Our open letter to the Cochrane Board dated February 16th points out that a series of rapid reviews on the effects of sundry non-pharmaceutical interventions undermined or ignored the rationale for the Cochrane Collaboration.
Cochrane authors and editors did not follow the rules nor the spirit of those who came together long ago to create the Cochrane Collaboration and kept going, whatever the costs, within the rules.
We considered four founding principles were breached:
- Collaboration
- Avoidance of duplication
- Use of best quality evidence
- Keeping reviews up to date
The rapid reviews that breached these principles included junk studies, such as models, and plugged the gap of the long-standing Cochrane review on the same topics (‘Physical interventions to interrupt or reduce the spread of respiratory viruses‘ (A122)). Review A122’s publication was delayed by six months, which saw the gap filled with reviews that included poor-quality evidence – if models can be called evidence.
We have over 40 years of experience working with and publishing Cochrane reviews. In that time, we have never observed the substitution of high quality evidence with an approach that could only be described as a race to the bottom.
One possible argument for the hasty production of reviews is that there was an emergency, and we needed something, anything, to direct decisions.
The accompanying editorial to A122, which eventually came out in November 2020, made this argument: when the chips are down, any old data will do. If this wasn’t enough, one of the editorial references was to a consensus statement published in a mega journal based on the ideology that governments must act — in doing so, they should push zero-Covid policies.
The fact that a consensus statement was cited to ‘contextualise’ the results of a systematic review of RCTs should make all involved think seriously about the critical thinking – or lack thereof – at the time.
It is worth reminding readers that A122 initially included all types of comparative studies. In its third update of 2020, the authors saw no reason to keep including lower-quality evidence and opted to focus on randomised controlled trials, as there were many of them from which to draw conclusions.
The problem is that trial results may not support the dominant narrative, which flipped to lockups, lockdowns, muzzles, the rule of six Hancocks, granny in the garden, following runners with drones on roads which have been deserted since the fall of the Roman empire, chopping off the bottom half of school doors and sundry crazies.
Observational studies and models will say what you want them to. As our antivirals series shows, everything can be manipulated, but comparative trials are more difficult to manipulate, especially if the trialists are competent and honest and follow the magic luminous path of their protocol.
Observational studies have their role, but should not be used to assess the effectiveness of interventions against respiratory viruses, as we have explained in a three part series last year.
When examining the decision-making process of the past, there were two opposing viewpoints. One side supported the prevailing belief in Government policies of suppression and used any available evidence to back up its claims. Policymakers were not able to differentiate between low-quality and high-quality evidence; therefore, this position went largely unchallenged. Overnight experts and opinions could shout from the rooftops their support for policies that at times were made up by inexperienced Government advisers. In addition, journals such as Cochrane produced large quantities of junk science reviews at scale and speed, further promoting the interventionist narrative.
The other was the need for high-quality evidence. However, when it came to non-pharmaceutical interventions, high-quality evidence not supporting the predominant narrative was suppressed, and its authors were attacked, silenced and censored.
Randomised evidence took a back seat when it came to deciding what to do. As a consequence, we got policies that were untried and untested, and we are still paying the price for them.
So, which is it to be? We are clear — and have always been — about which approach is correct. However, we are still unclear why so many defaulted to the low-quality junk science approach.
So, what should be done next time to prevent the pandemic race to the bottom that ends at the door of the modellers loaded with their assumptions?
Did our open letter get an answer or even an acknowledgement? No.
An emailed version got the following response:
In a further email, the Cochrane bureaucracy informed us that the Board had seen our letter but did not have any specific comments to make.
The Interim Chair’s point about making a comment using the appropriate facility on the page of any review is very important. It is the correct way to do things — and has been for the last 30 years — and was completely disregarded by Cochrane’s own Editor-in-Chief, as we shall discuss in the next post.
None of the four substantive points made in our letter to the board have been addressed. Herein lies the miserable story of the use of evidence during the pandemic. Although we are dismayed with the way things have gone, we believe that with some critical thinking, a few retractions and a better understanding of what constitutes high-quality evidence, we can turn the tide towards an evidence-based approach.
Dr. Carl Heneghan is the Oxford Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Dr. Tom Jefferson is an epidemiologist based in Rome who works with Professor Heneghan on the Cochrane Collaboration. This article was first published on their Substack, Trust The Evidence, which you can subscribe to here.
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Ukrainian C14 neo-Nazi official tells how his neo-Nazi militia got funds and weapons from the West. This same official also tells of how neo-Nazis played a prominent role in the West/NATO instigated and backed coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014.
It’s beyond deniability that the West and NATO gave both funds and weapons to neo-Nazi militias in Ukraine.
In the quotes below is a text translation of what this official says in the recording. (He says ‘We have fun killing’. If you view him, you’ll believe he does.)
Ukrainian C14 Neo-Nazi Official:
State sponsored terrorism?
It depends if they win or not. Winners are freedom fighters, only losers are terrorists.
And the winners will write the history to ensure all future generations believe that these same winners wore the white hats and broke no laws, either of God or man.
Yes, Himmler once boasted of the freedom of action to slaughter whomsoever he wished was given him by the certain knowledge that as the ‘victor’ he would be writing the history books – didn’t turn out too well.
Hitler asked “Who remembers the Armenians now?”, referring to the genocide committed against the Armenians by Turks from 1915.
Goebbels knew that if his side won the war they’d go down in “history” as the greatest statesmen of all time; and if they lost, as the greatest criminals.
Ditto Churchill
That video should be a massive wake up call to the gullible teddy bear collectors in our society, both as to the reality in Ukraine and also our own government’s shenanigans.
I’d like to see some man-bun wearer accuse that bloke of misgendering someone, or of not bending the knee sufficiently to blm.
Only if it’s not fake news. We surely must accept by now that any information we receive is odds on to be fake.
Believe nothing said by any poilticians and the media – can’t go far wrong!
Easy with Johnson the opposite of what he says is usually the truth!
Especially that from all Western media and politicians – RT has had some very sceptical pieces about the Russian Government along with excellent documentary histories of the Ukraine packed with first hand testimonials and also allows free discussion – of a kind sadly no longer ever seen on the BBC!
In order to ascertain ‘the truth’ we always need two sides to track the middle way where ‘the fragile truth’ often resides.
We are now denied that and can therefore trust nothing we are told as being objective.
“Russian General killed trying to help Ukrainian civilians escape Ukrainian shelling” Anyone see that report in UK Media ?
Although we appear to be on the ‘same side’, accusing those who oppose you of taking the most extreme form of that opposition, “new nazi”, is a woke tactic and always has been, nor worthy of support and which undermines our argument.
I really can’t understand what you mean by that?
As for neo-Nazis. There are ordinary decent “nationalists” and “patriots” in Ukraine, but C14 are in neither of these brackets. C14 are genuine neo-Nazis and they openly admit that. But these neo-Nazis make up a very small percentage of people in Ukraine.
I believe the general definition for neo-Nazi with normal people on the centre-Right is bullying, murderous thug that is no good to country or culture. If these C14 thugs were around in 1935 they’d gladly do their savagery under Stalin’s far-Left banner.
As for the woke idiots and their application of the term Nazi to everything they don’t agree with, if we start changing the definitions of commonly used words and terms because some halfwits have given them definitions opposite to their original meanings, then we would soon run out of definitions.
Anyway, I’m not using neo-Nazis to refer to Ukrainian “nationalists” or “patriots”.
Intelligent comment – sadly like hens’ teeth!
Generally I agree, however if that actually are neo-Nazis then it’s worth pointing that out
So you believe everything Yevhen Karas says?
Always interesting to read the Party line from Moscow.
Yes, I’m sure all Ukrainians (except the “majority” who want to be ruled by Putin) are staunch Neo-Nazis.
In particular those nasty Neo-Nazi women and children swarming towards Neo-Nazi Poland, Neo-Nazi Hungary, Neo-Nazi Romania and the rest.
Quite right that the heroic peace loving Putinesque Russians are ignoring the Neo-Nazi protesters in Russia and bravely shelling residential areas in Neo-Nazi held areas of Western Russia, doubtless soon to be extended to the Neo-Nazi areas which were part of the Neo-Nazi Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Neo-Nazi Polish Republic.
Who can forget the kindness of the beloved Stalin and his henchmen in Ukraine when they did their best to prevent the Neo-Nazi kulaks from over-eating in the celebrated Holodomor?
And the sheer humanity of the heroic KGB in dealing with Neo-Nazis in the period between 1944 and 1952? The number of Neo-Nazis who were so kindly educated in the Gulag Archipelago?
That’s one hell of a hilariously deranged word-salad.
Yup, that’s why I responded to it.
I’d just cash in your extra ‘Putin Points’ fairly soon, or convert them into to Renminbi.
It replies with all the intellectuality of a lizard.
Is that the best you can offer, you two-bit loser?
/s
So you deny the Nazis ever existed or still do exist even though they wear Nazi insignia and call for the ‘ethnic cleansing ‘ of Russians from their homes !
What about the Holocaust – do you deny that as well? Any idea of the number of Russian prisoners of war murdered by the Nazis in WW2?
Obviously not. But I’m certain that you deny Holodomor, the Gulags and their consequences.
There are also “Neo-Nazis” in most countries including the UK.
Mostly tiny numbers of pathetic dimwits.
Absolutely no comparison with the immediate danger of hordes of State supported GangGreen lunatics and their Crony Capitalist promoters and financers. Not least Vladimir Putin. Although he has very sensibly taken great care that GangGreen doesn’t appear much in Russia
.
It’s clearer to call them “S14”; the “C” is Cyrillic, as in “CCCP”.
The “14” suggests a US neo-Nazi influence, surely referring to the “14 words” beloved of white supremacists: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.” This usage comes from the US and is not “European” in the sense that “18” and “88” are, even if some neo-Nazis use the combined form “14/88”.
This doesn’t mean “14” doesn’t ALSO refer to 14 October 1942, the mythical foundation date of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA).
It’s always worth remembering that Wall Street financed the Bolshevik revolution and the rise of Hitler and so profited from both sides in WW1 and WW2. There’s little that’s new under the Sun.
To get rid of war completely you must get rid of human striving and ambition, and turn us into sheep.
The better way is to provide some safer outlet for this striving. Exploration was one answer in the days when the world was young – this is what we need to get back to….
Thats a really good thought thanks.
How about the God Shaped Hole? Not to say that we should regain religion. Just to point out that since the west became largely secular, there’s an enormous void being filled willingly by hysteria. It seems, though might be a coincidence.
So the question might be(being careful not to beg it): Is the GSH really a problem or a solution. And for whichever, how to attend to that?
Faith and force are the destroyers of the world.
The rejection of formal religion is not the adoption of reason.
So many commentators seem to have conveniently forgotten about the NATO destruction of Yugoslavia in 1999.
Many choose to also forget how in 1990’s Balkan War NATO bombed the hell out of Slavic people.
Russia was economically on its knees at that time and I recall thinking that when they get their mojo back they’ll remember acts like that.
Yes the RAF targeted the TV station and I believe some international journalists were killed. Weak Russia could do nothing.
However, a wise Prussian once said it all:
“Do not expect that once taking advantage of Russia’s weakness, you will receive dividends forever. Russians have always come for their money . And when they come do not rely on an agreement signed by you, you are supposed to justify . They are not worth the paper they are written on.
Therefore, with the Russians the only way is to play fair, or do not play at all.”
Otto von Bismarck
Yes just going to post the same. And Kosovo of course was the template for creation of ‘independent’ states in eastern Ukraine. NATO doing it; good. Russia doing it, bad.
And he missed out War on Terror, which of course is human/human war, now clearly aimed at humans within the State boundaries. The latest manifestation being ‘white supremacists’ which apparently the CIA are busily inventing to perpetuate the domestic terrorist emergency.
Just started doing a re-run of the X-Files on Disney(apologies for that). Hugely prescient.
and that was when i noticed the MSM blatantly lying too.
Are they lying though?
Seriously! I’m not apologising for whatever it is they are doing trust me.
It seems to me they really really believe what they are saying. Even if you factor in the obvious following of the money they all have snouts buried deep in, they nonetheless believe the attraction of the belief itself, more than the temptation the money delivers.
