/industrial complex they might have enough tax money to provide a little relief for workers through Build Back Better legislation. Oh, but my bad! The biggest corporations do not pay taxes in the U.S.

+I thought this was 2022 but it is really 1914. Inter-state war between capitalists to re-divide markets and colonial spheres of control is a class issue. The working class should never align itself with its bourgeoisie under the illusion it is carrying out some moral campaign.

+Black Alliance for Peace, "The crude ideological framing of the U.S. and Western Europe positions on Ukraine as a battle between "democracy" and authoritarianism that is successful in the white supremacist colonial West, does not work in the global South where Western backed coups and wars are the norm."

+I support the expropriation of oligarchs and capitalist property without compensation, apparently the same way that the U.S. does with the confiscation of the property of Russia capitalists! Does that mean that I am finally on the same side as the U.S. state?

+The moral bankruptcy of Western liberalism is as follows: Whenever someone applies to Europe the normalized behavior of European colonizers in the global South, they become the embodiment of evil (Hitler) There is nothing in Ukraine that is unfamiliar to us in the global South at your hands!

+Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky continues to prod the West to take on more responsibility to protect Ukraine since in his inexperience he allowed his people to become yet another group sacrificed to advance U.S. strategic interests. But it is too late. When will people learn?

+Former Bolivian president Evo Morales tells the United Socialist Party of Venezuela congress that it is time to think seriously about how to put an end to NATO and U.S. imperialist policies, while some liberal/leftists are finding ways to support their bourgeoisie and NATO once again. There is such a fundamental gap between Western leftists and revolutionaries in the South.

+For anyone who wonders how societies go mad and embrace totalitarianism - this is it. You see how easy it is to seduce the public into supporting un-freedom by weaponizing "freedom?" It is all presented as common sense and decency, and anyone who does not conform is the enemy.

+With all of the crimes committed by the U.S. state, the peoples in the global south always separated their criticism of the U.S. government from the people of the U.S. But the crude, ignorant, liberal led public opinion in the U.S. does not seem to be making that distinction with Russia.

+The coverage of conflict in Ukraine by capitalist media is appalling. Where is any voice expressing a different view, an alternative strategy to continued war, a call for a ceasefire and diplomacy? Instead, media pushes a line of war and sensationalist fantasies of Ukrainian victory.

+The great patriotic U.S. energy companies are calling for immediate sanctions on Russia oil and gas. With Iranian and Venezuelan oil suppressed and Russia energy out of the market, guess who supplies the gaps? Higher gas prices for us, windfall profits for them. War is a racket!

+The incompetents running Biden's foreign policy ignored advice from old school realpolitik professionals ,from the late George Kennan to Henry Kissinger, not to threaten Russia with game-playing in Ukraine. The result is a war the working class will pay for with higher gas and food prices.

+Sanctions are forms of economic warfare meant to give a comparative advantage to the U.S. and its Western European allies. Its use is of course illegal and violates all of the principles of the World Trade Organization that all of the big capitalist nations are a part of, and exposes the mythology of the free market.

+Illegal economic sanctions used by U.S. and European capital to give it a comparative advantage in global market and to discipline and punish global South nations, (surely no one believes they have anything to do with justice) has run into its own contradictory logic with the attempt to impose them on an economy integrated into the global system.

+The fight for voting rights and procedures is not the fight for real democracy. Democracy is more than voting. For example, in the U.S. there are no representatives from a working-class party in either the House or Senate & legally democrats & republicans enjoy a monopoly.

+Sanctions are sold by U.S. propagandists as targeting specific nations, but the real target is not just those nations like Iran, Venezuela, Cuba and now Russia, but also the so-called allies of the U.S. and now U.S. consumers.

+The objective of U.S. policy in Russia was always economic. It was to create the conditions for more draconian sanctions on Russia in order to disarticulate the Russian economy from Europe, making it easier for U.S. capital to assert its hegemony over Germany and France, and thus, all of the European market.

+U.S. policies are increasingly being seen as reckless and disruptive to the global economic order. The dollar, once seen as a safe haven for excess capital and accumulation that could be tucked away in New York and London banks, is now seen as subject to the wild vicissitudes of whatever administration holds the reins of government in the U.S. The steady and mature stewardship of the global capitalist order by senior policymakers steeped in realpolitik has been replaced by immature ideologues who are unable to grasp the changed world that the U.S. finds itself in.

+There are a number of nations that can talk about war crimes and crimes against humanity that nations commit. But the one nation that absolutely should never be allowed to utter a word about war crimes committed by another nation is the U.S.

+Freedom is living in a nation that has no oligarchs - supposedly like in the U.S. The billionaires that control the economy, politics, state and culture in the U.S. are just called "billionaires" and the people love them.

https://www.blackagendareport.com/musings-margins
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Wed Mar 09, 2022 11:53 pm

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When Did the Ukraine War Begin?
March 9, 2022
By Roger D. Harris – Mar 7, 2022

Viewing the Ukraine war as starting with the current Russian invasion leads to very different conclusions than if you consider that the starting point of this war was the 2014 US-orchestrated coup in Ukraine. The coup, which had elements of an authentic popular revolt, has been used by outside powers to pursue geopolitical ends.

The conception that the war started on February 24 of this year is like viewing the “invasion” by the US and its allies of Normandy in June 1944 against the “sovereign” and “democratic” Vichy French as the start of World War II. Never mind that the Vichy government was a puppet of the Nazis; that the opportunities to negotiate had long been rejected; that the war had been raging for years; and that the only option for stopping the Nazis was militarily.

The US imperial army

NATO, it should be understood, is an army in the service of the US empire. Viewing it simply as an alliance of nominally sovereign entities obscures that it is commanded as a tool of US foreign policy in its stated quest of world dominion; that is, “full spectrum dominance.” The “alliance” members must fully integrate their militaries under that command along with purchasing US war equipment and offering up their own citizens as troops.

After the implosion of the Soviet Union and the supposed end of the first cold war, instead of NATO being disbanded, the opposite occurred. There was no “peace dividend” and no honoring of the promise that NATO would not expand any further. Instead, NATO stampeded east towards the borders of the Russian Federation adding fourteen new members of former USSR republics and allies.

Even before the 2014 coup, the US’s fateful decision in 2006 to draw Ukraine into NATO posed an existential threat to Russia. By December 2021, according to “realpolitik” international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, a US-armed Ukraine had become a de facto member of NATO, crossing a redline for Russia. Mearsheimer concludes, “the west bears primary responsibility for what is happening today.”

Failure of peaceful negotiations

Speaking before the UN on March 2, the Venezuelan representative identified the breach of the Minsk Protocols, with the encouragement of the US, as the precursor of the present crisis in Ukraine.

After the 2014 coup in Ukraine, the Minsk Protocols were an attempt at a peaceful settlement through “a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, release of prisoners of war, constitutional reform in Ukraine granting self-government to certain areas of Donbas, and restoring control of the state border to the Ukrainian government.” Moscow, Kyiv, and the eastern separatists were all parties to the agreements.

The Russian perception of negotiations with the western alliance in the runup to the invasion, as reported by the New York Post, was described using insensitive terminology as “like the mute with the deaf” by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on his meeting with his British counterpart. (NOTE: the NYP, even in the updated version of the article, refers to Lavrov as the “Soviet” Foreign Minister, forgetting that the USSR hasn’t been around for over 30 years.)

Following the latest round of “sweeping” US-imposed sanctions on Russia, their Foreign Ministry announced, “we have reached the line where the point of no return begins.” Such sanctions are a form of warfare as deadly as bombs.

Upsides of war for the US and the downsides for everyone else

War is a great diversion for Joe Biden, whose popularity has been slipping due to a lackluster domestic performance. The US empire has much to gain: further unifying NATO under US domination, reducing Russian economic competition in the European energy market, justifying increasing the US war budget, and facilitating sales of war materiel to NATO vassals.

NATO has dumped over a trillion dollars in arms and facilities into the border countries next to Russia and continues to this day to pour lethal weapons into Ukraine. The leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi C14 recently bragged on YouTube (while other voices are censored): “We are being given so much weaponry not because as some say ‘the west is helping us,’ not because it is best for us. But because we perform the tasks set by the west… because we have fun, we have fun killing.”

More than 14,000 people have been killed in the eastern Ukraine region of Donbas in warfare between ethnic Russians and Ukrainian regular military/right-wing paramilitaries in the eight years since the coup. The self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, beleaguered enclaves in the Donbas of largely ethnic Russians, seceded from Ukraine and were recognized by Russia on February 21.

The semi-governmental (over 80% US government funded) Rand Corporation’s playbook for the US and its allies says it all: “pursue across economic, political, and military areas to stress—overextend and unbalance—Russia’s economy and armed forces and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.”

The conflict could have ruinous consequences for the Russian Federation, according to western sources and even some people who identify as left in Russia. As a bonus for the US, according to Juan S. González, the US National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, the sanctions against Russia are “by design” intended to hurt Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, all targeted by Washington for regime change. And, of course, for Ukrainians of all ethnicities there is no winning in a war.

It is difficult to think what other options Russia has to defend itself. Perhaps there are some, but surely they are slim. It should be clear that the US has continually been the aggressor even if some do not agree with the Russian response. As Phyllis Bennis with the Institute for Policy Studies argues, the US provoked this war.

Severing Russia from Europe

The peaceful integration of Russia with the rest of Europe would be a great threat to the US empire. A unified or even a cordial Europe could truly herald the end of US hegemony. The long-game geopolitical goal of preventing the unification of Europe may well be the fundamental aim of US foreign policy in that continent.

What would become of “US strategic interests” if peace were to break out in Europe, and Russia would become partners with Germany, France, and Italy? A potentially more independent Europe, including Russia, would challenge the US-dominated Atlanticist project.

The extreme hostility that the US took to the Nord Stream 2 project, which would have piped Russian natural gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany, went beyond the narrow economism of favoring US liquefied natural gas (LNG) suppliers. Where Washington’s earlier efforts of imposing illegal unilateral economic sanctions on its NATO ally faltered, the current conflict will surely discourage any rational and cooperative economic association of Russia with its western neighbors.

The severing of Russia from the rest of Europe is a tremendous victory for the US imperial project. This is especially the case, when there were recent moves in the direction of economic, cultural, and political exchange, which have now been reversed.

Spheres of Influence and inter-imperialist rivalry
Russia shares a 1,426-mile border with Ukraine and considers that region within its security perimeter, vital to its national security. The US, which is 5,705 miles from Ukraine, considers the world its sphere of influence. Clearly, there is a conflict of interest.

The contemporary geopolitical dynamic has evolved from the one Lenin described in 1916 in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which was then characterized as one of inter-imperialist rivalry. This theory is not entirely adequate to understand today’s world dominated by a single superpower (with its European Union, British, and Japanese junior partners). Surely, national centers of capital continue to compete. But over-arching this competition is a militantly imposed unipolar pax Americana.

There is just one superpower with hundreds of foreign military bases, possession of the world’s reserve currency, and control of the SWIFT worldwide payment and transaction system. Simply reducing the conflict to one of contesting capitalists obscures the context of empire.

Further, even if one just understands the present situation as one of a clash of two imperialist camps, that does not preclude taking sides. Surely World War II was an inter-imperialist war, but that did not prevent socialists from opposing the Axis pole and supporting the allies. The US is ever more aggressively stirring up the pot, not only in Ukraine, but also Taiwan, Africa, and elsewhere.

Asymmetry of the Forces

The forces are asymmetrical in this contest. Russia and the US may have comparable nuclear arsenals, but Russia has no bases of any kind in North America compared to at least six nuclear and many more conventional bases for the US in Europe. The US military budget is 11.9 times the size of Russia’s, not to mention the war chests of Washington’s NATO allies. Similarly, the US economy is 12.5 times as large as Russia’s. Of the Fortune 500 top international corporations, only four are Russian compared to 122 from the US. Russia’s labor productivity is only 36% of the US’s. In terms of finance capital, the US has 11 of the world’s top 100 banks; Russia has one. Far from being a key exporter of capital, Russia is a leader in capital flight, in part owing to sanctions imposed by the US and its allies.

As analyst Stansfield Smith concludes, Russia “plays very little part in the quintessential imperialist activity: the export of capital to the periphery and the extraction of profit from developing countries’ labor and resources.” Russia is a target of US-led imperialism; Ukraine is caught in the crossfire.

Hypocrisy of the “international community”
If only the outrage over the Russian invasion had some ethical grounding by what is misleadingly called the “international community,” but is in reality the US and its subalterns. Biden’s touted “rules based order” is one where the US makes the rules and the rest of the world follows its orders, in contradiction to the Charter of the UN and other recognized international law.

From Cuba, journalist Ángel Guerra Cabrera laments: “our region witnessed flagrant US violations of those principles in Guatemala, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Grenada and Panama, the last three through direct invasions. Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are current examples of a US policy that flatly denies its assertion, not to mention Puerto Rico.”

International law expert Alfred de Zayas reminds us that the so-called “international community seems to have accepted egregious violations of Art. 2(4) [of the UN Charter] by the US against Cuba, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela; by NATO countries against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yugoslavia; by Israel against all its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians and Lebanese; by Saudi Arabia against Yemen; by Azerbaijan against Nagorno Karabakh, by Turkey against Cyprus, etc.”

How this war will end

Regardless of how one sides—or not—in the new cold war, it is instructive to understand the context of the conflict. This is especially so when views outside the dominant US narrative, such as those of Russian outlets Sputnik and RT that hosted US intellectuals like Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, are being silenced.

This article addressed how this war began. How it will end or even if it will end is another story. The world is spiraling into a new cold war, emanating from a region formally at peace under socialism.

Expressing a view from the standpoint of the Global South, former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva commented: “we do not want to be anyone’s enemy. We are not interested, nor is the world, in a new cold war…which is for sure dragging the whole world into a conflict that could put humanity in danger.” If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that the end of endless war will come with end of the US imperial project that provoked this crisis.

https://orinocotribune.com/when-did-the ... war-begin/

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Sanctions on Russia are Shaking the World, Including the West which Imposed Them
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 9, 2022
Elijah J. Magnier

“We cannot replace Russian gas overnight,” Germany announced, followed by France to confirm that “its stockpile of gas will not be enough if Russia stops supplying us.” Hungary did not hesitate to reveal that “its economy and local currency will collapse if energy-related sanctions are imposed on Russia.” Finland confirmed that it needs eight years to dispense with Russian gas, of which Europe imports 43% of its annual needs through the “Northern Stream I” and the “Yamal” lines. Indeed, the Russian gas flows at its total capacity and crosses Byelorussia, Poland, and Ukraine, still enjoying Russian gas despite the ongoing war.

It is not rocket science to understand why Europe has taken successive steps to impose sanctions on its leading Russian economic partner in the energy field. But most affected by their own sanctions are the European states, especially after gas prices reached four times their original price ($4000 per thousand cubic meters) and oil prices skyrocketed to $139, dropping at a later stage to 131$. America, the largest importer of Russian oil, is significantly affected by its sanctions on Russia, like Europe and the rest of the world. However, the US has decided to apply the sanction to the Russian oil and all oil products it imports, fully aware that the energy price will become unaffordable for large numbers of the world population. It may reach beyond $200 a barrel, a price that would affect the cost of living all over the planet. President Biden recognised publicly that the war in Ukraine would involve “all of us”.

Unsurprisingly, the US is the primary driver of sanctions because it is the one fighting the war through Ukraine and supplying it with arms since before and during the war. The US pushed its Western allies to follow suit to impose collective sanctions on Russia that in the first place harmed the US’s allies. Since 2014 and until today, the US sanctions on Russia reached the figure of 5532, which includes companies, institutions and individuals- without necessarily damaging the Russian’s capabilities or altering its plans.

However, several countries like China, India, Iran, Pakistan and other African and Asian states have rejected the US dictate and did not join the collective anti-Russia campaign. This was expressed by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan when he received a letter from the head of Western diplomatic missions asking him to condemn Russia in its war on Ukraine. He replied, “Do you think we are your slaves and that we will do whatever you ask?”

To date, the US and Europe have primarily contributed to financing the Russian war on Ukraine because they pay 14 billion dollars a month for Russian oil and gas. America knocked on Venezuelan doors after a boycott of many years and its illegal “recognition » of Juan Guaido as president-in-exile instead of the officially elected President Nicolas Maduro. The Venezuelan President received a US envoy requesting the return of oil production to its total capacity to supply to the US and repair its six refineries that Washington sanctioned (its spare parts) for decades. Iran restored a refinery and brought it back into operation for internal use, enabling Venezuela to export a little of its oil surplus.

However, Venezuela is hesitant to follow the US’s wish and imposes its conditions. The most important requests are lifting all sanctions, recognising Venezuelan sovereignty, and returning the relationship to normal before any other steps. This certainly does not mean at all that Caracas will save the US and compensate its needs for oil and turn its back on Russia, with whom it has deep and long-term economic and security agreements.

The US went to Iran to speed up the nuclear agreement. Still, we were confronted with the Russian wall, requesting written consent to continue military-economic cooperation between Moscow and Tehran. This indicates Iran’s response to Russia by not allowing the US to depend on Iranian oil instead of Russian. Would Venezuela and Iran give a lifeline to the US administration, which has imposed sanctions on the two peoples for many years, whereas Russia helped them with its capabilities?

The price of oil in March of 2020 was about $16 per barrel. It has hit the $140 wall in recent days, and in the coming days, the price is expected to increase following the US oil sanctions. Moscow will compensate the US sanctions on oil imports by increasing the oil price worldwide. The US oil sanctions will certainly not stop the war in Ukraine, contrary to the effect of an agreement of neutrality between Kyiv and Moscow.

Iran and Venezuela will certainly not sell their surplus and reserves of oil to lower their price and help the US with its objectives when they can sell very little oil at a very high price and embarrass Biden while standing by Russia. Business and politics do not always meet, but time will tell how the US can bring back the oil price to its average level.

As for other Western sanctions, there are several problems whose consequences the West may not be prepared for when rushing towards an economic war against Russia. The Nickel price observed its highest single-day increase of around 60% because of the market’s worries about the supply shortage from Russia, the world’s third-largest nickel producer of a metal used in technologies and batteries. The steel price followed as concerns in Europe of the longevity of the war in Ukraine arose.

Moreover, the Russian civil aircraft sector will be hit but has some benefits up its sleeve. Hundreds of planes leased by Russia from the West will not return to their owners anytime soon because of the sanctions and European and Russian airspace closure. Russia says that its planes will continue to operate within the Russian continent and to the countries of Asia and Africa. Russia said it has the right to pay the lease in Russian local currency (ruble), or these planes will be considered compensation for the loss that will hit the national Aeroflot Company. Before the sanctions, Aeroflot’s annual profits reached about 491 billion dollars. As of today, the 8th of March, all flights from Moscow to Europe and vice versa have been cancelled. The European companies that own the planes will not recover their assets due to sanctions and Russia’s intention to hold them in Russia.

