nazis

When Russia’s Vladimir Putin demanded that the U.S. rule out Ukraine as a future member of the NATO alliance, the U.S. archly replied: NATO has an open-door policy. Any nation, including Ukraine, may apply for membership and be admitted. We’re not changing that.

In the Bucharest declaration of 2008, NATO had put Ukraine and Georgia, ever farther east in the Caucasus, on a path to membership in NATO and coverage under Article 5 of the treaty, which declares that an attack on any one member is an attack on all.

Unable to get a satisfactory answer to his demand, Putin invaded and settled the issue. Neither Ukraine nor Georgia will become members of NATO. Russia resolved that it would go to war to prevent that from happening, just as it did on Thursday.

Putin did exactly what he warned us he would do.

saudis

Golfer Phil Mickelson’s candid comments about human rights abuses in Saudi Arabia, which is backing the new league he is promoting, have drawn a swift backlash from the PGA and long-time sponsors.

Mickelson and his foundation were scratched from the PGA Tour event in the California desert as the fallout from his shocking remarks continued.

In an astonishingly unguarded interview, Mickelson said that despite believing Saudi Arabia was guilty of human rights abuses, he saw the Saudi-backed breakaway league as a lever to change the PGA Tour.

dolls

The last 30 years have been a persistent erosion of American power and prestige. The US is a nation in search of its soul and moral purpose.

It has been led by a succession of timid, or reckless or vapid or exploitative, and opportunist presidents.

International politics expert Jonathan Holslag calls them "polite cowards". Those leaders who talk up democracy while ignoring the people in their own countries whom democracy is failing.

Each leader has presided over the drift from the American Dream. Inequality has grown like a cancer.

Decades of decline

map

Galyna Lekunova, a veterinarian in the eastern Ukrainian city of Mariupol, was left fuming by a new law in January [2021] mandating the use of Ukrainian in the service industry.

In protest against the regulations that she said amounted to "discrimination," the 47-year-old began offering 50-percent discounts to her Russian-speaking clients.

This is what she believes spurred the perpetrators of a graffiti attack on her clinic, which was defaced in late January with scrawls of black coffins and a warning of "Death to the enemies".

One month later, the paint was still visible on a poster of a puppy advertising her services in Russian in the industrial port city on the Black Sea.

war...

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg announced on Friday that the group would be providing more weapons to support Ukraine in the face of Russia’s military assault, and deploying parts of its combat-ready response force.

Soltenberg accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of trying to topple the “democratically-elected government in Ukraine.”

POGO1

Ever since the fall of the Communist system and the fracturing of the old Soviet Union in 1989-1991, the globalist foreign policy hawks in the American state department and their dutiful minions in the media and amongst both political parties have actively pursued a program of what the late zealous Neoconservative Fox News pundit Charles Krauthammer termed a “unipolar” world.

in good company

You needed only look into Vladimir Putin’s eyes as he publicly ridiculed his own international spy chief this week to know all we might wish to know about this President of Russia.

The eyes were at once cruelly amused, threatening and impatient. They were those of a fox at the open door of a hen house.

Here was a man taking pleasure in the humiliation of an old comrade, reducing him to a vassal, and seeking personal gratification by displaying to the world - on live television - his superiority over all around him.

hatz

Some of Scott Morrison’s closest party-room allies could face internal challenges for their seats after a Supreme Court decision handed down Friday.

Mr Morrison had backed a plan to have the Liberal Party intervene and stop three sitting MPs – Alex Hawke, Sussan Ley and Trent Zimmerman – from facing internal party contests.

The Prime Minister and the federal Liberal Party gave the party’s NSW division until Monday to hold a long-delayed annual general meeting, as well as preselect candidates for three seats currently held by sitting Liberal MPs and Morrison allies Alex Hawke, Sussan Ley and Trent Zimmerman.

invasion

In many years of international negotiations and on-the-ground work in conflict zones I have learned that leadership is not a choice between a good option and a bad option. The choice is easy. Pick the good option.

But leadership is having the right ethical framework to choose the least bad of competing bad options, knowing that everyone will criticise you for taking a bad choice.

This is where we are today with Ukraine and Russia. Decision-makers squandered good options when the 2014 Crimea situation was appallingly handled.

What will play out now is one of three broad and bad possibilities. There are no good choices left.

heartland...

It’s complicated. But people in Ukraine are dying and they blame Putin for being a thug by wagging war against their free country. He is a thug… Who can blame them — though so far, not that many people —compared to a full open warfare — have been killed, mostly Ukrainian soldiers. 

The Ukrainians don’t know that their sacrifice or plight, lies at the heart of a 1905 “commitment”… I am with them. Why should we care about old stuff that have no bearing on our enjoyment of life that Vladimir Putin is taking away now with his ruthless armies.

fuse

San Francisco – Speaker Nancy Pelosi issued this statement on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine:

“Russia’s launch of a premeditated war against the sovereign nation of Ukraine is an attack on democracy and a grave violation of international law, global peace and security.  Putin’s unprovoked actions will cause devastating loss of life and a diminishing of Russia in the world order.

bear

US Foreign Policy Is a Cruel Sport

Bear baiting was long ago banned as inhumane. Yet today, a version is being practiced every day against whole nations on a gigantic international scale.

BY DIANA JOHNSTONE

biden

tantrum

France has downgraded its diplomatic relations with Australia in a new Indo-Pacific strategy.

French President Emmanuel Macron reacted with fury last year when Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed plans to scrap a $90 billion deal to buy submarines.

Mr Morrison instead signed a partnership with the United States and Britain, known as AUKUS, under which Australia will buy nuclear-powered submarines.

A document issued by Mr Macron and his foreign affairs minister, France’s Indo-Pacific Strategy, takes a cool approach to Australia.

vlad

The history lesson by the Sydney Morning Herald as to what is the "Ukraine crisis" is a bit glib and should be taken with a grain of salt. It tries to be "balanced" but it still smells of Western toilet cleaner. Yes we know, we can twist history whichever way we wish — and Putin does it as well. But AN AGREEMENT WAS MADE THAT NATO WOULD NOT MOVE EAST, after the fall of the Berlin wall.