Chris Hedges introduces his latest article for Scheer Post, titled “Chronicle of a War Foretold“, with the following:

“After the fall of the Soviet Union, there was a near universal understanding among political leaders that NATO expansion would be a foolish provocation against Russia. How naive we were to think the military-industrial complex would allow such sanity to prevail.”

Imperial narrative managers have been falling all over themselves working to dismiss and discredit the abundantly evidenced idea that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was due largely to Moscow’s fear of NATO expansion and the refusal of Washington and Kyiv to solidify a policy that Ukraine would not be added to the alliance.

Take Michael McFaul, the mass media’s go-to pundit on all things Russia:

https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1496726589828067339

Or New Jersey Congressman Tom Malinowski:

Or Just Security editor Ryan Goodman:

It makes sense that they would have to do this. After all, if westerners were to get it into their heads that this whole terrible war could have been avoided by simply solidifying a policy of neutrality for Ukraine and issuing a guarantee that it would never be added to NATO, they would begin asking why this did not happen. NATO powers had no interest in adding Ukraine to the alliance anyway, so it doesn’t really make sense to refuse to make such low-cost concessions if the only alternative is mass military slaughter. I mean, unless your goal was to provoke mass military slaughter to advance your own geostrategic objectives.

So they work hard to present the narrative that the invasion has nothing to do with NATO at all, and occurred solely because Putin is an evil madman who hates freedom and wants to destroy democracy. Most western analysis goes no deeper than this:

But these herculean propaganda efforts have one pretty significant plot hole: if the attack on Ukraine has nothing to do with NATO expansion, then how come so many western experts have spent years warning that NATO expansion will lead to an attack on Ukraine?

Check out this 2015 video clip by John Mearsheimer, for example:

Or this one by the late great Stephen F Cohen back in 2010:

https://twitter.com/queeralamode/status/1495993824921157632?s=20&t=UgvS4y-V4t43IuKDhNdEOw

Or this excerpt from a summary by The Nation of points made by Cohen in a 2017 dialogue with John Batchelor titled “Have 20 Years of NATO Expansion Made Anyone Safer?“:

NATO promises that Georgia might one day become a member state was an underlying cause of the Georgian-Russian war of 2008, in effect a US-Russian proxy war. The result was the near ruination of Georgia. NATO remains active in Georgia today.

 

Similar NATO overtures to Ukraine also underlay the crisis in that country in 2014, which resulted in Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the still ongoing Ukrainian civil war in Donbass, and in effect another US-Russian proxy war. Meanwhile, US-backed Kiev remains in profound economic and political crisis, and Ukraine fraught with the possibility of a direct American-Russian military conflict.

Or this from Stephen M Walt in 2015:

Today, those who want to arm Ukraine are demanding that Russia cease all of its activities in Ukraine, withdraw from Crimea, and let Ukraine join the EU and/or NATO if it wants and if it meets the membership requirements. In other words, they expect Moscow to abandon its own interests in Ukraine, full stop. It would be wonderful if Western diplomacy could pull off this miracle, but how likely is it? Given Russia’s history, its proximity to Ukraine, and its long-term security concerns, it is hard to imagine Putin capitulating to our demands without a long and costly struggle that will do enormous additional damage to Ukraine.

The solution to this crisis is for the United States and its allies to abandon the dangerous and unnecessary goal of endless NATO expansion and do whatever it takes to convince Russia that we want Ukraine to be a neutral buffer state in perpetuity. We should then work with Russia, the EU, and the IMF to develop an economic program that puts that unfortunate country back on its feet.

Or this from George Kennan right after the US Senate approved NATO expansion all the way back in 1998:

“I think it is the beginning of a new cold war. I think the Russians will gradually react quite adversely and it will affect their policies. I think it is a tragic mistake. There was no reason for this whatsoever. No one was threatening anybody else. This expansion would make the founding fathers of this country turn over in their graves… Of course there is going to be a bad reaction from Russia, and then [the NATO expanders] will say that we always told you that is how the Russians are — but this is just wrong.”