To destroy a cult, requires a bigger more powerful cult. And the West has rid itself of a meaningful cult when it killed God (Im not religious BTW, just pointing at it). So the West is a weakling to all intents, where it matters most for Power.
Evidence?: notice how facts no longer are important on the ‘winning’ side of power these days…
If so what does that mean? Anyone want to go into it? Hard as that analysis will be, it does seem to have merit.
so you are saying that the Croats and Serbs should have been left to fight it out among themselves divide the land between them and kill everyone else. I thought Nato became involved to protect the Bosnian and Kossover moslems
Nato became involved to crush ‘Russia friendly’ and Nationalist Serbia. Russia’s weakness gave them the opportunity to meddle in the Balkans again ( like 1914)!
yes they ended up attacking Serbia, but you have not answered my question about protecting the Moslem Bosnians and Kossovans.
You actually still believe the bombing was about protecting people. Incredible.
A comment by Richard J Aldrich regarding war crimes in the Serbia-Bosnia war:
America used Islamists to arm the Bosnian Muslims
“Protecting” is just the propagandists’ way of describing intervening on one side in an internal conflict. It’s usually based in some truth, as it was in Yugoslavia and is in the Ukraine now when Russia uses it, but in both cases it’s a cover for hard realpolitik.
Regardless, the attack on Yugoslavia was incontrovertibly illegal as is the attack on the Ukaine, but those laws were rendered de facto inoperative by repeated US/UK breaches of them without even a pretence of enforcement or punishment of the perpetrators. .
Most of them denied it a the time – if they were even born then.
The image that Time created is just plain wrong.
Anyone who has studied Hitler can see that Putin is not that. Peter The Great is his great inspiration, not Hitler.
Hitler wanted to commit genocide over other races. Putin presides over a multi ethnic state and even restrains Russian ethnic nationalism at times to help keep it together. His original speech pre the invasion called on Ukrainians as brothers in the Great Patriotic War. These are not the behaviours of /Hitler.
Western media is unhinged, manipulated by the evil US and UK governments.
Finding a diplomatic answer to stop the war and the killing ought to be the goal of our awful government: instead they are using this as an excuse to up the ante on Russia. That ought to tell people that their motives are not pure and that we are being played.
I can’t decide whether our UK government is consciously evil or just plain stupid. It’s clear that politics has always attracted too many of the wrong sort: proud, immoral, arrogant and inexperieced types who are usually quick to line their own pockets. For some reason this tendency has got worse in recent years.
Candidates should have to undergo strict recruitment procedures before being allowed to stand as MPs, as would be normal in commerce or industry. The electorate cannot be expected to sort the wheat from the chaff just on the basis of the aspirant’s own campaigning: their vote can come later.
why use or when AND applies?
So bloody true.
On government and wisdom – When the people have become corrupt, the worst will rise to the top.
Not necessarily the most violent. But perhaps the most ignorant and selfish, more likely. This is Boris et al.
Evidence? notice how the narrative is always prefixed with the notion of saving the planet or similar. What bigger ego trip could there be for a leader than that “I am here to save you”. And how nice must that feel for them. Far nicer than the $sums of oligarchy.
But to gain that high seat requires the people who select that leader feel broadly the same way – the collective unconscious and its dark shadow keenly at work.
“Corrupt” covers it.
Exactly my opinion – however the USA never does its research or understands the peoples’ mindset before they go barging into these countries with their guns blazing – they focus solely on what assets they can get their hands on – with America its all about making money!
The MIC and the OGM complexes got what they wanted via the Straussians.
It is EXACTLY going to plan for those three.
What they didn’t plan for and expect is that Russia teamed up with China, the BRICS, South Anerica and Africa not playing along, lowly indebted and pretty sanction proof Russia not being much impacted by their sanctions, the sanctions having such an immediate devastating effect on their own electorates, the sanctions and the stupid, counterproductive and criminal expropriation drives leading to irrevocable and proliferating dedollarization and a viable competitive financial system in those and ever more countries.
You ain’t seen nothing with regard to the latters impact yet.
This is nothing but a proxy war.
Legacy media is a mouthpiece for government and government has an agenda in all things (climate, digital IDs, and dare I say it, probably even depopulation).
Check out Gilbert Doctorow’s great historical outline of the Russo-Ukrainian war:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/ep-2074-russia-ukraine-and-nato/id716825890?i=1000552533666
Hilary Clinton said that “Putin ” was “Hitler” in 2016 the stupid and devious woman thankfully lost the election very badly to a pragmatist. and deal maker.
Problem was she plotted her ‘revenge’ from that day on!
Calm down dear, the Time cover is a mocked up picture – as it clearly states at the end of the post. Irrespective of these “neo-Nazi” activities; does anything really justify Putin’s attacks on a sovereign nation and his barbaric slaughtering of civilians?
Excellent analysis. Pure War, that is the invisible war in which humanity is pitted against technology, the monster, manifests in different faces as it reveals itself. COVID was the eruption of Pure War into the 2020s, now seamlessly transitioned into Ukraine. The underlying archetype is unchanging: call it the Coming of the Borg. The West has emasculated and infantilised itself, and created its image of the enemy as the carbon dioxide molecule and the pronoun. Meanwhile, we are about to be swallowed by a tidal wave of AI. Pure War is the war of all against all, the Scapegoat war, the War of World Peace. It is the end of logistics, the end of the vector of speed, the end of the accident. 2022. Buckle up.
I think another layer of foil on that hat is needed.
I think you may need to check in with reality. Where have you been?
I find your anti-Borg bigotry… futile.
The aim of Islam is World Peace, once they have Borged the entire world to their will.
Serbia feels upset that you all forgot them so quickly
Indeed, and all of the “stop the WAAAAGH” types screeching about how someone has to do something, where were they two weeks ago demanding the military liberation of the Crimea?
Or Canada
So when is Johnson going to do something about the total mess he hs made with our own people in Northern Ireland who he has handed over to the EU and cut adrift from the UK?
So, wrecking our own country while meddling in Russia – it is simply beyond belief what a total disaster this entire Government really is – and Kneeler Starmer would be ten times worse!
Astra Zeneca hasn’t forgotten ‘useful’ Serbia !
Serbia is the chosen location for their next Big Pharma investment ‘experimentation’ Who was it said these globalists were a “Union Jack “company?
Serbs were out on the streets of Belgrade supporting Russia!
But surely their Government leans towards the EU…. with equivocation…..watch this space!
Serbia is a land-locked country surrounded by vassal NATO states of various degrees of hostility. Realpolitic suggests prudence for the time being, otherwise access to the rest of the world could become problematic.
I love academics who whitter on without looking at facts, no mention of the cause of Putin’s invasion and no analysis of why
Both the Daily Sceptic and Soiked appear to have gone mainstream on this one
The Daily Sceptic is sceptical of just the things it wants to be sceptical of.. nothing more..
We all ‘fall’ in the end, no matter how far we have already travelled over the frontier.
Dr Alexander states that British politicians aren’t stupid, when their actions to impose Net Zero and make us energy dependent and outsource manufacturing to dictatorships like China and Russia seem to be spectacularly stupid.
But he may be right, perhaps they aren’t stupid. In which case they are EVIL and traitors to the British people.
I support the Russians in this. Largely because I no longer see our democratic governments as legitimate.
Who was it so loftily told us: “We live in a post democratic age” (only Blair’s Dark “Consigliere ‘Lord” Peter Mandelson).
The Founding Fathers pointed out the post democratic age too. You can see the ignorance in America by their belief that the constitution is there to uphold democracy, rather than protect the republic and minority groups from Power.
Our Collective approves of being told what group we belong to, and therefore what we “should” think about any given issue.
We would hate to have ideas of our own, like some autonomous individual.
Yes, that bit jumped out at me as well.
Me too! It’s an oxymoron I think, inherently contradictory, “what sceptics should think about x or y or z “.
You mean we are to all intents: slaves?
I think the preferred term in the New Normal is non-autonomous pod-dwelling toil-units.
Good training for the ‘Great Reset’ – ( for those who survive the ‘cull’ that is).
A thought provoking piece? What’s the war in Ukraine all about? There is a section of opinion that say’s it’s a creation of the all powerful malignant global technocracy, a war provoked too take our attention away from the main event, the death’s of millions due to the “vaccines” the collapse of FIAT and the introduction of CBDC/Bio security and the imminent digital enslavement of the 99%…. problem reaction solution
Is Convid now yesterday’s news, despite mounting evidence of a biological disaster? Notice how quickly the establishment pivot’s away from the “new plague” to “the new Czar” and his need for a new “Imperial Russia”
Or is the war simply about US exceptionalism and EU fascism and expansion? (After all, the EU was a creation of Nazi’s and US geo politics after the end of WW2)… 1990, the US/NATO promise Russia “no encroachment on former Warsaw pact countries”…The CIA “orange revolution” The CIA “maidan revolution” Non implementation of the “Minsk agreements” Thirteen year’s of Ukrainian army incursions into the Donbas, the constant shelling of it’s population and myriad alleged atrocities committed by the Neo Nazi Asov battalions! Is that what the war is really about? Why now?? And why have the vast majority unquestioningly AGAIN, accepted a narrative promoted by governments, establishment and media that has lied to us all incessantly for over two year’s???
Listen too Delingpoles interview with Alex Thomson for an alternative view…
I am coming around to the ‘all empires need to expand, otherwise they collapse’ theory.
The Western world’s finances are so rotten and its structural problems so great, that it needs to expand (regime change is the word they use for that….).
And it does so by provocation.
The West has had its eye on Russia’s treasures for a very long time.. Bolshevik Revolution.. supported by both Wall Street and the City of London..
Yes, money is at heart/fundamentally a pyramid scheme; all societies using it have to expand or go bust, slowly or quickly depending on how they organise their pyramid.
Alex Thomson is a brilliant breath of fresh air – we used to have people like him advising Governments now we have Carrie Symonds-Johnson ( BA, Theatre Studies) and her ” Prosecco Entourage”!
Reminder: Wasn’t it “the worlds’ a scary place”, Bent Banana Milliband D, ( now a Soros operative) who “wokefied” ignored and ruined the Foreign Office professionals and sold off the priceless Library?
I doubt if the “FO Old Guard” would have told the “Foreign Secretary” that Rostov on Don was in the Ukraine and that British subjects should go over and stir-up a full on Civil War )
This sort of thing reminds me of that scene at the end of ‘The Holy Grail’ where the A J P Taylor character is giving an ivory tower lecture on warfare and promptly gets his head chopped off by one of the marauding knights!
One way of looking at the Ukraine conflict is as simply a religious war. Putin is a devout member of the Russian Orthodox Church which is deeply associated with Ukraine. Putin is maybe on a Messianic mission to defend the purity of his faith against the corrupting hedonistic influence of the west. This would also explain his interventions in Chechnya and Syria – against the corrupting influence of Islam.
Religious fanaticism justifies anything: trying to explain the irrational by the use of reason is itself irrational!
“One way” but then in the end “religion follows the sword!”
” . . . Dr. Alexander tries to pinpoint what’s so strange about the war in Ukraine and what sceptics should think about it.”
Hi Toby,
Call me a pedant if you like, but I don’t want to be told what I should think by anyone about anything. I want exposure to the main arguments and viewpoints in order that I can then make up my own mind.
A little detail, I know; but it’s an important one, I think.
It seems Mr Young is struggling with this one quite intensely. Not sure though as he only reveals himself on London Calling.
To achieve this you need the RT version – denied by the UK censors.
Say no more!
Yes, this is an old fashioned war. Anyone looking through Mailonline might be struck with the parallel between that organ and notorious anti-Semitic German publications like Die Sturmer.
I’m not sure I like this emphasis on “what sceptics should think” about things. Surely the whole point of being a sceptic is we make our own mind and don’t rely on someone in the media to tell us what we should think?
Well, I suppose in fairness to Toby, the main thing is that we are likely to be sceptical about any such attempts to tell us how we should think about an issue…
BBC News Website
‘However, a number of new laws have made it harder to protest in Russia in recent years, rights groups say.
