Raoul_Luke
I feel a bit lightheaded. Maybe you should drive.
Both Noam Chompsky and Pope Francis are "Putin lovers." Which, of course, is absurd. First, Professor Chompsky:
Chomsky told us that it "should be clear that the (Russian) invasion of Ukraine has no (moral) justification." He compared it to the US invasion of Iraq, seeing it as an example of "supreme international crime." With this moral question settled, Chomsky believes that the main 'background' of this war, a factor that is missing in mainstream media coverage, is "NATO expansion."
"This is not just my opinion," said Chomsky, "it is the opinion of every high-level US official in the diplomatic services who has any familiarity with Russia and Eastern Europe. This goes back to George Kennan and, in the 1990s, Reagan's ambassador Jack Matlock, including the current director of the CIA; in fact, just everybody who knows anything has been warning Washington that it is reckless and provocative to ignore Russia's very clear and explicit red lines. That goes way before (Vladimir) Putin, it has nothing to do with him; (Mikhail) Gorbachev, all said the same thing. Ukraine and Georgia cannot join NATO, this is the geostrategic heartland of Russia."
Though various US administrations acknowledged and, to some extent, respected the Russian red lines, the Bill Clinton Administration did not. According to Chomsky, "George H. W. Bush ... made an explicit promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand beyond East Germany, perfectly explicit. You can look up the documents. It's very clear. Bush lived up to it. But when Clinton came along, he started violating it. And he gave reasons. He explained that he had to do it for domestic political reasons. He had to get the Polish vote, the ethnic vote. So, he would let the so-called Visegrad countries into NATO. Russia accepted it, didn't like it but accepted it."
"The second George Bush," Chomsky argued, "just threw the door wide open. In fact, even invited Ukraine to join over, despite the objections of everyone in the top diplomatic service, apart from his own little clique, Cheney, Rumsfeld (among others). But France and Germany vetoed it."
However, that was hardly the end of the discussion. Ukraine's NATO membership remained on the agenda because of intense pressures from Washington.
"Starting in 2014, after the Maidan uprising, the United States began openly, not secretly, moving to integrate Ukraine into the NATO military command, sending heavy armaments and joining military exercises, military training and it was not a secret. They boasted about it," Chomsky said.
What is interesting is that current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "was elected on a peace platform, to implement what was called Minsk Two, some kind of autonomy for the eastern region. He tried to implement it. He was warned by right-wing militias that if he persisted, they'd kill him. Well, he didn't get any support from the United States. If the United States had supported him, he could have continued, we might have avoided all of this. The United States was committed to the integration of Ukraine within NATO."
The Joe Biden Administration carried on with the policy of NATO expansion. "Just before the invasion," said Chomsky, "Biden ... produced a joint statement ... calling for expanding these efforts of integration. That's part of what was called an 'enhanced program' leading to the mission of NATO. In November, it was moved forward to a charter, signed by the Secretary of State."
Soon after the war, "the United States Department acknowledged that they had not taken Russian security concerns into consideration in any discussions with Russia. The question of NATO, they would not discuss. Well, all of that is provocation. Not a justification but a provocation and it's quite interesting that in American discourse, it is almost obligatory to refer to the invasion as the 'unprovoked invasion of Ukraine'. Look it up on Google, you will find hundreds of thousands of hits."
Chomsky continued, "Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise, they wouldn't refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion. By now, censorship in the United States has reached such a level beyond anything in my lifetime. Such a level that you are not permitted to read the Russian position. Literally. Americans are not allowed to know what the Russians are saying. Except, selected things. So, if Putin makes a speech to Russians with all kinds of outlandish claims about Peter the Great and so on, then, you see it on the front pages. If the Russians make an offer for a negotiation, you can't find it. That's suppressed. You're not allowed to know what they are saying. I have never seen a level of censorship like this."
