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China sees parallel between Ukraine, Taiwan

BY M. K. BHADRAKUMAR | INDIAN PUNCHLINE | MARCH 20, 2022 

The Chinese stance on developments around Ukraine was initially one-dimensional, namely, there is no conceivable comparison between Ukraine and Taiwan issues, as they are fundamentally different, because Taiwan is a part of China, whereas Ukraine is an independent country. Factually, that was a correct stance. 

However, there has been a shift lately toward acknowledging that the Eurasian tensions hold an analogy for the Indo-Pacific region. Chinese commentaries underline that the relentless expansion of NATO in the post-Cold War era is the root cause of events unfolding over Ukraine. In the video call with President Biden in the weekend, President Xi Jinping implicitly touched on this aspect: 

“The US and NATO should also have dialogue with Russia to address the crux of the Ukraine crisis and ease the security concerns of both Russia and Ukraine… As two Chinese sayings go, ‘It takes two hands to clap.’ ‘He who tied the bell to the tiger must take it off.’ It is imperative that the parties involved demonstrate political will and find a proper settlement in view of both immediate and long-term needs… An enduring solution would be for major countries to respect each other, reject the Cold War mentality, refrain from bloc confrontation, and build step by step a balanced, effective and sustainable security architecture for the region and for the world…” 

In the spate of Chinese commentaries on the Ukraine conflict, one report that catches attention for its incisiveness and insights is an interview in the Global Times entitled Russia-Ukraine conflict can be regarded as a ‘preview’ of US’ possible acts in Asia: Zheng Yongnian – NATO’s phantom. 

Zheng Yongnian is best known as an international authority on Chinese politics, political economy and the CCP. He opined categorically that NATO’s expansion will not stop and it will likely expand to Asia. 

In his view, the US is already putting in place “the prototype of an “Asian NATO” — referring to AUKUS, Quad, Five Eyes, Indo-Pacific Strategy, US moves vis-a-vis Vietnam and Singapore. Second, he said China should anticipate a Ukraine-style crisis taking place in “many countries and regions” in Asia and “the expansion of NATO will only stop when another bloc can compete with it and form a check and balance.” 

Third, while China’s economic openness and interdependence are its strong points, that may not prevent a war but can probably slow it down. He said bluntly: “Once fierce conflicts happen between China and the US, will the US kick China out of the SWIFT system as it did with Russia? My opinion is: 100 percent YES.” That said, China’s economy, deeply embedded in the West, can make the West feel real pain.

However, Zheng Yongnian also pointed out that it is not all black and white, either. On the one hand, while China and Europe have common interests and no geopolitical disputes, on the other hand, Europe’s current solidarity with the US is very fragile, as European interests are at risk in a longer term perspective and the EU itself is “at a particularly vulnerable moment.” 

Besides, a remilitarised Germany will cause uneasiness in the continent, especially for France, with geopolitical implications. Also, the spectre of nuclear proliferation haunts Europe now. It is no longer possible to rule out conflicts happening again within the Western civilisation. 

Interestingly, Zheng Yongnian also flagged that the geopolitical landscape of Asia may radically change if Japan, on the footfalls of Germany, also opts for remilitarisation. “This will impact on the entire East Asia, he warned.” 

The analysis is very profound and there is very little to add to it. China is wary that Washington is moving in the direction of creating a “Ukraine-like” strategic dilemma for Beijing apropos Taiwan. To be sure, China has been provoked by the abrasive remarks recently by Gen. Kenneth Wilsbach, commander of Pacific Air Forces, on the “key lessons” Beijing should draw out of the Ukraine conflict. 

The general listed them as the “solidarity of the global community” in opposing “an unprovoked attack on a neighbour” and “the onerous sanctions that have economically crippled Moscow”. Wilsbach threatened that if China behaves in the Russian way, “something more robust will happen.” 

In addition, he warned, China should also consider the opposition of regional countries, apart from the ravages of the war in human lives and treasure. It could not have been lost on Beijing that Wilsbach shot straight from the hip just before Biden’s phone call to Xi Jinping. 

Against this backdrop, the speech by Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng on Saturday at the Tsinghua University on the implication of the Ukraine developments for the Asia-Pacific region merits careful attention. 