Or how about now-CIA Director William Burns’s 2008 memo to then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice:

“Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for the Russian elite (not just Putin). In more than two and a half years of conversations with key Russian players, from knuckle-draggers in the dark recesses of the Kremlin to Putin’s sharpest liberal critics, I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests.”

Or what the last US ambassador to the USSR Jack Matlock recently wrote about the Ukraine conflict, calling it “an avoidable crisis that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense”:

In 1997, when the question of adding more members to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), I was asked to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In my introductory remarks, I made the following statement: “I consider the Administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.”

So many people who’ve worked hard to gain an understanding of the Russian government have been warning for years that NATO expansionism would lead to a disastrous conflict, strongly emphasising Ukraine as a powderkeg where that conflict could ignite. Yet we’re being asked to believe that what we’re seeing in Ukraine has nothing whatsoever to do with NATO expansion and is due rather to Vladimir Putin simply being a mean jerk who wants to ruin everything.

The aforementioned Michael McFaul even goes so far as to pretend this thing we were warned about for decades was never anything anyone ever mentioned until the end of last year:

Imperial spinmeisters have even gone so far as to deceitfully claim Putin makes no mention of NATO in a speech about intervening in Ukraine and citing that as evidence that he’s just a land-grabbing Hitler-like monster, hoping no one would fact check them:

When he most certainly did:

And continues to:

So I dunno, if experts have been warning for many years that NATO expansion would provoke an attack, and the guy launching the attack is explicitly citing NATO expansion as a driving motive for his actions, it seems like maybe it’s sorta kinda got something to do with NATO expansion.

Which would be great news, because it would mean that the US and its allies actually have a lot more power to end this war than they’ve been letting on, and no good reason not to do so immediately.

_________________________

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57 responses to “Experts Warned For Years That NATO Expansion Would Lead To This”

  1. …..much restraint has been exercised on my part regarding “god” and other similar abstract manifestations…..the fraud of christianity has guided our path to this point in time…..true believers are waiting for the order….to launch…..so now i will say….fuck your god, goddess, deity, invisible whatever, and so on……the ashes and eventual dust will be here long after the the relevance of said abstractions…….a memorial to the futility of our nonsense……

  2. “I consider the Administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.” And that’s the truth. How will this struggle for influence in the area of the former USSR end? In the Book of Daniel we read: “At the appointed time [the king of the north] will return back [Russia will regain the influence, which it lost after the break-up of the Soviet Union. It also means the break-up of the EU and NATO. Many countries of the former Eastern block will return to a military alliance with Russia, but not everyone], and will enter into the south [because of ethnic conflict to the south of Russia’s borders (Matthew 24:7)], but it will not be as the former [Georgia – 2008] or as the latter [Ukraine – now], for the dwellers of coastlands of Kittim [the distant West, to be precise – Americans] will come against him, and (he) will broke down [mentally], and will go back.” (11:29, 30a) This will be a mutual slaughter. This time it will be a world war not only by name. “The great power sword” will also be used. (Revelation 6:4) Jesus characterized him in this way: “A frightening things both and extraordinary (related to unusual phenomena) from sky powerful will be.” For that reason there will be significant tremors along the length and breadth of the regions [of strategic importance] and famines, and pestilences. Some ancient manuscripts contain the words “and frosts”. The Aramaic Peshitta: “and will be great frosts”. (Luke 21:11) We call this today “nuclear winter”. In Mark 13:8 there are also words of Jesus: “and disorders” (in the sense of confusion and chaos). The Aramaic Peshitta: “and confusion” (on the state of public order). This extremely detailed sign fits only one war. Jesus stated: “All these are but the beginning of the birth pains.” (Matthew 24:8)

    1. what a relief that everything is going according to god’s plan.