The central bank of Russia will begin to rely on its internal financial messaging system (FMS) of the SPSF system as an alternative channel for US international electronic financial messages (SWIFT). Only a few Russian banks were subjected to sanctions and were prevented from using the SWIFT system because the West needs this system to pay billions of euros in advance for the price of oil and gas.

PAYPAL, VISA, AMERICAN EXPRESS and MASTER CARD have suspended financial operations with Russia. Moscow preferred the Chinese UNION PAY system as an alternative that operates in 180 countries worldwide. Credit cards using another system called MIR will be used for local transactions.

Undoubtedly, there is mass emigration of US and European companies from Russia, which will harm both Russia and the West. However, there is no doubt that the sanctions against Russia are also harsh on the west. If Russia weaponises its energy, it will materialise Hiroshima-like consequences in which the prices of fuel and gas will rise to a level never before seen in past crises.

However, Moscow is prepared for the economic war. Russia has cash reserves amounting to 632 billion dollars in euro (32.3 per cent), yuan (13.1 per cent), gold (21.7 per cent) and dollar (16.4%). 450 billion dollars are in Russia and China and other amounts in France, Greece, Germany, the US and the UK.

The consequences of the Russian war on Ukraine are undoubtedly a pivotal stage that represents a significant turning point in history. Russia will turn towards its first ally, China, which has the most critical monetary and developmental reserves globally. It will also resort to Pakistan, India, China, and Iran for trade and industrial exchange and other Central Asian countries to continue economic and commercial exchanges.

Russia bypassed the sanctions and the devaluation of the currency in 1998. It was not affected by the European and American crisis in 2008, and it has born the economic earthquakes whose repercussions are heard today in the West in particular. However, the heavy sanctions will not be without severe consequences, and the unprecedented anti-Russia media campaign has reached its highest level. It will affect the morale of the Russian population.

The West shot Russia and hit its own feet: European officials wish to see the end of the war in Ukraine soon. However, the whole world fears this war with its economic and military repercussions and hopes that it will end finally on the borders of Ukraine. However, President Putin has determined to savage Ukraine into submission, regardless of the consequences. The Russian President is not expected to pull back unless Ukraine first signs the required agreement. Official international talks with the West must include Moscow’s fear of NATO’s expansion and clarification of its future intentions toward Russia.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/03/ ... osed-them/

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THE UNITED STATES ACCELERATES THE COLLAPSE OF ITS FINANCIAL EMPIRE
Mar 9, 2022 , 10:31 a.m.

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The West has left Russia no other way out than to create an alternative to dollar hegemony in conjunction with China (Photo: Getty Images)

The collapse of the US empire, already underway for a few years, is gathering pace. External and internal factors accelerate their fall. This is what the economist Michael Hudson talks about, who has studied the mechanisms with which the dollar corporatocracy plunders the rest of the countries in the world, in a recent article , about the events in Ukraine and its global consequences.

THOSE WHO TRIED TO CATCH THE BEAR HAVE FALLEN INTO THEIR OWN TRAP

Hudson begins by describing what has become apparent to the naked eye: that the US "sanctions" and military confrontation against the rest of the non-Western world have only promoted Russia and China joining forces, and other countries in the Eurasian region. be influenced by that orbit.

In this way, the West is the main cause of the worst scenario for its future as hegemony. He says:

"American economic and financial power was expected to avoid this fate. For the half century since the United States abandoned gold in 1971, the world's central banks have operated on the dollar standard, holding their international monetary reserves in the form of securities. Treasury, bank deposits, and US stocks and bonds.

"The resulting Treasury bill standard has allowed the United States to finance its military spending abroad and the acquisition of investments in other countries simply by creating dollar notes. American balance of payments deficits end up in central banks countries with payment surpluses as their reserves, while debtors in the Global South need dollars to pay their bondholders and conduct their foreign trade.

"This monetary privilege, the seigniorage of the dollar, has allowed US diplomacy to impose neoliberal policies on the rest of the world, without having to use much military force of its own, except to seize oil from the Middle East."


What US diplomacy has achieved is to force Russia to be more self-sufficient economically, and to disassociate itself from the world financial system dominated by the United States, weaving new financial networks in the multipolar framework.

"Russia had been too enthralled by neoliberal free-market ideology to take steps to protect its own agriculture and industry. The United States provided the necessary help by imposing internal self-sufficiency on Russia. When the Baltic states obeyed the American sanctions and lost the Russian market for its cheeses and other agricultural products, Russia quickly created its own cheese and dairy sector, while also becoming the world's leading exporter of grains.

"Russia is discovering (or about to discover) that it does not need US dollars as backing for the ruble exchange rate. Its central bank can create the necessary rubles to pay domestic wages and finance capital formation.

We could add that to sustain that monetary issue, it is necessary to support it in the dynamics of the real economy, an issue that the Russian Federation has been doing under the government of Vladimir Putin for a few years.

Any country that goes against the United States is subject to having its national assets seized, to the extent that they are in US banks, the UK or other countries subject to US influence.

This has happened to Iran, Venezuela and Afghanistan recently (going back in history a bit, it also happened to Ukraine after the 2014 coup, and to Libya during the operation against President Muammar Gaddafi in 2011), and now it is happening to Russia. The UK is also confiscating the savings and investments of Russian individuals. But this has consequences in the collective psyche of the Russian capitalist class:

"By imposing sanctions on the richest Russians closest to Putin, US officials hoped to induce them to oppose his break with the West and thereby effectively serve as NATO influencers. But for Russian billionaires, their own country is starting to look safer.

In the long run, Hudson writes, this will force not only Russia and its allies, but any nation that does not want to come under US pressure, to build an alternative financial system, tailored to their needs and interests.

"What foreign countries have not done on their own to replace the IMF, the World Bank and other strong arms of American diplomacy, American politicians are forcing them to do. Instead of European, Middle Eastern and Global South to break away while calculating their own long-term economic interests, the US is alienating them, as it has with Russia and China More politicians are seeking voter support by asking if their countries would be better served with new currency arrangements to replace dollarized trade, investment and even foreign debt service".

DE-DOLLARIZATION MAY BE JUST THE BEGINNING

With the special military operation in Ukraine, Moscow responded assertively to the provocative military maneuvers of the United States and NATO. That forced Washington to impose its "sanctions", which in the medium and long term would be transformed into benefits for Russia and which currently serve as a warning to the rest of the world to avoid the dollar and all the financial apparatus that goes with it, according to the argument of the American economist.

Politically, the US government cannot afford to retract its extreme anti-Russian rhetoric, so the "sanctions" will likely remain in place. But this will have consequences internally.

"(...) the final break with NATO adventurism must come from within the United States itself. As this year's mid-term elections approach, politicians will find fertile ground to show American voters that gas and energy price inflation is a by-product of the Biden Administration's policy of blocking Russian oil and gas exports (bad news for owners of big consumers!) of gasoline from SUVs !).

"Gas is needed not only for heating and power production, but also to make fertilizer, of which there is already a global shortage. This situation is aggravated by the blockade of grain exports from Russia and Ukraine to the United States and Europe. , causing food prices to skyrocket already."

Hudson highlights other alarming signs of instability in the financial system, which, however, do not seem to be able to make the United States desist from playing the card of the warlike confrontation on Ukrainian territory.

*Stock markets in Europe plunged at their opening on Monday, March 7, and continue the same trend this week (at the close of this note).
*Brent oil soared towards $130 a barrel.
*In New York, the Dow Jones industrial average plunged 650 points.
*Gold soared to more than $2,000 an ounce.

Russia, under the leadership of President Vladimir Putin, has prepared as well as possible for this eventuality and, despite the current wave of Russophobia, will surely overcome the difficulties, Hudson argues. Geopolitical alliances will change dramatically over the next few years. The US empire and its European satellites will be the real victims of their military and financial wars.

The days of the collapse of the dollar-centric system are numbered.

https://misionverdad.com/globalistan/es ... financiero

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"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Thu Mar 10, 2022 12:53 pm

Briefly about Ukraine. 09.03.2022
colonelcassad
March 9, 22:52

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Briefly about Ukraine. 09.03.2022


1. Mariupol. The cleanup continues. There is no complete evacuation from the city. Today, an obvious provocation was also arranged with the shelling of the maternity hospital, which had previously been occupied by the Ukrainian military and turned into a stronghold, as evidenced by the local residents themselves.

2. Volnovakha. The cleansing continues, the city has not yet been completely taken, although there are already DPR flags hanging on some buildings. There is still work to be done.

3. Dokuchaevsk. The troops of the DPR took Novotroitskoye and created the prerequisites for an early cessation of shelling of the city. The Armed Forces of Ukraine will gradually retreat to the north, narrowing the front line and preparing for defensive battles in the environment.

4. Donetsk-Gorlovka. On the front, no major changes, although there is a revival in the area of ​​Avdiivka, Maryinka and a number of other points. Perhaps in the coming days, events here will develop more actively.

5. LPR. The occupation of the remaining uncontrolled villages of the republic will continue. Fighting is going on in the area of ​​Severodonetsk and Rubizhne. Agglomeration is still under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Civilians are also being held hostage.

6. Raisins. The RF Armed Forces control part of the city. In the southern regions, the enemy's DRGs roam, the remaining Ukrainian forces are operating south of the city. Attempts at offensive operations in the Balakleya region, as well as the entire "counteroffensive in the Kharkov region" in general, did not bring much success to the enemy. Well, except for Chuguev, who has been recaptured from himself. There is a suspicion that soon the Armed Forces of Ukraine will greatly regret that they spent the remaining reserves on this activity. Meanwhile, the threat of a boiler in the Donbas after the loss of the Izyum APU continues to grow. Ukrainian sources report that the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine has allegedly already written off the group, which, in fact, only has the task of dragging out resistance as much as possible after the formation of the cauldron.

7. Kharkov. Fighting continues on the outskirts of the city, inside which a humanitarian catastrophe is growing. Meanwhile, in the region itself, Russian humanitarian aid is being imported more and more actively. It is more or less safe to leave the city except by train. In the evening, the governor of Kharkov announced the capture of Dergachi, who were already under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Chuguev №2.

8. Sumy. No big changes. The bulk of the people still cannot leave the city, as Kyiv refuses to use the humanitarian corridors offered by Russia. The situation is similar in Chernihiv.

9. Kyiv. The Russian Armed Forces continue to fortify west of Kyiv, in anticipation of the buildup of Russian Armed Forces in the Brovar area. The Armed Forces of Ukraine still hold Irpin, from where people walk out in the direction of Kyiv. According to the Pentagon, the RF Armed Forces can completely surround Kyiv within 72 hours.

10. Nikolaev. The city is blocked from three sides, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are preparing for street battles, which means that the struggle for the city's foreground is lost.

In general, everyone is waiting for the start of the 2nd phase of the operation, the basis of which should be a full-fledged pocket in the Donbass with a subsequent advance to the Dnieper, the completion of the encirclement of Kharkov (with a possible assault) and the complete encirclement of Kyiv. The development of the operation in the area of ​​Nikolaev and Odessa is also expected. Realizing this, they are trying to use the remnants of the reserves of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to strengthen the defense of Kharkov, Odessa and Kyiv.

Tomorrow's talks between Lavrov and Kuleba in Turkey will most likely be Ukraine's last chance to avoid further consequences of hostilities, but it will certainly not take this chance.

Broadcast as usual in Telegram - https://t.me/boris_rozhin

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7 ... tml#cutid1


Russia withdraws from the Council of Europe

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Russia officially withdrew from the Council of Europe today.

The states of the EU and NATO, unfriendly to Russia, abusing their absolute majority in the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe (CMCE), continue the policy of destroying the Council of Europe and the common humanitarian and legal space in Europe.

The course of events becomes irreversible. Russia does not intend to put up with these subversive actions carried out by the collective West in line with the imposition of a “rules-based order” to replace international law trampled by the United States and its satellites. Russia will not participate in the transformation by NATO and the EU obediently following them of the oldest European organization into another platform for incantations about Western superiority and narcissism. Let them enjoy communicating with each other, without Russia.

https://www.mid.ru/ru/press_service/spo ... /1803555/- zinc

Further, it was specified that:

1. Russia terminates its cooperation with the ECtHR.
2. Citizens of the Russian Federation will no longer be able to apply to the European Court of Human Rights.
3. Russia's withdrawal from the Council of Europe means the termination of cooperation with all structures associated with them (that is, the ECtHR, PACE, etc., etc.) Regarding PACE, you know my opinion - you should have left for a long time and not come back. Especially if you pay money for it.

The final touches of a useless 30-year trip to the "golden billion" to the "blessed West".

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7485454.html

We will do everything to no longer depend on the West in any way.
colonelcassad
March 10, 14:09

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Based on the results of the talks between the Foreign Ministers of the Russian Federation, Turkey and Ukraine, as well as subsequent statements by Lavrov. Main.


1. There will be no ceasefire - the Russian Federation has firmly tied this issue to the fulfillment of the requirements for the LDNR, Crimea, demilitarization, denazification, etc.
2. Work on humanitarian corridors to rescue civilians will continue.
3. Russia officially stated that it did not attack Ukraine and does not plan to attack other countries. As I wrote yesterday, the Russian Federation did not declare war on Ukraine, as well as Ukraine and the Russian Federation. So officially it's not a war.
4. The Russian Federation will not beg Europe to buy Russian oil and gas if they are ready to refuse them.
5. The Russian Federation wants to see Ukraine as a friendly country without a ban on the Russian language and culture, so that Ukraine is not an instrument of the West against Russia.
6. Russia will seek answers on the topic of US WMD development in Ukraine.
7. Russia will do everything to cope with the consequences of the break with the West and no longer depend on the West in any way. Other

things.

1. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said that NATO is not ready to ensure the security of Ukraine.
2. Borrell said that the EU has reached its limit in terms of imposing financial sanctions against Russia (the Russian Federation, in fact, has not even begun to introduce retaliatory measures yet)
3. The LPR has already officially recognized Abkhazia.

Well, Medvedev about sanctions and consequences for the Russian Federation.

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I wrote last year. Just in case, keep an eye on the scenario when Medvedev goes up again.

In general, the period of the march to the West from 1991 (plus the last years of Perestroika) to 2021 is over. Since 2022, a new era has begun for the country (as well as for the rest of the world). What it will be remains to be seen. We live in that very era of "great changes".

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7 ... tml#cutid1

All above Google Translator

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Disarming Ukraine Day 15: A Curious Hospital Bombing And 'No-Fly Zone' Pressure
This allegedly happened on March 9 at about 17:30 local time (15:30 UTC) in Mariupol, Ukraine:

Russian forces bombed a maternity and children's hospital in southern Ukraine, authorities there said Wednesday, an attack described by the country's President Volodymyr Zelensky as an "atrocity."
...
Mariupol city council posted a video of the devastated hospital in the city and accused Russian forces of dropping several bombs on it from the air.
...
Police in the Donetsk region said that according to preliminary information at least 17 people were injured, including mothers and staff, as a result of the attack.
Zelensky repeated his call for the NATO military alliance to declare a no-fly zone over Ukraine, as he expressed his outrage at the attack.


This is curious. The three story building is quite large with more than a hundred rooms.

Image

Pictures show that all windows have been destroyed by a huge pressure wave. If there had been people in the building many would be dead and all would likely have cuts from glass and other debris flying around.

How come that there were allegedly only 17 people injured?

The video taken shortly after the incident (there is still daylight) and published by CNN shortly thereafter shows the completely destroyed interior of the hospital but no casualties and no traces of blood on the floors. The still pictures published with the CNN report show only one man in uniform who has some blood on his face. Other persons in the pictures have no visible signs of wounds.

A day before a news piece in the Russian magazine Lenta.ru published on March 8 at 00:01 local time (March 7 21:01 UTC) had mentioned the hospital. (The piece was fetched by archive.org on March 7 22:09 UTC.) It is a report from a Lenta.ru reporter in Donbas who interviewed refugees arriving from Mariupol. Here is a machine translated excerpt:

“They can’t hold out for more than a week” Residents of Mariupol talk about the humanitarian catastrophe that is unfolding before their eyes
The correspondent of Lenta.ru visited the village of Bezymennoye in the south of the DPR, where residents of Mariupol fleeing the hostilities arrive, and talked with those who managed to leave the city.
...
Some of the residents of the villages adjacent to Mariupol managed to get to the territory controlled by the DPR without any problems. But not everyone is so lucky, and everyone has their own story.
...
During the first day of the humanitarian corridor's operation, only 52 people left Mariupol (and about 200,000 were expected). There are always human tragedies behind the numbers.

A man walks by the tents where refugees are taken. He is on edge and does not let go of the phone, his face shows that he has not been without sleep for several days. His name is Igor, he spent about a day on the road to get to Bezymennoye from the Crimea. He constantly approaches the military, employees of the Ministry of Emergency Situations, asking to see the lists to find out if his elderly parents were able to evacuate from Mariupol. He is trying to go along with the soldiers towards the front line, closer to the city.

Igor said that in the last days of February, people in uniform came to the maternity hospital where his mother works. He does not know whether they were fighters of the Armed Forces of Ukraine or the nationalist battalion "Azov" (banned in the Russian Federation). The military knocked down all the locks, dispersed the staff of the maternity hospital, and set up firing points in the building in order, as they explained to the doctors, to prepare the “fortress of Mariupol” for defense. The reaction of the military to objections is standard: blows with rifle butts, shooting into the air.


On March 7 (UTC-5) the permanent mission of the Russian Federation to the UN published a statement by its Permanent Representative Vassily Nebenzia had made at a UNSC briefing on the humanitarian situation in Ukraine. The briefing had been scheduled for March 7 3:00 pm local time (March 7 20:00 UTC). (The statement was fetched by archive.org on March 8 at 2:12 UTC.)

The statement says among other things:

By our records, 200 thousand civilians are trapped in Mariupol alone and held at gunpoint by the Azov battalion. The humanitarian situation in cities deteriorates rapidly. As for humanitarians who are ready to help, they cannot get in there and prevent the unfolding disaster. People in other regions of Ukraine that have been blocked by nationalist battalions find themselves in the same desperate situation.

Ukrainian radicals show their true face more distinctly by the day. Locals reports that Ukraine’s Armed Forces kicked out personnel of natal hospital #1 of the city of Mariupol and set up a firing site within the facility. Besides, they fully destroyed one of the city’s kindergartens.


We have these records:

*On March 7 some time after 20:00 UTC the maternity hospital #1 in Mariupol was mention at a UNSC meeting as being occupied by the Ukrainian military.
*On March 7 21:01 UTC Lenta.ru published a report from a reporter in Donbas who had interviewed someone who said that the hospital was occupied by possibly Azov or other military forces.
*On March 9 about 15:30 UTC the hospital gets bombed and completely destroyed but with astonishing few alleged casualties none of which are documented despite video records taken on the scene shortly after the incident.
*Shortly thereafter President Zelensky uses the bombing to publicly press for a 'western' enforced 'no-fly zone' over Ukraine. (There is currently a Russian enforced no-fly zone over Ukraine.)

I leave it for readers to decide what really has happened here.