“Although Russian legislation avoids explicitly using terms like ‘permit’ or ‘ban’… it effectively requires organisers to seek authorisation for their assemblies,” Amnesty International says.‘
Not as bad as the UK then
oh unless you’re doing a globalist “protest” using rent-a-crowd members for your astroturfing (faking grass roots) when the police do not seem to enforce the law and will be told to kneel etc..
That’s identical to the situation in Germany even pre-COVID: The effected authorities have to be notified about all planned public demonstrations and they may prohibit them for a variety of reasons. This has greatly expanded since COVID. The bottom-line is that anything the established authorities don’t like will be prohibited on public health grounds. Things they do like, eg BLM and CSD, can go ahead.
in other words the entrenched hypocrisy of the west is set against the entrenched literalism of the east – Both entrenched in a Global strategy borne out of elites/City of London/ Manhattan to maintain opposing super industrial geo political spheres of influence but at all costs not to encourage neutral independent states – why NATO /US destroyed Ukraine in 2014 in a coup creating an ongoing civil war and why Russia has had enough. Thanks for the lesson on being a sceptic.
From Putins point of view and that of many Russians expansion into Ukrain is less of an imperialist or colonialism enterprise than the American takeover of their current territory 1/2-2 centuries earlier which, bar Britain, few objected to at the time.
Ukrain is a territory 70% occupied by people from whom Russians are descended, the remaining 30% being overspills from neighbouring populations. It was only geographically defined as a Province by Tsariat Russia for administrative convenience.
They speak language that is, at most, a dialect of Russian with a sprinkling of different spellings introduced by 19th ‘Liberal Interectials’ trying to imply otherwise.
There are no distinct ‘Ukrainians’.
This does not excuse Putins war of conquest any more than a USA attempt to assimilate her own “motherland “: Greater Britain, ie. England, Scotland, Wales and the whole of Ireland.
“This does not excuse Putins war of conquest”
It’s not a war of conquest, it’s a defensive war.
Whether it ultimately results in conquest remains to be seen. The Russians claim, and with strong credibility given the context, that its a war to remove enemy influence and threat, and to remove from power the aggressive Russia-hating elements that have been waging war on the Russian-speaking population.
A neutral and disarmed Ukraine with protections for minority languages – essentially the Minsk solutions that were agreed, but ignored and treated with contempt by the nationalists – is nothing to object to and would not constitute “conquest”.
It’s not a war of conquest, it’s a defensive war.
Well, that’s a matter of opinion at this stage, unless you’ve got the inside track to Putin’s mind. In twenty years’ time we will probably know one way or the other.
A neutral and disarmed Ukraine
Unfortunately, neutered, disarmed countries encourage the rise of demagogues who stir up the populace to resent such terms; as did Hitler.
Every country needs arms to be able to defend itself: defending the population is the most basic role of government. The alternative is guarantees by the ‘great powers’, which is what Belgium had at its creation as a new country by the Treaty of London. Germany was a guarantor, but broke the treaty and invaded. We honoured it and got dragged into the Great War.
The Budapest Memorandum operates at a lower level than an international treaty, and was supposed to give Ukraine guarantees of territorial integrity in exchange for giving up its nuclear arsenal. Russia is one of the signatories. Not much has been said about this memorandum. While it does not put the signatories under obligation to join a war against an invader, it gives justification for them to do so. This is nothing to do with NATO. It would be possible (I’m not suggesting desirable!) for the USA (or UK, for that matter) to engage Russia in Ukraine without dragging NATO in: they could engage as independent countries outside of any connection to NATO: the USA and UK have done that many times, in fact, all over the world without dragging NATO into it.
“Well, that’s a matter of opinion at this stage, unless you’ve got the inside track to Putin’s mind. In twenty years’ time we will probably know one way or the other.”
A matter of opinion by definition, as are any that run counter, but it’s clear that reality fits much better with that assessment.
Those claiming conquest generally have to rely on self-evidently absurd propagandist nonsense about Putin as Hitler.
“Unfortunately, neutered, disarmed countries encourage the rise of demagogues who stir up the populace to resent such terms; as did Hitler.“
But that didn’t happen in Finland, a much better parallel.
Of course, it’s going to be much harder to make it work now that the US has stirred up so much hatred in the Ukraine pursuant to its policy of trying to push NATO membership into the country. But we have to begin from where we are.
“The Budapest Memorandum“
Rather comical for apologists for US policy to try to pretend that any agreements have any force as pretexts for their actions, given their shameless disregard for their own commitments under the UN Treaty not to wage unilateral wars of choice, and especially in the Ukraine given their similarly shameless disregard of the Minsk accords.
If this is about “justification”, then Russia is clearly justified in addressing an existential threat on its borders from a superpower with a track record of waging illegal wars of aggression and a policy of promoting hatred of Russia.
I hope you are not suggesting that I am an apologist for US policy. I am not. Anyone who knows me knows that I have been a great critic, including of its meddling in Ukraine.
The point about the Budapest Memorandum was (I believe) just factual stuff.
As for Finland, having worked for a company in Finland for 7 years I think I understand the situation pretty well. Until 1992 Finland had to walk a very difficult line to avoid upsetting the Russians, while wanting to look west as well. Although it was ‘neutral’ politically, it wasn’t disarmed: it still needed a strong military to defend the country long enough for refugees to migrate west or east (into Russia) depending on where the threat came from in the Cold War.
The Soviets treated Finland like the Allied powers treated Germany after the Great War, and it actually supports my point. Few people know that Finland was paying reparations to the Soviet Union since the Second World War until the USSR collapsed. Moreover, the USSR kept a naval base in Finland until 1956. Russia also carved off land from Finland, taking its access to the White Sea, and parts of Karelia and culturally important cities (such as Vyborg), leading to 100,000 refugees, which was a huge number considering the small population of Finland.
All this created resentment in Finland, and when the Soviet Union collapsed and there was turmoil in Russia (which I saw first hand) Finland made its move towards the European Union, joining almost exactly three years later. Now it is seriously considering joining NATO. It is as much Russian behaviour that has caused Finland to look westward as being tugged westward.
The point about Finland is that it counters your false parallel with post-WW1 Germany. There’s no reason to suppose a Finland solution couldn’t work fine for the Ukraine, and it’s what should have been agreed uncontroversially between the US and Russia in the 1990s.
All the worst problems there stem from the US dangling the prospect of NATO membership in front of the worst elements amongst that country’s nationalists. (I have no aversion to nationalists per se – though I view faux-nationalists who actually want EU membership as the liars they are), and actively intervening in the politics and economy of the Ukraine to push that policy.
Re Bucharest, it’s an irrelevance. At most a reminder (which should not be needed for grownups) that the realists are correct (as usual) in viewing hard facts as what matte, not words. There’s inevitably a suspicion when it is raised that it is intended as some pretext for criticising the Russians and thereby making excuses for US sphere confrontation of Russia.
There’s no reason to suppose a Finland solution couldn’t work fine for the Ukraine
What’s a ‘Finland solution’? As I mentioned, that ‘solution’, where Finland was ‘neutral’ because it was scared about upsetting the East or the West is hardly a good situation to be in, caught in the middle in a cold war. And this ‘Finland solution’ has Finland paying war reparations to the Soviet Union (including 525 locomotives and 619 ships), and had land taken off it (leading to 100,000 refugees), though it was first invaded by the USSR in 1939. And it has the Soviets running a naval base in Finland.
It’s not a false parallel with Germany after the Great War. It is widely recognized that the reparations exacted from Germany and the restrictions placed upon it by the Treaty of Versailles, and the humiliation of being demilitarized, and the loss of culturally important cities, were factors in public support for the rise of the Nazi demagogue.
If you speak to Finns who lived through the Second World War and its aftermath with the so-called ‘Finland solution’ you’ll find that this was no solution that was desirable. Your ‘Finland solution’ seems like more or a solution by and attractive to someone remote from Finland rather than the people who have to live with it.
Plenty of Finns were happy with it, as wisdom suggests when you are emerging having been on the losing side of a world war right next door to the victors, and it’s hardly significant that many now claim they would prefer to have been on the other side. That wasn’t an option, the alternative was what the Ukraine is getting now, only at the hands of an ideologically distinct superpower, and might suffer for decades to come if the US sphere keeps sustaining the nationalist ultras.
Your refusal to consider anything but the maximal objectives of the nationalists strikes me as obtuse. In the real world, peoples have routinely bowed to reality and gotten on with their lives. This is not a situation in which there is a meaningful ideological difference, except perhaps in the woke ideology of the US sphere that Ukrainians I believe rather naively think they will be able to ignore.
Your refusal to consider anything but the maximal objectives of the nationalists strikes me as obtuse.
I haven’t said anything about any maximal objectives of nationalists. What objectives? Which nationalists? You are just making this up as a faux riposte, like your others. Responding like that makes you appear like a bot.
Plenty of Finns were happy with it
How many have you spoken to? How many do you know and have worked with? How many do you know who lived through the Second World War? Have you ever visited Finland and Russia and discussed it with both sides (I have, by the way).
“I haven’t said anything about any maximal objectives of nationalists. What objectives? Which nationalists? You are just making this up as a faux riposte, like your others. Responding like that makes you appear like a bot.”
That’s only a superficially fair criticism. What you did was merely to reject the only alternative under discussion to the maximal objectives of the nationalist ultras (full national independence resulting in NATO membership).
A distinction without much difference.
I haven’t spoken to any Finns who were around in the early post-WW2 years, but I’m aware as a historical fact that Finnish Cold War neutrality was not a policy imposed upon them by direct force, but one which arose in their reasonably democratic system as a sensible response to the situation in which they found themselves.
As I noted, there’s absolutely no honest reason to suppose it could not work for the Ukraine, and indeed election results appear to suggest it would be the preferred solution if it were available, since candidates wanting compromise have to be intimidated by nationalist militias and oligarchs to prevent them moving in the direction of such reasonable compromise.
Defensive war…you are really saying this?
What is Putin defending against, that justifies the invasion of another country?
What was the substantial and imminent threat mechanism, that necessitated all the killing?
The excuses you present do not justify your obvious support for this murderous campaign against Ukraine.
Same goes for the 22 people who approve of your message.
“Defensive war…you are really saying this?
What is Putin defending against, that justifies the invasion of another country?”
You’ve had the situation explained to you more than enough times here, that it’s clear you aren’t interested in facts, just in your emotive “Russian war bad” mantra.
Either stop pretending to be asking questions, or go check yourself in for an international relations course under Prof Mearsheimer and actually listen for a change.
They speak language that is, at most, a dialect of Russian with a sprinkling of different spellings introduced by 19th ‘Liberal Interectials’ trying to imply otherwise.
That’s pejorative, and a very Russian imperialistic view, held in the nineteenth century, that Ukrainian was ‘Little Russian’ as opposed to ‘Great Russian’, i.e. Russian. It makes for good propaganda, but it would be pretty offensive to a Ukrainian speaker.
But more to the point, it is simply not true. It used to be thought that Russian and Ukrainian simply diverged from a common language (Old East Slavic) around a thousand years ago, but that’s far too simplistic a view.
To say that Ukrainian is a mere dialect of Russian is as daft as saying that modern English is a dialect of German (or French). Whilst it has influences from Saxon and Norman French it is not a dialect of either of them or their modern equivalents.
Just because Russian and Ukrainian are categorized as Eastern Slavonic does not mean that Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian any more than Russian is a dialect of Ukrainian. By stretching the word ‘dialect’ to its maximum extent, you might say that Russian and Ukrainian are dialects of Eastern Slavonic (an academic category), but asserting that Ukrainian is a dialect of Russian is to drink deeply of Russian imperialistic propaganda.
Ah ken whit ye mean.
Those heroes of freedom Boris johnson, trudeau and the Dutch idiot Rutte are combining their efforts to deter the dreadful Russian dictator and fight for democracy and freedom. All they need is Macron on board. Will sleep well tonight then…
This is a 2-pronged war.
Sanctions will hurt the West more than RU and will ultimately force the West to pay for gas (survival) in either Roubles or in gold. Either way, BRICS++ CBs will drop the dollar like a stone and the whole rotten edifice will collapse under the weigh of its non-recyclable debt. All this Western bravado by Johnson et al is a paper tiger. We cannot afford to counter-prosecute a conflict with toilet roll, LBGT-enviro friendly Armed forces and Net-Zero Battle Tanks.