These are the first authoritative remarks by a top Chinese official acknowledging that “the Ukraine crisis provides a mirror for us to observe the situation in the Asia-Pacific. We cannot but ask, how can we prevent a crisis like this from happening in the Asia-Pacific?” They have followed immediately after the 2-hour long phone conversation between President Xi Jinping and President Biden.  

Le Yucheng took note that the Asia-Pacific is in “promising situation” today — an anchor of peace and stability, an engine for growth and a “pace-setter” for development. The region faces two choices between building “an open and inclusive family for win-win cooperation or go for small blocs based on the Cold War mentality and group confrontation.” 

Le Yucheng explained this binary choice as between: “peace and not undermining regional tranquility; so-called absolute security and common security; mutual respect and wanton interference in others’ internal affairs; and, unity and cooperation versus division and confrontation. Without doubt, he was sounding alert about the US’ so-called Indo-Pacific strategy. 

Le Yucheng underscored that the India-Pacific strategy characterised by acts of provocation, formation of “closed and exclusive small circles or groups”, and fragmentation and bloc-based division can only lead to a situation “as dangerous as the NATO strategy of eastward expansion in Europe… (which) would bring unimaginable consequences, and ultimately push the Asia-Pacific over the edge of an abyss.” He underscored the criticality of the regional states pursuing “independent, balanced and prudent foreign policies” that dovetail with the process of regional integration. 

The parallels between the situations around Ukraine and Taiwan respectively, are being discussed explicitly in the Chinese commentaries and articulation — while the US “squeezed Russia’s strategic space” through NATO expansion and simultaneously incited Kiev to confront Russia, when it comes to Taiwan too, Washington is instigating the secessionist forces in the island by upgrading arms sales to provoke Beijing. 

Of course, the US has refrained from direct intervention in Ukraine, as Russia is not only a military power but also a nuclear power. The big question is whether China will arrive at a conclusion that its best opportunity “to solve its internal Taiwan question” lies in confronting the US at the present juncture when “the US is short of confidence and needs to bluster to embolden itself” and when the NATO’s hands are full in Eurasia and it is unlikely that the US’ allies in the Asia-Pacific will want to intervene in Taiwan. 

March 20, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , | Leave a comment

China-Russia relations the most important strategic asset that cannot be damaged by US provocation

Illustration: Liu Rui/GT
Global Times | March 18, 2022

The close relationship between China and Russia has been a thorn in the US’ side, especially against the backdrop of the ongoing Ukraine crisis. With the simmering of the situation, it couldn’t be any clearer that Washington is eager to exploit the Russia-Ukraine conflict to drive a wedge between Beijing and Moscow.

For one thing, senior White House officials have on multiple occasions accused China of not exerting enough pressure on Russia to stop the country’s military action in Ukraine. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said on Thursday before US President Joe Biden’s virtual meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping that Washington will “impose costs” for any support Beijing provides to Russia’s actions against Ukraine. He urged Beijing to assume “responsibility to use its influence and defend the international rules and principles that it professes to support.” For another, an increasing number of Western media reports and analyses have emerged to hype how China’s ties with Russia have made China “uncomfortable” and “awkward” and warn that Beijing risks isolation if it doesn’t distance itself from Moscow.

NATO’s eastward expansion is the root cause of Russia’s anger and military operation in Ukraine. It’s the US that should put out the fire it lit in Ukraine. Ridiculously, it is demanding Beijing to do this job at the cost of damaging China-Russia relations. This is unreasonable and insidious. By pushing China to denounce Russia and asking China to bear the responsibility for the fatal strategic mistake the US and NATO made in the construction of so-called European security, Washington has no intention of hiding its desire to sow discord between China and Russia.

US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said on Monday that China could use its unique relationship to bring an end to Russia’s actions against Ukraine. What nonsense. Russia is an independent major power and China has no ability to exert influence on Russia’s decision on the Ukraine issue which it deems as a “life-and-death” matter.

If China really pressures Russia in a way that is inconsistent with the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination, it will only undermine the China-Russia relationship and sabotage mutual trust, which will be a huge strategic loss to both sides. This is what the US is eager and happy to see.

Washington knows that China cannot influence Russia or force it to do anything. But it has regarded the Ukraine crisis as a good chance to tear the two countries apart. The more discord Washington could sow between China and Russia, the more it will be in line with US interests. But how can Beijing and Moscow allow such an evil trick to succeed?

