The Advocates of Death 558


There is a completely crazed article by Simon Tisdall in the Guardian – worryingly its “most shared” – calling for “direct, in-country military support” by western powers in Ukraine against Russia.

While Tisdall outlines well the many catastrophic and wide-reaching effects of the Ukraine war, including tangents such as its effect on climate change, he fails completely to acknowledge the rather more obviously catastrophic possibility that direct western military intervention in Ukraine will lead to full scale nuclear war.

But strangely that is not what I find most wrong-headed in Tisdall’s article. What I find culpably unbalanced is this paragraph:

The broader, negative political impact of the war, should it rage on indefinitely, is almost incalculable. The UN’s future as an authoritative global forum, lawmaker and peacekeeper is in jeopardy, as more than 200 former officials warned Guterres last week. At risk, too, is the credibility of the international court of justice, whose injunction to withdraw was scorned by Putin, and the entire system of war crimes prosecutions.

It is as though the illegal invasion of Iraq had never happened, and had not already dealt the severe blow to the moral authority of the United Nations that helps enable Putin’s actions now. And Why is defiance by Putin of the International Court of Justice a severe blow to its credibility, but British refusal to obey its instruction to return the Chagos islands to the survivors of the British genocide there apparently was not a severe blow?

Putin is merely following British and American example. The failure of liberals like Tisdall (whom I generally respect) to acknowledge this I find infuriating. I condemn the invasion of Ukraine and I have no hesitation in calling Putin a war criminal. However for precisely the same reasons so are Bush and Blair. It astonishes me how very few people in the media are prepared, in the current emergency, to acknowledge this. That is perhaps understandable if not readily excusable. But to claim like Tisdall that Putin’s actions are somehow unique and precedent-setting goes beyond omission to active propaganda and lying.

I am returned from holiday with the family, much refreshed, and have decided to revert to the idea that not every article on this website needs to be long form or profound. Shorter, snappier pieces like this to fill the gaps between highly worked articles are also useful to keep brain cells sparking and conversation flowing.

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558 thoughts on “The Advocates of Death

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  • Neil

    To all those on this site cheering on the invasion …

    If Putin’s aim was to stop Ukraine joining NATO, why not just say, “If Ukraine joins NATO we will invade”? That way, Putin, who most of you seem to agree is such a nice, peace-loving man, might have avoided the needless, horrific deaths of tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Russians.

    If his motive was to save the people of Donbass from genocide, why not simply open Russia’s border to them? When the hundreds of thousands of refugees then fled across the border into the welcoming arms of mother Russia to escape the evil Ukrainians, Putin would have both saved all those lives and scored a massive propaganda victory while making Ukraine look bad, all while avoiding the bloodbath of this invasion. (Let’s not forget that far more people have died in a few weeks of Putin’s war than died in a decade of troubles in Donbass.)

    If his intention was to de-nazify Ukraine, well, obviously a country doesn’t have the right to wage war on another country on the basis of not agreeing with the allegedly extreme politics of a small number of people in that country. If it did, the US would definitely have the right to invade North Korea to get rid of all the “commies” there. (I suppose it would be different if they were real nazis, gassing Jews in concentration camps etc… )

      • j lowrie

        Come on, Neil the US army is only good for attacking half-armed peasants, or untrained mountain guerrillas or boy soldiers. Up against the Russian army without air superiority on the first day half the Yanks would run away and the next day the other half would surrender. I remember a British soldier who had served in Korea telling me how he hated to go into battle with the Yanks on his flank as they regularly ran away under sustained fire. When Biden promises that the US army will not fight against the Russians there speaks the voice of cowardice. You might however want to volunteer yourself. I believe the the National Front is still recruiting.

      • Crispa

        USA has a long track record of trying to “get rid of commies” as they see them: Cuba, Nicaragua, Chile, Honduras, Venezuela to name a few and of course little Grenada, which it invaded directly and against which illegality even UK government protested at the time.

        • Neil

          Crispa,

          “USA has a long track record of trying to “get rid of commies””

          Right, so if it’s wrong for the US, it’s wrong for Russia. How about a little consistency?

          • pretzelattack

            how about a little consistency neil? the us has conducted a proxy war against russia for 2 decades. russia has not reciprocated. it is ok with you if the russians put wmds on the border of whatever country you live in?

    • j lowrie

      The US did invade Korea. Should Putin now employ American measures and send to all NATO capitals pictures of Pyongyang in 1953?

        • j lowrie

          In Korea the Yanks put in power Korean officers who had served in the Japanese army rounding up all those young Korean girls to serve as ‘comfort Women’ i.e. sex slaves for the Jap troops. Are YOU. Cheering?

          • Neil

            J Lowrie,

            “In Korea the Yanks put in power Korean officers … ‘comfort Women’ … sex slaves”

            So Russia are allowed to invade countries because they’re the good guys but the US aren’t allowed because they’re the bad guys,.

            Was that your point?

    • j lowrie

      More than one million Russians have already fled into Russia. Many Russians are angry with Putin for his wretched procrastination and fears that he might sell them out!

    • Giyane

      Bevin
      100% agree.

      The jackals in Biden’s Democratic Party cannot feast on the corpse of Ukraine so long as Putin is denazifying Nuland’s fascists. It’s a straight choice, as you say, between Russia taking control of Eastern Ukraine or Nazism taking hold of Europe. Fuck the EU means exactly what it says on the tin. Get Europe to self-destruct.

      The Democrat project to re-write the ending of WW2 , discredit Russian sacrifices to defeat Nazism , and push Britain into the mould of Alt right US politics, against its will.

      We now understand what the Brexit concept of European Reform of the ERG actually means. Viz : to make the left-leaning EU an underclass and Britain a right-wing partner of US hegemony. When liberalism extends sympathy to Nazi ideology , alarm bells ought to sound. So far , nothing from the educated , chatter class.
      Disgusting , depressing , devastating that the entire British chattering class is taken in by Tory proto- Fascism.

    • Wikikettle

      It is a terrible fact that a very ‘small number of people’ with power rule over the many. It has always been openly shouted by these Banderites to “cleanse” ethnic Russians from Ukraine – Russia already has a million refugees from Donbass. The majority of all Ukrainians wanted peace and good relations with Russia. The few, egged on by US UK Nato made sure that only one part of every country having the right to determine its security arrangements was shouted out. The proviso part – Not mentioned. Inshrined, as it was and stating, that No country’s security should be at the expense of another’s. Russia was expected to just sit there and just watch Nato next door build, train and install missiles. Neutrality is what the majority wanted in Ukraine before the coup and now the majority of Ukrainians will not thank those few who destroyed Ukraine with the egging on from those whose ‘homeland’ sees not the war and deaths they engineered from the other side of the world from a safe distance.

      • Neil

        Wikikettle,

        “now the majority of Ukrainians will not thank those few who destroyed Ukraine”

        Those who destroyed Ukraine? Are you talking about Russia? Because the majority of Ukrainians do seem mightily posed off with Russia and Zelensky is more popular than ever.

        But you’re right, a majority of Ukrainians do want peace, which is why they’re not keen on the Russian army dropping bombs on them.

        • pretzelattack

          oh you live in urkaine now neil? that seems inconsistent. no neil, the ones who used Ukraine as a puppet to attack russia bear the primary share of the blame, but you seem ever so invested in pretending that is not true.

          • Neil

            Pretzelattack,

            “the ones who used Ukraine as a puppet to attack russia bear”

            What attack? Who attacked Russia? When did this happen? What weapons were used? At which point did the attackers cross the Russian border? What casualties did Russian troops sustain? Etc etc. Please provide details.

        • Tom Welsh

          “Because the majority of Ukrainians do seem mightily posed off with Russia…”

          Freudian slip? Many of the most prominent Ukrainians do indeed seem to be mighty poseurs.

        • nevermind

          those few who are killing Ukrainians? the west has for decades covered Ukrainian anti semitic murderers in their midst, most fled from the advancing Russians who had lost millions of their men to fight Germany, no thanks to those Yanks who nearly screwed up D day.
          You are trying to spraypaint a barrel of rotten apples and trying to sell them to us.
          If you so eager, why not let go of the dingy place where you work multiple blogs trying to help the Integrity Initiative fairy tellers. Go and fight and take that warmongering hussy Truss with you.

      • Neil

        Wikikettle,

        “No country’s security should be at the expense of another’s”

        Seems to me Ukraine’s security is suffering at the expense of Russia’s, wouldn’t you say?

        But presumably you believe Ukraine wanted to join NATO so it could start a war with Russia all along.

        I thought Ukraine wanted to join NATO because it feared Russian aggression. Wait. Russian aggression? Now that’s just a crazy idea …

    • Jimmeh

      > If his motive was to save the people of Donbass from genocide, why not simply open Russia’s border to them?

      He did. And he handed out free Russian passports to anyone in Donbas that wanted one. And yet there are still a lot of russophones in Donbas. Perhaps the people of Donbas don’t really want to go to Russia? That might explain why he’s forcibly deporting civilians from occupied territory to Russia.