      1. The Gods Must Be Crazy.

  3. ……how many “events” have been created to advance the agenda of white supremism?….. too numerous to mention here…..amerikkka has a long history of it….amerikkkan exceptionalism is at stake here as always in these “media events”….the reliable knee-jerk-off of tacit support of the current “show” is expected….a distinct result of the reliable ignorance of the amerikkkant people…..what is frightening, to say the least, is that instead of the usual ticker tape parade of imperial warriors returning home, the glorification of our “superior” killing machine, the celebrations of our imperial alliances……we get real FALLOUT…..all in the name of real FICTION…….

    1. I listened to an expert on nuclear weapons on TED and he said every place that has a military base has a nuclear missile aimed at. Check!
      And we should ask our military what happens after the nuclear war.
      Nuclear winter, starvation and death even in countries that do not own nukes.

  4. i’ve got the tass – newssite bookmarked. https://tass.com/

    1. thank you. lots of information provided by Russian govt there, i feel much more grounded now though i miss comments by poeple around the world on RT.

  5. Some of the loonier warmongers are calling for a no-fly zone to be imposed over Ukraine, a development that could rapidly lead to war between Russia and NATO.
    .
    The imposition of a no-fly zone “would be a significant and real help for the people of Ukraine,” said Tory MP Peter Bone.

    In the United States, Congressman Adam Kinzinger demanded that the United States take this measure. “Declare a #NoFlyZone over Ukraine,” Kinzinger tweeted. “History teaches that taking a stand is inevitable and gets more costly with time. We own the skies, Russia cannot hold a candle to our Air power. Do this. Putin is too dangerous to hope he is satisfied with ‘just Ukraine.’”
    The claim that the United States “own(s) the skies” in Eastern Europe is false. Russia operates what is arguably the world’s most advanced Anti-Access and Area Denial (A2/AD) system, which would inflict significant losses on NATO aircraft that sought to engage Russian air forces. If Moscow’s aircraft were to come under attack from sites within NATO territory, Russia could respond with cruise missile strikes on the batteries, triggering NATO Article 5 and starting a world war.

    This insane demand won support on both sides of the aisle, with Democratic Party operative Jon Cooper demanding, “The U.S. must declare a no-fly zone in Ukraine—NOW!!”

    In an exchange on BBC’s Radio 4 Today, UK Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said that the imposition of a no-fly zone would be an act of war against Russia.

    “To do a no-fly zone I would have to put British fighter jets against Russian; NATO would have to declare war on Russia.” This would “trigger a European war,” he said.
    https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/02/26/ukra-f26.html

    1. another zionist war in Europe seems inevitable, unless the european people rise up and throw their zionist trash out first.

      1. “We own the sky”. I love that! Five thousand miles from home. Arrogance at its best. These guys don’t even make a pretence at invoking international law. It’s pure unadulterated “might is right”. Next thing you know, one of these lunatics is gonna ask why the CIA hasn’t whacked Putin yet. What do we pay them for? However exhaustive one thinks the American constitution is, there’s still a big hole in it: there should be an amendment stipulating that anyone beating the drums for war will be given a gun and a helmet and packed off to the theatre of operation without even a pair of binoculars (but with earplugs) because that’s how close he’s gonna get to the action. Then of course, it’s these MIC-sponsored chest-beating snowflakes who vote the amendments, so let’s not dream… :o)

    2. The nutcakes in Congress do not represent us. I wrote to my Congressma and Senator that they do not have my permission to ship my money to Ukrainian oligarchs.
      In his turn, my own senator introduced a bill to establish and fund Ukrainian Resistance.
      However, I must point out, people in the Senate are way older than an average US person, they literally represent a different era. I hate to call him a dinosaur because the actual dinosaurs were busy evolving, which we cannot suspect our senators of.