Not like the petty followers that Washington can manipulate at will, China and Russia are both independent great powers. Besides, China has maintained a consistent position over the Ukraine issue, emphasizing all sides’ security concerns and interests should be respected and upheld. Its position is out of its own interests and the interests of the region. It will never dance to the tune of the US or sacrifice relations with Russia to satisfy US demands.

It also should be noted that no matter how the Ukraine crisis evolves and how heavily Russia is targeted by the US now, Washington still views China as its biggest strategic competitor. China should bear this in mind all the time. It must not give the US any chance to drive a wedge in the China-Russia relationship.

For a long time, the West has misinterpreted the China-Russia relationship, believing it’s based on expediency and could be easily torn apart. The truth is, the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of coordination has withstood the test of the time and is rock solid. It’s China’s most important and stable diplomatic strategic asset that cannot be damaged.

March 19, 2022 Posted by | Aletho News | , , , | Leave a comment

Cheerleader of NATO wars spotted in Ukraine

By Rachel Marsdon | Samizdat | March 17, 2022

French intellectual and philosopher, Bernard-Henri Lévy (“BHL”), has an odd propensity for appearing alongside western proxy fighters in war zones. And new reports now place him on the ground amid the conflict in Ukraine.

The day after the February 24 launch of Russia’s attack on Ukraine, France 2, the main state-owned television network, hosted a debate featuring, on one side, former prime minister Dominique de Villepin, perhaps best known worldwide for his role during the run up to the Iraq war in 2003. Back then, he served as the foreign minister and represented France’s opposition to the American efforts under then president Jacques Chirac at the United Nations Security Council.

After then US Secretary of State Colin Powell made his now infamous speech imploring the international community to back an invasion of Iraq to prevent Saddam Hussein’s use of weapons of mass destruction, De Villepin argued in favor of inspections.

“Given this context, the use of force is not justified at this time. There is an alternative to war: Disarming Iraq via inspections. Moreover, premature recourse to the military option would be fraught with risks,” he said.

History has now proven him correct in his assessment.

De Villepin’s call for prudence and avoidance of military escalation in Ukraine was loaded with historical lessons learned. “Military interventions never yield the expected results,” recalled the former French prime minister. “History has taught us this in Libya, Iraq and the Sahel.”

On the other side of the France 2 debate table was BHL, who has a rather interesting relationship to some of the conflicts evoked by De Villepin. “[Russian President Vladimir Putin] launched this crazy war, without reason, against a people who had done nothing to him,” replied the philosopher.

It seems that in BHL’s world, wars start like magic with a need to protect completely innocent parties that just happen to be on NATO’s side, and not because of covert shenanigans that predate them — something that BHL should certainly know about.

During the NATO-backed war in Yugoslavia — the war in Europe that those commenting on the current situation in Ukraine seem to forget — BHL, who just happened to be hanging out in the region, overtly backed the NATO proxy, then Bosnian president Alija Izetbegović, who, his opponents believed, was a Muslim fundmentalist. Izetbegović was allegedly used by western forces to helm Islamist fighters against Serbia and ultimately carve out a zone of influence and military control in the Balkans. Later, in a 2019 tweet, BHL referred to the al-Qaeda-linked Izetbegović as “one of the great, luminous figures of the 20th century.”

Then, in March 2011, ahead of the NATO invasion of Libya, which led to an overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi that October, BHL was spotted in Libya meeting with “Libyan rebels,” footage of which can be seen in BHL’s documentary, “The Oath of Tobruk.” It would be easy to chalk up Levy’s presence among the western-backed proxy fighters ahead of Gaddafi’s ultimate demise at their hands as just journalistic interest or intellectual curiosity. But that theory is betrayed by French reports of an activist role at the highest level of the French government.

BHL succeeded in bringing three members of the future Libyan government in waiting to meet with then French President Nicolas Sarkozy at the Elysée Palace on March 10, 2011 — seven months before Gaddafi’s demise, according to Le Figaro. The newspaper also reported that BHL, who met with then US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton, at a Paris hotel and noted an American disinterest in military intervention, subsequently took to French airwaves to pressure Sarkozy into having the French take the lead in the invasion by telling the French audience that, “If Gaddafi takes Benghazi, the huge French flag flying on the Corniche will literally be spattered with the blood of the massacred Libyans.” Four days after the media appearance, NATO began its military intervention in Libya.