Posted by b on March 10, 2022 at 10:44 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/03/d ... .html#more
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Thu Mar 10, 2022 3:47 pm

The liberation of Mariupol has begun

The units of the DPR army began to gnaw through the defenses of the Ukrainian security forces and enter the city.

The first successes of the defenders of Donbass became known in the afternoon, and closer to the night the army of the DPR consolidated its success. In the suburbs of Mariupol, street battles are in full swing, during which the Ukrainian army suffers losses and retreats into the depths of the city, losing one position after another.

As previously reported, during the day, a dozen firing points of the Armed Forces of Ukraine and nationalist battalions were destroyed, which, by the way, were located in residential buildings. After suppressing the resistance of the enemy, the soldiers of the DPR army managed to evacuate civilians whose houses were captured by the militants.

With the coordinated actions of the DPR units, the enemy’s defense breaks through in various areas, and we can safely say that in the near future the Armed Forces of Ukraine and the national battalions will be finally cornered. Despite resistance, the Ukrainian army retreats.

“Despite the fact that the Ukrainian military is resisting, under the fire pressure of the DPR army, they are retreating from their defensive positions,” says one of the fighters, who has been on the front lines of the Mariupol direction for the past few days.

According to him, the further development of events depends primarily on what actions the DPR army will take. However, there is no doubt that if the defenders of Donbass continue to advance and squeeze out the enemy, the city will soon be liberated.

The only difficulty, according to the fighter, is fighting in those parts of the city where the maximum building density, and hence the maximum number of civilians. There, the DPR army will have to act as carefully as possible, but the enemy forces may already be running out by that time.

Author: Georgy Medvedev

https://novorosinform.org/osvobozhdenie ... 91391.html

WarGonzo: The left bank of Mariupol is cleared by 60%

DPR fighters are successfully clearing the city blocks of Mariupol, according to WarGonzo project sources on the front line.

Military correspondents note that the defenders of Donbass are making serious progress during the operation to liberate Mariupol from the Nazis.
"Despite the fact that heavy street fighting is still going on in the city and it is still unsafe to move freely in the liberated areas due to the constant shelling of the national battalions, today the DPR fighters managed to advance a few more streets," the statement said.
Earlier it was reported that the fighters of the People's Militia of the DPR took control of several city blocks in Mariupol and went to the Azovstal plant.

https://novorosinform.org/wargonzo-levy ... 91427.html

War criminal Arsen Avakov liquidated in Kharkiv - media

A number of telegram channels published news about the death of the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov as a result of a high-precision strike by the Russian army.

Arsen Avakov, the former head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine, who arrived to organize the defense of the Ukrainian army, was killed as a result of an attack by the Russian military.

One of the first messages about Avakov's death was published by the telegram channel Older Edda.
"In Kharkov, Avakov was seriously wounded or killed," the message says, with the proviso that this data has not been officially confirmed.
At the same time, Avakov's official Twitter account published a video made part of the way back. On it, the ex-head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs reports on the "imminent victory of the Ukrainian army."

https://novorosinform.org/v-harkove-lik ... 91419.html

Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation: the Pentagon was interested in insect vectors of infections in Ukraine

Igor Kirillov, head of the radiation, chemical and biological defense troops of the Russian Armed Forces, said that a lot of containers with fleas and ticks were taken abroad from the biological laboratory of Kharkov.
"The Pentagon is also interested in vector insects capable of spreading dangerous infectious diseases. An analysis of the materials received confirms the fact that more than 140 containers with ectoparasites of bats - fleas and ticks - were transferred abroad from the biological laboratory in Kharkov," the lieutenant general said.
Earlier, the Russian Defense Ministry announced the presence of American laboratories in Ukraine as part of military biological programs. This was later confirmed by US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland.

https://novorosinform.org/minoborony-rf ... 91439.html

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US military biolabs in Ukraine
colonelcassad
March 10, 17:56

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Briefing by the Russian Defense Ministry on the US military biological laboratories in Ukraine.



So far, the Russian Federation has provided more facts and evidence of attempts by the Americans to develop WMD in Ukraine than the US itself could find in Iraq in an attempt to "discover" Saddam Hussein's WMD.

For blog readers, this topic is certainly not new, the first materials on this topic were published 5 years ago. Now it's just that all this is gradually being confirmed and overgrown with texture. Hence the hasty US attempts to clean up the tails.
Nuland, of course, made a big mistake when she admitted the existence of laboratories, and then began to justify them. For this, not only here, but also in the states, they seized on. If the Russian Federation correctly plays this card, it may turn out the same way as it was with the story about the secret CIA prisons, which were also in Ukraine.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7 ... tml#cutid1

All above Google Translator

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U.S. Nailed to the Wall on Illicit Biological Weapons Labs in Ukraine
gilbertdoctorow Uncategorized March 9, 2022

A couple of days ago, when I presented a summary of the dramatic information and warnings conveyed in the latest televised briefing by the spokesman for the Russian military, Igor Konoshenkov, I received back from some readers the comment that this was all just Russian propaganda, similar to the kind of propaganda we hear regularly coming from the Pentagon and State Department. The allegations of biological weapons banned under international convention being produced in experimental laboratories in Kharkiv and other Ukrainian towns under programs paid for and supervised by Americans had to be fake news, these skeptics and cynics maintained. The same had to be true of Konoshenkov’s asserting that the Ukrainians were working on dirty nuclear bombs at their Zaporozhye nuclear power stations, which had just been captured by Russian forces.

Nonetheless, yesterday the story about biological weapons labs received convincing confirmation from the U.S. State Department, when Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary for Political Affairs, said publicly before microphones that the USA fears that its biological labs in Ukraine will “fall into the wrong hands.” That is a very convoluted admission that the Russians’ allegations are perfectly true. The U.S. is battening down the hatches against the coming storm of international indignation, at the same time trying to divert attention away from itself by suggesting that the Russians might do something dastardly with what they find.

American evasion and attempted dissimulation were stymied however when, also yesterday, the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs demanded an explanation from the United States of what exactly Americans have been doing not only in their Ukrainian labs, which were situated in cities across the Ukraine from Kharkiv to Lviv, but in a total of 336 such labs spread out across the world. Intense Chinese concern is understandable since one such laboratory was in Wuhan, the point of origin of Covid19.

Still on the subject of biological weapons being prepared in Ukraine under United States funding and guidance, Russian experts were on television this morning explaining how leaks from these labs have been monitored over the past few years. In one such case, 450 Ukrainian civilians were said to have died from biological agents that contaminated their residential block. This number, you will note, is higher than the total number of civilian deaths in the ongoing “barbaric” Russian operation in Ukraine as reported in The Financial times (characterization as “barbaric” by Andrew Bacevich, Chairman of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a self-described American think tank for peace). The Russians are now examining whether outbreaks of swine flu and avian flu that caused havoc with their livestock in farming areas close to the Ukrainian border may not have been artificially induced by saboteurs coming from Ukraine. Work on viruses transmissible from animals to humans was also reportedly being done in the Ukrainian facilities.

Let us now turn to the question of Ukraine’s program to produce nuclear weapons, which Konoshenkov also mentioned in his briefing. Today Russian news is saying that they possess more than just documentary proof of such development, which contravenes the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 and the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, to which Ukraine is a signatory. The Russians now claim to have found sample “baby bombs” which will prove beyond doubt the nuclear ambitions of Kiev for which the United States was a guiding force.

All of the foregoing points to what may be expected when the Russians finish their demilitarization and denazification campaign in Ukraine in the next several weeks. They may well convene an international tribunal to try the Ukrainians who were responsible for the illicit programs involving weapons of mass destruction. We may expect the Chinese to join them in running the tribunal, as well as other closely interested countries. It is also reasonable to expect that this tribunal will identify and seek to extradite their American handlers. This may be difficult, because Moscow has already said today that the Americans on the ground in Ukraine overseeing the biological weapons laboratories all carried diplomatic passports. However, the Russians, like the Americans, can be very resourceful in cases like this.

*****

Finally, before closing today’s bulletin of latest developments in the Russia-Ukraine war at the political level, I direct attention to the question of Poland’s turning over its fleet of Soviet-era MIG jet fighters to Ukraine, which has been a hot issue on Western news these past few days. The Poles had been in discussions over this possibility with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken last week, and Blinken seemed to be approving. For the Poles, the proposed “donation” to support Ukraine would be a godsend. They would get rid their fleet of old Soviet planes and would receive in exchange from the United States F-16 fighters, thereby better integrating Poland into the standard equipment of NATO fully at the charge of Uncle Sam. Let us assume the transaction would come to half a billion to one billion dollars to the benefit of Warsaw and to the cost of U.S. taxpayers.

Is it any wonder that several other former Warsaw Pact countries, now NATO member states yesterday said they too were ready to help the comrades in Ukraine by turning their old MIGs over to Kiev and taking in exchange United States fighter planes.

Warsaw announced yesterday that it intended to fly its MIGs to the Ramstein air base in southwestern Germany for the hand-over. This news release apparently took the U.S Government by surprise. At her testimony before the Senate a little later in the day, Victoria Nuland said she had no pre-warning of the announcement and would not comment till she got back to her office and studied the matter further.

This announcement was indeed remarkable. Ramstein is the headquarters of the United States Air Forces in Europe and also of the NATO Allied Air Command. If the MIGs had simply been transferred to Ukrainian pilots on Polish territory and then flown into combat in Ukraine, then they would bring down on the dispatching airport in Poland the instant retribution that General Konoshenkov stated explicitly two days ago. By sending the planes to Ramstein for the hand-over to the Ukrainians, the Russian response, cruise or hypersonic missile attack, would go instead against the United States air base.

Dear promoters of Poland as the defense shield of Europe in Washington: pay close attention to what your friends would do to you.

However, none of this will come to pass, as we may conclude by today’s announcement from the Pentagon that the deal is unacceptable and is outside the competence of Poland to offer. Today the Pentagon spokesmen say plainly that the issue at hand concerns all of NATO and can be taken only by NATO collectively, not by one member, Poland.

This is a nice formally correct explanation from the Pentagon. The subtext is that the U.S. Chiefs of Staff have taken with the utmost seriousness the warnings of retaliation from Konoshenkov, against NATO, Article 5 or no Article 5 pledges of ‘one for all and all for one.’ Meanwhile, the general public in the United States is clueless because virtually nothing about this appeared in major media.

*****

When the war started, President Putin was hopeful to come to a quick understanding with the leading officers of the Ukrainian armed forces regarding capitulation and regime change. However, in a matter of days it became clear that the Ukrainian military has been thoroughly infiltrated by radical nationalists and is unable to act in the interests of the nation independently. It now appears that this type of analysis would be better applied to the United States of America. Only the senior generals in the Pentagon have their eyes and ears wide open to the Russian capabilities and intentions. The political classes, both Democrats and Republicans on The Hill, are lost in their own virtual world of unlimited United States power. That alone explains the potentially suicidal demand from Democrats yesterday that Biden now impose a ‘no-fly zone’ over Ukraine.

It may be that the war will end when the Pentagon generals and their Russian counterparts sit down and talk about revising the European architecture of security, leaving Blinken and his associates to look on through the windows.

©Gilbert Doctorow, 2022

https://gilbertdoctorow.com/2022/03/09/ ... n-ukraine/

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Lavrov-Kuleba Meeting Fails to Reach Ceasefire Agreement


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Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Sergey Lavrov in Antalya, Turkey, March 10, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/ @JeSuisEspe_

Published 10 March 2022

"The West is acting dangerously," Russian Foreign Affairs Minister Lavrov said, warning that Western arms supplies to Ukraine will lead to an escalation of the conflict.

Foreign affairs ministers Sergey Lavrov (Russia), Mevlut Cavusoglu (Turkey), and Dmytro Kouleba (Ukraine) held talks in Antalya, Turkey on Thursday. No concrete agreement emerged from their meeting to halt the Russia-Ukraine conflict.

Nevertheless, the head of Russian diplomacy stated that President Vladimir Putin is willing to meet with the Ukrainian president if their meeting provides an "added value", serves to reach a solution, and facilitates establishing concrete agreements.

Lavrov also pointed out that the Antalya meeting is not a substitute for the Belarus talks, which are seen as "the only viable format." Russia will not agree to the creation of a "parallel track" of negotiations as Ukraine may be hoping for, Lavrov said, stressing that Kiev's search for "new formats" is only meant to show "some activity" and replace "real work".

During the Belarus rounds, Russia made it very clear what needs to be done to end the conflict in Ukraine: the demilitarization and denazification of that country and guarantee its neutral status, the Russian diplomat stressed.


Lavrov also mentioned that the Ukrainian side promised to respond shortly to the proposals put forward in writing by Russia at the latest round of talks in Belarus.

Besides reiterating the claim that Ukrainian nationalists use civilians as human shields, Lavrov denounced that the Pentagon has deployed military biological labs in Ukraine. "The West is acting dangerously," he said, warning that Western arms supplies to Ukraine will lead to an escalation of the conflict.

“Those who send weapons to Ukraine, or encourage mercenaries, will be responsible for their actions,” the Russian diplomat stressed, as reported by agency AA.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Lav ... -0005.html

Russia Reveals Ukrainian Plan to Attack Donbass Region

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Chernobyl nuclear power plant is de-energized. March. 9, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@nexta_tv

Published 9 March 2022 (15 hours 50 minutes ago)

The plant has been completely cut off from electrical means and radiation leaks are "imminent", Ukrainian authorities told the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) on Wednesday.

Russian troops established control over the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on February 24 when the Kremlin launched its special military operation in Ukraine. Both sides, Russia and Ukraine, agreed to ensure the plant's security jointly.

Nikolai Pankov, Russian deputy defense minister, disclosed that nationalist forces from Ukraine attacked a substation and the power cables conducting electricity to the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. He qualified such an attack as an extremely dangerous instigation.

Pankov warned that Ukraine is hindering the organization of repair and restoration work. He argued that this demonstrates the provocative nature of the Ukrainian nationalists' actions. Otherwise, the deputy minister said that Russian specialists are making every effort to ensure the transition to reserve diesel generators at the Chernobyl site.

In this sense, Russian Deputy Minister of Energy Pavel Sorokin recognized that Belarus has offered to connect the plant to the Belarusian energy system to restore electricity supplies to the plant permanently. Sorokin also accused Ukrainian authorities of being responsible for any interruptions of the work of compressor stations or provocations against them.


Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko affirmed that the disabled plant, which does not produce power of its own, has the capacity to maintain power independently through on-site diesel generators. However, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said that the cooling systems of the spent nuclear fuel storage facility would stop once the backup generator stopped working, making radiation leakage imminent.

In this regard, the IAEA claimed that there is no critical security risk at the plant despite the loss of power. The agency also stated that the thermal load of the spent fuel storage pool and the volume of cooling water at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant are sufficient to remove heat without the need for a power supply effectively.

European Union foreign affairs chief Josep Borrell expressed that the situation in the Chernobyl plant is a source of concern. He called for the preservation of safety regarding the nuclear infrastructure in Ukraine. He said that he fully supports the IAEA in its interest in finding consent on practical solutions amid such a critical scenario.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Ukr ... -0011.html
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 11, 2022 12:28 am

Briefly about Ukraine. 03/10/2022
colonelcassad
March 10, 22:17

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Briefly about Ukraine. 03/10/2022

1. Mariupol. The cleanup continues. Promotion in the northern and eastern parts of the city. Mangosh is blocked. The purge of Volnovakha continues. Most civilians are held hostage by the Nazis and are consumables for them for various provocations.

2.Zaporozhye. The RF Armed Forces east of Gulyaipole are advancing towards Novaya Novoselka and Ugledar. From the side of Novotroitskoye, the forces of the DPR are pressing to the north. The Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have two options here: either turn to Ugledar, or make their way through Velikaya Novoselka to the Donetsk-Kurakhovo-Zaporozhye highway, with a further attack on Krasnoarmeysk.

3. Raisin-Balakleya. Having repulsed the counterattacks of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation began to advance in the direction of Chuguev and the eastern outskirts of Kharkov, in order to block the city from the east. It is also worth noting strikes in the Lyubotin area to the west of the city. So far, it is not completely clear where the Izyum grouping will move further in the context of movement along the lines of communication of the Donbass grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

4. Kiev. Fighting continued to the west and east of Kyiv. Brovary is still under the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but the movement of mechanized columns to the south and south-west is noted - the troops, in fact, flow around the fortified area of ​​the Armed Forces of Ukraine and seek to further envelop Kyiv, with the aim of completely blocking it.

5. Krivoy Rog - Nikopol. Having set up barriers to the north of Nikolaev, the RF Armed Forces have seriously advanced in the direction of Nikopol over the past 24 hours. Control over it should secure the ZNPP, as well as cut the Zaporozhye-Nikopol-Krivoy Rog highway.

6. Odessa. No major changes. Russian ships carried out Caliber launches near Odessa, which were mistaken for the shelling of Odessa. "Calibers" were launched at the airfield near Krivoy Rog. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are planning to blow up the remaining bridges with Transnistria in the near future in order to prevent the hypothetical use of Russian troops deployed in the Transnistria.

7.Severodonetsk-Lysichansk. Fighting continues in the area of ​​the agglomeration, but so far there has been no direct assault on the cities. Rubizhne is also still under the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Fighting is still going on in the Popasnaya area.

8. Donetsk-Gorlovka. No significant changes. Positional warfare with the active use of artillery continues here at the front. The Armed Forces of Ukraine along the way continue senseless shelling of Donetsk and other cities and towns.

9. Nikolaev. The city is already quite densely lined. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are waiting for the assault, but the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation have so far limited themselves to blocking the city.

10. Chernigov - Sumy. No significant changes. The fuss with humanitarian corridors continues.

Negotiations between Lavrov and Kuleba, as expected, did not lead to results. SVO continues. The Zelensky regime is still not ready to accept the required conditions, which determines both the continuation of the operation and the growing “Syrianization or Idlibization of Ukraine.”

Broadcast across Ukraine as usual in Telegram - https://t.me/boris_rozhin(if you are interested please subscribe)

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The danger of a world ruled by NATO: Interview with Ángeles Maestro
March 10, 2022 Carlos Aznárez

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Ángeles Maestro is a leading figure in Spain when it comes to internationalist and solidarity activism. A former communist deputy, today she is not only highly critical of the positions of that party but also denounces its permanent ideological retreats.

She has denounced with all her might the Psoe-Podemos compromise, and now that the NATO war is endangering the whole world, she has no doubts about where to stand, repudiating imperialism and the interventionist maneuvers of the Atlantic Alliance.

We spoke with Nines Maestro about how she views this confrontation from a country like Spain, which, like the rest of the European Union, is once again on its knees before U.S. arrogance.

U.S. imperialism has been subordinating the European Union in an uninterrupted process since NATO was created in 1949, six years before the existence of the Warsaw Pact.

Indeed, the explicit objective of NATO’s existence was to confront the Soviet Union but also to subordinate the European Union and to prevent the establishment of any kind of alliance, regardless of the ideology of the Soviet Union, with Russia and at that time with its satellite countries. The very existence of this alliance negated the military sovereignty of each and every one of the countries of the European Union.