  6. My article is called ‘Angry Bear’ it is my ignorant American perspective on the Russian situation.

    https://chasingthesquirrel.com/

  7. I made a wonderful screenshot today, in which you could see a headline, saying that Selensky agreed to enter negotiations on a ceasefire with Moscow, time and location yet to be determined and then a breaking news line, saying, that the US offered to evacuate Selensky. (The spider evacuates the fly to the safety of its net)
    The big lies in one picture:
    The US demands negotiations (at best in hope they fail).
    The russians don’t want negotiations (which they do, but now they have clear minimum demands)

    I have no more tolerance for the stupid, rhetorical question “What does Putin want?”, when he clearly stated in his speech, that demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine are his goals. The circumstance, that MSM watchers, readers and listeners in the west have no idea who the Banderas and Asov batallion are, pretty much says it all.
    The Muricans would love to extend this war endlessly, most likely to sell weapons, have someone else to point at (which they do anyway) and implement more anti-democratic measures, because the amount of people who saw through this charade right away was surprisingly high. I expect the next anti-“russian disinformation” campaign, with internet censorship coming pretty soon.

    One thing becomes ever more apparent: The proxy fight is not so much US against Russia, it is US against Europe, because our people will actually be the ones to suffer from exploding prices and idiot sanctions.

    1. I saw that as well:
      Zelensky ready to negotiate with Russia on PERMANENT basis;
      The location is being chosen, but Zelensky disappeared.
      US says it is ready to evacuate Zelensky.
      Zelensky tells all who want to hear that we may not see him again alive.
      I used to like his comedies, but this is too dark for my taste.

      1. Latest: Ukraine now refuses to negotiate.

  8. I just had a thought: the other week when that us spokesman was called out by the AP journalist for claiming Russia was going to invade using crisis actors etc. At the time people were saying “wow a mainstream media member holding the power apparatus accountable, maybe the tide is turning in journalism?”

    Well, given hindsight I think I see (cynically) exactly the play there. If the US had known about an invasion, and did nothing to stop it, and didn’t explain or provide any evidence such that mainstream journalists were calling them out for it, what do they gain from that display of a seemingly blatant lack of credibility?

    Simple: so they can stamp their feet and say “see?? Told you so. Don’t question us next time.”

    I’m anticipating them to use this copiously for the forseeable future. “We told you about Ukraine, now shut up and don’t ask us for proof.”

    What seemed to be a journalist standing up to power perfectly served their interests in enabling them to make baseless claims in perpetuity.

  9. Lawrence, Picot, Sykes, Balfour, and Camels Avatar
    Lawrence, Picot, Sykes, Balfour, and Camels

    The continuing insidious creep of attempted imperialist expansion, combined with unadulterated propaganda and cowardly, obsequious conformity to the delusions of the self determined predominant exceptionalists, has been bought to heel in Ukraine. During the reign of Queen Victoria, opium in concert with bludgeoning regulatory and militarised ignorants, was the preferred catalyst utilised to minimise the oppositions potential to resist and defend themselves against fundamental, rapacious injustices. Fast forward a century and a half and we are still confronted by similar protagonists, suffering from the same delusional expansionist imperialist ideals, but manipulation, deceit, and misinformation are now their chosen opiates of choice.

  10. zbigniew dzwonkowski Avatar
    zbigniew dzwonkowski

    Any problems worldwide mean the sharper human minds… which changed very little through ages… then, here are the questions to answer : … Is the “Arjuna dilemma” to fight his cousins in the Bhagavad-Gita , relevant by analogy to the present situation in Ukraine ?…. Was the Bhagavad-Gita War all about the Kuru Brothers hypocrisy ? ….. Does the structure of the biblical names Gog and Ma-Gog suggest the war between Brothers ?…. to begin with… in order to solve the world problems…

  11. After causing the crisis, the White House asked Congress for ($$$ 6.4 billion) more money to deal with it.
    Congress does not produce anything, and even the MIC just spends my and my children’s money.
    So where is the money going to come from? To pay for the outstanding National Debt, the US will have to go pick on other countries to steal their resources. This is not a democracy, but for sure is a kleptocracy.