In 2012, as the NATO-led invasion of yet another country, Syria, raged in an (ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to overthrow President Bashar al-Assad with “Syrian rebels” backed by CIA and Pentagon covert programs, BHL took to the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival with both Libyan and Syrian rebels, to symbolize “the passing of the torch of Liberty,” according to Le Point magazine. Just a few months later, BHL was calling for France to also send weapons to the western’s proxy “rebels” to fight the Syrian army, specifically, “cannons, anti-aircraft missiles, defensive weapons, for Aleppo, Homs and the rest of Free Syria.”

Then, in February 2013, BHL wrote on his blog, “La Règle du Jeu,” praising then French president Francois Hollande for launching French military operations in Mali, which were ultimately an unsurprising result of the destabilization of Libya caused by the earlier French-led, NATO-backed invasion cheered by BHL himself. “For the first time, in Mali and Libya, force was put at the explicit service of freedom and justice; for the first time – since Valmy!  – there is a desired link … between the exercise by France of its power and the defense of values that go beyond it.” In defense of the “values” of leaving countries in tatters for years after hopelessly destabilizing them because their leaders refuse to kowtow to the agenda of Washington and its allies, apparently.

And now, BHL — symbolic of a certain caviar leftist that sells wars and invasions of benefit to the military industrial complex from the lofty perch of humanitarianism — wants action in Ukraine. And after calling for it prominently via French mainstream media, he is hanging out in Odessa — coincidentally, just in time for the launch of the new “Ukraine fighters”, once again doing NATO’s dirty work, but this time comprised of foreign and domestic western-armed warriors, both regular troops and irregular combatants, cheered from the sidelines by the west against Russian troops.

A regular and welcome fixture all over English and foreign western establishment media from America to Europe, BHL tends to appear wherever there’s armed conflict between interests of the western establishment intent on clinging to the current unipolar world order, against those more representative of a more competitive multipolar alternative. His very presence in Odessa should give pause to anyone who still honestly believes that NATO isn’t a directly involved player, using Ukraine as a platform for its ongoing fight against an new and emerging world order over which it risks losing control.

March 17, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , | Leave a comment

How America will Profit from War in Europe

By Salman Rafi Sheikh – NEO – 16.03.2022

When the US President Joe Biden announced, on March 8, his decision to ban imports of Russian oil and gas to the US, he opened up a potential business opportunity for the US LNG gas business to expand further into Europe and beyond. While Biden’s decision does not automatically apply to Europe, given how Europe is mindlessly following the US in its footsteps at the expense of its own strategic autonomy, there was/is no denying that most European nations will follow suit the US decision. Indeed, this was Biden’s intention when he said that this decision was made in “close consultation with our Allies and our partners around the world, particularly in Europe … to keep all NATO and all of the EU and our allies totally united.” But this is not just about unity; it is about business, making money and keeping Europe under exclusive US control.

For quite a long time, the US has been making efforts to prevent Europe from asserting too much autonomy in the international arena as a player in itself. Europe decided to refuse to follow the US decision to scrap the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) with Iran. Until recently, it had differences with the US over NATO, with the French President Macron even calling the organisation “brain dead.”

But things are fast changing to the US advantage. By deliberately pushing for NATO’s expansion into Eastern Europe and by denying Russia any reasonable security guarantees, the US set the stage for the present crisis, which has now not only ‘united’ the EU under the US leadership, but many NATO members – in particular, Germany – have decided to increase their defense budget by at least 100 billion Euros.

What the US President Trump was unable to do through table-talks, the Biden administration has achieved through generating an actual war/ crisis in Eastern Europe. Other than NATO members, non-NATO members like Sweden, too, have decided to increase their budget, with public opinion in Sweden swinging for the fits time in favour of NATO membership in the wake of the on-going crisis. Where will this defense spending go?

There is no denying that no European county will be buying weapon systems from Russia or China, but mainly from the US military industrial complex. (NATO does not have its own force; “NATO forces” refer to multinational forces from NATO member countries, who in turn contribute both personnel and equipment to the organisation for “collective defense.”) A highly expected sale will involve F-35 fighter jets. It is, therefore, not surprising to see two major US military industrial groups, Lockheed and Raytheon, have seen their market shares rising up by 16 per cent and 3 per cent since the start of the war in Ukraine, respectively.