The Spanish State voted at one time against joining NATO, but then Felipe Gonzalez and his party erased with their elbow what they had written with their hand.

The Spanish State, since 1982, has been part of the military structure of the Alliance, following a referendum in which the conditions were absolutely unfulfilled. I remember that Spain is not only part of the military structure but even a leader of the Psoe itself, as Javier Solana, was secretary general of NATO during the war of destruction and provoked explosion of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

The other conditions of the referendum such as the Non-installation of nuclear weapons was also discarded by means of bilateral agreements with the United States, by which Spain renounced the right to ask if the ships, the airplanes that cross its skies or the American military bases themselves harbor nuclear weapons or not. On the other hand, as is quite evident, the military presence in U.S. bases on Spanish soil has only increased.

This government, which claims to be the most progressive in history, is playing one of the most undignified roles, competing with the government of (José María) Aznar and the Azores trio (George W. Bush, Tony Blair and the former Spanish president) in the invasion of Yugoslavia, the Spanish State is going even further than other European Union countries in supporting NATO’s offensive against the Russian Federation.

Not only that, but the Psoe government together with United Podemos is preparing for the NATO summit to be held in Madrid at the end of of June of this year and there have been declarations from the leaders, including those of the Communist Party of Spain and its Secretary General Enrique De Santiago, assuring that Spain will fulfill its commitments to NATO and they are collaborating in each and every one of the government’s decisions.

Curiously, after the last congress of the Communist Party approved the exit from NATO and the dismantling of the bases, in a very explicit and clear demonstration of what the congresses of a Communist Party are for, and their leaders trample on all the agreements of those congresses and of course the legitimate interests of the peoples of the Spanish State.

Considering that, as has happened in all previous wars, the American and NATO bases are foreign territory and can be a military objective of the countries that are attacked by NATO. That terrible sensation is the one we communist and left-wing people are experiencing, having governments as unworthy as those of the Psoe or the Popular Party.

It is foreseeable that from the bases of the left that are not sold out to NATO there will be a reaction against the submissive approaches of the leaders.

We must say that platforms and committees are being organized in different towns of the Spanish State and also in Madrid against this NATO summit asking for the immediate exit of Spain from the Alliance and the dismantling of the bases, the non participation of the Spanish army in the attack on any country and denouncing the government that is preparing this NATO summit in which the incorporation of Ukraine to NATO is also expected.

This reminds us of when Bush ordered the attack and invasion of Iraq and a patriotic hysteria arose in the United States that spread around the world, where Saddam Hussein was targeted, he was the “enemy” to be defeated, and NATO was the “good guy in the film” for the West.

This hysteria is now repeating itself and the Olympic Committee decides that no Russian athlete can compete, or FIFA eliminates the Russian soccer team from the World Cup in Qatar, or the censorship of this world dictatorship bans RT and Sputnik.

There is a McCarthyist “wave” as never before seen, accompanied by the media. But in your analysis you have pointed out a very interesting fact which is the regrettable role being played by a certain political left, which includes communist parties, Trotskyists and also bien pensantes intellectuals of “progressivism” who when the time comes to take one side always put themselves in the middle or on the opposite side.

How do you think this will evolve as NATO continues to advance? It is clear that NATO wants and needs to destabilize Russia and then go after China. How do you think the population, which is now mostly chloroformed, will react to these events?

The moment is complicated, what you have said is precisely like that: communist parties, NGOs, and other organizations of the left are as always taking the side of imperialism, what we call here “ninis”, which means, what has happened in any attack on any country, is the demonization of the corresponding leader.

There was talk at one time of “neither Bush nor Saddam”, “neither NATO, nor Milosevic”, “neither NATO nor Qaddafi”, demonizing Bashar Al Assad in the case of Syria, and so on. In reality, it is an attempt to equate the aggressor with the aggressed. Moreover, with the media lies, which are very important to remember: when the invasion of Iraq was justified, it was because they had non-existent weapons of mass destruction and the image of a cormorant full of oil dying on a beach was used to prove that Saddam Hussein was a terrorist, or the thousands of images that never existed.

There is the case of the story of what was later shown to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States, a teenage girl crying because newborns had been ripped from incubators, and it was clearly a constructed story. Or the bombings attributed to Qaddafi who was said to be bombing his own people.

So all these media lies are constructed, and they encourage the position of some leftist organizations that jump on the “No to war” bandwagon, accusing Russia of the Invasion of Ukraine, in an attempt to whitewash the attacks of imperialism that Ukraine represents in relation to Russia and other countries in the area.

I also wanted to point out when you asked what will be the reaction of the population, that many times I remember that maxim that the dominant ideology is the ideology of the ruling classes, and that the media in power of the multinational oligarchies collaborate to shape those supposed public opinions.

The reality is that with obsequious pro-Yankee positions such as those in Europe, the consequences will soon be felt by the populations of each country.

In Europe, the consequences include the U.S. and the European Union imposing sanctions on Russia, and those who pay for them are the peoples of the EU. In particular, with the ban on exports to Russia many small companies are reacting, seeing their businesses ruined by the impossibility of exporting different agricultural products to Russia, let alone in a situation of bestial crisis like the one we are living through, the cancellation of the purchase of gas from Russia.

This is the most important issue for the United States because the gas pipeline that was supposed to bring Russian gas directly to Germany and the rest of the European Union, was 30% or 40% cheaper than gas bought from the United States, a product of fracking, and also of much higher quality because the U.S. gas is full of impurities.

At this moment I can say that modest families, not only the poorest ones, are no longer able to use electricity for heating or to use electricity when the sun goes down, and when the economic repercussions arrive, we will see that the United States sanctions against Russia are paid for by the peoples of the European Union.

Therefore, at the beginning I pointed out how in the very existence of NATO, beyond the confrontation with the communist Soviet Union, the fundamental objective is to subordinate the European Union to its interests, paying directly the consequences because the geographical relationship of the European Union with Russia is much greater than that of the United States or Great Britain, who are the great instigators of the NATO offensive.

Of course, the aim of Great Britain and now of the U.S.A is to prevent the natural alliance between countries that are very close to each other and therefore tend to establish trade relations for the purchase and sale of their products. I think it is important that the denunciation of U.S. imperialism which is striking Russia on the backs of the peoples of the European Union is very much present.

For example, when the European Union in the previous crisis imposed sanctions on Russia, the farmers of some countries put mountains of peaches or other products that they could not export to Russia, they burned flags of the European Union and they were not leftists or communists but farmers who saw that they were destroying their economic possibilities.

Objectively, all the measures imposed by the pandemic, the digitalization, the end of small and medium enterprises, placed millions of workers in a terrible situation. Without a doubt, the sanctions against Russia will be paid by our peoples and will place many people in very strong contradictions, not ideological but economic and trade possibilities.

Putin has been patient without limits before finally attacking those he considers enemies of Russian security, he tried in the Minsk meetings to reach agreements to avoid what is happening now, before finally recognizing the independence of the People’s Republics of Donetsk and Lugansk, who were the ones who fought for all these years.

Hence, Putin has prioritized several points for which he will withdraw his soldiers from Ukraine. He pointed out two of them at the beginning of the defensive operation: demilitarization and denazification. There are many in the world who are unaware of what is happening in Ukraine when people say that there are Nazis and a government that sponsors them.

Tell us about this issue that Europe should be concerned with instead of very lightly lining up behind NATO.

Actually, the Nazi presence in Ukraine has remained very strong, organized and armed since World War II. They are the same symbols and heirs of the former Nazis. I hope that people who read or listen to us remember the Nazi offensive in Ukraine, Russia, Belarus and the nations that formed the bloc of the Soviet Union at that time.

It was a genocide, an extermination in which the massacre was systematic and overwhelming against the peoples, it was not against armed people, they were no armed fights and military confrontations but mass murders, which made up the total balance of the 27 million dead of the Soviet Union in the Second World War, the great majority of them civilian population.

The people of Belarus, Russia and Ukraine are well aware of what “Nazi” means. They are serial killers who exterminate entire populations, homosexuals, blacks, gypsies, Jews and who have ethnic cleansing intentions. This included the extermination of the Jews in the Second World War, which leads to the fact that within Israel itself there are demonstrations against Israel’s support to the Ukrainian Nazis.

But of course, this whole process has had at its core the Donbass, Lugansk and Donetsk. It began with a coup d’état fabricated by the European Union and the U.S.A in 2014, a coup d’état that was penetrated to the core by the Nazi organizations that occupy prominent positions in the army and police, in which the Nazi battalions are integrated.

It should be remembered that there was also the massacre of workers, taking advantage of the fact that in the towns of the former Soviet Union and Ukraine the May 1st demonstration is succeeded by a series of activities and celebrations culminating on May 9th, which is the anniversary of the entry of the Red Army into Berlin.

There was a demonstration of workers who were burned alive in the House of Trade Unions in Odessa, leaving 50 dead and more than 150 missing. There is a powerful image that gives an idea of the cruelty of these people and there is a paper written by a comrade who was part of the battalion of International brigades in Donbass, entitled, “The Hypocrisy of a Leftist “No to War” that Comes too Late” and it included a terrible image of a young pregnant woman bent over a table, who was strangled with a telephone cable when they entered to burn those who were left alive in the House of Trade Unions.

When the Russian government made the decision to recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics, I believe that it did so ultimately upon hearing the statements of the Ukrainian government which was preparing to invade Crimea, calling not only for Ukraine’s entry into NATO but also the installation of nuclear weapons underground and NATO biological warfare laboratories in Odessa.

When the Russian government made the decision to protect the People’s Republics by acceding to their request for help and the denazification of Ukraine, it was simply pre-empting what was undoubtedly underway on the part of the U.S., the European Union and the Ukrainian puppet government.

President Zelensky, who certainly in this whole scenario can hardly be said to be serving the interests of his own people, but rather a Nazi presence that intends to carry out the genocide of the Russian speaking and culturally Russian population along with all the ethnic minorities that stood in the way of the Ukrainian Nazi’s patriotic cleansing. Ukraine is a puppet of the European Union and the U.S.A, and ultimately of NATO.

Do you see prospects that in this situation Russia will lean more towards China and together with other countries, such as Belarus, Iran and perhaps India, will aim to form a block against the aggressive NATO adherents?

China’s rapprochement is a historical tradition in Russia, before, during and after the Revolution. Russia is a Eurasian country and there is a tendency towards alliance or closer cultural and economic ties, etc., with Europe and another inclination that turns fundamentally towards Asia and China.

I believe that the whole process of sanctions and military escalation around all Russia’s borders, from the Baltic to the Black Sea, encircled by NATO, inevitably result, as is happening to Iran and other countries, in the search for alliances against aggressive imperialism that threatens the people. These alliances are commercial and energetic, involving all kinds of commodities.

Now they are intensified by the sanctions themselves, seeking commercial exchanges in their own currencies and progressively abandoning the dollar while establishing military alliances. The declarations of the Chinese government state that in the face of any aggression against Russia, China would respond, although China is also under siege.

The U.S. and NATO encirclement is taking place in the China Sea, and exacerbates China’s own movements and internal conflicts, leading to a coincidence of interests and the formation of blocs that will inevitably confront with a NATO which, given the economic decline, especially in the productive sectors, is becoming more intense, there are those who speak of civil war in the U.S..

The situation of massive poverty in many sectors is unsustainable, and here is some evidence: all the multinationals of digitalization, such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, etc., have been detrimental to the productive structure of the U.S. and other countries, and this is causing internal tensions and leading to the prediction of a loss of the elections by the Democrats.

These supposedly progressive democrats, as history has shown us, are controlled by the great economic powers and by the nuclear military complex, but without a doubt it is the democratic governments that have been the most aggressive in relation to the invasions of countries, coups d’état, blockades, etc.

Translation by Internationalist 360°

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... s-maestro/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 11, 2022 1:18 pm

War is peace

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The European Peace Fund will allocate an additional 500 million euros for military assistance to Ukraine (c) Borrell

War is peace (c) Orwell

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7488928.html

Volnovakha is released!
colonelcassad
March 11, 9:28 am

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After stubborn fighting, the troops of the Donetsk People's Republic liberated Volnovakha from the Ukrainian Nazis. A number of settlements to the north of the city in the direction of Ugledar were also liberated. The information was confirmed this morning by the Russian Defense Ministry. Volnovakha is memorable for those. that it was here that a large grouping was located for a long time, which was supposed to take Dokuchaevsk and advance south of Donetsk to the border of the Russian Federation. The first video from the liberated Volnovakha https://t.me/boris_rozhin/30747(in the photo, a hospital in the south of the city - almost 200 civilians were hiding in it, more than 40 of them were children - they were not allowed to be evacuated). It is worth noting that the reports of the capture in Volnovakha do not cancel the problems associated with the possibility of the presence in the city area or in the city itself of the remaining enemy groups and single snipers who could not retreat in the direction of Ugledar. Plus mines and all.
Well, plus the humanitarian issue is extremely acute.
The capture of Volnovakha will free up additional forces for the development of offensive operations in the territories of the DPR occupied by the enemy.
In addition, the moment of complete taking control of the Mariupol-Donetsk highway is approaching. In Mariupol itself, the ring around the encircled enemy group is inexorably shrinking.

Broadcasts of events in Ukraine as usual here https://t.me/boris_rozhin
Reserve channel in case of blocking here https://t.me/boris_rozhin the location and movement of enemy troops also write here motohack@mail.ru

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7488101.html

Cancellation of decommunization of names in the liberated territories of the LPR
colonelcassad
March 11, 10:00

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By decree of the head of the LPR Pasenik, the Ukrainian law on the decommunization of names in all liberated territories of the republic actually ceases to operate.
All names roll back to the state of May 18, 2014, that is, to the state that existed at the time of the referendum on the independence of the republic.
Accordingly, the names erased by Bandera will be returned, including numerous names and names of the Soviet era.
The LPR army added that there would be no Shukhevychs in the republic.
That's good. This is the right move. I believe that such a decree will appear in the DPR.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7488288.html

Like we've been saying all along, the people of Donbass wish not only to be free of Nazis but yearn for a return to socialism. This I think a major factor in Russia's lukewarm support of the republics, it's the last thing the capitalist oligarchs of Russia want. Only the continual encroachment of NATO and the eventually intolerable bombardment and apparent build-up for a 'final ATO' of Donbass brought us to this place.

Volunteers and trophies
colonelcassad
March 11, 11:49

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An important day for the operation to denazify Ukraine.

1. Official approval was given for the transfer of captured equipment and weapons at the disposal of the RF Armed Forces to the armies of the DPR and LPR. In fact, this will finally legalize the supply of weapons to the Donbass, although it is quite clear that they were carried out earlier through the "military trade" and "deep mines of Donbass." And then yesterday, after a video with trophies, where they said that they were being disposed of, many were indignant. somehow, why good to disappear. In general, it will not disappear, but it is illiquid, of course, for scrap or for spare parts. Shoigu announced the range of weapons for the republics - MANPADS, ATGMs, small arms + tanks. Putin approved, so this issue has already been resolved.

2. The go-ahead was given to send volunteers to Ukraine. So those who wrote to me - how to go to fight in the Donbass and complained that the military registration and enlistment offices were wrapping them up, you can get ready. Where will the volunteers go? it is still unclear - perhaps in the army of the DPR and LPR, perhaps the formation of the Ukrainian Liberation Army or something like that will begin. Let's look in general.

In general, this is an indicator that Russia intends to complete the denazification operation.
There is also a growing feeling that Ukraine will not remain within the borders of 2022 and will be divided, and its territory will be partially Syrianized. The longer the conflict drags on, the more likely this scenario will be.

PS. In the title photo, a soldier of the army of the people's republics with a captured "Jevelin".

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7488670.html

rushed about
colonelcassad
March 11, 7:47 am

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Russia requested March 11 UN Security Council meeting in connection with US biological programs in Ukraine - Russian Permanent Representative to the UN WHO

said it recommended Ukraine to destroy "particularly dangerous pathogens" in the country's laboratories to prevent leaks - Reuters

as occasional security assistance - State Department
Although on the 9th the White House stated https://www.state.gov/the-kremlins-alle ... n-ukraine/ that it does not own laboratories in Ukraine and does not participate in their activities. Now there is a new line of conduct - there were laboratories, we participated there, but "sporadically".

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7487623.html

Lessee, WMDs being put right on the border...If some potentially hostile nation were to build such facilities in Sonora what would the US do? Who is the aggressor here?

All above Google Translator except my comments(italics)

***********************************************************************************

Time for a rant. The Cayapo is good at this.
IT'S NOT RUSSIA, IT'S CAPITALISM, SILLY

Image The Cayapo

11 Mar 2022 , 5:36 am .

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Marx and Lenin never imagined, in their lucid brains, seeing capitalism in its highest stage gobbling up itself.

MERCENARIES OF WORD, IMAGE AND SOUND

Once again the war is sold to us like hot cakes, the ignorant brains contemplate its consequences through the means of disinformation. A war is sold to us expensively, before we were terrified and deceived with the information about the war and its consequences, but this war and those to come will be charged to us as expensive shows, because our brains, loaded with extreme consumerism, demand it .

The arms companies, the advertising media (false information in the world) are making a killing, and nobody cares about the forms. En masse, the criminals of conscience and ideology who are called journalists, communicators, intellectuals, academics, scientists, sports associations, entertainers, show vendors, minstrels of any art, defenders of anything that can be profited from, religious, presidents, politicians from any branch of politics, ranging from the extremes of the right or left, for the most part joined the side that paid the most; because they all know what is happening, they may not know the ins and outs of the business to which they will never be invited, but they do know that there will be many crumbs and none of these miserable mercenaries of word, image and sound want to lose their share .

a task that resulted in the bourgeoisie persecuting and murdering both Rosa Luxemburg and Liebknecht, but also allowing the Russian people to attempt the massive experiment of creating another culture. Unfortunately, since it did not happen, the whole world condemns it, but no one sensibly attempts a study, an in-depth analysis, of what exactly happened with the Soviet Union, but rather the comfort, the laxity, the lightheartedness of the politicians and intellectuals, whether they are paid, because of ideology or because of ignorance, who carry out the scientific analysis of the facts.

But the submissive, they oppose it from their comfortable positions in front of the computers in their comfortable apartments or offices, because the Russians decided not to let themselves be screwed, but not because the Ukrainians hurt them, or because the tragedy of the peoples suffering from capitalism makes them sleepy. in any of its modalities, but because they are paid, or because of ideology or because of mental laziness or because of cultural pundits, or because they believe that the Russians will put an end to the beautiful and well-considered humanist civilization that corporate propaganda shows us, but they do not oppose because they have a serious position before the facts that capitalism produces every day against life, but because they are conscientiously charging.

In order to ingratiate themselves with their masters, the wretched conduct of the world creeps leads them to cry out for the war to stop, but they never said so when the baited elites of thieves and murderers from the United States, the United Kingdom and Europe subjected and submit to genocide, blockades, sanctions, hardships to the peoples of Lugansk and Donetsk in the Donbas region, to Syria, to Sudan, to Yemen, Libya, Iraq, Iran, to the Saharawi Republic, to Belarus, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua, Russia, for name a few.