    • Steve Hayes

      One thing we now know with certainty is that NATO won’t commit forces to defend a non-member against a half-competent foe such as Russia. It’s always been uncertain whether they’d do that for a member state either but Russia would have been more unwise to test that hypothesis by waiting for Ukraine to join. As regards a non-member, they called that one correctly – apparently the precedent was already set in Georgia but Zelenskiy seems to have been unaware of it as he allowed the spooks to make a sacrificial pawn of his country.

      • Neil

        Steve, NATO is reluctant to “commit forces” because that might lead to WW3. Putin seems happy to bandy nuclear threats about, and his spokeswoman today said that it’ll be ok because Russians will all go to Heaven. Who are the grown-ups here?

        • Steve Hayes

          I’d say the nuclear threat is a factor but not the major one. After their Vietnam experience, it’s been obvious American policy to not commit troops anywhere they might suffer significant losses. Instead, vast amounts have been spent on high-tech weapons, many of which never worked and none of which have proved decisive in wars against any but the weakest opponents. Perhaps the one thing the nuclear stalemate does do is it deters any attempts to attack Russia itself with those weapons. But the way that UK military advisors (or whatever they were) fled Ukraine just before the Russian invasion can’t be explained by fear of starting WW3 had they remained, and I don’t think Russian nuclear threats had the West entered an air war over Ukraine would have been credible either.

          • Neil

            You might not think nuclear war is a major issue, but I’m glad at least one side are being grown up about this

            Having said that, how far do you let some warmongering asshole use nuclear blackmail to attack smaller neighbours before you draw a line?

          • Shaun Onimus

            Indeed the Russians and Chinese have been very grown up, thankfully for the rest of us.

            “Having said that, how far do you let some warmongering asshole use nuclear blackmail to attack smaller neighbours before you draw a line?”

            Last I checked, about twenty years? Or when the one with the big guns decides so, it’s not like some internet warriors will stop them.

          • Neil

            Shaun, starting a war and threatening to use nukes is “grown up”? Maybe you need to change your dictionary.

    • Shaun Onimus

      I’d answer this as if I was American in 2003 and someone posed this question.
      This is nonsense propaganda, our leaders clearly stated it’s a special military operation. Stop spreading misinformation!
      If you’re going to post shallow questions, expect shallow dismissals and lets not waste comment space.

    • pretzelattack

      the us does not restrict itself to its neighbors, Jan, the us has extended the Monroe Doctrine to the whole world. that is remarkable.

      • Tom Welsh

        And yet when Russia proposes its own very modest equivalent of the Monroe Doctrine, extending perhaps to the successor states of the USSR… Washington is enraged and denounces this “aggression”.

        If the Monroe Doctrine is still respected – and of course it never had any force of law – perhaps all the other nations should cooperate to keep the USA out of Eurasia and Africa. That would be only fair.

        The fundamental question is whether any community or government should be allowed to proclaim itself “exceptional” and to ignore the laws and treaties that are observed by everyone else. I agree with Mr Putin and Mr Xi that it shouldn’t.

    • Tom Welsh

      No, Jan. I do think a nation may be forced to invade one of its closest neighbours, after 20 years of failed attempts to resolve differences by diplomacy, and if that neighbour is not only conspiring to commit genocide and to attack the “invader”, but showing unmistakeable signs of doing so.

      Remember – or learn, if you never studied history – that for most of the past 1,000 years the Ukraine has been part of Russia. Sometimes a very central, vital part.

      My analogy is that if, in some political revolution, Hampshire had declared itself independent of England, and gone on to persecute English people and plot with some distant power to attack and destroy the UK. Would the rest of the UK be justified in using force to combat such plans?

      We cannot devise any analogy that works with respect to the USA, since it was not created until Ukraine had been part of Russia for 900 years or so – and until after Crimea became part of Russia.

      • Maglocunos

        The Hampshire analogy is good, but still lacks some of the linguistic, cultural, historical and religious nuances

        The UK’s own internal colonies more come to mind in some respects

        .

      • Jimmy Riddle

        Tom Welsh – but the important point here is that Hampshire did not declare itself independent of England – and even if it did there would be large numbers of Hampshirians who would identify with the English side.

        A better analogy might be Ireland. Ireland was part of the United Kingdom, but then the English orchestrated a potato famine, which is still remembered to this day and is still a very sore point. This certainly gave the Irish independence movement a good push in the right direction – and today Ireland is an independent country. You’d be hard pushed to find someone living in the Republic of Ireland who actually wants to join up with the UK.

        Similarly, and more recently, in the Ukraine, Stalin organised a famine, which is remembered to this day. A result of this is that, just as the Irish wanted to have nothing to do with the English and wanted their own independent sovereign country, exactly the same is true of the Ukrainians.

        The most striking thing for me in this whole business has been just how little support the Russians have received from the Russian speaking part of the Ukrainian population. This surprised me, because before the conflict I had been led to believe that at least 1/3 of the population of the Ukraine sided with Moscow rather than Kyiv, but this appears to have been complete rubbish.

        Looking at the Ireland analogy, it is as if the `protestant’ faction of the North had the good sense to understand that they’d be better off as part of a united Ireland than as part of the UK.

        In your Hampshire example, if a faction of Hampshire people really did declare independence, there would still be a large pool of England supporters there, whom the English could get to help them out if they wanted to solve the problem by invasion.

      • Jan

        Wow. So if Scotland declared independence, England would be ok to invade 30 years later and take it back. That’s a surprising thing to read from a Craig Murray supporter 🙂

  • Johnny Conspiranoid

    “The failure of liberals like Tisdall (whom I generally respect) to acknowledge this I find infuriating.”

    Here Mr. Murray generally respects someone whose main characteristic he finds infuriating.

  • Ian Kiddle

    While I agree with many of your points, you as a supporter of Scottish independence are being hypercritical in dismissing Putin as a war criminal. The Eastern Ukraine states of Donbass and Lugansk similarly sought independence from Ukraine after the US instigated coup of 2014. They fought for this independence and when they were on the point of defeating the Ukrainian Army, Germany ,France and Ukraine hurriedly agreed to the Minsk Agreements that should have led to some self rule for these states. Ukraine reneged on these agreements and harassed, with shelling sniper fire etc, these republics for 8 years killing 14000 of their citizens.
    Before Russia launched its Special Military Operation Ukraine had amassed over 60,000 troops on the conflict line with the obvious intention of attacking the separatist republics. Russia’s justification for their response is “The responsibility to protect” as recognised by the UN, along with their own need for security guarantees for themselves. Simple enough no NATO membership and neutral status for Ukraine
    The ensuing war has seen terrible war crimes carried out by the Ukrainian side against civilians but the western media has ignored these and instead blamed Russia for crimes committed by the NAZI’s embedded in the Ukrainian Army. Russia has bent over backwards to avoid civilian losses but this is difficult if your opponent shoots from residential buildings and blatantly uses human shields as appears to be the case underground in the Azovsteel plant at this time. They have kept civilian infrastructure intact more or less up until now but this is rapidly changing as Ukraine attempts to use the trains and bridges to bring newly supplied NATO armaments to the front.
    Western commentators seem unable to talk about Putin without prefacing it with “the thug” or “the war criminal” Show me some evidence, and I don’t mean anything that comes out of a UK courtroom which, you have seen for yourself, can be completely unreliable and corrupt or incidents ascribed to him when he was new and learning the job. Putin’s crime has been not allowing Russia to succumb to the predations of the City of London and Wall Street.
    In my eyes Putin is the greatest statesman alive today.

    • Giyane

      Ian Kiddle

      There’s the rub . All that time we thought it was the EU being fascist against Catalonian autonomy/ independence, we were thinking that the EU is itself an autonomous / independent institution. This war in Ukraine has removed the camouflage of US / Nato total domination of Europe against its phantom enemy Russia.

      Smell the coffee. No independent Sotland will ever be free from Nato via its membership of the EU, and no non- EU autonomous or Independent Scotland will ever see the light of day. Ask the Irish about non- alignment and Ukraine.

      They might however be able to strike a deal with the Russian Federation. Not too far fro Scotland to Ukraine.

      • Giyane

        With apologies in advance for being frivolous. If Scotlsnd succeeded in joining the Russian Federation, the Fazlane nukes would still be pointing away from Scotland , not at Scotland. In order to threaten Scotland Nato would have to do what iraqis do in celebration, fire straight up in the air, regardless of the likelihood of them coming straight back down. Sorry.

      • Jimmeh

        > No independent Sotland will ever be free from Nato via its membership of the EU

        Scotland isn’t a member of the EU, and any newly-independent Scotland would have to apply for EU membership, with all that involves in terms of financial stability etc.

        • Laguerre

          Many EU leaders have already said they would favour Scottish membership of the EU, so your warning is a waste of time. It’s nothing new.