TPTB have solely caused our downfall (and theirs) with arrogance and un-founded righteousness and the media embargo of the other sides view has confirmed that to me.
With all respect to the prof., he doesn’t seem to have pinpointed very much of anything.
All of these wars, be they ‘old-fashioned’ armed combat, boots on the ground war, colonial wars (which still involved armed combat and boots on the ground) or metaphorical wars (which seem to be a matter of non-armed combat on a given country’s own citizens rather than anything else) are all about plain old-fashioned power and greed. Politicians and their powerful, rich buddies and corporations, banks, wage wars to make money and gain power. The war on corona and the war on climate change have made a handful of people very, very, very rich. The devastation they have caused and will cause may not be as direct and in your face as conflict like in the Ukraine, but it will exist nevertheless.
What is strange about this war is how it seems to have been a long time in the making on the part of the West, with the seamless switch of propaganda from covid to Russia being quite extraordinary. What is strange is how countries who have spent decades saying how large wars must be avoided at all cost, now seem to be bending over backwards to engage in one asap. What is strange is how people across the West who have been complaining about immigrant influxes for the better part of a decade, are now apparently desperate to receive as many refugees as possible, from the looks of it permanently, rather than until the war ends. The EU is already using this war as an excuse to continue its imperialistic, costly and utterly pointless expansion.
The war in Ukraine looks like a continuation of the desire of a few sociopaths to reshape the world, which in part involves the destruction of the West. What is strange is that so few seem to see this or wish to criticise it.
By the by, crediting the ‘Union’ for peace in Europe since 1945 is part of the great deceit – for the better part of 50 years after WWII there was no ‘Union’, for many years it was a trading block that offered great opportunity for economic growth and stability, that is what brought the peace. The so-called ‘Union’ is what has led to instability in Europe.
Yes the total and immediate switch from one crisis to the next is very telling. I still suspect that the backdrop is economic/monetary collapse in the West and from this perspective, the war achieves the same thing as covid:
In the rear-view mirror, the covid exercise is looking more and more to me like a war measure, intended to introduce at least the idea of strict control to a population about to experience a profound shock. Not to mention an infrastructure for the digital solution and an experiment to see how much of the population can be controlled without questioning. Eek.
I have to say, I have been getting that same feeling myself. It’s clear the government can get away with a lot. Even now the damage of the vaxxes is coming out, other than those actually suffering, everyone else seems to be letting it go, happy that life is back to normal (at least, it is here in NL). The fact that the vaxx was a clear waste of time, harmed people and led to a gross violation of civil rights simply doesn’t register for most people.
Now lots of people saying we should send war planes and weapons, maybe even soldiers. We should welcome refugees – something people here have not stopped complaining about since 2015 and Merkel’s open invitation to the world. Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova to join the EU asap, even though certainly in NL there is no desire for even more EU members. The power of a full-on propaganda onslaught, grossly fascinating and frightening in equal measures.
I’ve noticed how expressions used by a particular group (e.g., us sceptics) get quickly co-opted and given the opposite meaning. A ‘Karen’ used to mean the type of nosy parker who had to run at the speed of light from 200 metres away to tell someone to put their mask on or they would infect her, it morphed into people who wished to retain their individual right not to wear a mask being the Karen. Now the ‘never forgive, never forget’ directed at the covid crime perpetrators has already been co-opted and is being used againt the Russians, the Ukranians will ‘never forgive, never forget’.
Just want to say that VAT is a 20% tariff on internal trade within the EUSSR area.
So these claims of “free trade” are nonsense..
We are being herded, westerners must have the ‘collective’ view, if not, cancelled. All beliefs must be Mainstream to continue with their plans.
I agree.
This conflict appears to be about normalising cancel culture and economic sanctioning powers, feeding the MSM with ‘non-covid’ 24/7 material, strengthening the EU’s defence force aims, and further costly disruption to global energy prices.
It also advances the divisive pluristic narrative.
There is a great deal more to this, lurking in the background and ignored by the MSM, than ‘Russia bad, Ukraine good.’
Its all part of the Mass Formation Psychosis – if you are not part of it then you will be ostracised and cancelled.
“Events in 2020 disabused us of any fond views we had of the Chinese state, and now events in 2022 are disabusing us of any fond views we had of the Russian state“
Nope. On the contrary, both should have disabused us of any fond views we had of our own regimes, our elites and their abuse of our own culture and history, and their dishonest manipulation of us.
If we are determined to fetishise war as an ultimate evil that taints the cause that uses it irretrievably, then we should recognise the terminal harm that our own leaders did by removing any possibility of the “rules based global order” epitomised by the UN Treaty finally coming into its own after the fall of the Soviet Union. The decision to retain NATO after the disappearance of its supposed raison d’etre was the first warning that this was not to be allowed, but the crimes that did the dirty work were the illegal wars in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria. The criminals were Blair, Clinton, Bush, Cameron, Obama.
By 2022 any fantasy of a “rules based global order” in which unilateral war was forbidden was long gone.
I’d recommend a stiff course under Prof Mearsheimer for Dr. Alexander, who is simply ignorant, it appears, of the actual history behind and context of the latest flair up n the Ukraine.
In the meantime, some lighter reading that I’ve posted here recently would be helpful, regarding the “end of history” nonsense generally:
The Ukraine invasion is nothing compared to Iraq
Exactly – I was disabused of fondness for western imperialism 20 years ago and arrived in the current Era of Crises with this as a foundational principle.
This 100% ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Morning everyone!
I posted this yesterday but am putting it up again today.
It is a Pennsylvania state enquiry taking evidence from McCullough, Steve Kirsch, Bryan Ardis and Thomas Renz.
The doctors are more outspoken than I have ever heard them.
Steve Kirsch gives a blistering denunciation of US government policy which he calls a deliberate cover up of killings. He is rather verbose, but also very brave in his denunciations
Bryan Ardis makes a very clear and uncompromising case for deaths from the redemsevir policy.
Kirsch and Dr McCullough sit together and support each other, but Dr McCullough looks rather tired, I am sure the stress of fighting the legal charges against him and opposing the vax malfeasance is getting to him https://s.w.org/images/core/emoji/13.1.0/svg/1f612.svg .
Thomas Renz is not very impressive in his presentation, which struck me as rather weak, but – he is the only attorney brave enough to take this case on. Where are all the others?
https://senatormastriano.com/2022/03/01/expert-panel-discussion-on-covid-19-and-medical-freedom/
This is a must watch, even though the evidence is not really new. What is new is the uncompromising nature of the arguments against government policy.
This is as dramatic as a film. Heroes.
I suppose what is revealed is the massive and unprecedented and criminal corruption at all levels of the US government.
This is what the doctors/Kirsch are challenging, and they are not afraid to say so.
(This also puts the Ukraine psyop into perspective, as another criminal operation and a sickening lie. The US led western bloc has reached new levels of criminality.)
Hmm. From the point of view of the USA it is still is a COLONIAL WAR (I thought I’d join in with the shouting) — Ukraine is just some place far away; I’d bet that before 2022 only a fraction of Americans could have placed it on a map (not too many Brits, ether).
Reminds me of Reagan’s “limited nuclear war in Europe”.
Having said that, I think people on the Western edge of Europe think it’s far away. The Yugoslav conflict didn’t spill over this way; I don’t think enough people see the potential of where this could go. Countries like NL and Germany are so used to US/UK troops doing the heavy lifting, if conscription were re-introduced and troops actually sent eastwards I think there would be an incredibly swift and sharp change in sentiment towards Ukraine.
There’s an old adage that wars return once everyone that remembers the horrors of war have died…
I’m wondering how that applies to METAPHORICAL WARS? As far as I can tell, it is the opposite — once you start having METAPHORICAL WARS you need to keep having them lest people start getting too happy (or something). It appears to be the job of government to keep on inventing new METAPHORICAL WARS to keep the pressure up, or, even better, keep two or three on the go at the same time, just to make absolutely sure that there’s never a period without a METAPHORICAL WAR.
Hmm. I blame government up there — perhaps it is all of our faults? Is it part of human nature to always have a nebulous baddie just to keep us on our toes — this year it is the shadow of Covid, Russia and climate change; 1000 years ago it was Satan.
or an external baddies to distract you from the internal bad guy robbing you…
Agreed.
Similarly for recessions (real ones not the marker and govt labelled ones). The time frame for loss of memory is about 18 years. Long enough for us to forget that if you make loans to millions of householders, which depreciate at the rate of inflation, eventually the system will collapse, inevitably, its laws of physics stuff. And the next recession doesn’t hit us when these laws exceed a threshold of sustainability per se. But when the collective finally accepts that “yes, it’s a bubble”.
Watch for sometime in 2026 for the next business cycle to commence.
The real ‘baddies’ in this are the West! That is where the blame lies and until the West stops interfering in foreign countries without understanding their history are current affairs we will continue to be dragged into every miserable war the US can dream up!
Once again, any claimed analysis of the current conflict that does not include discussion of the Euromaiden protests and massacre, AT ALL, is pointless at best and propaganda at worst.
The West made today’s Ukraine: Obama’s CIA, Soros money, EU wishful thinking. It’s not hard to find mainstream media acknowledgement of such a few years ago – Seamus Milne in the Guardian for example. But today…. they have all forgotten. All the media know why we are here. None will say.
Much meddling and influence going on behind the scenes…
https://www.ukcolumn.org/article/bbc-media-action-subversion-broadcasting-house-kazakhstan
Dr. Alexander:
It’s easy to understand imperial war and colonial war. No matter where you are on the spectrum from king down to peasant, both offer the reward of territory and treasure. And an added bonus for the king is that the peasant’s focus outwardly at the foreign enemy, rather than inwardly at his domestic antics.
But metaphorical war? This is the king actually asking and coercing his peasants to wage war on themselves. There’s no treasure in it for the peasants and only temporary gain for the king, if he wants to pass his crown on to a son there will be no realm for the son to rule.
The hardest of all to understand battles that are being fought in this metaphorical war are the ones of cancel culture. But yet the peasants are waging these battles upon each other with gusto.
The peasants are now so confused that they believe they can use cancel culture strategies in the imperial war in Ukraine to defeat the aggressor. Supermarkets in the UK removing Russian made goods being the latest example in a series of events to cancel anything that might be construed as having microscopic linkage to Russia.
A meme showing Apple maps with a cancelled Russia speaks to the reality that has come to occupy so many people’s minds. It’s as if they believe reality itself is a social construct, and they can at a whim cancel any part of it that doesn’t suit them.
2019: President Trump futilely howling into the mainstream media gale about the shamelessly open and truly colossal corruption of the US Democrats and their direct corrupt connection to the Ukraine (and to China).
That was when the Us regime was still pretending that Zelensky – a tool of a Ukrainian oligarch who posed as a compromise anti-corruption figure aiming for compromise with Russia to win election, might do some good there. In the end he instead showed his true colours, kowtowing to the nationalist ultras and to his oligarch boss.
Looking here more like the weasel he is, rather than the comedy heroic figure now painted by the US sphere media.
Trump Tells Whole World The Truth About Ukraine In Front Of President Zelensky!!!
https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/03/04/rise-of-zelensky-from-comedian-to-president/
Pandora PapersUkrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rode to power on pledges to clean up the Eastern European country, but the Pandora Papers reveal he and his close circle were the beneficiaries of a network of offshore companies, including some that owned expensive London property, The Pandora Papers website states.
“In the heat of the campaign, a political ally of President Poroshenko published a chart purporting that Zelensky and his television production partners were beneficiaries of a web of offshore firms that allegedly received $41 million in funds from Kolomoisky’s Privatbank.”
“Zelensky has repeatedly pledged to rein in oligarchs. The day after the attack on Shefir, the country’s parliament passed a bill that would create a register of oligarchs and bar them from financing political parties or taking part in privatisations.”
Why would they set up offshore bank accounts at the same time that Kolomoisky was simply setting up an allegedly benign TV production deal with Kvartal? Unless the entire point of the show was to astroturf Zelensky into the *real* presidency all along…?
