Is Russia Really The Baddie?

[Lauren Johnson]

There are many reasons Trump/Musk/MAGA/Project 2025/and Christian Nationalists align with Putin. I think it is mainly Putin's embrace and official support of the ultra-conservative/racist/sexist/nationalist Orthodox Russian Church. There is a parallel and equally dangerous entity in the USA [and in many Spanish/Portuguese American countries]. Here is the man I feel wrote 'the book' on the danger of the Christian Right [who Jesus would condemn totally] and who are the engine behind many of those in the MAGA movement. Totally anti-Democratic/racist/mysogist/misusing Judeo-Christian teachings to bring about a new fascism......

 
The feckless Democratic Party helped create Trump because it stood for nothing good on the domestic front and for war and Israel, Israel, Israel internationally.   Watch this Hedges interview.  

https://x.com/ChrisLynnHedges/status/189...5966885381

[Fred Steeves]

As we approach the 3 year anniversary of this war, I'm reminded of where I was on this very day 3 years ago. Admittedly, I didn't know squat about the overall situation, so had to start doing some crash studying. One of my earliest memories was in the initial phase of questioning, and my wife (who is normie through and through) chastising me that if I knew what was good for me, I'd not take those questions public for how terrible of a person it would make me look. Or even how bad it would make her look, being married to a man who has questions of such a thing...

But you know a person can learn a lot in 3 years, and not just about this particular conflict either, having already began from a firm foundation of research in other areas, it's been quite the enlightening experience. First and foremost, in the sheer raw power of propaganda.

I myself was a normie when 9/11 happened, so no one was ever compelled to warn me against publicly stating my opinions about it, as they were well within the Overton Window of acceptability. Same with the soon after invasion of Iraq. Back then the Left in the US had not yet been crushed, and I well remember how my indoctrinated brain told me to look upon anti war protesters with utter contempt. "Look how unAmerican they are!"

Everything changed in 2009 when my awakening process began to unfold, as it will continue to unfold until the day I cash in my chips; but until 2/25/22, I don't recall mass hysteria in this country where you weren't supposed to speak your mind about such things for fear of public shaming. Sure, there was the time when "democracy" won the day and obliterated another country (Libya) in the name of freedom, but no one seemed to care much because "a good guy' was president. Gaddafi was just another in a series of Hitler reincarnates that had to be eliminated for the good of humanity by "the good guys". If you wanted to speak out about it, fine, but no one really cared.

But this one... This modern day Mc Carthy 2.0 has been a sight to behold for me, a true learning experience. I had 13 years of basic research under my belt at that time, knew better than to trust mainstream sources yet again screaming "Hitler!" to the high heavens, and have had a front row seat to the shit show of America's manufacturing consent machine.

Nothing along the way these past 3 years from the great narrative machine has matched the true facts on the ground that I've been collecting along the way, but here's the weird thing: in my experience anyway, up until 2/2022 the narrative machine and its loyal collection of public repeaters had always at least gone to the effort of making a show of it - you know, at least pointing to false evidence along the way. Findings that the few non believers out there can chase down and say "no, that's not true!" But this time it's like the machine doesn't even care about that any more, the mask is coming off, it's just a running narrative, and nothing else.

And it's still working! Wow.

Sigh. I used to have hope for humanity, I really did, and it wasn't that long ago either. Until somewhat recently I still had visions of sugar plums dancing in my head of enough of humanity waking up just enough to see the problem, and making say, a mass demonstration outside the White House gates or some shit like that. Like at the end of "Hair - Let the Sunshine In":



But now, reality is setting in, the finality of it all, almost like Winston Smith in "1984". We're not quite there yet, but I can make out the handwriting on the wall through the mist.

I don't see any opposition. I mean like, well, there is, but the numbers are so small they're irrelevant, and if need be, easily eliminated. The only "opposition" I see that actually has the numbers, is this ridiculous "Resistance" opposition that may as well have their inspiration straight out of Central Intelligence. They may THINK they're doing some great noble deed for mankind, but in essence, all they're really doing is the equivalent of jerking off in the corner.

That's all I've got for the day. Glad to get that off my chest anyway. Sigh, good thing I have my spiritual house in order anyway...

[Fred Steeves]

When Professor Jeffrey Sachs speaks, I listen. Yesterday he addressed the EU Parlaiment, and this may just be the most profound I've ever seen. Highly recommended:

[Fred Steeves]

I'd say this is what's known as a mask off moment. He's directly contradicting the western narrative:

Boris Johnson Admits: Russia-Ukraine Conflict is a Proxy War! #short  #shorts - YouTube

[Lauren Johnson]

It is astonishing to me there are still liberals, i.e. the people I know in my community, who still think Russia started the war out of the blue under the orders of the knuckle dragging Slav, Putin.  "He is threatening all of Europe."  etc.  There's no talking with them about alternative models.  The Ukraine project is a decades long initiative in different forms always in the context of Drang nach Osten, dismantling Russia without a nuclear war.  I used to think Putin was a Russian patriot fighting The Empire.  For me, that dog stopped hunting some a few months ago.  The Ukraine war is a function of a managed dialectic.  Where does the agency for this conflict reside?  Someplace deeper and darker, in the halls of Mordor.