    • MickW

      I completely agree with you

      This is a very good account of what has happened in the lead up to the conflict, what is happening now, and the way the media are twisting the narrative.

      The Russians are showing incredible restraint whilst idiots like Truss are doing all that they can to provoke them with apparently scant regard to the potentially catastrophic consequences

      I wish more people could see through it

    • David

      Excellent post 100+ uptick !
      Craig
      Why dont you have +/- boxes for post approvals.
      Nothing like ballot box democracy right?

        • Neil

          Likewise, Truss being an imbecile doesn’t make Lavrov any less of a snake.

          Truss: ‘Russia must move its troops away from the Ukrainian border, or else…’ Lavrov: ‘Why should we? It’s up to Russia where it deploys its troops inside Russia’

          • Neil

            Laguerre,

            “Is Lavrov “a snake”? He sounds pretty straightforward to me.”

            Straightforward would have been, “It’s up to Russia if we want to invade Ukraine.”

            So although it’s true that Truss is a national embarrassment, hindsight shows her stance on Ukraine was basically correct and Lavrov was being a disingenuous snake.

          • Laguerre

            So not much like a snake then. I’m sure both Truss and Blinken, his homologues over here, are at least as snake-like.

          • Neil

            Laguerre, completely agree. Truss is a snake, Putin is a snake, Johnson is a snake, Lavrov is a snake, Biden is a (somewhat senile) snake, etc etc. But despite the never ending whataboutery on these boards, despite all the undoubtedly despicable things the US and the UK have done in the world and are still doing, none of that makes what Putin is doing in Ukraine any less despicable.

          • wschira

            “…none of that makes what Putin is doing in Ukraine any less despicable.”

            Really? WHO said some thousand civilians killed to now, which are clearly some thousand to much.

            Killed from the US in Irak directly and as following the santions: More than a million people, included 500000 children which “were it worth”, as the witch Albright (she should burn in hell) answered an interviewer.

    • Giyane

      Bruce_H

      On the question of the status of civilians in war zones, the US is quite capable of using local people who have local grievances against their local enemies one day, and classifying them as threats to US interests the next.

      After all, the British Ladder system of utilising weaker clans against their oppressors was already perfected in India by the time Lawrence Gonzalo of Arabia was operating in 1918. The Kissinger doctrine specifically states that covert operations isn’t social work. The US ‘ aim is not to help local tribes, but to control a country and its resources that don’t in any way belong to them.

      The British first and now the US are jackals feasting on the carcases of poorer nations. They have never pretended to be anything other than pillaging scavengers, who , if anybody is stupid enough to believe their lies, will get be put in the meat grinder along with actual opponents of their empires.

      Having said that, I am not from a country that has been through the British or US mincer in the past, unless you count France as an agent of Papal imperialism . My mother’s family came from Huguenot roots.

      Imperialism will always rule, so long as babies in far off lands are not fed the knowledge of Kissinger’s thesis with their mother’s milk. ‘ Do not think the big friendly guy with the sweets is your friend ‘. Even with basic Safeguarding in place, no evil empire can use the populations of a country to demolish that country and place it into the jackals’ fangs.

        • Neil

          “Was it Kissinger who said that to be the USA’s enemy is dangerous, but to be its friend is fatal?”

          No, it wasn’t.

          • Pears Morgaine

            As is often the case it’s a partial quote deliberately taken out of context. What Kissinger said in full was:- “Nixon should be told that it is probably an objective of Clifford to depose Thieu (South Vietnamese president Nguyen Van Thieu) before Nixon is inaugurated. Word should be gotten to Nixon that if Thieu meets the same fate as Diem, the word will go out to the nations of the world that it may be dangerous to be America’s enemy, but to be America’s friend is fatal.”

            Puts an entirely different complexion on it.

        • Neil

          Andyoldlabour, it was part of a conditional sentence. It’s like me saying a conditional sentence such as, “If Leeds United are a good football team, then I eat babies for breakfast every morning.” Then someone comes along and says, “Wasn’t it Neil who said he eats babies for breakfast every morning?” The answer is no, I didn’t say that, and Kissenger didn’t say what Tom claims he said.

          A lot of people on these boards use evidence very selectively to confirm their biases, e.g. every report of Ukrainian atrocities is automatically given credence, every report of Russian atrocities is fake. People like Tom have made up their minds that Putin can do no wrong, and will interpret any piece of evidence as confirmation, including twisting people’s words as in Kissenger’s case here.

          It’s a natural psychological bias we all have and need to be on guard against. You can look up “confirmation bias” on Wikipedia. It’s interesting reading and none of us are immune.

          • Giyane

            Neil

            Again you use a reply to what I wrote to avoid addressing what I wrote.
            Kissinger was being criticised for not intervening to help Kurds who faced reprisals for doing US bidding against Saddam.

            Kissinger’s reply was the most cynical statement openly expressed by an extremely cynical bunch of warmongering criminal neocons. In effect he said that the US has no obligation to protect anybody who incurs danger doing US bidding.

            Ukranian citizens have once again been told that just because the US has been building up their military capability to fight Russian in rhe name of Nazi racism, which half of them do not espouse rathet hoping for integration into Europe, does not mean that the US will.lift a finger to help them now.

            Boring though your ad hominems may be that I and others hate the West, we don’t. We’re glad that we have finished our ruthless empire and we are exasperated that the generation that follows us wants to build Empire 2 clutching onto Uncle Sam’s frock coat tails.

            We love the West as it was in our short youths, before Recidivist imperialists Thatcher and Blair fired up their Empire 2 project with proxy jihadists fighting in Yugoslavia against Soviets.

            The utter falseness of the premise that Market forces are right and Socialism is wrong is summed up in Kissinger’s bonkers statement. That any proxy helping the US is altruistically helping Gangster Capitalism, when in fact they have been promised assistance.

            Its the oldest lie in the book, it stinks. And here it is again recycled in Ukraine, that the Ukranians are obviously fighting for Gangster Capitalism because they believe in it. There is no duty on the Gangster Capitalists to assist their proxies other than to supply them with expired equipment and the opportunity to become sex slaves in Europe.

            The devil whispers crap into the ears of the desperate, then pisses off leaving them infinitely worse off or dead..The US has become the devil that Britain once was. Who can possibly approve of such a disastrous return Britain to the evil practices of Empire? 1. Starmer 2. Boris

          • squeeth

            “None of us are immune.” List yours then list your sophistries and casuistries.

          • Neil

            Squeeth, too many to mention, but one virtue I do have is I respect others’ right to live and won’t kill thousands of foreigners just because America did this and America did that …

          • Giyane

            Neil

            Nazis don’t respect others’ right to live, but that’s OK because you respect their right to kill Slavic ethnic humans. You don’t of course personally do it yourself.

            The word for this is proxy warfare. I did not kill your toddler and I deeply regret that my pit bull did. So sorry old chap. That’s life.
            They always put down the dog that kills children, never the owner of the lethal dog.
            So you’re safe.

      • Neil

        Giyane,

        “Again you use a reply to what I wrote to avoid addressing what I wrote.”

        Actually I was just replying to someone else. Not everything has to be a conspiracy.

      • Neil

        Giyane, this made me laugh …

        “Ukranian citizens have once again been told that just because the US has been building up their military capability to fight Russian in rhe name of Nazi racism, which half of them do not espouse …”

        Half of Ukrainians are not Nazis? Really? Are you sure it’s so many?

      • Neil

        Giyane,

        “Nazis don’t respect others’ right to live, but that’s OK because you respect their right to kill Slavic ethnic humans.”

        What are you talking about?

  • Crispa

    The underlying assumption of the Tisdall article is that USA – Western might is always right regardless of its legality or morality. In this context the USA would be right to stage a coup in 2014 to install a government of its choosing despite it being illegal, unconstitutional and undemocratic. When the people of Donbass objected to this illegal and unconstitutional move the new illegal government with USA – Western connivance thought it right to murder large numbers of them as “terrorists”, when the people were actually only standing up for their rights and the rule of law. USA – West then thought it right to ignore the Minsk Agreements, when it was actually illegal and immoral to do so, and which would have stopped the bloodshed, because they now had Russia in their sights and wanted to get more than one over it. Now that Russia has called “foul” USA – West conveniently forgets its own chain of illegal and immoral acts and all of a sudden adopts this holier than thou attitude, when in reality they are just being cynical and inconsequential. This is what gets up my craw more than anything. One has to be an ophidiophile not to see it.

  • Mareks Vilkins

    only Russia has been warning about this trend for the past 30 years (well before Afghanistan & Iraq invasion) – and AFG / IRAQ did not pose any security threats to the NATO/US . Not so with US nuclear missiles near Russia border – all this liberal self-righteous moaning is pathetic

  • Goose

    Reporter Patrick Wintour comes across as another toadying servant of power. His latest ‘report’ titled : ‘Risk-taker Truss adopts tough line on terms for Russia peace deal’

    contains this nugget of information:

    “… in her speech Truss made clear that Russia would be required to leave the whole of Ukraine, and so no longer retain its foothold in the Donbas in the east and Crimea, which it annexed in 2014. In this view she gained the support of the defence secretary, Ben Wallace, on Thursday.”