A MOB OF HYPOCRITICAL LEADERS AND MINSTRELS

As soon as the cannons of war thundered, it became clear in real life that nothing is what has been said, that the ideological behaviors assumed and charged for by academics, professionals, artists, intellectuals, athletes, politicians, cat guards and each of their associations are only positions in the air, nuanced by the hypocritical manners of the salaried elites. But when it comes to paying favors to the mafias, there isn't one who won't kiss the godfathers of capital.

When the Russian nation declared with all the right and reason that assists it in the capitalist world, that it would initiate a special military operation to protect the lives of Russian citizens, who have been killed by the interests of capitalism based in the domains of Atlanticism, Hidden behind newly minted Nazi criminals, exacerbated nationalists, crooks, mercenaries, recruited by private companies that have their headquarters in Europe or the United States and accumulate wealth with the death of people in different countries of the world, the great machinery of anti-Russian propaganda and ideology, but the amazing thing is that, as if by magic, a swarm of journalists, announcers, entertainers, butlers of the political company, social communicators, ministers of all kinds, or rather, let's call them by their Name,mercenary criminals, employees of large capitalist corporations, who, whether ideological or not, lend themselves to hiding crimes and thefts, deceive, manipulate, brazenly fabricate false news, are cynical ranging from those who say no to war! by those who hide the facts of one side, manipulate the information of the other side, and those who simply justify genocides, ethnocides under the guise that they are inferior beings or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.They manipulate information from the other side, and those who simply justify genocides, ethnocides under the guise that they are inferior beings or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.They manipulate information from the other side, and those who simply justify genocides, ethnocides under the guise that they are inferior beings or were in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Systematic instigators of riots, promotion and even veiled participation in clearly subversive public demonstrations, instigators of violent extremist acts, they are also a factory of deliberately false information about the actions of the Russian forces and the Lugansk and Donetsk republics.

They are organized and trained groups or individuals, from the massive disinformation companies on the planet to manufacture false positives, rigged tests, with which they profit, regardless of the damage they cause to life. But beyond profit, these people are also loaded with hate, they are hostile and use political, racial, national or religious reasons to justify their hatred and hostility against the peoples or people they have been taught to fear.

These conscientious criminals bear great responsibility for the various crimes and robberies that capital has committed against the peoples of the world, and the worst thing is that they do not care that they murder, torture or imprison colleagues who assume different positions, for the On the contrary, they deliver them like the straws of the school.

Before they erase their declarations of no to war and turn tail wagging to kiss the hand of the new master who will feed them, know that they are nothing more than a mob of climbers and hypocritical leaders, all linked to decadent capitalism; a cart at full speed and without a wheel, which runs amok on the precipices of never again.

THE LARGEST SEPTIC TANK ON THE PLANET

All the reasons put forward to justify the existence of war are intrinsic to capitalism itself, they have nothing to do with peoples, their religions, color, gender, border or language, it is simply an economic problem. It has to do with the rearrangement of capital and how one sector of imperial capital consumes another sector throughout the planet. The skirmishes that today devastate the peoples of Russia and Ukraine are just distractions for the real war that is taking place all over the planet, between big companies, banks, corporations, be they information, entertainment, weapons, oil, agribusiness, sports , drug, financial speculation or whatever generates profit.

The attempt at rehabilitation or rearrangement that humanism is attempting today to continue preying on the planet in the name of respectable ideas, will be done at the cost of millions of murdered people, destruction of tools, machinery, service areas, unrecoverable energy, and above all, it will choke with the last rivers and mountains, turning the sea into the largest septic tank on the planet, which would result in misery and greater oppression for us poor people.

In its reengineering process, capitalism is going to consume a lot of natural assets, and when it goes into crisis again and has to reinvent itself, the cycle of devastation will repeat itself, each time with more miserable natural conditions. There will no longer be night, nor light, nor narration, nor active life to make it rich.

A single unstoppable consequence of capital, because recycling is just another business: currently, capitalism produces 278 billion tons of garbage a year, not counting what accumulates as buildings, factories, highways in daily deterioration, more all the dilapidated constructions that it produces daily, which is not noticeable as garbage, but which will be in time, so that if they were to distribute it equitably, it would be 37 tons each of us as people on the planet.

Predictions say that it will continue to increase because cities, especially in mine countries, euphemistically called developing or third world countries, do not stop their excessive consumption and capitalism has no way to stop it in the production of garbage.

Humanism, through its production apparatus, has consumed the natural assets that, for the most part, have become riches, destroying the conditions of life that make possible the existence of the species that today mostly wanders, like zombies, in the large and small towns.

Image
Capital swallows everything, even itself (Photo: File)

It is not true that one day capitalism will work in favor of the enslaved majorities, it is not true that it will solve any problem, it is not true that it will recover; on the contrary, its decrepitude and inefficiency will be accentuated. This does not mean that it will disappear by its own efforts; it will continue to writhe until it turns into slop, for the simple fact that we will never have a memory of what happens to us, because of the finitude of our way of life in time and space.

All this tragedy that capitalism produces to nature in general, but not to the elites that exercise power, is due to the systematization of long centuries of experience that lead the elites, not to change, but to perpetuate power through permanent path of accumulation of forces. Sustaining this reason in the possession and organization of weapons as a way to guarantee loot as the ultimate goal of humanist culture and its capitalist production apparatus, in order to overcome the great defects suffered by this species such as hunger, fear and ignorance, which even with all the development of this criminal culture has not succeeded.

The true true truth is that this has no solution in the philosophical, political, economic, artistic proposals that we know today, everyone who has access to power neither knows nor intends to know another way of existing, everyone is aligned with the humanist discourses and actions that govern the planet, and as long as this is so, no one will think of, beyond the pamphlet, the slogan and the cliché, empty shells of religions, reformers and progressives, no one wants to generate another discourse, another experiment, another do.

But true, the only option is in the creation of a thought that does not seek to save what exists, that seeks to overcome the eternal present to which the ancients have condemned us. We have to think about its creation and experimental application and then generate a mode of production that makes another custom possible, a culture in the body that does not suffer from the anguish and anxiety to which humanism and its production apparatus, capitalism, permanently subject us. , in the name of overcoming the aforementioned shortcomings.

In this war that we repeat, it is not between Ukraine and Russia but between two factions of capitalism, one of them totally obtuse, terrified and with a lot of power and based on elements that generate wealth that border on fiction, new technologies, shows, etc. The other based on real production, we are talking about generating wealth through the production of real merchandise, footwear, cars, clothing, roof, educated workforce for it, pretending with this to rehabilitate capitalism and its cultural, political, academic, artistic, in general grouped in the State and give them a much less bureaucratic and more functional role, that is, take them out of the pond to which capitalism itself led them as their natural future.

Now, this crisis is not new, it has already happened several times, and these generated two great wars in Europe, leading the population of a significant portion of the planet to a great carnage. This allowed them to burn merchandise and fundamentally get rid of a very important portion of the labor force that they took to die on the battlefields, and above all to rehabilitate the capital and move it as an empire to a single center, not like before that it was distributed in different powerful territories, especially in Europe.

It should be noted that this war did not overflow, because on the one hand the ethical springs of slave labor had not been destroyed like today, where the majority of the youth on the planet no longer care about work as a way of providing for themselves. , but that everyone is already excited about the possibility of new technologies and above all they are aware that by working they will not be able to satisfy the immense desire for consumption that capitalism itself installed in their brains, and on the other hand there is no salary that can satisfy their elementary needs, such as eating, shoes, clothing, having a roof even if it is rented, and this happens in Japan, Europe, the United States.

But the most serious thing is still the absence of an ideology that serves as a containment to stop the millions of zombies that will rise up all over the planet, realizing that they will not even have enough for a plate of food, and then go out to consume the wealth accumulated, because capitalism has sewn its pockets and is emptying those of the majority.

In the first crises, communism served as a containment for the great tragedy; but as in the fable of the toad and the scorpion, the nature of capitalism led it to sink the stinger into communism.

YOU GIVE ME WHAT YOU HAVE OR I INVADE YOU

At the world level, all the propaganda apparatuses have moved, be it NGOs, foundations, the media, churches, parties to condemn and tear their clothes off at the position assumed by the Russian Federation of putting a stop to speculative capital, which lives off the production and trafficking of drugs, weapons, through its agencies such as the DEA, CIA, FBI, all of them colluding with corporations that traffic in humans, weapons, throughout the world, whether migrants of any gender, color, prostitution or organ trafficking, but who have their addresses in the big banks of Europe, Japan or the United States, the decadent production of shows, of financial speculation, of the manipulation of privileged information in the stock markets and boards of directors linked to finance throughout the world,the production of false or biased information through their radio, TV, film, print, telephone, Internet and other electronic media corporations, which collude to outwit the peoples of the world and declare war on them, because they refuse to give away its resources to these corporate criminals, and also the sport controlled by its federations and associations, in short, to all those criminal associations based in Europe, Japan, the United States, that make use of political, judicial, police companies, that complying with the role of butlers, they manage all their misdeeds.because they refuse to give away their resources to these corporate criminals, and also the sport controlled by their federations and associations, in short, to all those criminal associations based in Europe, Japan, the United States, who make use of political, judicial , policemen, who fulfilling the role of butlers, manage all their misdeeds.because they refuse to give away their resources to these corporate criminals, and also the sport controlled by their federations and associations, in short, to all those criminal associations based in Europe, Japan, the United States, who make use of political, judicial , policemen, who fulfilling the role of butlers, manage all their misdeeds.

Today all the means of propaganda and ideology of the owners of the world are selling us the war as if Russia had invented it. It is not rash to think that this inter-capitalist war will place us in another dilemma never thought of, never imagined.

As soon as the Second European War ended, there were attempts to exterminate the Soviet Union and the Cold War was declared, a series of invasions began in the world: Palestine, the Korean peninsula, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, various African countries. , Latin Americans; it happens in Europe, the so-called balkanization in which Yugoslavia is separated into many chaotic pieces, which can be dominated separately; The dollar is imposed on the world as currency to establish parity, replacing gold in that function.

With the Soviet Union defeated, unipolarity is declared by way of deeds. Since then, the diplomacy of the revolver has been implanted directly in the head: you give me what you have or I invade you.

IN THEIR LUCID BRAINS

The so-called and identified as the Atlantic bloc, whose owners are the capitals settled in the United States, Europe and Japan, decided that the story was over, that the dollar should dominate parities and financial transactions throughout the world, that henceforth the power concentrated in the territories of the United States would decide what happens and what does not happen in the world, when it already seemed as Hegel said and then Fukuyama pamphled it, that the end of history had arrived, everyone should go to kiss the hand of the great imperial godfather settled in North America as the only capo of all capos, capitalism in its superior stage, imperialism. But what is happening today, Marx and Lenin could never have imagined, in their lucid brains, seeing capitalism in its highest stage engulfing itself.

With resources exhausted, both in Europe and in the United States, capital began to emigrate to China and Russia, where there were and are natural resources and needed, prepared and disciplined labor at very low cost, and since they saw that it was good They gave him the password and they all come to emigrate, not in rafts, rubber casings, but in the highest technologies of the first class of capitalism, which has always known that opportunities paint them bald, and they know it very well well.

While in the United States they invest a dollar and get a penny, in Asia they invest a penny and get ten dollars. Everyone was happy, until the capitals that could not emigrate because they could not go to offer drug production and trafficking, financial speculation, shows, disinformation, production and sale of weapons; because the capitals that emigrated were those that had to do with the principle of capital, producing goods, merchandise, generating profits, taxes, and of course, extracting surplus value at very low costs in a controlled market.

Twenty years had not elapsed before it began to be felt that these emigrated capitals had yielded their fruits, reborning these two great ancient cultures, the Chinese and the Russian, both located in the territories of Eurasia. This has brought about the confrontation of two powerful fractions of capital, the purely speculative fraction, which understands that the world belongs to them and that this world must obey them, that this world no longer needs nation-states, fatherlands, or values, even if they are ideological principles that guide them, that this world must be absolutely individual, that this world must enter into a controlled chaos in order to be able to obtain profits without having to work, turning the whole world into their particular mine, sustained by the arrogance that gives the power of weapons,

This sector of capital has military bases in almost the entire planet, its means of disinformation are installed throughout the world, its merchandise moves throughout the world, but these have been reduced to drugs, shows, manipulated information, financial speculation, weapons , mercenary companies and a few state-of-the-art technologies, already surpassed by the capital settled in China and Russia.

A strong and powerful bear roams the mental interstices of the leaders of the United States, Europe, Japan and other creeps on the planet. Fear and hatred take over them and their lapdogs, who work hard to try to sell Russia as the mother of war and Putin as the bad guy and the Russian people as a blind follower. The only hope, they think they have, is that they can convince the great majority that this terrifying bear will eat us all on the entire planet, and that is why we must support him as our savior, but capitalism in its delirium does not realize that we are zombies and we don't give a damn about his fate, which forced us to separate from him a long time ago.

https://misionverdad.com/opinion/no-es- ... smo-tonton

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 11, 2022 3:30 pm

UN Security Council to meet to discuss biological weapons activity in Ukraine

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Russia notes that the US and Ukraine recently destroyed particularly dangerous pathogens of plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases. | Photo: Sputnik
Published March 11, 2022 (5 hours 34 minutes ago)

The Russian Ministry of Defense indicates that a network of more than 30 biological laboratories operates in Ukraine at the service of the US Threat Reduction Agency.

The Security Council of the United Nations Organization (UN) at the request of the Russian representation, will hold an emergency session this Friday to address the biological military activities of the United States (USA) in Ukraine.

Russia's deputy representative to the UN, Dimitri Polianski, noted on his official twitter account that "the Russian mission has requested a meeting of the Security Council for March 11 to discuss US military biological activities in the territory of Russia. Ukraine".

In this regard, the Russian Ministry of Defense revealed that the US allocated more than 200 million dollars for the operation of biological laboratories in Ukraine, where, among other research, experiments with the bat coronavirus are being carried out.


Its spokesman, Major General Igor Konashenkov, said that Moscow has detailed information on the implementation by the Pentagon on Ukrainian territory of a project to study the transfer of pathogens through wild birds that migrate between Ukraine, Russia and other neighboring countries.

"According to the documents, in Ukraine in 2022 the US side planned to conduct work on pathogens of birds, bats and reptiles with an additional transition to study the possibility of carrying African swine fever and anthrax," Konashenkov said, while noting that the goal of these and other biological studies is to create a mechanism for the covert spread of deadly germs.

For its part, on the 8th, the Russian Foreign Ministry announced that it obtained documents from Ukrainian biological laboratories which "certify the urgent destruction of especially dangerous pathogens of plague, anthrax, tularemia, cholera and other deadly diseases."


In this regard, its spokesperson, María Zajárova, maintained that said actions were carried out to avoid discovering the "violations of article 1 of the Convention on the Prohibition of the Development, Production and Stockpiling of Biological and Toxin Weapons, (CABT)", for part of Ukraine and USA

This was recognized by the US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, Victoria Nuland, when she stated that there are "biological research facilities in Ukraine and that Washington is very concerned that Russian troops take control of them."


Meanwhile, the head of the Radiation, Chemical and Biological Defense Forces of the Russian Armed Forces, Igor Kirillov, declared that a network of more than 30 biological laboratories operated in Ukraine, which were at the service of the Threat Reduction Agency. , a dependency of the US Department of Defense.

However, Olivia Dalton, a spokeswoman for US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said the Russian request is "exactly the kind of false flag effort that we have warned Russia could initiate to justify a biological weapons attack." or chemicals.

To which the deputy ambassadors of the United States and the United Kingdom add that it would be Russia that could have used chemical weapons on Ukrainian territory.

https://www.telesurtv.net/news/consejo- ... -0008.html

Google Translator

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When did the Ukraine War begin?
Posted Mar 11, 2022 by Pressenza

Originally published: Pressenza (March 8, 2022 )

The conception that the war started on February 24 of this year is like viewing the “invasion” by the U.S. and its allies of Normandy in June 1944 against the “sovereign” and “democratic” Vichy French as the start of World War II. Never mind that the Vichy government was a puppet of the Nazis; that the opportunities to negotiate had long been rejected; that the war had been raging for years; and that the only option for stopping the Nazis was militarily.

The U.S. imperial army

NATO, it should be understood, is an army in the service of the U.S. empire. Viewing it simply as an alliance of nominally sovereign entities obscures that it is commanded as a tool of U.S. foreign policy in its stated quest of world dominion; that is, “full spectrum dominance.” The “alliance” members must fully integrate their militaries under that command along with purchasing U.S. war equipment and offering up their own citizens as troops.

After the implosion of the Soviet Union and the supposed end of the first cold war, instead of NATO being disbanded, the opposite occurred. There was no “peace dividend” and no honoring of the promise that NATO would not expand any further. Instead, NATO stampeded east towards the borders of the Russian Federation adding fourteen new members of former USSR republics and allies.

Even before the 2014 coup, the U.S.’s fateful decision in 2006 to draw Ukraine into NATO posed an existential threat to Russia. By December 2021, according to “realpolitik” international relations scholar John Mearsheimer, a U.S.-armed Ukraine had become a de facto member of NATO, crossing a redline for Russia. Mearsheimer concludes, “the west bears primary responsibility for what is happening today.”

Failure of peaceful negotiations

Speaking before the UN on March 2, the Venezuelan representative identified the breach of the Minsk Protocols, with the encouragement of the U.S., as the precursor of the present crisis in Ukraine.

After the 2014 coup in Ukraine, the Minsk Protocols were an attempt at a peaceful settlement through “a ceasefire, withdrawal of heavy weapons from the front line, release of prisoners of war, constitutional reform in Ukraine granting self-government to certain areas of Donbas, and restoring control of the state border to the Ukrainian government.” Moscow, Kyiv, and the eastern separatists were all parties to the agreements.

The Russian perception of negotiations with the western alliance in the runup to the invasion, as reported by the New York Post, was described using insensitive terminology as “like the mute with the deaf” by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on his meeting with his British counterpart. (NOTE: the NYP, even in the updated version of the article, refers to Lavrov as the “Soviet” Foreign Minister, forgetting that the USSR hasn’t been around for over 30 years.)

Following the latest round of “sweeping” U.S.-imposed sanctions on Russia, their Foreign Ministry announced, “we have reached the line where the point of no return begins.” Such sanctions are a form of warfare as deadly as bombs.

Upsides of war for the U.S. and the downsides for everyone else

War is a great diversion for Joe Biden, whose popularity has been slipping due to a lackluster domestic performance. The U.S. empire has much to gain: further unifying NATO under U.S. domination, reducing Russian economic competition in the European energy market, justifying increasing the U.S. war budget, and facilitating sales of war material to NATO vassals.

NATO has dumped over a trillion dollars in arms and facilities into the border countries next to Russia and continues to this day to pour lethal weapons into Ukraine. The leader of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi C14 recently bragged on YouTube (while other voices are censored): “We are being given so much weaponry not because as some say ‘the west is helping us,’ not because it is best for us. But because we perform the tasks set by the west…because we have fun, we have fun killing.”