Pandora Papers Reveal Offshore Holdings of Ukrainian President and his Inner Circle
It’s pretty obvious that Zelensky is his puppet, and more disturbingly, his “role” in Servant of The People was intended from the very start, to be “life imitating art” in a wag the dog fashion.
And the expensive properties owned by Zelensky and his associates are not limited to London. George Webb, investigative journalist, tweeted a video report with the description: “Breaking down Ukraine – let’s start with Zelensky’s $35M mansion in Sunny Isles, FL built by Kolomoisky and Pinchuk. $1.3B in the bank!!”
The problem that we have is that for more than two decades every major authority on geopolitics, including George Kennan and Henry Kissinger, warned that the “West” should not meddle in Ukraine so what did the “West” (in the shape of NATO, the CIA etc) do, it meddled in Ukraine – and one thing is clear if we now have a problem it was created by malice and an attempt destabilise the peace by people of extreme wickedness who had other motives than liberating the Ukrainian people. Our governments been fishing in troubled waters, and now the same racketeering clowns who brought you the Covid fiasco are busy tying to maximise the damage created so that it impinges disastrously on ordinary people’s lives economically even if it does not explode into a wider conflagration. If it does one of the minor clowns, Sadiq Khan, has assured us that London is well prepared for a nuclear attack. This is the sick nature of modern politics.
This a useful compilation of sources on Twitter by Arnaud Bertrand – you may have to scroll up.
https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1498491238416207874
There are men who think they are ‘god like’ and can amuse themselves with the planet
I don’t know what they think they are – it doesn’t seem to possess much dignity.You’d shudder at moving around in their world.
George even laughs about it.
Like any city can be ‘prepared’ for a nuclear bomb which wil flatten everything for a radius of miles!
If anyone on the side of rationality and reason needs further circumstantial evidence as to which is the side of the modern anti-truth cultural revolutionary globalist elites on the Ukraine:
U Chicago students demand political science professor Mearsheimer change his views on Russia v. Ukraine
There are still a few academics in the US sphere who hold to the idea that their opinions should follow from facts and analysis rather than being determined by political correctness and mob acceptability, but they are an ever more beleaguered minority it appears.
“The letter’s signatories include students Dayna Safarian, Edita Kuberka, Iryna Irkliyenko, Darya Kolesnichenko and Sergiy Kuchko.
Kuberka is a Ukraine native and longtime Amazon executive pursuing her MBA at University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.”
Surprise, surprise.
The new Age of Unreason: if we can just force enough people to say that the world is as we believe it should be, it will be so!
Yet another ‘academic’ talking out of his arse and taking his cue from establishment history.. the tripe we’ve all been spoon fed for aeons. History is indeed written by the winners, but that doesn’t make it the truth.. far from it..
It’s doesn’t rhyme but Might makes Real (not right).
I’m sure The Times understands Hitler opposed communism. The mind games never end with the UK Ministry of Truth.
A very good point indeed..
The picture is of Time magazine, not The Times newspaper (if i understand you correctly)
“Let us call the three types of war I have described, first, IMPERIAL WAR, second, COLONIAL WAR, and third, METAPHORICAL WAR. Imperial war is direct, an extension of power across land. Colonial war is indirect and distant. It need never involve civilians. It is bracketed: it is war by report. Metaphorical war brings war back home again, since the war is now fought on our behalf by states and sometimes involves those sacrificing its own citizens as a form of collateral damage, for the greater good.”
I’ve sent that to Private Eye for inclusion in their “Pseuds’ Corner” section.
Someone should take your pen or keyboard away from you, James. Then you could “reflect” on why.
What a load of wiffle. If you’re reading this, why don’t you try to find something out about the Ukraine before you start trying to sell your off-the-top-of-your-head optic for understanding the history of warfare and colonialism? You’re a f***ing disgrace to the world of intellectual discourse.
Start with developments in Christian churches in the Ukraine since 1990, if you’re really interested in that country and in the nature of the current conflict. Have you even heard of the 2018 Moscow-Constantinople schism? That’s not the only way into an understanding, but it’s one possible route.
https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/ukraine-new-al-qaeda/
Ryan Cristián and James Corbett are two of the most objective commentators.
Question everything, draw you’re own conclusions, and stay vigilant.
“What is war? War is a consequence of the desire to solve a problem by dissolving it: that is, specifically, by destroying the people who appear to be responsible for the problem.”
Haven’t you ever thought about this properly?
First, X cannot be defined as what it is a consequence of, unless you are talking about what it is a necessary consequence of and you’re sure that no other state of affairs can have the same consequence – and perhaps not even then, but those are two prerequisites. That is just basic logic.
Second, the aim of war is not to destroy people. That is such an ignorant assertion. The aim of war is to break the enemy’s resistance, either without even fighting battles (see Sun Tzu) or by making the enemy stop fighting (see Clausewitz).
Don’t you get out much, James?
That Time cover is disgraceful. To compare Putin to Hitler, whatever one thinks of the former, is not only an inversion of reality but the gravest insult to Russian people. We are being represented in the West by complete idiots. If anyone wants a dose of reality and an objective and detailed history lesson, this is a good place to start. Richard Sakwa on Jerm Warfare.
I think they know what they are doing.
They are not idiots, but evil.
The continual US led proxy wars have unleashed untold suffering and destruction upon innocent peoples and cultures.
It is a horror worse than the horrors of Stalinism, and it is purportedly done on our behalf.
God help us all.
Are all wars not in the end, about POWER?
Is the author here embellishing this for the purposes of his ego. To be seen to be intellectually superior in the quest for an answer that has no question?
Power is what we all want, in the end. The extreme extent of this want is war in whatever form it is necessary.
Look at the culture war. Nothing more than an unjust transfer of power (aren’t they all unjust?).
Why are we playing around with intellectual clap trap. And not just looking at the thing, for what it actually is, in and of itself?
“Are all wars not in the end, about POWER?“
Not really. Power and/or security would be a more honest summary. Claiming war is necessarily always and only about power alone carries the implication of an aggressive pursuit of power and has pacifist connotations. And George Orwell was correct about pacifists:
“Those who ‘abjure’ violence can only do so because others are committing violence on their behalf.”
It’s only “always about power” if you mean by that to include power to defend oneself.
Thumbs up. Then we’re in agreement?
If that’s the correct interpretation of what you wrote…
I think it is, though I beg your confirmation: is “power to defend oneself” any different than paying for a proxy to do it for you. That is, the State, gang leader, or master?
By ‘paying’ I mean whatever it takes to comply with the latent contract everyone agrees to by virtue of selecting and allowing to rule, that leader class’ in that time and place.
Could be taxation, economic rent(as it always used to be prior to the welfare state), or the most primitive form: to work for a master, in exchange for protection, food, clothing, shelter and medical care etc and whatever remains of the result of ones work is the property of the master.(after all, that is the latent contract)
Some wars are defensive and are about national survival – why did we fight WW2 where we lost much and gained nothing.
For Power?
I think WWII was fought by the UK because “aristocrats” in London (and Manhattan) that are higher up the hierarchy in the UK than the reigning monarch would not tolerate an Empire that they had no control over that stretched from Aachen to the Bering Straits.
An Empire like this would have greatly reduced the power of these aristocrat’s two foremost puppet countries, the UK and US. And then there was the danger that Hitler would support revolutionaries in the UK and US to overthrow the aristocrats (read Cabal).
It’s to be wondered if the UK stayed out of it and let Hitler conquer Bolshevik Russia if he’d ever bother any country in Western or Southern Europe?
Anyway, just theories.
To maintain power?
I thought you accuse the Ukrainians of Nazi tendencies. Now it turns out you are a retrospective WW2 Nazi enthusiast.
It’s not a bad thing to think about war, especially the different reasons for war.
For instance, if people in 1914 had known the true reasons why WWI was about to take place, 800,000 British men in the prime of their lives might not have been so quick and eager to go and fight it. Likewise, for the hundreds of thousands of White German soldiers that lost their lives in it.
WWI led directly to WWII. American General George Patton actually said when he heard of the terms in the Versailles’s Treaty, “This means another war”.
(WWI was essentially fought so the Cabal that’s actually higher up the hierarchy in the UK than the reigning monarch could have control over the oil in the Middle East, and their jealousy that German industrial exports had outpaced the British Empire’s on the world’s markets.)
Think of that, 800,000+ young White British men lost their lives to placate the greed and jealousy of a few “aristocrats” in London and Manhattan. And then in the 1950s when the UK was short of manhood to fill essential jobs, these same “aristocrats” sourced replacements from the developing world.
It would also be good also to know exactly what type of tyrant Putin is. Is he the type of tyrant that wants to put an ear tag on every subject and track their every move (the tyrants that rule the West are of this ilk)? Or is he the type that simply wants obedience from his subjects along the lines of medieval kings, and is willing to give them acceptable amounts of freedom in return for compliance?
Studying his method of war might give some clue as to which type he is. Which would in turn let people know whether he might move on to other Eastern European countries if his escapade in Ukraine is successful. It also might tell us if he would launch nukes if his back was against the wall.
If Hitler had got his hands on nukes in 1945, he’d have probably destroyed 80% of the planet. So, talking about and studying war when there is so much of it about is not a bad thing.
Agreed. One could also look at it in terms of slavery. That is, show me a class of slaves, in all of history, who could have run away from their masters, but for some reason did not. I don’t mean to ask you to cherry pick a non representative group of slaves who were permanently chained up so could not escape. I mean the vast majority of slaves, who were fed, clothed, housed and got medical attention, just enough, that they remained with their master.
If you look into this with care, you find there was never such a class. Each time the so called slaves assessed their position and made a decision of free will to remain ‘enslaved’, under the control of Power and strangely aspiring one day to rise into positions of power. Because the alternative – to run off to the free land and fend for themselves – was a worse alternative – power is non sequitur on the free land.
Are wars for controlling power the foundation of this observation? That is, leaders who fight these wars, do it, for the slaves who freely choose to be led by them?
No thumbs down I beg you, unless you can answer the first para above please.
That is, show me a class of slaves, in all of history, who could have run away from their masters, but for some reason did not.
The rest of your post suggests that this ought to be a challenge to the reader to find a class of slaves who did run away from their masters. From what you are saying, whenever slaves had opportunity to rebel they decided not to take it.
If you mean a class of slaves who could have run away and actually did then I would start with the helots, ‘a class of slaves’ in ancient Sparta.
Then there is the Haitian Rebellion.
I see your point. But I’m trying to show that there has *never* been a general case were slaves did run away when not chained down – because, my claim is trying to prove – that would have been the worse alternative for them(they are not daft in other words)(and I am biased on this one for full disclosure)
I did humbly ask not to cite corner cases please? No cherry picking. I’m looking for the general and extant form of slavery (which may well persist today if we look at it sceptically enough)
I’m not looking for a moral judgement to be made about slavery. I am trying to look at it for what it is, free from judgement, judgement suspended as it were. If we can reach that hard to get to place, we can proceed as to questions about why it happens, if it is normal if theres something that can be done about it and of course it’s relation to Power.
For a long time there was a belief that the Ancient Egyptians built their pyramids with slave labour. But then evidence was found that showed that the builders were free men and paid, and had quite nice and comfortable living arrangements. There was even graffiti left by the workers in some of the tombs that bemoaned their wages.
As for slaves in ancient Rome, I think that at least some Britons that were there as slaves in, say, 20 B.C would be reluctant to leave a city with a sewage system, running water, law and order and decent clothes and return to live in a wattle hut in the British Isles with the warring tribes of Celts, Saxons, Picts and Viking-types.
I think if Putin keeps Russia and any newly acquired territories homogeneous, the people there will be much better-off than us in the irrationally diversified West.
We’re all slaves in one way or the other, the only thing to hope for is the lesser of the evils.
Can you show me any slave labour force that was not paid?
Don’t worry too much about the form of payment. Find me slaves who were not paid please. In all of history?
Anyone who is interested in finding out about Vladimir Putin’s real take on the Ukraine – rather than getting off on the “idea” that “He’s a monster like in the James Bond films and he wants to kill everyone and eat their livers and who wants another Munich and God save Her Majesty” – might like to read this article that Putin wrote last year about the Ukraine and its relation to Russia, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians”.