    Wintour’s right about her being a risk-taker with this loose talk, jeez. This goes way beyond previously stated positions. The UK’s stance is dangerous, as it’s completely unrealistic. I’d imagine there is not a cat in hell’s chance Russia would abandon Crimea to Ukraine; about as likely as Russia handing Kaliningrad to Poland at the same time.

    Wintour casts the UK as being part of a small group of allies that are privately discussing ‘the terms’ of how the war might end. It isn’t a proxy war?

  • Bruce Dodds

    It is as though the illegal invasion of Iraq had never happened, and had not already dealt the severe blow to the moral authority of the United Nations that helps enable Putin’s actions now.

    Man, are you ever right about this. In the US media discussion of Ukraine there is a total absence of any recognition of how our past behavior affects our credibility. It is cringeworthy and it’s serious.

    Craig, it’s good to have you back.

    • Wikikettle

      Very upsetting listening to Professor Michael Hudson with Aaron Maté and Katie Halper on “usefulidiots ” Sociopath Neocons Sacrifice Ukrainians and Global Poor – Economist Michael Hudson. He of all people was at the heart of US and world economy. He says how US destroyed the Japanese economy previously, the European economy now, Nato Expansion, the resulting war and its ramifications on trade, energy and defaulting of poor countries, debts to IMF (US) will cause even more starvation, loans and enslave them even more to IMF World Bank, who will demand even more neo Liberal economic privatisations, wages cuts and austerity. Follow the Money !

  • Stevie Boy

    “The Advocates of Death”
    Congressman Adam Schiff couldn’t have been much clearer (in Jan 2020) when he stated on the floor of the U.S. Senate, “The United States aids Ukraine and her people so that we can fight Russia over there, and we don’t have to fight Russia here.”
    Philip Breedlove – the former Supreme Allied Commander of NATO – has now gone one better, during a recent podcast interview with the New York Times, he said,

    “I think we are in a proxy war with Russia. We are using the Ukrainians as our proxy forces.”

    I’m sure ‘the sacrifice is worth it’. After all, they are only Ukrainians.

    https://dailysceptic.org/2022/04/29/former-supreme-allied-commander-of-nato-says-we-are-using-the-ukrainians-as-our-proxy-forces/

    • Wikikettle

      Stevie Boy. Michael Hudson, explains why and who in US is now openly saying they do what they do to preserve US Uni Polar Power and control.

  • Den Lille Abe

    Now dear Sir, of course we all know that this Tisdall creep is unhinged, and he has probably snorted too much angel dust. The Guardian of today is completely unhinged, if I could find a way to wipe my ass in the online version, I would. It is a pity, the Guardian was once worth reading, not anymore.
    These journos need to go to Siberia for 25- 40 years, I was told, well 40 years ago”it was not too bad”. Former German soldier returned to Hamburg in 1953. I was related through my then girlfriend. He was a proud and stout old man then, he was a firm socialist, had always been, went to KZ for a while, and was put in a punishment battalion in 1941. He was a socialist, remember.
    Well that generation is all but gone, and what have we learned, very little.
    I have pity on humankind.

  • kimpatsu

    So you’re a radical pacifist?
    You have to fight back when attacked or you will always lose. The thousand-armed Buddha teaches better. Your argument is that the Russian threat of nukes is so great, once they’ve finished with Ukraine and march into Poland, you won’t fight to stop that either because you’re afraid of the consequences. There’s a word for that: cowardice.

    • Shaun Onimus

      Ah, you must have grown up on Western propaganda. Any journalist that’s not a bloodthirsty warmonger gets a new label each time our arms dealers need new mega-yachts. Anyone not bloodthirsty enough doesn’t see their articles printed, hence blogs. Even if Craig is a radical pacifist, I’d rather journalists be that than the bloodthirsty kind that have infiltrated your mind.
      Also, have you looked at a map lately? Wtf is Russia going to do with all that land? They have way too much for themselves already, which is a good reason our bloodthirsty overlords are poking the bear again. They cant create, theft and destruction is the only thing they are good at. Thanks for making me feel like I’m not the weakest troll here.

    • Bramble

      Pacifism is the opposite to cowardice. It is standing for peaceful solutions while being called a coward and traitor. Moral courage is far too rare a thing.

    • Jack

      kimpatsu

      Since Ukraine will most likely lose, they can choose to lose now or they can choose to lose in the future. In the future = more victims and perhaps loss of land.
      It is pretty obvious that Ukraine should choose to lose now.

      Why are you here by the way? Why are you not in Ukraine fighting? Are not you the “coward” in this debate?

      • Stevie Boy

        What’s interesting is that whether Ukraine wins or loses (whatever that means) they have sold their soul to the devil in terms of the USAs Lend-Lease process. This means they are going to have to pay for every bullet, rifle, missile, tank, etc. supplied by the USA.
        It took Russia and the UK until 2006 (61 years) to pay off its WW2 debt to the USA.
        Some countries apparently are still paying war debts.
        Germany and Japan were asset stripped and still host the invaders on their soil.
        USA wins, everyone else pays. Ukraine will still be paying for this war in 2080 !

        https://www.rt.com/news/554710-lend-lease-ukraine-us/

        • Pears Morgaine

          Ukraine losing will mean occupation by Russia and I can’t see them honouring any debts to the US.

          After WW2 the US paid for the re-building of Europe and Japan with the Marshall plan. The UK was the greatest recipient but instead of using the money to re-build and modernise industry as Japan and Germany did it was squandered trying to prop up what was left of the empire.

          I wonder who’ll pay for the re-building of Ukraine. I don’t think the Russians will able to afford it.

        • Neil

          Stevie,

          “This means they are going to have to pay for every bullet, rifle, missile, tank, etc. supplied by the USA.”

          Aren’t the Russian people paying for every bullet, rifle, missile, tank, etc. used by the Russian army?

          There’s a simple solution: Russian soldiers going back to Russia.

          • wschira

            “There’s a simple solution: Russian soldiers going back to Russia.”

            …and let the ukronazis kill the people in Donbass, as they did during the last eight years. Do you mean that?

    • Bruce_H

      Russia is not going to attack Poland, we really shouldn’t believe this sort of nonsense. The situation in Donbas and Ukraine is specific… however there was talk that Poland may go into the Ukraine, then toned down to just the Western part, which interestingly coincides to a bit of the world that Poland once dominated. It seems many people are thinking about what they can gain from all this.

      On another subject, has anyone seen confirmation of the suggestion that the delay in bringing the siege of the steelworks to an end is that there are several hundred Western military advisers, including many high ranking officers down in the basements? Notably 50 French officers, so with the elections on in France the scandal of French officers helping neo-nazis had to be kept secret. Both the Schilling Institute video of a rather interesting retired US officer and an interview of Pepe Escobar mention it but I can’t find anything this morning to confirm this. It would certainly explain why this affair is dragging on so much.

      • Neil

        Bruce,

        “Russia is not going to attack Poland, we really shouldn’t believe this sort of nonsense… Poland may go into the Ukraine … just the Western part, which interestingly coincides to a bit of the world that Poland once dominated. It seems many people are thinking about what they can gain from all this.”

        Speaking of believing nonsense, yes, sure, Poland are going to annex Western Ukraine. Of course they are, Bruce.

  • Jeremy Dawson

    I’ve just read the 2019 article on Chagos which you link to. But comments on it are closed.
    So if Scotland were to become independent, who inherits issues like Chagos?
    Do they somehow become shared between Scotland and rest of UK?

  • Piotr Berman

    Tisdall:

    “The broader, negative political impact of the war, should it rage on indefinitely, is almost incalculable. The UN’s future as an authoritative global forum, lawmaker and peacekeeper …”

    And what about the most obvious impact, a complete ruin of Ukraine that is already projected to lose 1/3 of already meagre GDP this year, not to mention the dead young and middle aged men, collateral damage, and a huge dislocation of people? Escalation of war that happened already and much more that is planned, 33 billion dollar plan, will deepen the destruction. Not to be on the receiving end of the generously leased weapons, Russia is damaging the railway system, and as a side effect, Ukraine will be severely hampered in attempting to export the remains goods that it still produces, and import essentials. It is hard to stop the flow of weapons without stopping everything else as well. Army needs fuel, to stop that, fuel stores and refineries are attacked, making it a puzzle how to provide fuel for tractors etc. in the agriculture. Industry, even everyday living will be hampered more and more. Escalation and counter-escalation converts a limited war to total.

    But Tisdall, like the entire West, never cared about Ukraine except as an abstract concept. I was amazed how miserly USA, UK and EU treated Ukraine during post-Maidan years. The plan to create a prosperous democracy that would erode Russian authorities by its brilliant example was sabotaged in every possible way, loans were given grudgingly, constantly reviewed with humiliating demands, anti-democratic actions were lauded as “countering malign Russian influence, and Nazification was tacitly promoted. Some brilliant enticing example it became. Now voila! 33 billion dollars, and sanctions that cost Europe many times more.