    1. It’s a gross puke of lies all MSM. It’s utterly disgusting to see they actively lying in despair over and over.

  12. The U.S. Oligarchy PROVOKED Russia into this. THEY WANTED THIS TO HAPPEN. There is no other way I can see it. Caring about the people of Ukraine without caring about the people in the other independent areas that Putin is ‘now’ defending who have been attacked for 8 years is sickening.

  13. Where do these idiots get off? How stupid do they think we are???
    I read Putin’s speech on 24 February and have to say I agree completely with him.
    If you’re interested, here it is in translation:
    http://thesaker.is/address-by-the-president-of-the-russian-federation-february-24-2022/

    1. it was a forceful ribetting speech. “i should have done this long ago…” was visceral. i think Putin intended to send extreme chill down the NATO spine. his anger is completely justified, anger is a great motivator, you have no soul if you’re not full of red hot anger against heinous crimes against humanity.

      1. AND being accused of poisoning the Skripals et al, etc, etc, etc!

        PS I said in an earlier post (in another thread) that it was undoubtedly all staged, and anyone who followed the saga closely will know that there were numerous inconsistencies and anomalies in the official narrative. Here are just two of them:

        What are the chances of two people who came into contact with a nerve agent several hours earlier becoming incapacitated in EXACTLY the same moment. Absolute zero of course!

        And it is of course inconceivable that the chemical weapons experts would only think to check the front door handle of Sergei Skripal’s house some three weeks after the Skripals were (allegedly) poisoned, and in the Real World they would have gone to the house the very next day, and the door handle would have been the very first thing they checked prior to entering the property.

        The reason the scriptwriters gave it three weeks (during which time the MSM endlessly speculated as to how the would-be assassins administered the Novichok etc) is so that the MSM had plenty of time to brainwash the public that the Skripal’s were poisoned on the one hand, AND, that it was that evil Vladimir Putin wot done it on the other. But just like in all fairy tales, they ALL lived happily ever after (in Part !, anyway!)

  14. What is boost phase intercept? Anybody? Over the years, Putin has alluded to it dozens of times in multiple press sessions with “journalists” hailing from every nook and cranny on our planet, and made it clear, without going into the kindergarten details, that this MAD busting “vaguery” is the Russian Federation’s chief concern regarding Nato expansion. So what is it about those AMB batteries being “parked in front of his house” that he particularily doesn’t like? The answer to these questions might never be made known to us, as Vlad the Mystical has also made it clear, that when he speaks to these theoretically fact hunting audiences, they seemed filled with only the “deaf, dumb, and dyslexic.”

    1. BPI is when you shoot down an ICBM when it is still taking off (and is larger and slower). That’s within the first 5 minutes of the launch of the ICBM. You need to install your ABM’s pretty close to the launch site.

      1. Correct. In order perform BPI, an interceptor must be within its operational range, and the basic BPI formula is, the closer both the interptor and its radar are to the target, the more effecient they become.