More than 14,000 people have been killed in the eastern Ukraine region of Donbas in warfare between ethnic Russians and Ukrainian regular military/right-wing paramilitaries in the eight years since the coup. The self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk, beleaguered enclaves in the Donbas of largely ethnic Russians, seceded from Ukraine and were recognized by Russia on February 21.

The semi-governmental (over 80% U.S. government funded) Rand Corporation’s playbook for the U.S. and its allies says it all: “pursue across economic, political, and military areas to stress–overextend and unbalance–Russia’s economy and armed forces and the regime’s political standing at home and abroad.”

The conflict could have ruinous consequences for the Russian Federation, according to western sources and even some people who identify as left in Russia. As a bonus for the U.S., according to Juan S. González, the U.S. National Security Council’s senior director for the Western Hemisphere, the sanctions against Russia are “by design” intended to hurt Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua, all targeted by Washington for regime change. And, of course, for Ukrainians of all ethnicities there is no winning in a war.

It is difficult to think what other options Russia has to defend itself. Perhaps there are some, but surely they are slim. It should be clear that the U.S. has continually been the aggressor even if some do not agree with the Russian response. As Phyllis Bennis with the Institute for Policy Studies argues, the U.S. provoked this war.

Severing Russia from Europe

The peaceful integration of Russia with the rest of Europe would be a great threat to the U.S. empire. A unified or even a cordial Europe could truly herald the end of U.S. hegemony. The long-game geopolitical goal of preventing the unification of Europe may well be the fundamental aim of U.S. foreign policy in that continent.

What would become of “U.S. strategic interests” if peace were to break out in Europe, and Russia would become partners with Germany, France, and Italy? A potentially more independent Europe, including Russia, would challenge the U.S.-dominated Atlanticist project.

The extreme hostility that the U.S. took to the Nord Stream 2 project, which would have piped Russian natural gas under the Baltic Sea directly to Germany, went beyond the narrow economism of favoring U.S. liquefied natural gas (LNG) suppliers. Where Washington’s earlier efforts of imposing illegal unilateral economic sanctions on its NATO ally faltered, the current conflict will surely discourage any rational and cooperative economic association of Russia with its western neighbors.

The severing of Russia from the rest of Europe is a tremendous victory for the U.S. imperial project. This is especially the case, when there were recent moves in the direction of economic, cultural, and political exchange, which have now been reversed.

Spheres of Influence and inter-imperialist rivalry

Russia shares a 1,426-mile border with Ukraine and considers that region within its security perimeter, vital to its national security. The U.S., which is 5,705 miles from Ukraine, considers the world its sphere of influence. Clearly, there is a conflict of interest.

The contemporary geopolitical dynamic has evolved from the one Lenin described in 1916 in Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism, which was then characterized as one of inter-imperialist rivalry. This theory is not entirely adequate to understand today’s world dominated by a single superpower (with its European Union, British, and Japanese junior partners). Surely, national centers of capital continue to compete. But over-arching this competition is a militantly imposed unipolar pax Americana.

There is just one superpower with hundreds of foreign military bases, possession of the world’s reserve currency, and control of the SWIFT worldwide payment and transaction system. Simply reducing the conflict to one of contesting capitalists obscures the context of empire.

Further, even if one just understands the present situation as one of a clash of two imperialist camps, that does not preclude taking sides. Surely World War II was an inter-imperialist war, but that did not prevent socialists from opposing the Axis pole and supporting the allies. The U.S. is ever more aggressively stirring up the pot, not only in Ukraine, but also Taiwan, Africa, and elsewhere.

Asymmetry of the Forces

The forces are asymmetrical in this contest. Russia and the U.S. may have comparable nuclear arsenals, but Russia has no bases of any kind in North America compared to at least six nuclear and many more conventional bases for the U.S. in Europe. The U.S. military budget is 11.9 times the size of Russia’s, not to mention the war chests of Washington’s NATO allies. Similarly, the U.S. economy is 12.5 times as large as Russia’s. Of the Fortune 500 top international corporations, only four are Russian compared to 122 from the U.S.. Russia’s labor productivity is only 36% of the U.S.’s. In terms of finance capital, the U.S. has 11 of the world’s top 100 banks; Russia has one. Far from being a key exporter of capital, Russia is a leader in capital flight, in part owing to sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its allies.

As analyst Stansfield Smith concludes, Russia “plays very little part in the quintessential imperialist activity: the export of capital to the periphery and the extraction of profit from developing countries’ labor and resources.” Russia is a target of U.S.-led imperialism; Ukraine is caught in the crossfire.

Hypocrisy of the “international community”

If only the outrage over the Russian invasion had some ethical grounding by what is misleadingly called the “international community,” but is in reality the U.S. and its subalterns. Biden’s touted “rules based order” is one where the U.S. makes the rules and the rest of the world follows its orders, in contradiction to the Charter of the UN and other recognized international law.

From Cuba, journalist Ángel Guerra Cabrera laments: “our region witnessed flagrant U.S. violations of those principles in Guatemala, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Grenada and Panama, the last three through direct invasions. Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua are current examples of a U.S. policy that flatly denies its assertion, not to mention Puerto Rico.”

International law expert Alfred de Zayas reminds us that the so-called “international community seems to have accepted egregious violations of Art. 2(4) [of the UN Charter] by the U.S. against Cuba, Dominican Republic, Grenada, Haiti, Nicaragua, Panama, Venezuela; by NATO countries against Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Syria, Yugoslavia; by Israel against all its Arab neighbors, including the Palestinians and Lebanese; by Saudi Arabia against Yemen; by Azerbaijan against Nagorno Karabakh, by Turkey against Cyprus, etc.”

How this war will end

Regardless of how one sides–or not–in the new cold war, it is instructive to understand the context of the conflict. This is especially so when views outside the dominant U.S. narrative, such as those of Russian outlets Sputnik and RT that hosted U.S. intellectuals like Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, are being silenced.

This article addressed how this war began. How it will end or even if it will end is another story. The world is spiraling into a new cold war, emanating from a region formally at peace under socialism.

Expressing a view from the standpoint of the Global South, former Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva commented: “we do not want to be anyone’s enemy. We are not interested, nor is the world, in a new cold war…which is for sure dragging the whole world into a conflict that could put humanity in danger.” If there is a lesson to be learned, it is that the end of endless war will come with end of the U.S. imperial project that provoked this crisis.

https://mronline.org/2022/03/11/when-di ... war-begin/

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‘U.S. government instigated crisis between Russia and Ukraine’
March 11, 2022 Elena Nikolaeva

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Protest at Ukraine Embassy in Washington, D.C., March 8. SLL photo

This interview with Struggle-La Lucha co-editor Greg Butterfield was originally published by Russian-language news service and Telegram channel Readovka on March 9.

Elena Nikolaeva: What was the impetus for the beginning of the crisis between Russia and Ukraine? What role did the United States play in the conflict?

Greg Butterfield: The government of the United States was the instigator of the current crisis between Russia and Ukraine.

The world watched the drama unfold over the last several months. While shouting from the highest rooftops that evil Russia was about to attack poor Ukraine, the Biden administration and NATO alliance pushed Ukraine’s Zelensky regime to launch a big new attack on the Donbass republics. The point was to force the Russian government into a corner where it would have no choice but to respond, and in this way to justify NATO aggression.

Since Russian President Putin officially recognized the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics and the joint antifascist military operation began, the pounding war drums have reached truly incredible heights here. I have seen nothing like it since the weeks immediately following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in New York and Washington, D.C. – at which time the propaganda led to the monstrous U.S. wars and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.

In the mainstream media, no alternative views are permitted. On social media, anyone who questions the U.S. narrative is immediately labeled a Russian agent and subject to being banned or restricted.

Unfortunately, the immense pressure of the imperialist state and media has had its effect on the leaders of anti-war forces in the U.S. and other Western countries. Many of those who just weeks ago were warning that NATO was pushing Russia into a corner are now denouncing Russia’s defensive actions in Ukraine, singing in perfect tune with the imperialists. They have forgotten, and some never understood, the plight of the people of Donbass and the power of the neo-Nazis in Ukraine.

Those of us who continue to stand up to the U.S. and NATO are determined to keep telling the truth. We know that the majority of humanity – from Cuba and Venezuela to China and North Korea to Syria and Yemen – are not fooled by the U.S. war propaganda. We’re confident that the lies will soon begin to collapse under their own weight and we will be able to win many workers and progressive people to solidarity with the people of Donbass and Russia.

EN: Russian forces have discovered secret laboratories and documents confirming the development of bacteriological and nuclear weapons. Why does Ukraine need these when its government also declares that it is a peaceful country?

GB: For the past eight years, since the Euromaidan coup in 2014, Ukraine’s government has been a thinly veiled disguise for U.S. and NATO control of the country. The real decisions are not made in Kiev, but in Washington.

Besides robbing the Ukrainian people of their industry and vast resources developed in Soviet times, the U.S. goal has been to turn Ukraine into a base for subversion and military attack on the Russian Federation. The biowarfare labs set up there are a perfect example of this.

In 2014, the U.S. and NATO hoped for a much more direct route to attack Russia. They wanted to seize the strategic naval base in Crimea. Thankfully, the Crimean population thwarted this plan with their popular referendum that led to Crimea’s return to Russian sovereignty.

Since that time, the resistance of the heroic people of Donetsk and Lugansk has been very important, delaying the plans of the U.S. and NATO.

EN: The West has imposed sanctions on all Russian citizens. Do you think this could turn into a problem for those countries?

GB: First we should state that sanctions are merely another form of war – one that primarily targets the civilian population, no matter how much the media talk about “Russian oligarchs.”

There are two ways in which the intensification of sanctions will undermine and ultimately turn against the Western imperialists and their aims.

First, the sanctions will create hardship for workers and poor people in these countries. In U.S. states like California, where cars are essential, gas prices have already shot up to $7 a gallon or more because of the war crisis. This is great for the big oil companies, who are the main beneficiaries of the crisis, but poison for the people.

The dumping of more billions and trillions of dollars into the weapons industry will increase inflation and mean even less money available for programs that fund basic human needs like health care and housing. This will cause the class struggle to intensify and anti-war sentiments to grow in the U.S. and Europe.

Second, the attempts to cut off Russia from economic relations with the West will mean that Russia, China and other countries targeted by the U.S. will grow even closer and have greater cooperation – economic, military and political. This can only strengthen the global alternative to Western imperialism.

The most urgent task of anti-imperialists in the West today is to stand up and tell the truth in defiance of the tidal wave of U.S. war propaganda. For example, on March 8, a group of comrades from the Socialist Unity Party protested at the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

They delivered a letter demanding the Kiev regime release Aleksandr Kononovich and Mikhail Kononovich, leaders of the Leninist Communist Youth Union of Ukraine, who were arrested by the notorious Security Service of Ukraine on March 6.

We must seize every opportunity to expose the fascistic character of the Ukrainian regime and the danger NATO poses to Donbass, Russia and the people of the whole region.

Source: Readovka

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... d-ukraine/

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Discerning Volodymyr Zelensky
Posted Mar 10, 2022 by Lambert Strether

Originally published: Naked Capitalism (March 8, 2022 )

“‘Not A Very Nice Person At All,’ she read. ‘I wonder what kind of person would put that on a wallet?’ ‘Someone who wasn’t a very nice person,’ said William.” –Terry Pratchett, The Truth

In this extremely short and simplistic post, I will do what it says on the tin: Scrape away the already deeply impacted layers of wartime propaganda.1 I propose to do this in the old-fashioned American way: By following the money. (I was inspired to write this post by Gonzalo Lira, former NC contributor (!), streaming from Kharkiv (!!). His video, “Who Is Zelensky? A Puppet—and Here’s Why,” is perceptive, lucid, and convincing, albeit NSFW. I recommend you listen to it, on the off chance that the more hits this video has, the more of a public figure—hence, safer—Lira will be.)

As a caveat: I’m going to be looking at the dealings of a billionaire, the armed militants he funds, and a politician he funds. All these relationships are so complicated and intricate as to make, say, The Clinton Foundation look like a child’s scribbled drawing. All these relationships are deeply rooted in the history of Ukrainian nationalism as well, with plenty of heroism and villainy to go around. By taking a transactional approach (“follow the money”) I abstract away from all that. (For example, Watergate exploded because it involved cash payoffs, not because of the often bizarre personal histories of the participants.)

With that, let’s begin with the money man.

The Billionaire: Igor Kolomoyskyi

Long-time Naked Capitalism readers will recall that our own Richard Smith introduced us to Igor Kolomoyskyi2 eight years ago, in 2014:

Kolomoyskyi is one of the oligarchs charged with holding down the Eastern provinces of Ukraine,3 and recently mocked Putin, reputedly sensitive about his height, as a “schizophrenic shortarse” (apologies for the English intonation: American alternatives are invited); definitely a bridge-burning moment. Putin, meanwhile, shut down as much of Kolomoyskyi ’s bank as he could, in Crimea and Moscow. I’m not sure who started it, but we can certainly mark it down as a first-rate spat.

While that was brewing up, Kolomoyskyi might well have wanted something that looked an American protector, and got it, in the form of the VP’s son[, Hunter Biden]. Another guess: Kolomoyskyi is far too ebulliently Jewish to look like a neo-Nazi. A U.S. connection with Kolomoyskyi might play well in circles keen to counter Russian complaints that the interim Kiev regime is dominated by “Fascists”.


No, I’m not going down this Hunter Biden rathole; those are not the transactions I am interested in now. I will note in passing that Kolomoyskyi ‘s style could be considered — let’s just go ahead and say it—crude. Kolomoyskyi and his running buddy, Gennadiy Bogolyubov, were business partners and founders of a thing called Privat Group:

Kolomoyskyi and Bogolyubo]fostered strong reputations as corporate raiders in the mid-2000s, becoming notorious for a series of hostile takeovers. Hostile takeovers Ukrainian style, that is, which often included the active involvement of Privat’s quasi-military teams. These schemes included, among others, a literal raid on the Kremenchuk steel plant in 2006, in which hundreds of hired rowdies armed with baseball bats, iron bars, gas and rubber bullet pistols and chainsaws forcibly took over the plant.

As of this writing, Kolomoyskyi was #1750 on the Forbes billionaires list, with a real time net worth (assuming Forbes didn’t outsource the data gathering to CDC) of $1.8 billion. Kolomoyskyi has also fallen out with the United States, amusingly including the Atlantic Council, but I assume all these tiresome bureaucratic obstacles will at some point be swept away, so that’s another rathole I’m not going down. Suffice to say that Kolomoyskyi still has his billions, which I expect go farther in Ukraine than they would here, and isn’t at all shy about funding thugs. Kolomoyskyi, like any billionaire, holds a portfolio of projects in the political field. I don’t know how many he has in toto, but there are at least two. Let’s look at them.

The Banderite Fascists: The Azov Battalion and Right Sector
Here is a photo from Ukraine on January 1, 2022. Nice torches!

The caption: “Activists of various nationalist parties carry torches and a portrait of Stepan Bandera during a rally in Kyiv… The rally was organized to mark the birth anniversary of Stepan Bandera, founder of a rebel army that fought against the Soviet regime and who was assassinated in Germany in 1959.” And further from The Times of Israel:

During World War II, Bandera led the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, whose men killed thousands of Jews and Poles, including women and children, while fighting alongside Nazi Germany against the Red Army and communists.

Bandera’s supporters claim that they sided with the Nazis against the Soviet army in the belief that Adolf Hitler would grant independence to Ukraine.

Expressions of admiration for Bandera and other collaborators have increased in scope and status following the 2014 revolution in Ukraine, which toppled the regime of Viktor Yanukovych amid claims that he is a Russian stooge, and triggered an armed conflict with Russia.


The History News Network gives more detail on Bandera:

Historian Karel Berkhoff, among others, has shown that Bandera, his deputies, and the Nazis shared a key obsession, namely the notion that the Jews in Ukraine were behind Communism and Stalinist imperialism and must be destroyed. “The Jews of the Soviet Union,” read a Banderist statement, “are the most loyal supporters of the Bolshevik Regime and the vanguard of Muscovite imperialism in the Ukraine.” When the Germans invaded the USSR in June 1941 and captured the East Galician capital of Lvov, Bandera’s lieutenants issued a declaration of independence in his name. They further promised to work closely with Hitler, then helped to launch a pogrom that killed four thousand Lvov Jews in a few days, using weapons ranging from guns to metal poles. “We will lay your heads at Hitler’s feet,” a Banderist pamphlet proclaimed to Ukrainian Jews.

Bandera’s ideology lives on today, specifically4 in the Azov Battalion, originally a paramilitary organization, but now incorporated into the Ukraine National Guard. WSWS summarizes:

The Azov Battalion was founded by the anti-Semite Andriy Biletsky in 2014. It incorporated many members of Biletsky’s former ultranationalist, white supremacist organisations, Patriot of Ukraine and the Social-National Assembly (SNA). These tendencies trace their political roots back to the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), headed by Stepan Bandera, and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA)….

In 2015-2016, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights connected Azov with war crimes, including mass looting, unlawful detention and torture.

Since Yanukovych’s ouster, the U.S. and its allies have ensured that the Ukrainian regime, particularly its far-right paramilitaries, remain a significant and threatening force. Billions of dollars have been spent supporting the government and supplying and training its armed forces.

In April 2015, nearly 300 members of the U.S. 173rd Airborne Brigade were sent to Ukraine to train Ukrainian soldiers, including members of the Azov Battalion. They were joined by British, Canadian and Polish soldiers in Operation Fearless Guardian.[/i]

Hence the designation, Banderite. We’re using the term Banderite Fascists partly for the sake of accuracy, but also to avoid confusing our own cosplaying soi-disant “Neo-Nazis” with the the real deal in Ukraine. And no, I don’t think “fascist” is off-point, either. Readers wlll recall Robert Paxton’s definition of fascism:

Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victim- hood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion.

That rings a lot of bells with me, especially the “redemptive violence” part.

After this build-up, you will unsurprised to learn that Kolomoyskyi funded the Azov Battalion:

Before becoming part of Ukraine’s armed forces, who funded Azov? The unit received backing from Ukraine’s interior minister in 2014, as the government had recognised its own military was too weak to fight off the pro-Russian separatists and relied on paramilitary volunteer forces.

These forces were privately funded by oligarchs–the most known being Igor Kolomoisky, an energy magnate billionaire and then-governor of the Dnipropetrovska region.

Newsweek:

Ihor Kolomoyskyi also allegedly funds the Azov Battalion….. Meanwhile Norwegian channel TV2 presented footage yesterday of the Azov battalion flying flags with the symbols of Ukraine’s neo-Nazi party–Patriot of Ukraine.

Reuters:

Some of Ukraine’s private battalions have blackened the country’s international reputation with their extremist views. The Azov battalion, partially funded by Taruta and Kolomoisky, uses the Nazi Wolfsangel symbol as its logo, and many of its members openly espouse neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic views. The battalion members have spoken about “bringing the war to Kiev,” and said that Ukraine needs “a strong dictator to come to power who could shed plenty of blood but unite the nation in the process.”