    • Wikikettle

      Piotr Berman. The US survives from : chaos, war, debt to IMF, World Bank, weapons sales, pitting one ethnic religious group against each other, using NGO’s and having complete control of the media and obedient politicians that are ‘selected’ by the deep state. The big change now however, is that all these plagues will now visit European countries. The Euro is losing value everyday, German manufacturing is doomed, European countries are diverting huge sums to buy new useless US weapons, while off loading old weapons to prolong the war in Ukraine. The more the country collapses economically, the more it has to beg the US (IMF) for loans, which are given under demands of neo Liberal economic policies, of austirity and privatisations, only benefitting huge corporations not the peoples. The ‘people’ ‘sheep’ are kept from revolting against the shepherd by division, propaganda and dehumanisation of the other. The other being the poorest, immigrants, refugees, Muslims and now Russians for collective punishment. All the plagues we visited on the global South are about to visit our ‘civilised Community of democratic poodle countries of the Collective heard of sheep that is Europe. Russia like Johnny Depp is now divorced and free of this rotten mistress.

    • Brian c

      “But Tisdall, like the entire West, never cared about Ukraine except as an abstract concept.”

      You can see how authentic Western humanitarianism is by the degree of outrage there has been about Biden inflicting mass famine on “the Afghan People” (last year’s cause celebre) or about what British bombs are inflicting on the Yemeni people. It’s extremely easy to conclude how genuine their humanitarianism is. But only if you choose to.

    • Bruce_H

      Several commentators that I have read about Russian methods in this war have pointed out that unlike other military interventions, US ones notably, the Russians have mostly left public services untouched – transport, electrical distribution, telecommunications, water and gas supplies, bridges have not been destroyed as in Syria or Iraq. Many, in particular our two NATO/US militants posting on this forum, scoff at the idea that the Russians “went in light” but objectively it seems to be true.

      The longer the war drags on though, and the more arms our peace loving democratic regimes deliver the more this is likely to change though.

  • Laguerre

    Tisdall is still at it this Sunday. He wants to win. He should know better; he’s old enough to have known the Cold War.

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/01/what-is-to-be-done-lenin-west-wont-win-in-ukraine-without-taking-risks

    By the way, I heard an interview with Nina Khruscheva (the grandaughter of K), now professor in New York, saying that Ukraine is a worse crisis than Cuba. Because both the US and Russia had made commitments they could not easily back out of, not the case in Cuba. Of course superficially she blamed Putin, she could not do otherwise, because she needs to keep her nice job in NY. But there was a lot of obviously careful speech, to make sure she put things the right way, not to provoke hostility in her adopted country, while retaining some semblance of the truth for her.

    • DunGroanin

      How are they going to spin the inevitable capitulation in getting the JCPOA agreement back on track in Iran, the IRGC has to be taken off the Terrorist List. If the minority ‘Collective West’ ever wants to have alternate supply to the Russian resources – which they actually may not be allowed without returning what they have stolen in broad daylight – we have NO CHOICE.

      Elijah with the latest good news
      https://ejmagnier.com/2022/05/01/the-us-iran-nuclear-agreement-is-ready/

      Divide and rule does not work when the divided have learnt to stand together.

      The UN jolly jobs for the boys club has shot it’s last bolt as they ignored the crimes and attacks by their Nazi favourites for 8 years in the separatist regions and now want to evacuate without surrendering the ‘treasurers’ of Azovstal. The only way that will happen is by the US declaring a Broken Arrow and nuking their own and Mariupol into radioactive inaccessibility for centuries- if they are really that insanely beyond accepting their crimes being revealed.
      I hope that is not allowed. China will have a say because of the biological warfare.

      The UN has still not turned up in Yemen or Palestine or anywhere there is chaos and death directed by their own masters.
      The fake vip visits with fake air raid sirens such as the Angelena Jollies latest PR trip to Liev yesterday are still selling the myth over reality to our moronic MSM consumers.
      The Resistance is opening newer fronts faster than the Empire can – we shouldn’t have assassinated Solemani – it made his message and plan invincible by doing so.

      The latest front will be Pakistan- which can easily lead it into a civil war as the elected government has had a coup again it as much as the Ukrainian did 8 years ago, this I’m the charismatic outsider leader is an actual leader and will command support throughout the Pakistani peoples and diaspora due to his sporting success and leadership. As a Pashtun there are seriously great warriors who would ably take on the sis in proper battles not the sissy suicide bombing or missile variety favoured by the CIA praetorians. There is absolute quiet on Pakistan in our MSM … too quiet.

      Happy Mayday World.

      • Stevie Boy

        Pakistan is useful to the CIA/USA to destabilise India and China. Now they have installed a more compliant government they can sell more of their rubbish military hardware and apply pressure on that front … IMO.

      • Laguerre

        The text may be agreed, but I am not at all certain the US will sign the new JCPOA.. There must be a vast lobby against signing.

      • Wikikettle

        There is another US Marine, not quite in the barnstorming mold of Scott Ritter, yet as informative, detailed and well worth subscribing to. His youtube channel is The New Atlas.

        • Wikikettle

          While the coke head actor gets his UK citizenship along with the SBU and their families. The desperate wives and women of Ukrainian soldiers start to demonstrate against Zelensky ! I hope for the sake of thousands of lives that the non Nazi Ukrainian army has a coup against their corrupt Oligarchs and make peace with Russia !

          • Wikikettle

            A ruthless coup and cull of Nazis by the Ukrainian Army itself, is the only way to end this madness.

          • Peter

            Yes, thanks, I had seen Brian Berletic, he is indeed a very impressive young man.

            Interesting take on how this might all end. What chance I wonder?

          • Neil

            Wikikettle,

            “A ruthless coup and cull of Nazis by the Ukrainian Army itself, is the only way to end this madness.”

            You’re calling for a ruthless military coup to bring down a democratically elected government, and you think you’re one of the good guys.

            The mind boggles.

          • Laguerre

            Neil
            Funny what happened in Maidan in 2014. Corresponds very closely to what you say is inadmissible.

  • DiggerUK

    A letter in todays Sunday Telegraph raises a question that has long puzzled me…… why haven’t the Ukrainians destroyed the NordStream 1 pipeline?

    Is Ukraine still being paid by Russia to allow fuel through? Is Russia still being paid for the gas?

    This has to be one of the craziest wars ever. A war that must have an immediate cease fire as a prelude to negotiations to bring it to an end.

    Blessed are the peacemakers, my arse…_

    • DunGroanin

      Digger , destroying such infrastructure is not what they want – OWNING it is , because it will deliver its purpose for decades.
      For instance even hardcore BrexShitHeads never proposed destroying the Channel Tunnel to preserve our ‘sovereignty’ and invasion by hordes.
      NS2 equally has not been dismantled, it was allowed to be completed! It is a massive asset that Europe needs for the rest of the century. Even as it was not needed – we had a surprisingly mild winter – it certainly will be required this coming winter given the low levels of reserves. It can’t be replaced by a fleet of dodgy and dangerous LPG ships – which god forbid, suffers an accident especially at port would be the equivalent of massive nuke.

      This goes back a long time when rules of wars were agreed upon – mostly because the backers of the belligerents were financing both sides.
      For example , remarkably people might think, IG Farben factories survived WW2 mass bomber raids! Err as much as ICI plants did in England.

      Our Owners don’t want to cancel Russian gas – just own it – but Russians won’t let them , even after centuries of trying, so Russia has to be Cancelled, but their pipelines and oil and gas fields will not be.

        • DunGroanin

          All right you got me. A mini Nuke. They are obviously a lot better.

          Seriously though when Milford Haven was purposed for receiving these ships it was considered how big such an explosion would be.

          Pipelines are much safer and provide grid level of reliability.

    • Bruce_H

      Not long ago I read that Ukraine was still being payed by Russia for the use of the pipeline, it surprised me too… business is business.

      On a similar level during all WW2 Sweden was supplying Germany with it’s iron and Britain with Oerlikon guns to defend it’s shipping from German aviation. The world is a strange place.

    • JohnA

      In answer to DiggerUK:
      Nordstream 1 is under the baltic, in parallel with the as yet unopened Nordstream II. If you mean the pipeline through Ukraine, the Ukrainians are mostly opposed to Nordstream II because it will end transit fees for them. Remarkably, Ukraine claims to hate Russia, hurls abuse at russia and worse to the Russian speaking population of what was east Ukraine, but still wants the transit gas fees from Russia.

      • Neil

        If you bothered reading the interview, Laguerre, you’d know that he sacrificed everything in leaving Russia. He also tried to enlist to fight the Russians but was told he was too old and inexperienced. He has no new master. On the contrary, by leaving gazprombank he chose freedom.