Regarding his views of the possible future scenarios, Chomsky said that "the war will end, either through diplomacy or not. That's just logic. Well, if diplomacy has a meaning, it means both sides can tolerate it. They don't like it, but they can tolerate it. They don't get anything they want, they get something. That's diplomacy. If you reject diplomacy, you are saying: 'Let the war go on with all of its horrors, with all the destruction of Ukraine, and let's let it go on until we get what we want.'"
www.zerohedge.com
Next up - the pope:
In statements published Tuesday by the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, the Roman Catholic leaders said that the Russian invasion was "perhaps somehow provoked" while again saying there were signs that NATO had been "barking at the gates of Russia" in the run-up.
The pontiff still condemned what he called the "ferocity and cruelty of the Russian troops" while warning against a pure 'good vs. evil' fairytale narrative of the conflict.
Just like with his initial similar comments made at the start of May, these latest statements have triggered outrage among Western pundits who've called for escalating military support to Ukraine at the expense of dialogue with Moscow toward negotiating a settlement to end the war:
The Pope also reiterated that the arms industry in the West is benefitting from the bloodshed: "I also note the interest in testing and selling weapons. It is very sad, but at the end of the day that is what is at stake," he said in the interview.
www.zerohedge.com
So are these guys "Putin lovers?" Nah, just victims of the war mongers' gaslighting...like me. Whenever you mention that the only ones benefitting from a never ending war in Ukraine are the MIC and their well-paid lackies in the corporate media, you get attacked. After all, there's whole lotta money to be made from forever wars, and the propaganda crowd is working overtime to convince us that it's in everyone's best interest for the war to keep going on and on and on. But at least there isn't a special (super hot) place in hell waiting for me, Noam and the pope. The rest of you all? You better get your sh*t straight before the clock runs out on your miserable lives...
Chomsky told us that it "should be clear that the (Russian) invasion of Ukraine has no (moral) justification." He compared it to the US invasion of Iraq, seeing it as an example of "supreme international crime." With this moral question settled, Chomsky believes that the main 'background' of this war, a factor that is missing in mainstream media coverage, is "NATO expansion."
"This is not just my opinion," said Chomsky, "it is the opinion of every high-level US official in the diplomatic services who has any familiarity with Russia and Eastern Europe. This goes back to George Kennan and, in the 1990s, Reagan's ambassador Jack Matlock, including the current director of the CIA; in fact, just everybody who knows anything has been warning Washington that it is reckless and provocative to ignore Russia's very clear and explicit red lines. That goes way before (Vladimir) Putin, it has nothing to do with him; (Mikhail) Gorbachev, all said the same thing. Ukraine and Georgia cannot join NATO, this is the geostrategic heartland of Russia."
Though various US administrations acknowledged and, to some extent, respected the Russian red lines, the Bill Clinton Administration did not. According to Chomsky, "George H. W. Bush ... made an explicit promise to Gorbachev that NATO would not expand beyond East Germany, perfectly explicit. You can look up the documents. It's very clear. Bush lived up to it. But when Clinton came along, he started violating it. And he gave reasons. He explained that he had to do it for domestic political reasons. He had to get the Polish vote, the ethnic vote. So, he would let the so-called Visegrad countries into NATO. Russia accepted it, didn't like it but accepted it."
"The second George Bush," Chomsky argued, "just threw the door wide open. In fact, even invited Ukraine to join over, despite the objections of everyone in the top diplomatic service, apart from his own little clique, Cheney, Rumsfeld (among others). But France and Germany vetoed it."
However, that was hardly the end of the discussion. Ukraine's NATO membership remained on the agenda because of intense pressures from Washington.
"Starting in 2014, after the Maidan uprising, the United States began openly, not secretly, moving to integrate Ukraine into the NATO military command, sending heavy armaments and joining military exercises, military training and it was not a secret. They boasted about it," Chomsky said.