[Fred Steeves]

It is astonishing to me there are still liberals, i.e. the people I know in my community, who still think Russia started the war out of the blue under the orders of the knuckle dragging Slav, Putin.  "He is threatening all of Europe."  etc.  There's no talking with them about alternative models. 

Well, a brokered ending to this big fat mess should, if not prove then strongly point to, the direction of one side or the other. Either he really is the latest in a series of bloodthirsty Hitler wanna be's, or he abides by agreements made and a ravaged nation can begin putting the pieces back together again. "Following the evidence wherever it leads".



"The Ukraine project is a decades long initiative in different forms always in the context of Drang nach Osten, dismantling Russia without a nuclear war".

That sounds about right, and similar for China.



"I used to think Putin was a Russian patriot fighting The Empire.  For me, that dog stopped hunting some a few months ago.  The Ukraine war is a function of a managed dialectic.  Where does the agency for this conflict reside?  Someplace deeper and darker, in the halls of Mordor".

Yes, I remember briefly chatting with you along those lines. I'm always open to closing one door and opening another, that's why per your recommendation I had Rolo Slavskiy and Edward Slavsquat on my email feed for some time, but the point finally came where I just couldn't square that circle. I wasn't and am still not seeing Russia losing on the ground, I can't get that deep into the weeds on internal Russian politics, and rather than Prigozhin being the last man standing as Rurik Skywalker predicted in July of '23, he was dead a month later.

I'm certainly never about to argue against certain events emanating from the halls or Mordor, and if you have some other places for me to check out I'll go check them out, just that I still think I'm looking at something somewhat clearly, and that view usually seems to be roughly matching up with events on the ground.

A dying unipolar world order, desperately trying to stop a rising multi polar world order.

[Lauren Johnson]

Ukraine war is in fact a proxy war sponsored by the US.  Period.  Game. Set. Match.

[Lauren Johnson]

Ukraine war is in fact a proxy war sponsored by the US.  Period.  Game. Set. Match.

[Lauren Johnson]

The beginning of the Ukraine war could in fact have begun with the illegal NATO Yugoslavian war.  This war marked the time when it knew NATO was coming for her:

COLD CASE: KOSOVO
Afterthoughts by Gaither Stewart, (Rome)

"The West’s dismantling of Yugoslavia was a harbinger of Capitalism’s new strategy for world domination. NATO’s bombing war against Serbs in Bosnia in 1995 and in Belgrade-Beograd in 1999 were precedents for the military interventions and neo-colonialism to come—for preemptive war under the cover of human rights that resulted in the US-led coup d’état in Ukraine in 2014 and the installation of a Nazi-inspired, anti-Russian government bordering Russia.

The illegal wars for the slicing up of Yugoslavia were the precursor and the model for the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq and Libya and Syria and the other wars in Africa and again in Latin America as in Venezuela. Notable in the case of Yugoslavia was the traitorous support for the bombing of the country of western liberals and many leftists, like the Italian leftist government in Italy just across the Adriatic Sea from Yugoslavia. The bombers flew from airports in Italy, above all from the Aviano Airbase in NE Italy. Intellectuals and the media swallowed whole the genocide-by-the-evil-Serbs story ... and regurgitated it. In the same way, gullible western leftists justified the illegal military interventions, and ultimately the neocolonial occupation of Bosnia and Kosovo. Before NATO’s 78-day bombing war against Serbia in 1999, the U.S.-supported criminal Kosovar KLA, the Kosovar Liberation Army, had killed far, far more Muslims in Kosovo than the Yugoslav authorities had. The administration of President Clinton armed and trained that army of criminals. Top secret!

The propaganda line was Milosevic conducted genocide in Kosovo. An enormous historical lie. President Milosevic and Serbia had to take the whole blame for the civil war. Serbia was excluded from its own Kosovo province and Milosevic was hauled off to the International Tribunal in The Hague and tried for war crimes … where he eventually died in his cell, at night. Enough to make you doubt all history books. If truth were the prime criterion, then most history books would have to be rewritten. Schopenhauer wrote back in 1851 that Clio, the muse of history, is as thoroughly infected with lies as is a street whore with syphilis.

Then, in 2006 the European Union and the USA had the effrontery to concede Montenegro’s right to secede from Serbia. Then again the West conceded the ‘right’ of Kosovo to detach itself from Serbia while the illegal occupiers assured the world that Kosovo would not be a precedent for other conflicts. One illegal act followed the other. Kosovo fell under UN administration after which it declared its independence. But not even that enormous illegality was enough. For then, America’s huge military base suddenly emerged in the newly recognized vassal state of Kosovo: Camp Bondsteel mushroomed on Kosovar fields.