  • Jack

    Ukraine strike wounded and killed at least one major general and even wounded absolute top rank general Gerasimov:

    “Ukrainian news reports following the strikes said that among the dead was Maj. Gen. Andrei Simnov, head of the Russian Army’s radio-electric warfare division.”

    “Official Ukrainian sources on May 1 said devastating artillery strikes on a Russian military headquarters may have injured the senior general in the Russian Army, Valery Gerasimov, along with killing or wounding dozens of other military personnel, many of them senior members of the officer’s corps.”

    https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/ukraine-says-russia-army-top-general-wounded-in-command-post-strike-dozens-killed.html

    Quite obvious that Ukraine get intelligence from Nato/US to carry out these high level strikes.

        • Neil

          Wikikettle,

          “Neil. I don’t think the Russians will do a Dresden Hiroshima or Nagasaki.”

          They’ve already done a Mariopul.

          And been threatening to use nukes.

    • Neil

      Jack,

      “Quite obvious that Ukraine get intelligence from Nato/US to carry out these high level strikes.”

      If the West is helping with arms, it’s natural that they’d be helping with Intel too.

      • Wikikettle

        Another escalation. Targeting leadership is very dangerous when the other side has promised ‘ lightning fast retaliation ‘. Looks like the old Conservative leaders in the Pentagon are being ignored as Martyanov explains. The neo cons and liberals are hell bent in direct war with Russia, as are the desperate Nazis, for us to come to their ‘ rescue ‘. Did they not learn anything from our scuttling away from our ‘allies’ in Afghanistan ?

        • Neil

          Wikikettle,

          “Another escalation. Targeting leadership is very dangerous when the other side has promised ‘ lightning fast retaliation ‘.”

          Yes, Putin’s hit squads against Zelensky have been met with swift retaliation by Ukraine’s military.

        • Laguerre

          And in your view any Ukrainian report about a subject they’re not likely to have knowledge about is nevertheless necessarily 100% true.

        • wschira

          Now, the Ukrainians and in particular SBU are known for idiotic fakes. They “let kill Babschenko by Russians” and after two days rose from the dead.

  • Peter

    “How can we expect any peace when the US insists on its unilateral dominance over the world, working to change regimes that reject its hegemony? This is what the war in Ukraine is about: Today Russia, tomorrow China.

    Hopefully, the awareness of the US wrongdoing is increasing.”

    So says Elijah J Magnier:

    https://mobile.twitter.com/ejmalrai/status/1520991021018095617

    He was also very good on Galloway last night, making the very good point that it is not only Ukraine-Russia that is now being assailed by American power but also the whole of Europe which has been corralled, against its best interests, into the self-destructive US sanctions regime.

    Ironic, is it not, that the previous global superpower (us) is now subject to the malign, destructive influence of the current one (US).

    Watch from 2:15:15 – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e9w-Lc_WL2w

    • Laguerre

      It’s been said, probably truly, for a long time that US policy in Ukraine has two prongs and targets to be defeated: 1. Russia, and 2. the EU. It’s a pity that von der Leyen and Scholz don’t seem to understand the point. Macron, I think, does understand.

      • Jack

        Laguerre

        Yes besides Macron there is no leader in the EU that seek a realistic peace, instead the hawkish baltic and poles seems to rule the EU on this issue.
        Chomsky touched upon that, mentioning Macron in his latest interview, he also put forward Trump as one such man that had that mindset.

        Noam Chomsky: Trump the ‘One Western Statesman of Stature’ Pushing Peace in Ukraine

        https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/05/01/noam-chomsky-trump-one-western-statesman-stature-pushing-peace-ukraine/

        • Henry Smith

          The establishment elite, dragging us into war and economic destruction:

          “Ursala Von der Leyen’s family tree traces a legacy of power and brutality, incorporating not only some of Germany’s most significant Nazis but also some of Britain’s largest slave traders and, through marriage, some of the United States’ largest slave owners. ”

          “Chrystia Freeland’s maternal grandfather, Michael (Mykhail) Chomiac, was a Nazi collaborator who served as editor-in-chief of an antisemitic newspaper in Cracow whose printing presses were seized from its Jewish owner. According to multiple reports, the newspaper, Krakivski Visti, was so antisemitic that when the Nazis slaughtered 33,000 Jews in Kiev’s Babi Yar ravine, Krakivski Visti declared the Jews “got their comeuppance” and that without Jews, Kiev had become “beautiful, glorious.” “

          “Victoria ‘f*k the EU’ Nuland, with family links to Ukraine and up to her armpits in the overthrow of the democratically elected Ukraine Government in 2014.”

          • DiggerUK

            L.A.,
            Peace is peace. A ceasefire should be demanded by all right minded people, regardless of their bias towards one party or the other, and peace negotiations started immediately.

            Thousands have already died since 2014, how many more do you want dead?

            Not doing so, is banging the war drum. This time some real WMD are out there. Your position is just madness

          • Lapsed Agnostic

            Thanks for your reply Jack. So in 2017 Trump says Russia & Ukraine should make peace, then in February 2022 he says that Putin’s invasion is “genius”, then in March 2022 he says the US should “bomb the shit out of Russia” using F-22’s with Chinese flags painted on them so that the Ruskies will think that the Chinese did it and start a war with China instead of Ukraine, then in April 2022 he says Russia & Ukraine should make peace because people will die. What will he be saying next week?

            As for Chomsky, this is what he was saying about Trump only 18 months ago:

            https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/noam-chomsky-believes-trump-is-the-worst-criminal-in-human-history

            I stand by my amateur psychiatric assessment.

            Thanks for your reply Digger. I don’t want any more people to die a violent death in Ukraine. However, I do think that a country has a right to defend itself if invaded by another, whether the invaders call it a ‘special military operation’ or a war. That’s why I thought that the Taliban and the Sunnis in Iraq had the right to attack military targets when their countries were invaded by the US & allies in 2001 & 2003 respectively.

            Unlike in Afghanistan & Iraq, every woman, child and man over 60 in Ukraine has had the right to reside in the EU since shortly after the war / special military operation began (not sure about men under 60 who identify as women). If they haven’t taken up that right, like the birth mothers of my niece & nephew – well, that’s their choice.

            I also really don’t want things to escalate to a nuclear exchange between NATO & Russia, but if the worst comes to pass – and I’ve put out info on another comments thread about how to go about preparing for that, if it’s of any interest – I think there really will only be one person to blame. If that’s madness, then perhaps I should try biting one or two commenters here.

            Thanks for your reply Pears. Agreed.

          • Jack

            Lapsed Agnostic

            Most likely there would be no russian intervention if Trump were still the president as Trump and Putin made a descent relationship during Trump’s presidency.

          • Bayard

            “If one side is led by a crazed megalomaniac who thinks he’s on a mission from god to kill Nazis it’s not going to happen.”

            I think that’s called the “No True Scotsman” fallacy.

          • Lapsed Agnostic

            Thanks again for your reply Jack. It’s entirely possible that Putin wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine if Trump were still president, but that might be because he couldn’t be sure whether Trump would be calling him a genius or ordering the USAF to paint Chinese flags on their F-22’s. As for Chomsky’s contention that he’s the worst criminal in human history (and that was before January 6): he’s not even the worst criminal out of the last four Presidents of the USA – and maybe not even the second worst.

            Bayard, if I was to state that the war in Ukraine will drag on because all Russians are bloodthirsty imperialists, and you retorted: “What about Vladimir Kara-Murza?”, and I responded that he wasn’t a proper Russian – that would be an example of the No True Scotsman fallacy.

          • Jack

            Lapsed Agnostic

            You have to go back and read up on Trump and Putin relationship during Trump’s presidency, Trump did not seek war with Russia, did you believe that during the Trump years?

          • Lapsed Agnostic

            Thanks again for reply Jack. During his presidency, I believe that Trump wasn’t seeking war with anyone, because he wanted to do “a tremendous deal” with everyone – apart from Iran, of course. Nevertheless, if Russia had invaded Ukraine on his watch, and he was being relentlessly mocked over his relationship with Putin by the US media – about which he affects insouciance, but really cares about significantly – and footage of putative Russian war crimes *happening to white people* was regularly being shown on the news, and he called Putin several times to tell him to stop but the invasion continued, who knows what he would have done?

        • Neil

          Vin_ot, you just provided a link to someone else claiming Chomsky said it. Do you have a link to Chomsky’s words, either video, audio, text or transcript?

          Quotation marks are used to signify that a person actually used those words. I say he didn’t. Feel free to prove me wrong

          • vin_ot

            Noam said there is “one statesman .. one high political figure in the United States” appealing for an end to the killing in Ukraine. You don’t appear to dispute his point. Rather, your triumph lies in highlighting that he did not say the precise term “a statesman of stature”.

            It’s a vital distinction that will be lost on many, but may I be the first to congratulate you on your quibble; which speaks very powerfully of your nature.