Putin refers of course to the authorities’ geeing up of the Orthodox Church of the Ukraine against the Moscow Patriarchate, but then Putin actually knows what he is talking about, and so you wouldn’t expect him to miss this out of his analysis.
Incidentally all of Orthodoxy is deeply Armageddonist, or at least I haven’t come across any part of it that isn’t. It would be interesting to hear about how the Armageddon meme has been played by various actors in the Ukraine especially since the Maidan events of 2014 and coming through the 2018 Moscow-Constantinople schism.
Putin’s big mistake was that he should have acted in 2014 when Victoria Nuland (Ukrainian Jewish heritage ) launched the blatant “Maiden Coup” US ‘regime change’ against an elected Russia friendly Ukrainian Government. He waited too long and trusted the promises of Nato and the West at Minsk. He now knows they plan the same “Regime Change” coup for Russia
He will never trust Nato and the West again! Nor will those who might follow him.
( Banned from Paypal MasterCard and Visa – Russia has joined the world expanding Chinese payment card system….is this the start of the long predicted global melt down of the dollar – the West’s now self- inflicited harm to justify bringing in the Bankers’ dreamed of Digital Currency and Passports ? )
He will never trust Nato and the West again! Nor will those who might follow him.
Nor will those following the western narrative ever trust Putin again, so we have a rather dangerous situation where neither side would believe the other even if there was a peace deal.
Time and again Putin stated that he was not going to invade Ukraine, right up to the day before the invasion. OK, so that was a crafty lie to serve his military strategy. But his attempt to justify how he wasn’t lying (i.e. it is a ‘special military operation’ not an invasion, therefore he hasn’t invaded, Q.E.D.) are always going to look like duplicitous when viewed historically, and not just from a western perspective. Those kind of justifications, where one can’t take a man’s word at face value, and actions appear to be the exact opposite from what the words mean, do not bode well for a lasting peace out of all this.
You’re giving those statements far too much significance. As it’s getting its forces into position, either by land or sea, no regime says “We’re going to invade you”.
So many people seem to have forgotten the big Russian troop movements in 2017, which some at the time said might indicate an imminent invasion of the Ukraine.
A deal was probably done then – not one that got talked about in the newspapers or yielded a document that was made public, as at Minsk in 2014 and 2015.
As it’s getting its forces into position, either by land or sea, no regime says “We’re going to invade you”.
I know that, of course. I’m not daft.
And I’m not giving it too much significance. Russians are facing up to 15 years in jail for calling it an invasion, implying that Putin was lying.
Doesn’t imply anything of the sort. It’s just censorship of the kind all governments engage in when they are in a serious war (not necessarily a colonial war of choice).
Not that we in this county have any room to criticise other counties for censorship given our “hate speech” speechcrime laws.
I wonder whether the Russians had the military capability to take on the challenge of a war in Ukraine then, in 2014.
They have had to rebuild much of their infrastructure and military since 2000.
The Ukraine operation has been carefully planned from a military and intelligence perspective.
I think the Russians want to ensure they can cover all the risks, especially as they know they will be facing united opposition from the West.
What a farce! The US – who came late to a war and never experience the
12,000,000 dead ( some say 20,000,000) inflicted on the Russian people by Adolf Hitler and walked their way through the few broken German divisions still operative in the West, when hundreds had been decimated by the Russians fighting Nazism and Fascism on the Eastern Front have the nerve to put a Hitler moustache on Putin, who is attempting to defend Russians in Eastern Ukraine from “Ukrainian Nationalists’ ” Azov battalion, those who wear and carry flags of the ‘Wolfsangel’ insignia of “Das Reich” 2nd SS Panzer division and have shelled schools killing teachers, children and civilins in their homes for 8 years.
The propaganda lockdown censorship is a reworking of the Covid Psyop only now it is the foaming mouthed “Russia Hate” – pure Orwell .
(Meanwhile, kept out of UK Media , the Russians have now discovered dangerous biological warfare pathogens being developed i US Labs in Ukraine near the Russian borders).
The sheep dutifully baa their support and put on yellow and blue T shirts ( with maks ?). Those who have never even head of Ukraine parrot the headlines of the Mail ( now in full hysteria mode).
The gaga US fake “President” says on video that Putin has “invaded Russia” having said last week that he had invaded “Iran” and no-one in the US bats an eyelid. The UK ‘Foreign Secretary’ implies that Rostov is in Russia and tells people to go and fight for Ukraine ( the third most corrupt country in the world!) while Diane Abbott tells us Putin has invaded “Croatia”!.
Our country is transformed by Media into a new hysteria – do the new ‘Ukrainidiots’ ( AKSA Covidiots”) know that the original Bandera supporters and Azov Nazis from Ukraine WW2 they support helped the Germans is the systematic genocide of the Russian people during WW2 ? Of course not.
Ignorance is bliss for the West’s ‘Deep State’ propagandists
Meanwhile, Johnson plans to steal our freedoms in a series of very nasty legislation pieces damaging to our most basic Human Rights – Bills these same sheep have never even heard of!
After the success of their Covid Operation, this along with their “Carbon Zero” nightmare is “Phase Two” of the Great Reset – ironically, the real ‘target’ is the British people …not the “wicked Russians” currently ‘the new Monsters’ for our universal gutter media propaganda- make no mistake.
The UK ‘Foreign Secretary’ implies that Rostov is in Russia
Well, Rostov is in Russia.
2008 WIKILEAKS CABLE – INCONTROVERTIBLE PROOF THAT UKRAINE-NATO ALIGNMENT WAS A LONG PLANNED NATO PROVOCATION AGAINST RUSSIA
“NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA’S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES”
“5. (C) Ukraine and Georgia’s NATO aspirations not only touch
a raw nerve in Russia, they engender serious concerns about
the consequences for stability in the region. Not only does
Russia perceive encirclement, and efforts to undermine
Russia’s influence in the region, but it also fears
unpredictable and uncontrolled consequences which would
seriously affect Russian security interests. Experts tell us
that Russia is particularly worried that the strong divisions
in Ukraine over NATO membership, with much of the
ethnic-Russian community against membership, could lead to a major split, involving violence or at worst, civil war. In
that eventuality, Russia would have to decide whether to
intervene; a decision Russia does not want to have to face. “
1st February 2008
From US Ambassador William J. Burns to:
US Joint Chiefs of Staff
NATO
Secretary of Defense
Secretary of State
etc..
https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
The current Director of the CIA setting out in 2008 the consequences of the policy of pushing US influence into the Ukraine and Georgia, which ended in war in the Ukraine.
And let’s remember alongside that, the actual policy actions on the ground that triggered the crisis which immediately preceded this war:
“In the fall of last year, 2021, it began to ramp up, and of course early this year…it became a full blown crisis. And the question that we want to ask ourselves is: what happened here? Why all of a sudden did this crisis go from the back burner to the front burner? And the answer is that the US and its allies were effectively turning Ukraine into a de facto member of NATO”
Prof John Mearsheimer
https://youtu.be/Nbj1AR_aAcE?t=785
The cable doesn’t say anything about NATO plans. All it mentions is Ukraine/Georgia aspirations. How can it be proof that it was a long-planned provocation?
Characteristic from you – you used to make similarly disingenuous criticisms of arguments that questioned the “vaccine” Official Truth, and other aspects of the covid hysteria.
Your query looks on the surface, to the naive reader, to be reasonable. “Why yes, that’s right, the quote only mentions aspirations”. Gosh!
But in reality of course the entire thrust of the memo is about the likely actual consequences of the policy of pushing NATO eastwards. And indeed those consequences came to pass.
As usual, it’s a deniable position on your part. Did you know that full well and make an intentionally deceptive comment? Or were you just harmlessly naive?
One of many significant differences between us is that you tend to make more assumptions than I do. All I see is an e-mail about Russia’s problems with NATO including Ukraine and Georgia. You assume that therefore there was a plan to push ahead with including these two countries in order to provoke Russia (In fact neither country has become a member).
No, the difference is that you take manipulative elite propaganda assumptions and treat them as facts, while holding dissenting arguments to a far higher, positively argumentative, standard.
“All I see is an e-mail about Russia’s problems with NATO including Ukraine and Georgia. You assume that therefore there was a plan to push ahead with including these two countries in order to provoke Russia (In fact neither country has become a member).“
In this case it’s because I’ve been following these matters for decades now quite closely and I’m well aware of how e policy has been pushed. You might honestly be ignorant of that as you claim, I don’t know. Claiming there was no policy of pushing NATO membership for the Ukraine is rather spectacularly ignorant though!
But in this case merely reading the memo honestly would have made it clear that it’s the issue of NATO membership that was going to cause problems as long as it was promoted as a possibility, as indeed it did. The “aspiration” you latched onto is merely part of the problems described.
Its not clever at all – in fact its very immature – this is the kind of child-like reaction that makes people look completely ignorant.
Look – I oppose the invasion of Ukraine and I deplore the deaths of innocent people in that country as much as the next person … but to compare Putin to Hitler is quite simply a joke and a poor one at that – he may be many things but Hitler he ain’t – and until people put their grown-up trousers on and start to realise that Putin didn’t just wake one morning and decided he wanted to invade a country for no other reason than he fancied being Hitler for a day then the quicker we can find a solution to this mess that has been bubbling away for many years now.
If this is the best the western msm can do then it needs to do some very serious growing up and fast.
You are quite rare in opposing the invasion. Most here excuse it and some support it.
Why can’t we talk about the causes of the conflict which yes, I’m afraid, are complex and involve many parties. Do you want it to be like a cartoon, we just say ‘Russia bad’; is that the discourse you’re after? If you’re so morally upset by objectivity, why on earth are you wasting your (and our) time?
You could make a statement that you condemn the war. But people don’t seem willing to do that. Why is that their stance?
The West has become infantilized and it has been deliberately done by our own governments. Its all about ‘feelings’.
I have been going on the London marches for a year and lots of the Parliament Sq./Downing st.demos realizing that I would only agree with lots there on opposition to covid vaccines etc, climate change/net zero etc.; writing to MPs etc contributing cash eg. to DS . I think that most opposing are small c conservative and patriotic, otherwise going by the contributors here I have been on the wrong side. yes there is a lot wrong with the Ukrainian Govt.US NatO etc. but the fundamental fact is that Russia has launched an enormous unprovoked ( yes unprovoked I take these stories of shelling in the Donbas with a pinch of salt they would never have been just one way) invasion, and the letter writers here are really appeasers. everything else now pales into insignificance and whatever the future resolution Russia must now be stopped and not rewarded for its aggression.
I respect everyone’s point of view and their right to voice it but I must admit I am surprised at all those who are, by virtue of their presence here, aware of how much we have been lied to constantly by the mainstream media about COVID over the last two years but who at the same time are willing to accept that that same media’s reporting of the war and the reasons for it are 100% truthful and not influenced by any agenda.
If the mainstream media can lie to you about:
If they can lie to you about all of these things, and they have, they can lie to you about anything.
It’s not just the actual lies, but the ommissions which are important. If you believe much of the media the Ukraine situation has come out of virtually nothing due to Russian imperialism, whereas in reality it’s been brewing since at least 2014 and NATO, as puppets of the US, have stirred things up to the point where a confrontation was virtually inevitable. The media is largely silent about this.
Yes, the lies of omission are in some ways worse than the lies of commission.
As with COVID.
yes but even if so I do not accept that the only alternative for Russia was to launch a full scale invasion of the whole of Ukraine. there has been shooting going both ways probably for years in the Donbas.Sevatopol is a strategic interest of Russia but by going for a full scale invasion has probably resulted in its effective loss with Turkey blocking any access out of the Black Sea. (without wanting to go into a whole lot of history, but which I think is interesting though it does not change anything now, 330 years ago the whole of the north shore of the Baltic was Ottoman Turk. Crimea is now mostly Russian but only because Stalin cleared out the Crimea Tartars)
sorry meant to type Black Sea not Baltic. maybe a resolution to consider for a futire Congress of Belin is for Ukraine to de jure as well give up Crimea in exchange for Russia giving up Kaliningrad/Koenigsberg to Poland/Lithuania with Ukraine compensated with some border adjustments.