  15. It’s not always easy to know what American politicians are going to do except for one thing that is absolutely predictable and verifiable throughout history: if something goes awry because of them, you can be sure that it’s somebody else’s fault.
    That’s 100% proof in all weather conditions: hurricanes, floods, snowstorms, wildfires…
    Mind you, they’re not the only ones! The late shah of Iran famously said, “I’ll behave like the king of Sweden when the Iranian people behave like the Swedes”.
    Some folks say his policies – often inspired by and serving the interests of the Americans, who’d put him on the throne, instead of those of the Iranians – were wrong but that’s a gross historical misinterpretation. The objective reality is that the shah reigned over the wrong people. In an ideal world, he would have been able to exchange it against another one more suited to his kind of beauty.
    In the case at hand, the US lit a fire in Russia’s backyard eight years ago and has kept fueling it while Biden was proconsul there and his son an important energy counsellor because of the names he bore (Hunter, which is self-explaining and Biden… well… same thing).
    A source said that it was because of the competence on energy he had acquired through years of sniffing cocaine all day but at press time, we’re still waiting for confirmation by a second source – contrary to the New York Times and Washington Post policies.
    And then when Putin comes with the fire extinguisher, they exclaim, “You’ve got a nerve to say we started that mess just because Vicky “Fuck the EU” came to eat some cookies on Kiev’s Maidan with the neo-nazis who were pulling the coup! If you can’t eat cookies with neo-nazis pulling a coup against a president you want out after giving them five billion dollars pocket money without being accused of meddling, what’s the world coming to?”
    Let’s talk about Russian meddling in US elections instead! At least this is documented! An FBI agent has been told by his brother in law who heard it from his butcher that in a little village in Idaho in 2016, a Russian expat working there as a lumberjack had told one of his American colleagues in the local dive that he was pretty sure Trump didn’t eat little children, contrary to what this guy was claiming and this in front of two witnesses who were not even as drunk, a moose that had come to visit a friend and a source who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to talk in front of moose!
    If that’s not Russian meddling, I wonder what is! But the coup that ousted Yanukovych? We’re respectable people here, Mister!

  16. when biden said: ‘putin has decided to invade’, it should be read as: ‘i have decided that putin has to invade’.

  17. Just found this article on Declassified from Feb 3rd which is well worth checking out:

    Ukraine crisis: How can peace be secured in Europe?

    Diplomats must keep talking to defuse tensions with Russia and negotiate a new pan-European security deal, an international relations expert tells Declassified.

    A neutral Ukraine with elections to allow for self-government in its eastern Donbas region. That could be the best route out of the crisis with Russia, international relations expert David Speedie has said.

    New commitments to avoid medium-range nuclear missiles being stationed in eastern Europe would also ease tensions, he commented.

    https://declassifieduk.org/ukraine-crisis-how-can-peace-be-secured-in-europe/

  18. Republicofscotland Avatar
    Republicofscotland

    A fairly accurate assessment so far for those who want an update.

    https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2022/02/25/ukraine-update-2/

  19. What would be the U.S. response if China and Mexico entered into a military ally pact?

  20. On New Jersey Congressman Tom Malinowski’s cartoonish ‘tweety turd’… “this is nothing to do with NATO expansion”… just as McCarthyism had nothing to do with Americans’ paranoid, dreaded fear of the Soviet Unions ‘communism’; still just as palpable today as it was back then, even though institutional communism died a dreary death, somewhere way back at the end of the 1980’s.
    Joe Biden, the remnant, is the same individual as those back then who still believe that capitalist Russia has no right to exist, Autocracy, or the hypocrisy of the democrat of you know who.

  21. It’s a long sequence about the same mistakes over and over again.
    The UK defense secretary now is talking about avoiding confrontations with Russia because a minimal miscalculation could lead to a disaster. But make no mistake, they always played down Putin and it was pretty common in Obama era to find some of them impersonating Putin. Thanks no one from Obama era is holding the wheels of power, right? Ohh, Biden…
    Anyways, Rome – Britannia-America have the same simple ancient strategy.
    They use you like a parasite uses its host. It’s very likely that the person you used to be was not even up to the task of protecting the establishment. You might never know who your true origins were as old programs are often overwritten. It’s easy to become confused when you’ve been reprogramed. Humans can be reprogramed just as easily your computer if not more so. Simple redirection, conditioning, repetition. Can you see some patterns to deflect and to redirect to something one or two steps ahead. Of course not.