          • Neil

            Vin, it’s indicative of a contempt for truth when one side tries to pass off an entirely made-up phrase as a direct quote. You call it quibbling, but If it was merely a quibbling matter, why did different commenters feel the need to keep repeating it, with quotation marks, throughout the thread? Answer: because they were happy to rely on fabricated bullshit to support their argument.

  • DiggerUK

    Sanctions only work if they exist, if they don’t exist they can’t fail…..can they?

    This is taken from from the BBC online. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/world-europe-61295448

    “Summary
    The EU remains unable to agree on ending supplies of Russian oil and gas, Germany’s economy minister says
    Ministers are discussing an embargo on Russian oil, but Hungary has made it clear it will block consensus
    Germany says it would not be ready to block Russian gas but could bear a phased-in oil embargo”

    Three days ago the EU were talking the talk.
    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/An-EU-Embargo-On-Russian-Oil-Is-Imminent.html

    Today they are only talking to their suppliers…_
    https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/European-Requests-For-Russian-Gas-Hit-5-Month-High.html

    • Neil

      Why is it when I cite the bbc, I’m shouted down as some kind of zombie brainwashed by Western msm lies, but when you guys find something you like, it’s, “Hey, did you see this on the bbc?”

      If I didn’t know better I’d say you were biased.

      • Bayard

        I suspect that’s because you only cite the BBC when they are saying something you agree with. I think that there’s a term for that, let me see, ah, yes, bias.
        Unless you take the standpoint that the BBC always tells the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, which is absurd, you have to concede that it cannot necessarily be trusted, thus citing the BBC as an authority will always be open to challenge. OTOH, it is fairly easy to see the narrative that any news organisation wishes to promote and, once that has been established, any news item that tends to contradict that narrative will tend to be more likely the truth than one that goes along with it.

        • Neil

          Bayard,

          “any news item that tends to contradict that narrative will tend to be more likely the truth”

          Reports of the loch ness monster, flying spaghetti monster, UFO sightings, Boris Johnson being an honest politician, Freddie Starr ate my hamster, and Putin’s war not being a complete shitshow are more likely to be true on account of challenging the accepted narrative.

          Thanks for educating me

          • Bayard

            “that” in my comment =/= “the accepted” in yours, therefore you are being (mis)educated by your own lack of understanding.

      • Steve Hayes

        The BBC can generally be trusted to get a verifiable fact right. That doesn’t mean it can be trusted to present a spread of such facts, including ones that go against their prevailing narrative. It certainly doesn’t mean it can be trusted to present facts impartially: e.g. our side says, their side claims.

        • Neil

          Steve,

          “The BBC can generally be trusted to get a verifiable fact right”

          This is by far the most important function a news service can perform. High praise indeed.

          It also explains why it’s always shouted down as msm propaganda by Putin’s cheerleaders … so many inconvenient facts.

          • Bayard

            “The BBC can generally be trusted to get a verifiable fact right”

            “This is by far the most important function a news service can perform.”

            No it isn’t. Yes, the BBC often tells the truth, especially when it would be easy to prove it wasn’t. However, it cannot be trusted to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth. The best lies always contain elements of truth.

    • Pears Morgaine

      A useful idiot will along shortly to dismiss that as propaganda because Radio Free Europe and HRW are both ‘CIA constructs’ or run by the NWO/illuminate/lizards/Mossad.

          • vin_ot

            I strongly suspect that if you were Russian you would be similarly mocking anybody who queried official Russian propaganda.

          • Bayard

            I admire your Panglossian faith, or should I call it gullibility, that any state “news” organisation can be trusted to tell the truth.

      • Neil

        Pears, of course … until they find something critical of Ukraine/the US/UK, and then it’s, “Hey guys, did you see this in the telegraph/guardian/BBC …?”

        • cimarrón

          Neil and Pears Morgaine,
          I’d be interested in your thoughts on this YouTube video of ‘Retired Colonel Richard Black Interviewed by the Schiller Institute’.

          (The link was posted here by Courtenay Francis Raymond Barnett on April 30.)

          • Neil

            Cimmaron, thanks for the link. I read it. A few questions. He makes a big deal about Russia being invited into Syria by the official government. Why is this important, if it’s not important in Ukraine? He also claims “armed Ukrainians, with weapons to kill Russian troops were literally on their borders”. Seriously? He’s asking us to believe Ukraine was about to attack Russia? If Putin really believed that, all he has to do was wait for it to happen. Fewer Russian soldiers’ lives would have been lost (given that those attacking need to expend more troops than those defending) and the world would have been united in condemning Ukrainian aggression (not to mention amazed at Ukraine’s suicidal urge in attacking a much bigger, stronger state). He also paints Putin’s actions as being purely noble, saving lives in the Donbass. So why didn’t Russia limit its activities to the Donbass. If it had the world might have believed this narrative. Instead Russia made a move on Kyiv and … oh look … tried to bring down the official government.

            He also ignored countless reports of Russian war crimes but takes a single example (a tank stopping in front of 40 Ukrainians) as proof that Russia is being ultra cautious when it comes to civilian casualties. It’s possible that more civilians have died in Mariopul than died in Dresden in WWII, and that’s just one city. But for him, that single incident with the tank settles the case in Russia’s favour. Seriously? It stinks of bias. He also says stuff like senior French officers are fighting in Mariopul. My guess is he has no way of knowing that but he says it because it suits his narrative. When Mariopul inevitably falls, we’ll find out who is right. He also speculates that French missiles sank the Moskva. Why believe that and not a million other possibilities with no proof? Again, I think because such speculation suits his narrative.

            There’s more like that. It just seems like he has a narrative he wants to push and he selects certain pieces of evidence to push it while ignoring masses of evidence that contradicts it.

            Because of that, it’s hard to believe all the stuff he says about America’s crimes as he is so keen to push a narrative without an impartial assessment of evidence. But let’s say every word he says is true about what the US did in Syria. Then condemning the US for interfering in a sovereign state without being invited by the official government would mean you’d have to condemn Russia for doing the same in Ukraine. So if the US did those things, I condemn the US. But, unlike most commenters here, I don’t think any of that, if true, gives Russia a free pass to commit similar atrocities in Ukraine. So I condemn what Russia is doing in Ukraine.

            But one thing is, it’s great that he lives in a country where he can air his dissenting view and not be censored, not be fined, not be imprisoned for doing so. If people like Assad and Putin and Xi had the guts to give their people that level of freedom to say what they want and access information freely without fear of repercussions, then it might help convince the rest of the world they’re the good guys who are carrying out the will of their people. What are they afraid of?

          • Bruce_H

            Reply to Neil;

            > Seriously? He’s asking us to believe Ukraine was about to attack Russia?

            No, that’s not what was said, he said the Russians thought that the 60 000 Ukrainian troops were about to move into Donbass and recover it as part of Ukraine under government control. The organisation monitoring the military activity in the area reported a massive increase in shelling and this is said to have prompted the Russians to act. He’s not the only one to say this.
            You say you read the link, I would suggest listening to the video, he has a way with words that is quite refreshing.

          • Pears Morgaine

            Either way he says the Russian invasion was not a pre-planned attack but the build up for it on Ukraine’s borders can be traced back to March 2021. He doesn’t mention Putin’s remarks about Ukraine not being a sovereign state or the need to ‘de-Nazify’ or ‘de-militarise’ it.

            Frankly the idea of the poorest state in Europe deliberately picking a fight with a much larger and better armed opponent is ridiculous.

          • Shaun Onimus

            Pears:
            The build up was due to the NATO war games being conducted across the border around the same time. I believe it was reported on this blog. Weird how you can selectively remember your enemy’s actions but not what was causing that reaction. Probably just ‘bloodthirsty evil Russians’.

        • Neil

          Bruce, I read a transcript of the video, and “armed Ukrainians, with weapons to kill Russian troops” was a direct quote verbatim.

      • Bayard

        From the Wikipedia page, first line: “Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is a United States government funded organization”. Shame the lizards haven’t learned how to edit Wikipedia yet.

        • Neil

          Bayard, Russian state media is (by definition) funded by the Russian state. So does that mean that everything it broadcasts is a lie?

          • John Kinsella

            A most unhelpful question – at least from the POV of Putin groupies.

          • Bayard

            No, it means that everything it broadcasts is not necessarily the truth. State-funded media funded by its own state is bad enough, but RFE is state-funded media funded by a foreign state and so is, essentially, no different from Reichssender Hamburg.

    • Neil

      Bayard and vin, so, the question is, do you simply put your faith in sources that happen to reinforce your world view, or are there better criteria? Personally I’d be more inclined to trust a free press that often offers no-holds-barred criticism of its leaders, regularly exposes scandals in high office and sometimes even brings down entire governments, than I would a tightly controlled press that is only allowed to push the government’s narrative and find itself outlawed if it fails to toe the party line.

      • Bayard

        “do you simply put your faith in sources that happen to reinforce your world view, or are there better criteria?”

        Yes, I don’t trust anyone who is in the business of purveying information for money, their incentive is always to tell you what you want to hear.