“ by going for a full scale invasion”
We have no idea what Putin’s objectives are, or indeed what the situation on the ground is at present. Everything in our media is either guesswork or propaganda. As even the Guardian admitted in a column low down its home page at the weekend.
If Russia were to launch a ‘full scale invasion’ they’d be a lot more damage.
we do not have a TV so I have had to get news for years from other sources. I agree that the MSM has lied to us completely over Covid etc.and maybe RT (as mentioned I do not watch it either) has been better at covering the marches etc. that does not mean that RT is any more trusty now on Ukraine.
RT is also partisan, I have no doubt and I wouldn’t trust it even if I was allowed to watch it.
I basically don’t trust any mainstream media and try to find “independent” sources elsewhere on the internet. These could be subject to their own bias of course. So in the end I am suspending judgement until the dust settles a bit.
And from Putin’s point of view, “NATO must now be stopped and not rewarded for its aggression” is equally valid.
If you can’t acknowledge any merits in the opposition’s position, then a war of complete conquest is the only option on the table.
Try your second sentence on yourself.
there may well be a lot of faults with NATO but it has not actually invaded Russia. the actual invasion of Ukraine is a complete game changer and may result (though I hope not) in my having to revaluate where I really stand on something more important than vaccines
“the actual invasion of Ukraine is a complete game changer”
So illegal wars of choice in Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya and Syria didn’t change the game for you, presumably because you liked the rationalisations given for breaking the laws in those cases, but this time you don’t like the rationalisation for breaking the laws (even after the aforementioned unpunished breaches created a clear precedent situation), so it’s a “game changer”?
OK.
I have never said I was in favour of these, and do not think it helpful to go into all the pros and cons; save to say I believe still probably that the original reason to go into Yugoslavia was to protect the Bosnian moslems from being killed by both the Serbs and Croats.
All these were limited in the sense that the great powers wanted to keep them local.I will accept any criticism here that now I am being selfish and self centred in being concerned at what I consider an unnecessary escalation but which might lead to a nuclear war
“I have never said I was in favour of these, and do not think it helpful to go into all the pros and cons;”
I didn’t suggest you had been in favour of them, I merely pointed out what was self-evident from your comment, that you didn’t see them as “game changing” even though they were very bit as illegal, and in some cases much bloodier (so far at any rate) than the attack on the Ukraine.
“All these were limited in the sense that the great powers wanted to keep them local.“
What makes you think the Russians don’t want to keep this one local? Russians nuclear weapons are a deterrent to stop NATO interference enlarging the war, obviously. This is geopolitics 101. Were it not for the Russian nuclear deterrent, NATO bombs and missiles would be falling on Russia already and we would be at war. We have been deterred.
Apparently 2 people think NATO has invaded Russia. Their thumbs say so.
My wife visited our younger daughter at the weekend and she was talking about the time she stayed with a Russian family in Volgograd. She was amazed at the Eternal Flame memorial and the ‘Motherland Calls’ statue in that city. The memory of that time burns deep in the Russian psyche in a way that it is hard for us to understand. At the same time in Ukraine the memory of the Holodomor starvation/famine deaths also burns deep. The west does not seem to understand these enormous and shocking histories and the way they are pertinent to what is happening in the present time. The West has blundered around in this area with complete insensitivity and lack of understanding, whether you would call that provocation? I will reserve judgement but it has not helped. In my view the West has displayed ignorance, arrogance and a dismal failure of statesmanship and diplomacy in this matter
You are either a shill or you know absolutely sod all about geopolitics to come out with garbage like that. There’s more than enough information out there to obtain informed opinion.. use it..
Take your ‘pinch of salt’ and ‘appeasers’ jibes elsewhere..
Yes the sceptics are a shameful bunch, as the learn from each other and the collective morals collapse further. east to do under the cover of social media disguise.
I think they should stand by their views proudly. Perhaps have a pro-war march through a major city and let people see who they are. That should test their resolve.
it would not be a pro war march but anti the Russian aggression, which have taken place already. maybe the decline in numbers at the 26 February march (I was still there) was because of people going instead to support Ukraine in Trafalgar Sq. and Downing St.
I don’t see many on this site that are anti-Russian-aggression, or supportive of Ukraine.
They are proud Putin excusers.
sorry I misread your comment and thought that you were thinking I should go on a pro war march. I realise now that you agree with me on the blinkered approach of those because they are sceptic (as I am) on covid, climate change etc. are unable to differentiate and realise that the Western intelligence warnings were in fact correct
Looks like 70% of sceptics want to reward Russia’s actions, judging by their thumbs.
hopefully it is only those writing here. as I said at the start those I have met on the marches are very down to earth, small c conservative etc. and like they appreciated the covid vaccine propaganda for what it was, equally will realise pro Russian propaganda for what it is.
Outrage as Russian gymnast brings the wrong kind of virtue signalling political gesturing into sport!
Russian gymnast displays pro-war ‘Z’ symbol while standing next to Ukrainian rival on podium
Ivan Kuliak faces disciplinary action after displaying letter which Russian forces in Ukraine have used on military vehicles
“The International Gymnastics Federation said it will open disciplinary proceedings against Russian artistic gymnast Ivan Kuliak for his “shocking behaviour” in displaying a symbol of support for Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during an event.
The 20-year-old finished third in the parallel bars final at the Apparatus World Cup in Doha over the weekend and displayed the letter “Z” on the front of his outfit as he stood on the podium next to Ukrainian rival Illia Kovtun, who won the gold.
Russian forces have used the letter Z as an identifying symbol on their vehicles in Ukraine following Moscow’s invasion of its neighbour. Some supporters of the invasion have also been displaying the symbol.”
[Paywall]
If he identifies as a woman they’ll immediately drop all disciplinary proceedings. Surely Z is somewhere on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum? Doesn’t the + sign stand for the rest of the alphabet? Gender Z.
And he finished third, I think. If he competes as a woman he’ll probably finish first all the time.
That six-foot strapping male swimmer in the US that calls himself a woman always wins his races. His fastest female competitors always comes in about 15 minutes after him.
I believe he does a great rendition of ‘Tomorrow Belongs to Me’, translated into Russian.
You can’t bring politics into sport, now kneel for BLM!
Is DS seeking to fool people that this article appeared in Time magazine?
No.
Will they use the new briefing room now for nightly bulletins by 2 generals and a PM?
The Biden Administration’s vendetta against Russia for Climate Change and to accomplish the Great Reset, will fail. They have bitten off more than they can chew.
latest from Armstrong economics
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/russia/russia-disconnecting-the-internet-to-prevent-us-cyber-attacks/
Putin chaperoned legislation, known as the “sovereign internet” law, back in late 2019 with the intent to disconnect the internet to protect the country because of what they saw as the “aggressive nature” of the United States’ national cyber security strategy.
Putin took steps in 2019 to protect Russia from American cyberattacks. He conducted tests in June and July to disconnect Russia from the global internet.
If it does come to a direct confrontation between Russia and the west, it’s good to know that out troops will have been properly trained and skilled in diversity and equality. Knowing that if things get too emotional they will know how to seek out a safe space and get full emotional counselling.
Some observations about Ukraine:
Russia was entirely provoked into invading Ukraine and threatening anyone in Russia who refers to the war with up to 15 years imprisonment. Also, Putin’s critics and opponents assassinated themselves to make him look bad.
Furthermore, Peter Hitchens has never been a Trotskyist and still isn’t one now, his visceral hatred of America, regardless of who is President is ample proof of this.. Hitchens’ denial of the Holodomor is simultaneously imaginary and verified fact because the Holodomor never took place.
Also, Peter Hitchens has also actually read Ayn Rand, his ‘critique’ of Atlas Shrugged in no way indicates he’s never read a book he couldn’t colour in and his summation of the story in no way indicates a Marxist hatchet job or that he’s a poor man’s Whittaker Chambers.
His condemnation of the free market for the collapse of the British Steel industry in no way ignored the government’s driving energy prices up.
Finally, his comments on the political leadership of Margaret Thatcher were in no way contradictory rubbish.
Oh, forgot to mention: any criticism of Putin for any reason is unquestioning support for the Chinese Communist Party because there are only two choices: a former Communist who has repackaged himself into a supporter of German socialism or an actual Communist party.
‘Prof. John Mearsheimer and ex-C.I.A. Russia specialist Ray McGovern discuss the Ukraine conflict and U.S. policy towards Moscow, presented by the Committee for the Republic in Washington.’
https://youtu.be/OeeqooNWO48
Yes it was refreshing to hear an American viewpoint which was not only knowledgeable about the history and geography but rational too.
What has happened to this site? It’s overrun by pro-Putin, anti-Western zealots. They’re making any rational discussion impossible and something is very funny on the uptick counts.
I find their work counter-productive. It also reminds me of what life would be like if they had control. No wonder Ukrainians are fighting so hard.
“something is very funny on the uptick counts”.
I have the same problem when I post on The Guardian below the line but I came to the conclusion that this was because my opinion was a minority one amongst the Guardian audience.
No. It’s populated by people who are trying to look at this objectively and in context. If that’s ‘pro-Putin’ then you are suffering from the same cartoonish binary thinking as most journalists and most of the public. This is a sceptics website; What would you have us do? Vehemently attack and condemn Putin and Russia and everything Russian? Yes? OK, then what?
Well you can start by condemning the invasion of Ukraine. But you don’t….you excuse it.
Woke tactics. Never mind the facts, first kowtow to the emotion.
Have you condemned the aggressive and corrupt US interference in the Ukraine over the past 20 years that brought us to where we are now, yet?
Thought not.
Just deflection…
If you can’t say you disapprove, then you must approve but be too ashamed to say so.
Why should I condemn it when it was the West who instigated the war by breaking the Agreement that NATO would not move eastwards. Putin told the West several years ago it was a red line and we ignored him!
“… anti-Western zealots …”
They have so much to be genuinely anti about that they don’t have time to be anti any particular hemisphere.
I am all the above, but am also sceptical on all the pro Russian narrative here. just because our MSM cannot be believed, does not mean that everything from Russia or RT has to be believed either. once there was an actual invasion (even if UK Column for one may still try to say otherwise like it said before there was no troop build up only swapping of units) that changed my perspective a lot
What proportion (in percentage terms) of MSM content do you disbelieve?
in many ways it is not so much what I disbelieve eg articles blaming everything on the unjabbed, but the censorship and complete failure to cover all the questions and concerns on the safety and effectiveness of what they should call experimantal gene therapies, no mention of the deaths and adverse effects, or the unparallelled size of the protest marches (especially considering unlike others not advertised before by MSM
You are correct in your comments, but…
They are largely the same idiots that have always been here.
Object to absolutely everything the media says, absorb and repeat the opposite propaganda. When there is also a moral vacuum they don’t care what the cause is.
This time they are excusing the invasion of Ukraine and the associated war crimes.
I expect a host of downward facing thumbs, but not much in the way of “I condemn this war”
Any analysis of this site shows an overwhelming majority in favour of Russian aggression (invasion and murder) against Ukraine. They pretend to by analysing reasons, but refuse to condemn the war.
It really is quite disgraceful.
So tell me: are you in favour of imposing a no-fly zone over Ukraine? Are you happy to see this war escalate? Are you happy to die in a nuclear holocaust? In the end, it is not moral high mindedness that will save lives but an acceptance of realpolitik. Far better to build bridges with Russia than encourage yet more bloodshed. Yes, some causes may be worth dying for, but I don’t see this as one.
Again distraction from the main issue of people excusing/approving of the Russian invasion. Why can’t you say you condemn the invasion?
If you are not in favour of killing innocent people, then just say it.
Obviously a no-fly zone would be a dangerous development.
I can say I condemn the invasion until the cow comes home and this will have exactly as much of an effect as condemning the weather. It’s nothing but a pointless exercise in public moralizing. Further, I think moral should be taken out of this equation. Putin invaded Ukraine in order to bring all of it back under his/ Russian control. For mostly person reasons, I’d prefer if he was driven out of it again. But the whole thing is just another war, it’s neither the first nor will it be the last.