    1. Awesome, you win the kookiest comment of the day. Sad, though. Maybe the pope and the queen have reprogrammed you.

  22. It’s hard to get good information about the war in Ukraine this morning (“fog of war”), but some themes come to the top.
    Russia’s cruise missile strikes for the first hour yesterday morning took out air force, anti-aircraft, military shipping and command communications.
    Ukrainian central command had been located in the Donetsk/Luhansk region with 60,000-100,000 Ukrainian troops, for an assault.
    Artillery shelling had massively increased for 10 days, which is why Biden could be sure of a “Russian invasion”.
    Shelling from Donetsk forces reportedly took out that command center.
    Russia hit all of the US bioweapon sites in Ukraine, it seems, as primary targets.
    Russians took Chernobyl and are using the exclusion zone as a military transit route.
    Crimean forces moved rapidly up from the peninsula, without Ukrainian military resistance, retaking Dnieper river water supply, which had been cut off since 2014.
    Russia controls the air and military communications, but civilian communications and the electric grid have not been taken down.
    Ukrainian troops are making civilians targets by giving assault rifles to all takers in cities, and setting up sniper positions in apartment buildings.
    Ukrainian and Russian governments are supposedly starting negotiations. That is the best route, of course, negotiated surrender to save civilians
    https://www.johndayblog.com/2022/02/ukrainian-war-morning-update.html
    https://drjohnsblog.substack.com/

    1. Republicofscotland Avatar
      Republicofscotland

      “it seems, as primary targets.
      Russians took Chernobyl and are using the exclusion zone as a military transit route.”

      John.

      I read this morning that the Ukrainian forces blew up a small nuclear power station near Lugansk, (The Saker) that got me thinking as to why would Russian forces try and capture Chernobyl nuclear power station yesterday, I got my answer, also Ukraine has around fifteen dilapidated nuclear power plants throughout the country, blowing up another one could be staged and blamed on Russian forces.

      1. ‘Claire Corkhill, a professor of nuclear material degradation at the University of Sheffield in the U.K., wrote on Twitter that the gamma radiation around the Chernoybl plant “looks to have increased by around 20 times compared with a few days ago.” However, caution should be taken “not to over-interpret at this stage,” she said.

        “This appears to be based on a single data point,” Corkhill added in a separate tweet. “What is intriguing is that the level of radiation has increased mostly around the main routes in and out of the Chernobyl exclusion zone, as well as the reactor. This would tend to suggest that increased movement of people or vehicles may have disturbed radioactive dust.”‘
        https://www.livescience.com/chernobyl-radiation-levels-rise-after-fighting

        1. And the Luhansk power station, which was shelled a few days ago, is a coal-fired plant.

  23. I’m getting a drubbing on FB for comparing what Russia is doing on its border and what the US is doing all around the globe. It appears many Unitedstatesians are just too afraid to think for themselves. I’m eager to see what the situation is in a week from now.

    1. Republicofscotland Avatar
      Republicofscotland

      Here you go Gregg.

      “FACEBOOK WILL TEMPORARILY allow its billions of users to praise the Azov Battalion, a Ukrainian neo-Nazi military unit previously banned from being freely discussed under the company’s Dangerous Individuals and Organizations policy, The Intercept has learned.”

      “The policy shift, made this week, is pegged to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine and preceding military escalations. The Azov Battalion, which functions as an armed wing of the broader Ukrainian white nationalist Azov movement, began as a volunteer anti-Russia militia before formally joining the Ukrainian National Guard in 2014; the regiment is known for its hardcore right-wing ultranationalism and the neo-Nazi ideology pervasive among its members. Though it has in recent years downplayed its neo-Nazi sympathies, the group’s affinities are not subtle: Azov soldiers march and train wearing uniforms bearing icons of the Third Reich; its leadership has reportedly courted American alt-right and neo-Nazi elements; and in 2010, the battalion’s first commander and a former Ukrainian parliamentarian, Andriy Biletsky, stated that Ukraine’s national purpose was to “lead the white races of the world in a final crusade …”

      https://theintercept.com/2022/02/24/ukraine-facebook-azov-battalion-russia/

    2. I heard an Indian diplomat explaining why her country abstained in the UN Security Council resolution condemning Russia. India doesn’t condone the invasion, she said, but it’s sheer hypocrisy for the West to bleat about it, after the unprovoked and illegal invasion of Iraq.