(There’s that “redemptive violence” thing.)

And besides funding the Azov Battalion, Kolomoyskyi is funding somebody else, seriously and for some time.

The Politician: Volodymyr Zelensky
That would be the current President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky.5 From the BBC:

In the Ukrainian political television dramedy Servant of the People, Volodymyr Zelensky plays a teacher who becomes president after a video of him ranting against government corruption goes viral. It’s typical of the programme’s slapstick take on the country’s struggles with oligarchy and overindulgent bureaucrats during its 18 years as an independent, post-Soviet nation. But scenes like this one have taken on a new significance now that Zelensky has become the real president of Ukraine, thanks to his popularity as a fictional leader.

Ironic, history. More:

Servant of the People premiered in Ukraine in 2015, starring Zelensky–then known as a comic actor–as a regular guy-turned-president named Vasyl Petrovych Holoborodko. The show ran for three seasons on the country’s 1+1 channel

In terms of quality, Servant of the People holds its own against any internationally known prestige comedy, which likely contributed to its effectiveness in both pointing out such corruption and crowning a real president. It falls somewhere between Armando Iannucci’s dark, cutting political satires, The Thick of It and Veep, and the sunny American take on local politics, Parks and Recreation. Servant of the People hits close to the bone at times, but offers a ray of hope too, packaged in smooth production, tight writing, fine performances, and laugh-out-loud sequences.


It’s little wonder that such a series, coupled with Zelensky’s winning performance as a smart, moral everyman, added up to a presidential victory that exceeded the show’s fantasy version of election night: on Servant of the People, he won 67% of the vote; in real life, he won 73.2%.

And the kicker:

[Igor] Kolomoisky owns 1+1, which broadcast Servant of the People and ostensibly helped to bring Zelensky to power.

“Ostensibly” is doing more work there than any mere adverb should every have to do. And Zelensky fits into the West Wing-shaped hole in the liberal Democrat brain. A telling detail on the 2019 election:

With the Ukrainian economy stalled and Poroshenko’s approval rating approaching single digits, it seemed likely that the 2019 presidential election would be a repeat of the 2014 contest, with the incumbent facing Orange Revolution veteran Yulia Tymoshenko. Instead, more than three dozen candidates entered the race, and Zelensky emerged as one of the front-runners virtually from the moment of the declaration of his candidacy. That announcement was made on 1+1 on December 31, 2018, preempting Poroshenko’s annual New Year’s address. The provocative move raised questions about the involvement of 1+1 owner Kolomoisky in Zelensky’s campaign.

I’ll bet!

Conclusion

I realize that in the current climate of fevered hysteria, anything less than wide-eyed hero worship of Zelensky will be seen by the more delusional engaged as somewhere between kicking a sad-eyed puppy and an act of high treason. And I freely admit that I haven’t tried to work out causalities, or disentangle feuds between fascists, or battles against corruption, let alone geopolitics, or anything like that. I have only looked at transactions: billionaire Kolomoyskyi funded Banderite fascists; billionaire Kolomoyskyi funded Zelensky. Doesn’t that seem odd to you?6

It seems odd to me. Perhaps the press should dig into it. Let’s transpose the situation to the United States. Suppose your candidate was an honest, independent outsider running for President. Then you follow the money. You find out that an oligarch paid your candidate a big advance to (say) write their book, and that same oligarch was also funding (say) the Proud Boys. Wouldn’t that set of transactions make you think twice? About the outsider’s honesty and independence? You might even decide your candidate was “Not A Very Nice Person At All.”

NOTES:
1.↩ This from Bush-era Iraq war brain genius Frum is more subtle than most:
https://twitter.com/AFP/status/15004531 ... ensky.html

2.↩ ‘”The transliteration of Ihor Kolomoyskyi’s name into English has numerous variants including Igor, or Ihor for his first name, and Kolomoyskyi, Kolomoysky, Kolomoisky, Kolomoiskiy, or Kolomoyskiy for his surname.”
3.↩ Kolomoyskyi was forced to step down as governor of the Dnipropetrovsk region in March 2015.
4.↩ Ukraine has has a lot of militias, and a lot of fascist militias (if you use Paxton’s definition). See here and here. This is a rat warren I am not going to enter.
5.↩ Zelensky has moved quite a lot of money offshore. This is a rathole I am not going down.
6.↩ Pause here for the expected special pleading.

https://mronline.org/2022/03/10/discern ... -zelensky/

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Zelensky, Babi Yar and Aidar
March 9, 2022 Lev Koufax

Recently, Struggle-La Lucha published an article outlining the historic and current connections between the Ukrainian government and Nazi movements. The article also rejected the imperialist information war that frames Russia as an enemy of the Jewish people.

Since that article’s publication just a few days ago, several reports have surfaced from Ukraine that we felt were important supplements.

False allegations of Russian strike on Babi Yar Memorial

On March 2, Western corporate media reported that the Russian military launched a missile strike that damaged the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial in Kiev. Supposedly this memorial was damaged when Russian missiles destroyed a TV tower used by the Ukrainian government to push anti-Russia propaganda.

While Russia did launch an attack on a Ukrainian TV tower, the Babi Yar memorial was not damaged. Reporters from Ynet News visited the site personally and discovered there wasn’t a dent in any of the structures. Ynet News is the online publication of Yedioth Ahronoth, the largest newspaper in Israel. Photographs clearly show that all statues are intact and the site remains unscathed from the military conflict.

Nonetheless, the corporate media continue to circulate Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky’s false claim that the Russian military targeted the Holocaust memorial. Truth doesn’t matter to the imperialist media. It’s as simple as that.

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Adair Battalion Soldier with Horrifying Tattoo Captured in Donbass

In the first days of March, combined Russian and Donetsk People’s Republic forces launched a successful offensive against the Ukrainian nazi Aidar Battalion. These attacks resulted in the dismantling of Aidar’s high command and the destruction of Aidar headquarters.

During this offensive, DPR forces captured many Aidar Battalion soldiers. Armenian and Ukrainian independent media were able to take pictures of one soldier. On his neck and back, he had an iron eagle tattoo and the Latin term “Suum Cuique.” That term translated into German is, “Jedem Das Seine.” It roughly means, “To each what he deserves.”

“Jedem Das Seine” was a common German Nazi slogan and actually donned the gates at Buchenwald concentration camp. Every Jew, Roma person, LGBTQ2S person, communist or anyone else who entered Buchenwald saw that slogan.

Aidar Battalion’s commander was recently named governor of Odessa by President Zelensky. Odessa is home to one of Ukraine’s largest and most historic Jewish communities.

These are the types of people the Western media wants the working class to support: Nazi commanders and soldiers donning concentration camp slogan tattoos.

https://www.struggle-la-lucha.org/2022/ ... and-aidar/
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by blindpig » Fri Mar 11, 2022 10:02 pm

Briefly about miscellaneous. 03/11/2022
colonelcassad
March 11, 16:24

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1. Instagram will be blocked in Russia. Meta will be recognized as an extremist organization. WhatsApp is 50/50 so far - conflicting messages are coming in. Users will not be considered extremists, only the service itself.
2. As for volunteers in the Donbass, the Kremlin announced that so far this applies only to foreigners. Citizens are asking to allow citizens of the Russian Federation to participate in denazification. From Syria, it seems like there are already 16,000 applications.
3. Iran has suspended negotiations on a nuclear deal. What can you do to prevent the US from solving its problems by entering the Iranian oil market. Earlier, the United States did not break off with Venezuela either. OPEC also refused to increase production. Everyone is waiting for the end of the conflict in Ukraine. After all, one must understand that the United States has already completely blown away or will still be able to bend the Russian Federation. Therefore, the wait-and-see attitude of many states is not surprising - everyone wants to see if the weakened hegemon can stall the troublemaker destroying the Washington world order. The stakes are high for everyone involved.
4. Ukrainian UAV flew from Ukraine to Zagreb and crashed in the capital of Croatia. Thus was born the legend of the "Ghost of Zagreb". Along the way, all the Croatian Air Forces were eliminated.
5. Putin said that the USSR lived under sanctions all the time and achieved success inproduction of galoshes .. Seriously, the current situation simply forces us to turn to the experience of the USSR, although it is hardly appropriate to talk about direct copying. I will return to this topic separately, as there will be more time.
6. Borrell admitted that it was the promises to accept Ukraine into NATO with the subsequent refusal to accept it into NATO that provoked Russia into its actions. Yesterday, he admitted that the ceiling of EU financial sanctions against the Russian Federation has already been practically reached.
7. China, following the Russian Federation, demands specific answers from the United States regarding the work of military biolaboratories in Ukraine and their potential in developing weapons of mass destruction. This topic will obviously be untwisted in the coming days.

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7489088.html

Briefly about Ukraine. 03/11/2022
March 11, 23:18

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Briefly about Ukraine. 03/11/2022

1. Mariupol. Urban battles with the gradual advance of our forces deep into the city. The enemy stubbornly resists, taking advantage of the fact that our troops are trying to prevent the death of civilians, behind whom the Nazis are hiding. The ring is narrowing, calls for the deblockade of Mariupol are becoming more and more hysterical.

2. Volnovakha. Today the city was taken. Heavily destroyed. For the inhabitants there is a real humanitarian catastrophe. There are many trophies in the city, including a large number of tanks. The combing of quarters and catching those enemy groups that did not have time to retreat to Ugledar continues.

3. Ugledar - Great Novoselka. The RF Armed Forces from the southwest and the DPR army from the southeast are gradually approaching Vugledar. A threat has also been created to Velikaya Novoselka, occupying which it is possible to develop an offensive in the direction of Kurakhovo and Krasnoarmeysk. To the west, fighting continued in the Gulyai-Pole area.

4. Raisins. In the southern districts of the city and around it, there are serious battles. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are trying to prevent the use of Izyum as a springboard for further advancement of the RF Armed Forces to Slavyansk and Kramatorsk, as well as in the direction of the Donetsk-Pavlograd highway.

5. Kharkov. No big changes. At night, the building of the Kharkov Physical and Technical Institute was blown up in the city, which was listed as an integral part of the program to create a dirty nuclear bomb. Evidence is being cleared. To the east of Kharkov, the troops of the RF Armed Forces are gradually blocking Chuguev, the enemy was forced to blow up the bridge in the south-east of the city.

6. Kyiv. The battle continues both from the west and from the east of Kyiv. The movement of mechanized columns indicates the persistent attempts of the RF Armed Forces to completely block Kyiv. The enemy indicates a fairly stubborn resistance. Chernigov, as before, is blocked.

7. Severdonetsk - Lisichansk. Fighting in the agglomeration area, as well as on the outskirts of Rubizhne. The popasnaya has not been taken to the end and there are still fights going on.

8. Nikolaev. The city, as before, is blocked from three sides, and the grouping of the RF Armed Forces is located south of Krivoy Rog and on the outskirts of Nikopol.

9. Odessa. No major changes. The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine is promoting the thesis about the imminent offensive of Russian troops from the PMR and is preparing the remaining bridges for the explosion.

10. Zaporozhye. The city is being prepared for defense, but the front is now between Vasilyevka and Kamenskoye without much movement. The RF Armed Forces have not yet made attempts to blockade Zaporozhye and are rather focused on advancing north to the Donetsk-Pavlograd highway.

In general, operations continue to develop despite negotiations and humanitarian corridors in some places. The most promising direction is the south. After the capture of Volnovakha, the DPR Armed Forces can increase pressure on Mariupol, as well as build up forces advancing on Vuhledar.

The RF Armed Forces in Zaporozhye have a number of offensive options, which also creates additional difficulties for the enemy. It is also worth noting that in the Donbass, the crisis of fuel and lubricants in the Armed Forces of Ukraine is becoming more and more acute. Its signs were clearly shown today in Volnovakha. Locals in Artemovsk report that the Armed Forces of Ukraine already have a decent amount of equipment there that has problems with refueling. In general, the crisis of the APU grouping in Donbass is growing.

* * *

Concerning the title card.

Foreign analysts have calculated ( https://www.realcleardefense.com/articl ... 20732.html ) how many troops Russia will need to control the liberated territory (west of the Dnieper River and north of Odessa) after completion special operation in Ukraine.

To do this, it will be necessary to complete at least four tasks:
1. Ensure the security of the new border, including land and sea (about 3,000 km, including Crimea) - 27,300 people.
2. Ensure the security of critical infrastructure in large cities - 25,900 people.
3. Ensure the safety of the main roads and railways - 20,300 people.
4. Ensure the security of the population, as well as the conduct of military-civilian and counterinsurgency operations - 94,900 people.

In general, the number of troops will be 168,400 people and the same number will be required for rotation, for a total of 336,800 people.

https://t.me/boris_rozhin/31037 - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/7489725.html

Google Translator

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The AFL-CIO’s Nazi Friendly Union in Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 10, 2022
Giorgio Manfredi

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The AFL-CIO recently hosted a fundraiser by the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) which aimed to support labor organizations in Ukraine assisting families suffering through the current crisis.

One of the labor organizations is the Confederation of Free Trade Unions of Ukraine (KVPU) which is a partner of the AFL-CIO’s Solidarity Center. A repacked version of the labor imperialist organization the American Institute for Free Labor Development (AIFLD), the Solidarity Center is almost entirely funded by the CIA-front organization the National Endowment for Democracy, along with the State Department and USAID. The current chairman of KVPU is Mykhailo Volynets who is pictured on the left sitting next to his deputy, Ihor Kniazhansky, of the neo-Nazi Azov Battalion.

Back in 2004, Volynets was awarded the AFL-CIO George Meany-Lane Kirkland Human Rights Award in part for his work related to the U.S. government-backed “Orange Revolution.”

The award is named after past AFL-CIO presidents Lane Kirkland and George Meany, who were rabid anti-communist cold warriors.

Meany once lied on camera about the AFL-CIO’s relationship with the CIA, while Kirkland served on the President’s Commission on CIA Activities within the United States, aka the Rockefeller Commission.

Kirkland’s right-hand man, Adrian Karatnycky, was heavily involved with the CIA-sponsored Polish Solidarity Movement and other AFL-CIO operations overseas. He would later go on to become the president of Freedom House, which was also involved in supporting the Orange Revolution (the latter resulted in the overthrow of Ukraine’s pro-Russian leader, Viktor Yanukovych).

Volynets is also the Chairman of the Independent Miners Union, a KVPU affiliate, and an MP in the Batkivshchyna (All-Ukrainian Union “Fatherland”) Party. The Miners Union and Azov Battalion teamed up during a protest in 2016 outside the Cabinet of Ministers. During the protest the KVPU delegated two of its people to negotiate with the Energy Minister, Volynets, and his self-appointed deputy, Ihor Kniazhansky, aka “Dushman” from the Azov Battalion.

Volynets chose Dushman, which allegedly means “suffocater” in Ukrainian, because his “aggressive style helped the union gain concessions from the minister during the talks.” Before joining Azov, Dushman fought in the Afghanistan war and is currently the head of the Vinnytsia branch of the National Corps, a fascist political party.

During the Maidan coup American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten, whose grandparents left Ukraine due to the Bolshevik Revolution, traveled there to meet with Ukrainian trade unionists. Weingarten claimed that reports of fascists in the protests were “Russian propaganda.”

At one meeting Weingarten attended in 2014, Volynets was present.

Weingarten is on the board of the NED-funded National Democratic Institute (NDI) and is a member of the Democratic National Committee (DNC). In 2009, Weingarten was a speaker at an event titled Assisting Independent Trade Unions in Cuba. The event was sponsored by several organizations, including the NED, Freedom House, and the Albert Shanker Institute. A former AFT President, Shanker was one of the key union officials involved in supporting Solidarity in Poland, along with fellow CIA asset Bayard Rustin.

In 2019 members of the U.S Congress considered declaring the Azov Battalion a terrorist organization. In response Volynets and several other members of parliament signed a letter defending and praising the Azov Battalion. The letter also stressed the idea that Ukraine should join NATO in the future.

“All of us are staunch supporters of deepening the relations between our nations even further, to the point when we eventually become allies after Ukraine joins NATO.”

Giorgio Manfredi (pseudonym) is a union organizer based in the United States. He has worked both inside and outside the traditional labor movement on local to national union campaigns. His research is currently focused on the “union avoidance” industry and the activities of intelligence agencies related to labor unions. Giorgio can be reached at aflcialocal1312@gmail.com or @UnionBustingBot on twitter

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/03/ ... n-ukraine/

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NATO White Helmets Follow al-Qaeda to Ukraine
Posted by INTERNATIONALIST 360° on MARCH 10, 2022
Vanessa Beeley

Four-hundred and fifty extremists from Idlib, north-west Syria have arrived in Ukraine according to Al Mayadeen.

Hailing from Idlib – the “largest Al Qaeda haven since 9/11”- these fanatics from various countries have been despatched to Ukraine to fight against the Russian forces that alongside the Syrian Arab Amy signified the end of their Caliphatist dreams in Syria.

These extremists passed through Turkey, a NATO member state, to arrive at their destination in western Ukraine. According to Al Mayadeen:

senior fighters from the terrorist group Hayat Tahrir-Al-Sham (rebranded version of Jabhat Al Nusra aka Al Qaeda) have held a number of meetings with senior leaders in the Turkistan Islamic Party group and Ansar Al Tawhid and Hurras Al Din groups, and agreed on allowing a number of their fighters to enter Ukraine through Turkey”.

According to the Counter Extremist Project:

Hurras al-Din and its leaders are U.S. Specially Designated Global Terrorists. The U.S. presently offers a $5 million reward for information on three of its leaders”

Yet here they are fighting for NATO member states, led by the US, in Ukraine, alongside the NATO fascist and Neo-Nazi contras.

Sources in Idlib added that these foreign fighters are veterans of the war against Syria led by the US and UK, bankrolled by Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The fighters had been causing issues in Idlib and “were given this opportunity to fight against Russia as a compromise by which they would receive a new start and with an acceptable income”.

Does that mean they were receiving a more-than-acceptable income in Syria? It is well known that Al Qaeda and affiliates are benefiting financially from the dirty war against Syria.

The fighters were apparently given assurances that their families would be allowed to follow on and settle in Ukraine. It must be noted that the Zionist influence in western Ukraine and particularly Kiev consists of a vast web of military, intelligence and ideological projects.

The inclusion of these Islamist extremist mercenaries in the war against Russia in Ukraine demonstrates the collusion between Israel and these terrorist gangs, already documented multiple times in Syria.

Around 300 of the terrorists are Syrian nationals from Idlib and Aleppo countryside, 150 are Belgian, French, Chinese (Uighurs), Moroccan, Tunisian, Chechen and British nationals.

The Syrian nationals will receive around $1200 – $1500 but there is no figure given for the foreign nationals. Bear in mind an average Syrian Arab Army soldier receives 70,000 Syrian Pounds per month, around $ 20.

Ukrainian President, Volodymyr Zelensky has claimed that 16000 foreign mercenaries will fight for Ukraine.