What is interesting is that current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky "was elected on a peace platform, to implement what was called Minsk Two, some kind of autonomy for the eastern region. He tried to implement it. He was warned by right-wing militias that if he persisted, they'd kill him. Well, he didn't get any support from the United States. If the United States had supported him, he could have continued, we might have avoided all of this. The United States was committed to the integration of Ukraine within NATO."
The Joe Biden Administration carried on with the policy of NATO expansion. "Just before the invasion," said Chomsky, "Biden ... produced a joint statement ... calling for expanding these efforts of integration. That's part of what was called an 'enhanced program' leading to the mission of NATO. In November, it was moved forward to a charter, signed by the Secretary of State."
Soon after the war, "the United States Department acknowledged that they had not taken Russian security concerns into consideration in any discussions with Russia. The question of NATO, they would not discuss. Well, all of that is provocation. Not a justification but a provocation and it's quite interesting that in American discourse, it is almost obligatory to refer to the invasion as the 'unprovoked invasion of Ukraine'. Look it up on Google, you will find hundreds of thousands of hits."
Chomsky continued, "Of course, it was provoked. Otherwise, they wouldn't refer to it all the time as an unprovoked invasion. By now, censorship in the United States has reached such a level beyond anything in my lifetime. Such a level that you are not permitted to read the Russian position. Literally. Americans are not allowed to know what the Russians are saying. Except, selected things. So, if Putin makes a speech to Russians with all kinds of outlandish claims about Peter the Great and so on, then, you see it on the front pages. If the Russians make an offer for a negotiation, you can't find it. That's suppressed. You're not allowed to know what they are saying. I have never seen a level of censorship like this."
Regarding his views of the possible future scenarios, Chomsky said that "the war will end, either through diplomacy or not. That's just logic. Well, if diplomacy has a meaning, it means both sides can tolerate it. They don't like it, but they can tolerate it. They don't get anything they want, they get something. That's diplomacy. If you reject diplomacy, you are saying: 'Let the war go on with all of its horrors, with all the destruction of Ukraine, and let's let it go on until we get what we want.'"
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
Next up - the pope:
In statements published Tuesday by the Jesuit magazine La Civiltà Cattolica, the Roman Catholic leaders said that the Russian invasion was "perhaps somehow provoked" while again saying there were signs that NATO had been "barking at the gates of Russia" in the run-up.
The pontiff still condemned what he called the "ferocity and cruelty of the Russian troops" while warning against a pure 'good vs. evil' fairytale narrative of the conflict.
Just like with his initial similar comments made at the start of May, these latest statements have triggered outrage among Western pundits who've called for escalating military support to Ukraine at the expense of dialogue with Moscow toward negotiating a settlement to end the war:
That's when in the interview he provided more context to his early May statements on the war. He said that a couple months prior to the Feb.24 invasion, he met with a "wise" head of state - though Francis didn't name him or her:
He added: "We do not see the whole drama unfolding behind this war, which was, perhaps, somehow either provoked or not prevented."
The Pope also reiterated that the arms industry in the West is benefitting from the bloodshed: "I also note the interest in testing and selling weapons. It is very sad, but at the end of the day that is what is at stake," he said in the interview.
"Someone may say to me at this point: but you are pro-Putin! No, I am not. It would be simplistic and erroneous to say such a thing. I am simply against turning a complex situation into a distinction between good guys and bad guys, without considering the roots and self-interests, which are very complex. While we witness the ferocity and cruelty of Russian troops, we should not forget the problems, and seek to solve them," he explained.
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero
www.zerohedge.com
So are these guys "Putin lovers?" Nah, just victims of the war mongers' gaslighting...like me. Whenever you mention that the only ones benefitting from a never ending war in Ukraine are the MIC and their well-paid lackies in the corporate media, you get attacked. After all, there's whole lotta money to be made from forever wars, and the propaganda crowd is working overtime to convince us that it's in everyone's best interest for the war to keep going on and on and on. But at least there isn't a special (super hot) place in hell waiting for me, Noam and the pope. The rest of you all? You better get your sh*t straight before the clock runs out on your miserable lives...