  24. I AGREE with you Caitlin.

    From what I have read, Russia WANTED to join NATO and the U.S. Government refused them.
    So of course Russia is afraid of the Ukraine joining NATO.
    We should have let Russia join.

    Why Not? I would guess because the Military Industrial System needs an Enemy as an excuse to endlessly build up the U.S. Military.

    1. I’m not so sure Russia expected to be allowed to join NATO. Asking to join and then being refused would be strong evidence of NATO’s intentions and consistent with the continuation of centuries of animosity toward Russia.

      1. If Russia expected to be allowed to join or not, they should have been allowed to.

        1. that would nullify NATO’s reason to exist.

          1. There’s always the aliens from outer space to defend against.

  25. Marginalize dissent long enough and truth as a process (not unlike science or democracy) can not only be managed/controlled BUT expertise itself compromised as well, when the well-compensated cheerleaders discredit entire institutions, possibly crushing the ideals they were built on.

    If anyone finds that wise or insightful, it’s almost certainly something I read somewhere, probably from a dead person, whose words often have more value than the thoughts (if we could call them that) of the living.

  26. oh, how they craved for this war … (it was the actual reason for the maidan coup, imo). they were so disappointed in 2014 when the russians addepted only crimea but not the republics and didn’t go in …
    (btw do ukrainians still have to pay for all the weaponry they got that’s being blown to pieces now?)

    1. You bet! Does the car dealer cancel your bill because you crashed the one you just bought from him into a bus as you were getting out of his garage, even if he insisted on selling you options that you hadn’t even asked for – which must have been the kind of hard-selling played on Zelensky by arms dealers explaining to him that he was not the nobody he looked like but the new Winston Churchill instead? Then again, maybe Zelensky had insured his brand new weapons against terrorism à la Larry Silverstein… :o)

  27. Aljazeera posted the following article about the Minsk Agreement a couple of weeks ago on Feb 9th. Here’s a short clip from it:

    Moscow may see Minsk II as a way to guarantee its central security demand – that Ukraine is never allowed to join NATO. Washington and NATO have already rejected that demand.

    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/2/9/what-is-the-minsk-agreement-and-why-is-it-relevant-now

    But needless to say, millions of people swallow the false narrative, the propaganda churned out by the NATO war-mongers!

  28. People willingly employed by the US power structures consider it a democracy because they allowed their views to confirm to the Empire’s, and get material compensation for it.
    In democracy, government’s policies are supposed to reflect people’s views, overall.
    Try to write to your Congressman, incredibly he/she will send a letter back that completely discounts your view, and instead lets you know what your Congressman stands for. What? I thought that the Congressman was to represent me, but instead he/she really expects me to adopt their party’s policy.
    This is not a democracy at all. In fact it is taxation without representation, all over again.

    1. The execrable PragerU firmly agrees that the US is not, never has been, and was never meant to be a democracy.
      ‘The Difference Between a Democracy and a Republic’
      https://youtu.be/wbsfpeMELGE (5 mins)

  29. CNN reported that DHS (Dept Homeland Security) is going to lead the way in monitoring people who disagree with the official narrative, and DHS already reported the rise in the (shall we call it false?) sentiment laying blame for Ukraine war at the US’s feet.
    How is the US’s BS better than Russia’s? Russian press published official warning to only use official words for describing events in Ukraine.
    Ah, the US BS is way more expensive, that’s how!

    1. Bullshit is better than bearshit!
      “While bull markets are fueled by optimism, bear markets — which occur when stock prices fall 20% or more for a sustained period of time — are just the opposite. Bulls are generally powered by economic strength, whereas bear markets often occur in periods of economic slowdown and higher unemployment.”
      https://www.citizensbank.com/learning/bull-market-vs-bear-market.aspx

  30. Well, yeah, we all know that, still as you say, just as Putin said, just so sickening, because it happens everyday in the USA in so many different ways, and yes, absolutely no change at all from the US. So sickening I can’t even write about it. People like that, we know what should happen to them.

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