Apart from this massive increase in defense production, a clear indication of war in Europe being a business opportunity for the US is the field of energy export to Europe. The US decision to impose a ban on energy exports from Russia is symbolic insofar as the US is not a large buyer of Russian oil and gas. The imposition of the ban is, however, aimed at luring European markets to the US. The US, in short, is eyeing capturing the European market on a long-term basis.

As it stands, US LNG exporters are already appearing to be the big winners as gas prices in Europe hit all-time high. Major US exporters like Cheniere Energy Inc are among the top beneficiaries, as they have been able to sign long-term delas to sell LNG to Europe in very recent months. The present crisis has only made their task a lot easier and much more profitable at the same time.

This is happening at a time when the US LNG exports are expected to reach 11.4 billion cubic feet per day in 2022, accounting roughly for 22 per cent of the expected global LNG demands next year. The number of cargos of LNG shipped from the US to Europe, only in the first two months of 2022, has reached a record high of 164, as compared to the previous record of 125 in 2020. This trend is likely to continue – and even intensify – amidst European nations’ claims to reduce their dependence on Russian natural gas.

Supplying the US LNG to Europe is also part of a US plan-in-the-making to globalise its exports. As a recent report in the Washington-based think-tank, Centre for Strategic and International Studies – which receives funding from the US government – the US export of LNG to Europe for the next 20 years could provide the foundation for the export of US LNG to Asia, which is the largest market for LNG. Expansion of US LNG gas supply lines to Asia would also mean a direct territorial expansion of the US global influence.

The New York Times’ advocacy of a yet another “trans-Atlantic Pact” between the US and Europe reflects essentially how the path for increasing Europe’s dependency on the US is being laid. The EU/NATO already largely depends on the US for its security, which is one reason why there was, until recently, a growing demand from within Europe to enhance its own strategic autonomy by developing weapons systems “independently of the US.”

These initiatives are unlikely to develop any time soon, and even if they do develop, they will have no impact on Europe’s quest for strategic autonomy. It will only add to the US-led trans-Atlantic alliance.

It is important to understand that until very recently, Europe was seeking autonomy from the US, not from Russia. By manufacturing a crisis in Europe and by forcing the European nations to confront a war in their own continent, the US has been able to bring a sea-change in the European political discourse from seeking autonomy from Washington to reducing ‘dependence’ on Russia. From the US perspective, therefore, the war is already a major strategic victory – a victory that the European elite is either completely unaware of, or has been forced to shut its eyes to.

March 17, 2022 Posted by | Economics, Russophobia | , , , | Leave a comment

Unreasonable, sinister for NATO to push China to condemn Russia

Global Times | March 16, 2022

The Ukraine crisis was largely triggered by NATO’s aggressive eastward expansion. The bloc is the culprit. Instead of reflecting on itself, NATO piles pressure on other countries to stand with it against Russia. This is unreasonable and quite sinister.

“China should join the rest of the world in condemning strongly the brutal invasion of Ukraine by Russia,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday, “The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a blatant violation of international law so we call on [China] to clearly condemn the invasion and of course not support Russia. And we are closely monitoring any signs of support from China to Russia.”

NATO is a puppet of the US, a Cold War military bloc manipulated by the US. The obsolete military organization has launched many ruthless military aggressions and triggered corresponding disasters in which local people underwent great suffering. NATO’s aerial bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in 1999 during the Kosovo War is one example.

NATO’s hands are stained with blood and the bloc itself has been a major threat to global and local security. Is NATO qualified to criticize other countries? This organization should have been dismantled long ago.

“NATO is the most serious war machine that violates international law and endangers the sovereignty and territorial integrity of other countries since the end of the Cold War. Since when has the group become a defender of international law? If it is a defender of international law, could you please first apologize for their bombing of Yugoslavia? Could you first compensate for bombing the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia in 1999, which left three journalists dead, and more than 20 people injured? Stoltenberg is not qualified and has no right or moral basis to make such remarks,” Shen Yi, a professor at the School of International Relations and Public Affairs of Fudan University, told the Global Times.