So, NATO member states are yet again turning a sovereign nation into a battlefield using mercenaries and fanatics to defend their agenda – to blockade and besiege Russia on the western flank and to ensure NATO expansion east despite the Minsk agreements.

Russian President, Vladimir Putin had warned German Chancellor, Olaf Scholz of the growing number of foreign mercenaries operating in Ukraine during a telephone conversation on the 4th March.

This is not the first evidence of Syrian extremist armed groups heading to Ukraine. Militant Wire Telegram channel had previously reported that a Syrian businessman, Tariq Al Jasem from the southern Aleppo countryside had formed a faction to fight against Russia in Ukraine.

Al Jasem’s links to extremists in Syria was later confirmed by Syrian researcher, Ibrahim Mohammed Wahdi.

[youtube]https://youtu.be/YtTtOQ4EJhk[/youtube]

One thing is for sure, confronting Russian forces on the ground in Ukraine will be a very different experience for these Islamist terrorists who benefitted from extensive rat runs in the areas they occupied in Syria, spending most of their time underground while Syrian civilians were used as human shields above ground.

There are no tunnels for them to escape to in Ukraine, they will be exposed to the full force of a Russian military already experienced in dealing with these terrorist groups after six years battling them successfully in Syria.

THE WHITE HELMET TAG TEAM

The pseudo humanitarian organisation embedded with Al Qaeda and affiliates in Syria, the White Helmets, are now offering to “help Ukrainians organise their first responders” according to an opinion piece by Josh Rogin for Washington Post.

On March 16 the leader of HTS (Al-Qaeda in #Syria) Abu Jaber thanked the #WhiteHelmets & called them the “hidden soldiers of the revolution” pic.twitter.com/1ac8M8xb5d

— Ibn Walid (@walid970721) March 20, 2017


Rogin doubles down on the US/UK legacy media narratives on Russian involvement in the Syrian war against terrorist forces sponsored, promoted and armed by the Western US-led coalition.

The whole Russia “is bombing hospitals, schools, civilian infrastructure” canard is rolled out, as always lacking the important context that Al Qaeda inc. occupy schools and hospitals. These buildings are converted into military headquarters, ammunition factories and storage, Sharia courts, prisons, torture chambers and detention centers as I have personally witnessed in Aleppo, Eastern Ghouta, southern Idlib – please subscribe to my YouTube channel or Odysee for multiple recorded civilian testimonies.

I interviewed Ahmad Aldayh in May 2017, in his shop in East Aleppo. He had been held prisoner by Jabhat al Shamiya brigade [affiliated with Nusra Front aka Al Qaeda] in the Eye Hospital in East Aleppo for 7 weeks just prior to its liberation by the SAA on 4/12/2016 when the wardens fled the advancing Syrian Army.

Here is his testimony:


According to Rogin, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has said it would “immediately proceed” with an investigation into the alleged Russian war crimes in Ukraine.

Has the ICC started proceedings against the UK/US allied destruction of Syrian civilian infrastructure and US occupation of Syrian oil fields or the torching of Syrian wheat and barley fields, the deprivation of water from millions of civilians in the north west of Syria, the crippling unilateral economic sanctions?

Has the ICC started proceedings against the far right Ukrainian brigades that have massacred 14,000 Russian speaking Ukrainians in the Donbass region for the last 8 years?

On the contrary, Ukraine is being supported by NATO member states to take Russia to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “having launched an invasion on the pretext of false claims of genocide perpetrated against the country’s Russian speakers” according to a report in The Guardian.

Unsurprisingly the NATO-linked “evidence” provider, Bellingcat, is involved in “preserving” evidence against Russia that is admissible in court.

Karim Khan who was elected as ICC prosecutor in 2021 is a British barrister and Queen’s Counsel. According to the Guardian, Khan’s “predecessor as ICC prosecutor Fatou Bensouda announced in 2020 that there was enough evidence from the conflict in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea to launch an investigation but the ICC judges did not give their approval”. Khan reviewed the case and concluded that:

I am satisfied that there is a reasonable basis to believe that both alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity have been committed in Ukraine.”

Effectively Khan imposed false equivalence onto what has clearly been the attempted ethnic cleansing of the opposition to the NATO influence in Ukraine and the NATO support for far right, Neo-Nazi elements in the Ukrainian security forces and political institutions.

The very real genocide that has been ongoing for eight years in Donbass was “disappeared” just as the agencies of Western hegemony and aligned media have disappeared the atrocities committed against the Syrian people by the terrorist groups in Syria and the ethnic cleansing pogroms carried out by these so called “moderate rebels”.

ENTER THE WHITE HELMETS

Rogin repeats the taglines that have been the mainstay of PR for the UK-incubated White Helmet organisation – “giving emergency care to civilians since 2014”.

The “all volunteer force” where each “volunteer” is paid $150 per month for the most junior members (remember the salary of a Syrian Arab Army soldier is $20) claims to have saved more than 100,000 civilians, a claim rendered ridiculous by their own lack of supporting documentation. Interesting that Rogin uses the term “force” which more accurately represents the armed members of White Helmet groups with close links to Al Qaeda.

James Le Mesurier might also have been worried that despite the White Helmets’ headline claim of over 115,000 lives saved they had documented only 625 to end Oct ’19, of which only 88 are supported by plausible video evidence, of which only 9 are named of which 3 have surnames.

— Mike Ralph King (@MikeKingWriter) November 18, 2019


Raed Saleh, now known as the “Chairman” of the White Helmets and with terrorist ties himself made the following statement in an interview with Rogin:

We are here to help our Ukrainian brothers and sisters in any way we can,” Raed Al Saleh, the leader of the White Helmets, told me in an interview. Putin’s goal is to break the will of the civilian population, he said, and there are no limits to the savagery of his troops. “The Russian military has no principles. They respect no human rights. They have no standards or ethics,” Saleh said. “The Ukrainians are facing the most ferocious, unethical, criminal killing machine that exists in the world today, which we have been facing for the last seven years.”

“There are no limits to the savagery of [Russian] troops” Saleh tells Rogin. For a more reserved and accurate account of the Russian military campaign in Syria, I recommend ‘Operation Aleppo’ by Sunday Times contributor and defence journalist Tim Ripley.

Despite allegedly being tasked with the documentation of war crimes in Syria, the White Helmets have not one record of atrocities and crimes committed by the terrorist armed groups, including ISIS and Nusra Front (Al Qaeda). They are embedded with these terrorist groups yet have not witnessed a single war crime?

Those atrocities include the regular targeting of children, schools, hospitals and civilian infrastructure in the Syrian Christian town of Al Sqeilbiyyeh, northern Hama.

During these attacks, the White Helmets shared underground headquarters with Al Qaeda in Qalaat Al Madiq less than one kilometer away from the Christian town that was threatened with extinction for seven years prior to liberation of the surrounding areas by the Syrian Arab Army and Russian forces in early 2019.

The White Helmets are allegedly preparing a series of videos to instruct Ukrainian civilians in the handling of unexploded rockets, how to evacuate a building under attack.

I guess it will be a slick compilation of their finest operations, perhaps taken from the Oscar winning promo that was produced in Turkey, not Syria? The White Helmets are even “ready to send in staff”.

Perhaps they would base themselves in the Zionist funded field hospitals that are springing up in Ukraine.



Odd how this announcement follows on from the arrival of Idlibistan terrorists in Urkaine? Not really, the White Helmets go where the terrorists go.

In Syria the White Helmets did not stay behind to help the civilians. Once an area was liberated from the terrorist groups by the Syrian Arab Army and allies, they departed on the green buses that evacuated extremist fighters to Idlib.

In July 2018 they were evacuated from southern Syria via Israel to Jordan in a special operation masterminded by Israel and Canada, a very Zionist intervention to rescue the US Coalition funded, terrorist-linked organisation.

Saleh mentions the use of walkie-talkies and the deployment of teams to monitor skies for planes as a more effective early warning system. Rogin fails to mention that the White Helmets in Syria have been supplied with the US State Department developed Hala System that enables the “grotesque militarisation of humanitarianism in Syria”.

Saleh regurgitates the Russian “double tap” claims – “Russian planes attack civilians, wait for first responders to arrive and then attack the first responders”.

Saleh never refers to the evidenced double tap strikes carried out by the terrorist groups embedded in urban areas in Aleppo and in all the cities they occupied – targeting civilians, waiting for the REAL Syria Civil Defence (RSCD established in Syria 1953) to arrive before targeting them as they attempted to rescue Syrian civilans.

I interviewed the Commander of the RSCD (not the White Helmet imposters) in Aleppo in March 2018. He told me:

They (terrorists) targeted us deliberately in order to destroy our equipment & structures. They wanted to prevent us being able to work for our people. They would target our crew with sniper fire and explosive bullets. Their main mission was to kill the crew and destroy our base so we couldn’t care for the people of Aleppo”

According to the Commanding Officer of this RSCD centre, the main terrorist objective was to paralyse the essential infrastructure for the 1.5 million Syrian civilians sheltering in the Syrian Government controlled West Aleppo. This included the destruction of water trucks, water pipes, electricity stations and the RSCD crews, vehicles and equipment.

I was told that the terrorist groups systematically carried out double-tap attacks on the RSCD crew. Nusra Front or one of their affiliates would fire mortars into a densely populated civilian area of West Aleppo.

For example in June 2016, terrorist groups intensified their attacks on West Aleppo.

The district of Midan was pounded by mortar fire and during one attack, a huge number of civilians were injured and trapped in destroyed buildings. The RSCD sent teams to evacuate the wounded and to dig out those trapped inside the buildings.

The terrorists waited for us to arrive and begin work, before they targeted the same area again – with mortars and hell cannon missiles”
CO, RSCD


Predictably, Rogin reinforces the concept that the White Helmets are a “victim” of a “Russian disinformation campaign” ignoring the fact that the majority of accusations against the White Helmets come from the Syrian civilians who survived occupation by the armed groups and the White Helmets.

Accusations of organ trafficking, child abduction and trafficking, staging of “chemical weapon” events, murder, theft, corruption and being weapon-carrying members of extremist armed groups – a claim even made by former White Helmets and an operational White Helmet leader I interviewed in Daraa in July 2018.

Of course Rogin sweeps all the considerable prima facie evidence against the White Helmets to one side, that is his job.

The fact remains, there are many questions hanging over the credibility of the White Helmets that are yet unanswered by an independent public enquiry into the war crimes they are accused of committing by the Syrian people disenfranchised by mainstream media and UN agencies.

Saleh claims “there is no greater honour than doing this work”. One must ask what kind of honour is gained by supporting violent ideologues and fanatics globally. When Saleh suggests it is a “duty and privilege” to “save people who represent the future of their country”, is he referring to the NATO-backed far right, Neo-Nazi brigades who would take absolute power in Ukraine?

It would make sense that an organisation tasked with being an auxiliary to some of the most brutal and sectarian armed militant gangs in Syria would now be providing PR for their fascist equivalent in Ukraine. As Syrian President, Bashar Al Assad stated shortly after the Russian military campaign began:

The enemy facing the Syrian and Russian armies is one. In Syria, it is (Islamist) extremism and in Ukraine it is Nazism. The Russian Federation will give a lesson to the world that great countries are not only great with their military strength, but also their respect for the law, high morals and humanitarian principles”
Translated from Arabic by Syriana Analysis/a>


In 2018 during an interview with the Corbett Report I alluded to the potential for a White Helmet global franchise. It appears that my prediction is coming true in Ukraine.

Effectively, the war against the Syrian alliance has been switched to Ukraine and Ukraine and its people are being weaponised by NATO member states to carry out their dirty work against Russia.

Ukrainians must resist the call to arms, secure negotiation with Russia and maintain neutrality before their country becomes a battleground strewn with the corpses of another US UK EU allied proxy war against the most powerful enemy they have confronted so far.

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/03/ ... o-ukraine/

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Challenge-Response - How Russia Is Countering 'Western' Moves Against It

Challenge:

March 3: Zelensky says 16,000 foreigners have volunteered to fight for Ukraine against Russian invasion

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Thursday said that 16,000 foreigners have volunteered to fight for Ukraine against the Russian invasion.
In an emotional video posted to his Telegram channel, Zelensky referred to the “international legion” of 16,000 foreign volunteers he has sought to “join the defense of Ukraine, Europe and the world.” The country earlier this week temporarily lifted visa requirements for foreign volunteers who wish to enter the country and join the fight against Russian forces.

March 8: 450 Arab and foreign extremists from Idlib arrive in Ukraine

Close to 450 extremist Arab and foreign nationals have arrived in Ukraine from Idlib to fight against Russia's forces, less than only three days after they left Syria, passing through Turkey.
Relatives of extremists that have arrived in Ukraine told Sputnik that senior fighters from terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (the rebranded version of Jabhat Al-Nusra, i.e Al-Qaeda) have held a number of meetings with senior leaders in the Turkistan Islamic Party group and Ansar Al-Tawhid and Hurras al-Din groups, and agreed on allowing a number of all their fighters to enter Ukraine through Turkish soil.

Response:

March 11: President of Russia: Meeting with permanent members of Security Council

Sergei Shoigu: We are receiving a huge number of requests from all manner of volunteers from different countries, who would like to come to the Lugansk and Donetsk people’s republics to take part in the liberation movement, as they say. The largest number of requests, over 16,000, has come from the Middle East. We believe that we should grant these requests, especially since the matter does not concern money but a genuine desire of these people. We know many of them; they helped us fight ISIS in the most difficult period, during the past 10 years.
...
Vladimir Putin: All right, thank you very much.
Regarding the mobilisation of mercenaries from all over the world and sending them to Ukraine. We can see that Ukraine’s Western sponsors and the Ukrainian regime are not concealing this fact. They are doing this openly and neglecting norms of international law. So, if you see that some volunteers would like to come and help the people in Donbass, especially without pay, then we should meet them halfway and help them relocate to the war zone.

I am sure that the fighters from Syria and elsewhere who will fight on Russia's side will get some pay from this or that sponsor, most likely Iran. Some Russian billionaire may also be willing to chip in. But it is important for Putin to show that these are not mercenaries like those on the other side - thus no official pay.

There was an additional challenge-response pair with regards to Ukraine.

Shoigu also mentioned all the foreign weapon deliveries the Ukraine has received. He told Putin that the Russian forces had captured large amounts of heavy and light weapons including U.S. derived Javelin and Stinger missiles. He proposed to give those to the militia of the Donbas republics.

Putin agreed with that.

A third challenge-response is the immense number of forces NATO currently mobilizes and moves towards its eastern border. Shoigu thinks that NATO plans for those troops to stay there forever. He will soon propose a new arrangement of Russian forces to potentially counter them.

Putin said that he would decide that separately. A few hours later he had a meeting with President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko. The two likely discussed the stationing of Russian troops and weapons like air defense and missile artillery systems in Belarus. That would make any potential NATO move more complicate.

In the above challenge-response pairs the Russian response is symmetric to the challenge. Foreign fighters versus foreign fighters, weapon deliveries versus weapon deliveries, and troops movements versus troop movements.

The challenges Russia has not yet responded too are the myriad sanctions the 'west' has enacted against it. There the responses can only be asymmetric.

I wonder why Putin is waiting to make them public. Does he want to keep them in reserve?

Posted by b on March 11, 2022 at 14:48 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/03/c ... .html#more

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Nuland must testify on biolaboratories in Ukraine - Volodin

The State Duma plans to create a parliamentary commission on US biolaboratories in Ukraine jointly with the Federation Council and invite US Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland to testify.

In his address to the future members of the commission, State Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin said that the first thing to start with is to invite Nuland to testify, since she is aware of what is happening.

Therefore, he suggested first "interrogating" the official, and then "interrogating".
"Let her stock up on cookies, they can be useful to her herself," Regnum quoted Volodin as saying .
According to the publication, one of the possible candidates for the position of the head of the commission is the vice-speaker of the State Duma Irina Yarovaya.

https://novorosinform.org/nuland-dolzhn ... 91521.html

The former mayor of Melitopol was detained by the Ministry of State Security of the DPR - he supported the Nazis

The security forces of the DPR established the involvement of Ivan Fedorov in the financing of Ukrainian terrorists.

The former mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, was arrested on suspicion of financing Ukrainian neo-Nazi groups. Vladimir Rogov, a member of the main council of the military-civilian administration of the Zaporozhye region, wrote about this in his telegram channel.

According to him, the investigators of the General Prosecutor's Office of the LPR established the involvement of Ivan Sergeevich, a native of Melitopol, Fedorov, born on August 29, 1988, in terrorist activities.

According to the investigation, as the mayor of Melitopol, Fedorov provided financial and other assistance to the Right Sector Nazi organization banned in Russia * in committing terrorist acts and crimes against the civilian population of the Donetsk and Luhansk People's Republics.

"Today, Fedorov Ivan Sergeevich, accused of involvement in terrorist activities, was detained by officers of the Ministry of State Security of the DPR," Rogov said.

https://novorosinform.org/byvshij-mer-m ... 91539.html

Marines of the Armed Forces of Ukraine went over to the side of the DPR

Nine soldiers of the 36th marine brigade of the Ukrainian army laid down their arms and surrendered to the forces of the republic, the Federal News Agency reports.

Ukrainian infantrymen voluntarily went over to the side of the liberators of Donbass, FAN writes , citing information from the People's Militia Department of the DPR.

"The soldiers who laid down their arms belonged to the 36th Marine Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine," the statement said.

In addition, the DPR forces seized a Ukrainian tank and armored vehicles. As trophies, Donetsk soldiers got NLAW and Javelin anti-tank missile systems, which were previously transferred to Ukraine as military support from the West.

Recall that Russian President Vladimir Putin approved the transfer of foreign weapons seized in Ukraine to the military personnel of Donbass.

https://novorosinform.org/na-storonu-dn ... 91495.html

Ukraine will lose the South: the source spoke about the new ultimatum of Russia for Zelensky

According to the Telegram channel "Resident", the Ukrainian president received time to think before the next round of negotiations.

Russia delivered an ultimatum to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. This was reported by the Ukrainian telegram channel "Resident" with reference to a source in the office of the President of Ukraine.

The channel’s interlocutor noted that if the Ukrainian president does not accept Russia’s conditions, including the rejection of NATO, the recognition of Crimea and Donbass, as well as the prohibition of Nazi ideology and giving the Russian language the status of a state language, then Ukraine will lose its southern regions.
"We were given time to think before the next round of negotiations," the "Rezident" writes.
https://novorosinform.org/ukraina-poter ... 91529.html
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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kidoftheblackhole
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Re: Footnotes from the Ukrainian "Crisis"; New High-Points in Cynicism Part IV

Post by kidoftheblackhole » Sat Mar 12, 2022 2:38 am

I consider Zoltan Zigedy/Greg Godels to be one of the best voices on the Marxist left but I really hate that fucker right now.

Compare what he writes: http://zzs-blg.blogspot.com/

to this:

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2022/02/ ... -too-late/

The tragedy isn't that Russia is intervening now, its that they didn't do it 8 years ago (and Karl Marx would 100% say the same thing)

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