Likewise, I’m not in favour of killing innocent people is just another soundbite without meaning. Presumably, only sadists would be In favour of killing innocent people but what precisely marks someone as guilty or innocent is an entirely different question. And it’s simply not applicable: People are killed in wars because they’re combatants or because they’re simply in the wrong place at the wrong time, not because they’re morally guilty or innocent of anything. Established rules of war dictate that killing non-combatants/ civilians ought to be avoided. But in practice, this will not always be possible. That’s bad. OTOH, people kill other people all the time, be it in peace or war.
My understanding of the Ukrainian situation currently is not underwritten by two years of research but my initial interpretation is that the yanks (CIA primarily) have poked the bear once too often. A CIA backed coup in 2008 ejected the elected president and the puppet was installed. Thereafter murders of Russian speaking people in the east (Donbass) and illegal NATO expansion eastwards have prompted Mr Putin’s invasion, despite his numerous attempts at negotiating settlements.
Vladimir Putin has effectively been insulted by the USA and their current European lackeys, including Bozo, and has had enough. His overriding commitment is to his country and the Russian people. Allowing NATO (nominally a defensive organisation) to expand such that nuclear weapons could be sited on Russia’s borders would hardly mark Mr Putin as a patriotic statesman.
If my admittedly basic understanding is correct I fully understand why Mr Putin has acted as he has.
How would we react if Krankie invited Mr Putin to set up a naval base at say Faslane?
I don’t think my view is wildly out of kilter with fellow Sceptics and I hope this explanation helps.
“what sceptics should think about it”
Pathetic, Toby.
A surprisingly level-headed article in the Guardian explaining how so much is still unknown about the Russian objectives and the current situation in Ukraine. A shame the rest of the media coverage isn’t similarly circumspect:
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/06/clear-picture-russian-war-ukraine-clouded-unknowns-lack-reliable-information
For example:
Some of these legacy media basta*ds are starting to get scared. They’ve seen a lot of conspiracy theories come true. It may be getting into their thick woke skulls that they aided and abetted very serious crimes to be perpetrated on humanity.
A US TV show host became visibly shaken when he was told by a podcaster that the media would be gone after and hauled before a Nuremberg II court. As did the weasel Fauci when told he was guilty of serious crimes.
It would be normal for these woke cretins to now start trying to cover their asses.
Then there’s Putin who made an announcement a couple of years ago that he had supersonic missiles capable of delivering tactical, medium and long-range nuclear warheads. He also claimed to have developed submarines that the West can’t track.
The Western media didn’t cover this very much, because they knew Putin made these announcements for the ears of ordinary Western people and not their governments. The Pentagon and MI6 would soon become aware if Russia had these new weapons, so Putin would have known he had no need to inform them.
It turns out that Putin was not lying about having these new weapons. Russian expert, Gilbert Doctorow, has ascertained that Russia does indeed have supersonic missiles and untrackable submarines.
The Russians can surface a submarine just off the New York coast and launch a missile with multiple nuclear warheads and they’ll have hit their targets before the Americans even knew the submarine was there.
The legacy media in the West is controlled by the CIA and MI6, so the reason they didn’t report Putin’s announcement of these weapons was because of embarrassment that the Russians had out-technologied the West.
So, if the Cabal in the West attempts to lay-off their genocidal gene therapy crimes on Russia, as they seem to be actually doing, perhaps Putin will not stand for it. Nothing might wake the woke cretins in the likes of the Guardian up as quick as the realisation that a nuclear warhead could descend undetected on New York or London.
Be careful, because a lot of conspiracy theories over the last two decades have been proven to be fact.
I have always believed that first and foremost Vladimir Putin is a Patriot. The lazy, cowardly bastards running Europe and North America are most definitely not. I am reasonably convinced, at the moment, that Mr Putin is working for Russia first.
Time will tell.
Good analysis FW
That’s indeed wonderfully level-headed: We just assumed Putin sent tanks into Ukraine to conquer the country. But maybe, he just wanted to park them there! We don’t really know!
That’s still the We don’t know …, therefore, it could … shit which dominated Corona news since 2020. Whenever somebody starts talking about what he doesn’t know, listening to him is a waste of time.
Comment before reading: Please stop digging Hitler out of his grave for cheap, political point-scoring. The second world-war ended 77 years ago. It’s high time to stop refighting it in headlines (or title pages).
Less generalizations about the audience of such an article would be fine. Both post-world war international orders were essentially nothing but attempts to reduce so-called German Europe to a state where it wasn’t capable of being an international player one had to reckon with anymore and keep it this way in perpetuity with the help of a body of international laws invented for this very purpose. The first attempt at this didn’t work out so well, hence, the second was much more brutal/ thorough, resulting in the (mostly Russian-)enforced depopulation of wide stretches of eastern central Europe and the forced removal of Germans from other areas they had lived in for centuries. It is conjectured that this affected 14 – 15 millions people. To ensure that – in the new world order – the Germans would remain faithful servants of their new masters, the rump country was partitioned into two competing states and remained militarily occupied until the early 1990s. Even today, the German state is anything but sovereign but subject to strict limits regarding its armed forces and absolutely verboten to have any kind of independent foreign policy in its own interest.
That’s the face of the peaceful world society which overcame wars against its protagonists by eliminating the antagonist, a hitherto almost unprecedented procedure (almost because Napoleon I did something similar, although he restricted himself to forcing political entities into his European empire while he left the people alone). That’s a rule of law which the people who made this law will prefer much more than those it was enacted on. As side effects, all of European countries east of Germany and north of Greece also ended up under military occupation, just by the Russians alone. Russia lost most of its European empire in the period from 1991 – 2014. It’s now again trying to consolidate it after most of the so-called West voluntarily committed almost-suicide, with governments intentionally crippling their economies and driving the people at their mercy into despair, madness and death.
What’s surprising about that? The international We are the biggest bullies! order shifts whenever the relative powers of the individual bullies shift: Wage war on your own people to harm your own countries. Expect other countries to take advantage of that. Nothing ever changed here. Your violently enforced world order will only remain for as long as you can credibly enforce it with violence.
Here is an article that really is worth reading: Lucian Leustean, “Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine: The First Religious War in the 21st Century“.
Leustean has received Atlanticist and also Church of England money, but his article is an excellent point of entry for those who want to start wrapping their heads around what we can call the church differences and church fight in the Ukraine, which is a major part of the background to ethnic and cultural and linguistic differences in the Ukraine (and therefore the war) and the Moscow-Constantinople schism of 2018. In that schism, the synod of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople and then the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church reciprocally excommunicated each other’s outfits.
Excommunication is when it gets SERIOUS.
While Ukraine is a focal point for the schism, its effects have spread not just in the Ukraine but worldwide including in Africa and (who’d have guessed?) the Middle East.
Let’s just say there will be bods in the British Consulate in Jerusalem who are trying to keep abreast of this stuff.
Leustean:
It appears that Leustean is “parti pris” in the matter of the schism, but that’s not hugely important because “caveat lector” always applies. There will be very few among the readers of his article who won’t learn something from it.
He writes
The three religious sites he mentions in that sentence are all in Kiev.
You can expect at least one of them and quite possibly all three of them to get into the news soon.
So there you go – I am making a prediction on the basis of my obviously limited understanding.
‘… and what sceptics should think about it.’
No, no, no, no… sceptics should decide what they think for themselves, not as directed by others. That’s what sceptic means.
Repeating the mantra of the rest of the herd is the pattern here.
Go take a leek..
Talk about over thinking something.
All wars are over territory: who rules, who collects the rents/taxes.
All wars are caused by those who lust after power and control who want to rule the territory and collect the rent/taxes.
The war-makers use: violence, or treaties (which eventually lead to violence), or edicts.
The EU war-makers are using treaties to acquire territory and establish their rule. The Covidians, Climageddonist, and Environmentalistas are using edicts – with great ambition to rule the entire Planet and become God selecting the animals two by two and planting out the Garden of Eden.
Those who lust after power and control can never have enough, will never give it up voluntarily. The only remedy against them is violence, their annihilation.
Now history shows that is so; philosophy wants to argue with reality from its position in an intellectual fog.
Ukraine is saved! Slava Ukraina! BloJo’s boys are on the way
Former British Marines have come to Ukraine to help fight Russians [former as in ex-SAS or ex-MI6?]
https://t.me/RusTroyka/388
My name is Jax. I’m from England. Basically we’re here to help stop the invasion of Ukraine. Hopefully, you know, we will win. [All ex-military]
https://t.me/DonbassYasinovatayanaliniiOgnia/24984
Lets hope Jax doesn’t come home in a body bag!
Please tell Mr Alexander that his entire analysis is totally inaccurate; as usual with these narratives, the massive elephant in the room isn’t mentioned: jewish bankers, Jewish bankers wars!!!.
And no, this is not ‘my opinion’ nor ‘what I think’, I’m just repeating what some big mouth jews have stated and revealed.
The jewish bankers and their luciferian cabalist minions are the only people on earth having a ‘great plan” to establish a global dictatorship which they call a “Universal Republic”. In the 19th century they made a plan in how to engineer 3 world wars necessary to unleash a WW3 necessary to present to the world their ‘messiah’; their words, not mine.
So this Ukraine thing is a fabricated “crisis” which will be used to gradually prepare the right conditions to unleash that war.
Haven’t someone stated that the world is at a point of a “global transformation”? That the only thing they need is the right “crisis”???
One last fact, the jewish bankers control governments, either directly or through their invisible weapon: freemasonry.
And don’t call me crazy or nuts just because you aren’t properly informed – I know the truth is stranger than fiction!
It’s always worth remembering that Wall Street financed the Bolshevik revolution and the rise of Hitler.
I am pleasantly surprised that the majority of your readers understand what exactly is the genesis of this “invasion.” Particularly liked the comment that “The Daily Sceptic” decides exactly what it wants to be sceptic about. Maybe you could be renamed “The Hourly Sceptic.”
Most of your readers would be lay people with little scientific background , and thats the reason why you have got away with cute albeit anaemic pieces on the pandemic. You never chose to take the virus by its horns or should it be its spikes, but instead relied on anaemic wishy washy articles written why your “experts.”
I fear a spill over of cliches in your pieces of Ukraine, or else why would you publish a piece elaborating an “old fashioned war” as opposed to a new fashioned one without a murmur on who or what sparked this conflict. Maybe you realise the truth could be too corrosive for the fainthearted.
What a marvellous, thought-provoking and fascinating article. Thank you so much to the author and to Toby for publishing it.
The cover is interesting.
In 1938 Time’s Man of the Year was…..Adolf Hitler.
Seriously.
The media of today is no smarter than the media of that time.
Many thanks to Fireweasel for his post. Everyone interested should research the Ukrainian nationalist hero Stepan Bandera, mass murderer. Russians (and Poles) have every reason to have intense feelings about this, because of the unspeakable barbarity of the man and his current day followers. The West ignores the torture and killing of men, women and children in modern day Ukraine. The Ukraine conflict has been deliberately provoked by the West and is a cynical proxy war, ultimately.
Listening to London Calling this morning here is my biased observation:
Mr. D. is being consistent in that no news can be trusted
Mr. Y. is being consistent in that some news can be trusted
Is that fair?
Both are not that smart though. The one believes the world is trying to be controlled be an elite class. And the other disbelieves that though makes a lot of apologies for what might be elite classes.
Nonetheless it’s the best show on the radio. We could do better though.
It looks like monopoly corporations(who set the price of fuel rather than let the market decide) such as Shell have declared they are no longer accepting Russian commodities.
So, given we live in a free market I’m told, where can I buy Russian fuel for my car and home. Clearly, given the increased supply the price will fall.
And can I trust my government to stay out of the way of the free market?
Disturbing use of words. No word of Yugoslavia. Other destructive wars called pseudo wars or other “colonial” wars, as if life of a non-European person is not worth as much.
Toby, Did you really say “what sceptics SHOULD think”? What mean’st thou?
My memory is fading in my old age. Could someone remined me – did we ever find Saddam Husseins’s “WMD capable of being launched at 45 minutes notice”? I suppose bombing the country back into the stone age might have hindered that a little.
A long live stream by a US businessman, normally living in but now hiding in Ukraine, offering the views of someone actually present on what is going on. The guy is married to a Ukranian and was caught in a Kiev hotel in the early days of the ‘invasion’. His video of that event went viral leading to a visit from government goons. Fortunately he was not at home at the time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j7NTLZDd4tc