EatTheRich
President
Sure it does. If people are panicked about the price of gas, they will be clamoring for more oil production.
According to the "conventional wisdom" on Ukraine...
- Thread starter Raoul_Luke
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EatTheRich
President
It’s not that it’s justified. It’s that it’s a response to moves by Russia’s imperialist rivals.
I disagree...While Trump was a seriously flawed candidate, we have had others who would have been better.
Going back a ways...Obama was certainly a serious and intelligent candidate. I have also thought Wesley Clark would have been better than Kerry and better than "W". Romney is a serious and intelligent man...but ran a shitty campaign.
I would have preferred Biden to Hillary in 2016....and still can't understand how anyone cast a vote for Trump unless it was simply a vote against Hillary.
Which has nothing at all to do with the impact on an increased demand for alternative energy.
EatTheRich
President
Not alwaysFeel free to believe Putin's claim to be defending the homeland from a dangerous coalition of anti-Russian nations. Of course it is bullshit.
- Putin said on Thursday that the Ukraine invasion is about expanding Russian territory.
- Before, Putin insisted that Russia was freeing Ukraine from so-called Nazis and preventing genocide.
- Putin said it was his destiny to "return and reinforce" Russia like Peter the Great did.
Putin undermined his own rationale for invading Ukraine, saying that the war is to expand Russian territory
Putin said shortly before invading Ukraine that it had nothing to do with territory. On Thursday, he said it was his destiny to expand Russia.www.businessinsider.com
Nato has always been a defensive organization meant to deter an invasion by the Warsaw pact. Russias invasions of countries in the East Block happened every few years....East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia....any time one would threaten to actually have a democratic government. The threat was always coming from Moscow.
Marshall Plan - Wikipedia
en.m.wikipedia.org
Drumcollie
* See DC's list of Kook posters*
What is that supposed to mean? Is this about what Chomsky said or the Pope? Or did you just go Liberal and say the least intelligent thing possible. Could you please post a plausible response that has an opinion?
Bugsy McGurk
President
No. Both things are not true. NATO has nothing to do with Putin’s invasion. Nothing. Referring to NATO is just your veiled way of expressing fealty to Trump, your cult leader, who spent his term trying to dismantle NATO. Putin loves you guys.
EatTheRich
President
If you say so. Seems to me Biden is getting a ferocious backlash for even paying lip service to the idea of phasing out fossil fuels.
Yet you can understand why anyone cast a vote for Biden in 2020 and your Brain Drain is why!
'Brain Drain Biden' is ensuring gas remains High
Biden admin misses major oil lease deadline: 'an absolute disgrace' (msn.com)
Drumcollie
* See DC's list of Kook posters*
Great point. It's like Biden name calling Putin and undermining any response that he could have to end the invasion or any negotiation possibilities with Putin.Feel free to believe Putin's claim to be defending the homeland from a dangerous coalition of anti-Russian nations. Of course it is bullshit.
- Putin said on Thursday that the Ukraine invasion is about expanding Russian territory.
- Before, Putin insisted that Russia was freeing Ukraine from so-called Nazis and preventing genocide.
- Putin said it was his destiny to "return and reinforce" Russia like Peter the Great did.
Putin undermined his own rationale for invading Ukraine, saying that the war is to expand Russian territory
Putin said shortly before invading Ukraine that it had nothing to do with territory. On Thursday, he said it was his destiny to expand Russia.
Nato has always been a defensive organization meant to deter an invasion by the Warsaw pact. Russias invasions of countries in the East Block happened every few years....East Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia....any time one would threaten to actually have a democratic government. The threat was always coming from Moscow.
I find the idea that you think Russia is a bad player because of invasions into E. Germany, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, meaning Russia bringing socialism to these countries was a bad idea when the (D) party is America's largest socialist platform in government today, pretty hilarious.
EatTheRich
President
1. The Democrats are anti-socialist.
2. The invasions he is (I assume) talking about … E. Germany and Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 … were aimed at undermining workers’ democracy in socialist states in order to solidify the power of a counterrevolutionary pro-capitalist bureaucracy.
But oil is needed now
So if only Biden had adopted Trump's praise of Putin he'd have called off the invasion?
We are not party to this war and would not be part of the negotiation to end it. I've provided quotes from Putin as well as Trump. Both argued that Crimea belongs to Russia and even claims by Putin that all of Ukraine belongs to Russia.
Yes, Russia performed invasions after WWII of those countries as well as a military intervention in East Germany when they departed from the Moscow party line.
You think the democratic party is socialist....there are some people who want larger social programs, most do not. I think the republican party is flirting with a brand of populism that borders on fascism. When did the democrats advocate for civil war because they lost an election? 45% of republicans think they will have to take up arms against the government.
Bugsy McGurk
President
No NATO nation has ever attacked Russia, and they never will. You know that, Putin knows that, and the Trump/Putin supporters we see here know that. It’s a pretext, plain and simple.
Many voted for Biden because they hated Trump.
RickWA
Snagglesooth
EatTheRich
President
They certainly attacked Soviet Russia.
Jack4freedom
Governor
Those are some very interesting and intelligent observations by Chomsky and The Pope. What all of this geopolitical interaction suggests to me is that we are still in the very early stages of our development as a species. Those at the highest levels of power here on earth are still spiritual midgets who think they are quite clever because they have accessed enough power to create huge amounts of material wealth by creating conflicts between different factions and selling battlefield expendables and super expensive defensive systems and Intel operations to both sides of the conflicts they create. Pretty primitive in my opinion.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.'"
Zerohedge
ZeroHedge - On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zerowww.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
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...
To me the real question isn’t whether or not NATO is a threat to Russia and thus the invasion and murder going on right now. The question is that after WW II, the Cold War and the fall of the Soviet Union why doesn‘t Russia join NATO and the EU? Most of civilized Russia is closer to Berlin than it is to China. I do not think it benefits the Russian people for their leader/leaders to position them as a hostile loner who insists on playing the victim and lashing out at those countries who surround them.
EatTheRich
President
I don’t think Germany wants Russia in NATO or the EU. Nor does Russia want to be dominated by the U.S. and Germany.