Kosovo is an occupied state. After NATO’s bombing war against Serbia in spring 1999, Kosovo was occupied by foreign troops. Territory stolen from Serbia by military force in contravention of the UN Charter. Serbian lands transformed into a U.S. vassal and one gigantic military base.

Keep in mind that all this happened in Europe which likes to claim it has had no wars since 1945!! But the Security Council neither condemned NATO’s illegal war nor tried to remedy the postwar situation, because three of the Council’s permanent member states had launched that war. Serbia itself became to all effects a defeated state. The UN accepted the war of aggression against Serbia as a fait accompli. And confirmed the legitimacy of the bombing war on humanitarian grounds.

Thus, the precedent was set for intervention anywhere … in Libya and Syria and Iran. And candidate nations for humanitarian intervention are countless—Iran, North Korea, you name it. The aggression against Serbia marked the end of morality as we once knew it. The gods are dead and anything is permitted. The black hole of immorality…. Think Serbia and think Kosovo. Pure robbery.

The theft of Kosovo affects every aspect, every curve and dip and rise of Serbian politics. Serbia and Serbs, all of them, are incapable of swallowing the illegal NATO war against them back in 1999. The theft of Kosovo! The wound festers. The loss of Kosovo runs like a sore through Serbs. Serbia, of left or right, cannot even allow the importation of any product from that fake country, like Kosovo’s famous wines, if it is marked ‘produce of the Republic of Kosovo’.…

Serbia is both European and anti-European. Its march toward the European Union is slow. One step forward and two back. Serbia wants the EU and it doesn’t. It has one foot in, one foot out. The Serbian Socialist Party was falsely blamed for the Balkan wars, for genocide, before it was betrayed. Its leader Milosevic was sacrificed so that Europe could make war on Serbia.

Meanwhile, Serbia has become a lynchpin for Russian plans to deliver its gas directly to Europe via a pipeline under construction, passing under the Black Sea, through Bulgaria and Serbia to Italy and Austria. Why should Serbia worry about Europe’s growing dependency on Russian gas? Russia and Serbia are Slavic brothers: similar languages, Eastern Orthodoxy, major trading partners.

And above all, Russia supported Serbia on the U.S.-EU theft of Kosovo."

[Fred Steeves]

Very interesting. That jogged some memories from my time in the US Navy back in the early-mid 90's that for some reason, I've never gone back to truly figure out what was actually going on, exposing a hole in my general knowledge of that region. So thanks for bringing this up, it spurred me to go do some quick brushing up.

I was a parachute rigger for an S-3 squadron attached to the aircraft carrier USS America on a Med cruise 93/94. Still pre internet, was only 27 so only interested in doing my job well, and having a good time, I didn't know shit and didn't even care.

In hindsight now there was not just one, but two pretty sizeable events that happened on that cruise - the one I already knew was just before we were set to hit a port of call in Rhodes, Greece, the now infamous "Blackhawk Down" event happened in Mogadishu, Somalia. All port visits were immediately cancelled and we set sail on the double through the Suez Canal into the Indian Ocean, and spent 40 straight days steaming up and down the coast giving support to all sorts of military personnel ashore. IIRC there were quite a few SEALS ashore doing what SEALS do (you didn't ask), and I specifically recall how when they first came aboard for some R&R they always looked exhausted, and maybe a bit shell shocked. Who knows what they were doing/seeing.

But the other event, which I've never paid much mind about until now, was why we spent so much time in the Adriatic Sea, and hit Triesta, Italy twice for port of calls. The carrier group was part of both "Operation Deny Flight" - supporting a no fly zone over Bosnia, and "Operation Sharp Guard" - enforcing a blockade in the Adriatic.

https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/...flight.htm
https://web.stanford.edu/group/tomzgroup...-a-IEM.pdf

Thinking back again, I wasn't the only one who basically knew nothing about events there on the ground. Even the pilots knew nothing. They knew the official NATO party line, and I can't recall a single person questioning anything, ever. I never talked to one person who didn't know that we were the good guys, there to make sure the bad guys didn't do bad guy type things.

Talk about being in the belly of the beast, I was part of the empire's police force, his muscle. And of course something else I didn't know then, was that we were right at the beginning of the now rapidly fading uni-polar moment. I was so excited, so proud to be an American, to be living on an aircraft carrier as the center piece of a strike group that instilled fear in despots around the world. Sometimes when we were underway full speed somewhere in the middle of some ocean, and flight ops weren't happening, I'd stand at the bow similar to that scene in "Titanic", and just be taken away by the sheer magnitude of where I was standing. The raw, unparalleled force behind it.

Now I know that we weren't the good guys, we were the bad guys. Not that we were bad people, we just simply knew not what we did. Problem is judging from the few ship and squadron chat groups I'm in, most of them STILL don't know. 30+ years on now, and they still joke and mock events like the over turning of Libya for example. Oh those were the days ha ha!...