        “Personally I’d be more inclined to trust a free press that often offers no-holds-barred criticism of its leaders, regularly exposes scandals in high office”

        Me, too, but where, these days does one find such a paragon? In the UK, it is reduced to a few, easily dismissed, outlets on the internet.

        “a tightly controlled press that is only allowed to push the government’s narrative and find itself outlawed if it fails to toe the party line.”

        That’s perilously close to being a description of the MSM in the UK these days.

        “One cannot hope to bribe nor twist,
        thank God, the British journalist,
        but seeing what the man will, do,
        unbribed, there’s no occasion to.”

        There are other means of control than the big stick.
        BTW, respect for spelling “toe” correctly.

    • Bruce_H

      What he says makes absolute sense, and yet no one will listen. The world is in a global lemming syndrome, and yet this is totally down to people following slavishly the mad policies of the US Democratic Party. Many think of the Democrats and Republicans being the US version of Right and Left but in reality the Democrats, in recent years at least, have always been the more warmongering party.

      When Trump was elected I have to admit I felt a sense of relief despite him being totally awful on many levels as I was also convinced that Clinton would have had us all in WW3 before the end of her mandate… Now Biden has taken up her bloody flag.

      Is it Russia that’s the eternal enemy of the rich or do they still see it as being communist? Does “residual communism” exist? In Russia despite the present government being conservative and right wing by European standards? Or are our traditional political terms out of date?

    • John Kinsella

      He is listed by Wikipedia as “He is known as an expert on sustainable development, economic development, and the fight against poverty.”

      Not international relations or defence…

      • glenn_nl

        So you think his comments on sanctions – from an economic perspective – are worthless? You don’t think maybe his vast knowledge of the way economies are affected by, say, wars and sanctions, have any bearing? Fascinating.

        Perhaps we should _only_ hear from the military and politicians, in your opinion?

        Surely it’s not his lack of enthusiasm for and promotion of more war that’s really offending you here.

  • Lapsed Agnostic

    Few good things have/will come out of the War in Ukraine – but one thing that has is that one or two Ivy Leaguers are finally getting an education in how things work – from Louise Mensch, of all people:

    https://twitter.com/brent_peabody/status/1521107856866557952

    By the way, if you’re wondering why Israel isn’t doing anywhere near as much for Ukraine even as countries which are heavily dependent on Ruskie oil & gas like Germany, the main reason – apart from it not wanting to upset the significant number of Israelis with Russian heritage – is that it’s worried that Russia will no longer tell it where the Iranian Revolutionary Guards are hiding in Syria so that it can bomb them to ****.

    Israel’s reward for refusing point blank to even *sell* weapons to Ukraine was to have Lavrov publicly state that Hitler was Jewish. How will we even begin to explain these times to our children, grandchildren, nephews, nieces etc? – assuming that we are able to, of course.

      • Lapsed Agnostic

        Thanks for your reply U Watt, and for the link to Afshin’s tweet – still miss him on RT. I wasn’t aware of the recent revelations about Hitler’s heritage, the Jerusalem Post not being on my daily reading list – for better or worse. Whether it’s true or not, it’s perhaps not the best thing to be bringing up when seeking to retain some measure of support from one the few countries in the Western sphere to not now be entirely antagonistic to your cause – and it seems to have had the unfortunate (for him) result that Israel is now willing to supply non-lethal military aid to Ukraine.

        https://twitter.com/SamRamani2/status/1521540597227692033

        I don’t want to be seen giving the Ruskies tips, but I think it might be good for them if Lavrov has a fortnight’s holiday in Sochi or somewhere, before he claims that Kashmir belongs to Pakistan or that China belongs to Taiwan.

        • Pears Morgaine

          They’re not recent revelations, the story has been kicking around for decades, is completely lacking in any supporting evidence and has been de-bunked.

          Hitler’s grandmother was supposed to have worked as a housemaid to a wealthy Jewish family in Graz but there’s no record of anyone with their name living in the city at the time and Jews were banned from the area until the 1860s anyway.

    • Jimmy Riddle

      Lapsed Agnostic – many thanks for drawing attention to this!
      Yes – the Ukraine war is utterly horrible.

      It’s very good, though, to see that people are finally `getting wise’ to Israel.

      • Lapsed Agnostic

        Thanks for your reply Jimmy. You’re welcome. Yes, more joy in heaven etc – I may be wrong, but I’d imagine that young Peabody and his pals have careers of some influence ahead of them.

    • Jack

      Lapsed Agnostic

      Why should Israel give weapons to a state that glorify Stepan Bandera, an antisemite that killed thousands of jews or where such weapons would go to the infamous Azov battalion, a neo-nazi regiment?

      • Squeeth

        Because “Israel” is run by antisemite thugs who will collaborate with anyone who hints that they will support the last and foullest apartheid state on earth.

      • Lapsed Agnostic

        Thanks for your reply Jack. Why does Israel sell hundreds of millions of dollars worth of weapons & defence systems to Gulf State dictatorships, which could at some point easily turn them on it? I’d imagine that the Israelis would be flooding Ukraine with free Spike missiles & Harop loitering munitions if, say, it was being invaded by Iran.

        • Jack

          Lapsed Agnostic

          You think it makes sense for Israel to arm Ukraine considering the anti-semitism aspect?
          I put the question before but you diverted to the arab world and responded with a question to my question.

          • Lapsed Agnostic

            Thanks again for your reply Jack. That was a rhetorical question btw. It would make far more sense for Israel to sell weapons to Ukraine than to the Gulf States. If it sold Ukraine, say, 20 Spike NLOS’s & 20 Harops (barely a token gesture compared to the UK’s largesse), they would doubtless all be used against Russian targets in Russian-controlled Ukraine because they’re very effective weapons. Assuming that they could get their hands on some of them, Azov & the like wouldn’t be holding them back just so they could launch them at targets in Israel from a Lebanese hillside when the War in Ukraine is finally over.

            The fact is that this is mostly about Israel’s bizarre obsession with Iran & Hezbollah in Syria – whilst much of the time it largely ignores the Hamas powder-keg it’s stuck up its arse in Gaza, apart from the completely disproportionate carpet bombing retaliations to the periodic rocketry, of course.

  • DunGroanin

    Let’s talk about the pipelines and propaganda.

    Brotherhood & Soyuz are the least of Europe’s problems – Ukraine is a red herring when it comes to pipelines of Russian hydrocarbons. Checkout the Oil pipelines and volumes too.
    https://www.nationalgeographic.org/photo/europe-map/#oil-and-gas-pipelines

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_natural_gas_pipelines

    It’s Yamal Europe & Northern Lights through Belarus INTO Ukraine near Poland and through it via Jamal in the north and Transgas in the south feeding in to rest of Europe through Baumfarten Gas Hub that is central to the gas supply security for many Europeans.
    https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Major_Russian_Gas_Pipelines_to_Europe.svg

    Note how the U.K. is plumbed into it through NEL & BBL too ! Don’t tell me the U.K. doesn’t NEED or USE Russian Gas!

    Of course we could make the dangerous sea journeys using insane amount of fossil fuel to power the giant floating dangerous liquid gas bombs , and expect to unload in the only deep water port in Wales and push it back to Europe … but that would be insane !

    NS2 direct to Germany was a guarantee of secure supply to us via that shorter route reducing transit fees and hence better profits for all these involved.

    The Russians know that all monies stolen for commodities supplied will be repaid with interest some time in the future – regardless of how many decades – because legality of contracts and banking will stand on their side; hence they will not renege on contracts of supply as long as they get actual roubles or even not. But they certainly won’t renew or increase any supplies without actual roubles and certainly not if their previous supplies monies are not released back.

    Sanctions will work in the opposite direction for the first time this century – let’s see how long the public carries on believing the bullshit of Russophobia because as India is finding out today with the heatwaves that require more fuel to power an increasing demand for electricity generated by coal – ready supplies actually delivered in the short term is what actually matters – I bet they’ll be considering switching to clean gas instead of dirty coal through a pipeline – shame they didn’t yet partake in the BRI and are complicit in stopping Pakistan from doing so.

    Now that Ramadan is over and Imran can take on the massed fading powers of the 5+1 Eyed Gollum Empire and the ISI/CIA praetorian cabal held by the traitorous diaspora … things will naturally evolve in these parts as it is about to do in the French state as the GJ’s gather their loins to usurp their latest little bankers emperor and the current republic goes the way of predecessors.

    Russia and China will just have to sit back and watch as their enemies driven to madness make true the idiom of not stopping their enemies in full throated self destruction.
    They will be there to step in and help as soon as asked.

    If I am allowed to buy Gazprom gas for domestic use through the Grid at half the price of the insane LNG I will jump instantly. I bet there would be a queue of realists ahead of me too!

    In the meantime we are being screwed by the Yankees and their proxies and placements in our governments across Europe.

    Their unipolar Empire is dead, it now resembles the classic headless chicken running around in its death throes before expiring to the dinner table of the multipolar new world order.

    What a gas , eh ? ?

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