The West has fallen into extreme insanity, and this is quite sick. This is also a symptom of the growing abnormality of the international community under the coercion of the US and its allies. Stoltenberg’s rhetoric sounds like he attempted to label China as Russia’s “accomplice.” In terms of tensions between Russia and Ukraine, there is no absolute right and wrong, as the geopolitics, history and culture between them are too complicated. Their tensions are a difficult problem to solve. In this context, portraying their military conflict as good versus evil is not rational and detrimental to address it.

The Chinese ambassador to US Qin Gang said in an opinion piece in The Washington Post that rumors like “Russia was seeking military assistance from China” are “purely disinformation.” All this is information war initiated by the US. NATO is trying to use this kind of information war to intimidate China, and to coordinate Washington, in an attempt to occupy the moral high ground over the Ukraine crisis.

“By making such statements, NATO is trying to distort the focus of the international community from criticizing its eastward expansion to China’s so-called coordination with Russia,” Zhang Tengjun, Deputy Director of the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies at the China Institute of International Studies, said. “NATO is deliberately circumventing its role and responsibility. It is trying to shift the blame and confuse the public. This is very sinister.”

March 17, 2022 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

‘West’s global political and economic dominance ends’ – Russian President

Samizdat | March 16, 2022

Russian President Vladimir Putin has stated that the latest rounds of unprecedented sanctions imposed on Russia by the US and its allies over the Kremlin’s military campaign in Ukraine, mark the end of an era. According to Putin, from now forward the West will be losing its “global dominance” both politically and economically.

On Wednesday, the Russian head of state proclaimed that the “myth of the Western welfare state, of the so-called golden billion, is crumbling.” Moreover, it is the “whole planet that is having to pay the price for the West’s ambitions, and its attempts to retain its vanishing dominance at any cost,” Putin said.

The president predicted food shortages across the world as Western sanctions against Russia adversely affect the entire global economy.

Touching on the decision by several Western powers to freeze Russia’s central bank assets, Putin said that this would only serve to irreparably undermine trust in those nations, and make other countries think twice before placing their reserves in the care of those countries. According to him, nearly half of Moscow’s assets were “simply stolen” by the West.

Addressing people in the West, the Russian leader said the massive sanctions imposed on Russia are already backfiring on the US and Europe themselves, with governments there trying hard to convince their citizens that Russia is to blame.

Putin warned ordinary people in the West that attempts to portray Moscow as the primary source of all their woes were lies, with many of those issues being the direct result of Western governments’ “ambitions” and “political short-sightedness.”

Western elites, according to Putin, have turned their countries into an “empire of lies,” but Russia will keep on presenting its own position to the whole world, no matter what.

March 16, 2022 Posted by | Economics | , , , , | Leave a comment

Outlines of potential Ukraine peace deal as revealed by Russia

Samizdat | March 16, 2022

Vladimir Medinsky, Russia’s top negotiator at the peace talks with Ukraine, says that Kiev is floating the idea of becoming a neutral nation.

“Ukraine is proposing an Austrian or a Swedish model of a neutral demilitarized state, but with its own army and navy,” Medinsky said on Wednesday, adding that “the size of Ukrainian Army” was among the issues discussed.

Moscow wants Ukraine to officially become a neutral country which will never join NATO. Russia attacked Ukraine on February 24, saying that it was seeking the “demilitarization” of the country, among other demands.

Medinsky reiterated that Moscow wants Kiev to recognize Crimea as part of Russia, and the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics (DPR and LPR), which broke away from Ukraine shortly after the 2014 coup in Kiev. Other key issues of concern the “denazification” of Ukraine and the rights of Russian speakers living in the country, the negotiator said.

“There was some progress on several issues, but not all of them,” Medinsky said about the talks with Kiev.

Commenting on this model of Ukrainian neutrality, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said “it can be viewed as a certain compromise.”

Austria declared itself a neutral country in 1955. Its laws ban the nation from joining military alliances and hosting foreign military bases on Austrian soil.

Sweden is often described as a ‘non-aligned’ country, given its longstanding tradition of not formally joining any military bloc. It is not a NATO member and has no foreign bases on its territory.

However, in response to the Russian attack on Ukraine, NATO invited non-members Sweden and Finland to attend the US-led bloc’s meetings and decided to share intelligence with them.

The Ukrainian leadership previously said it was ready to discuss potential neutrality with Russia. At the same time, President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine must receive “security guarantees” from Russia and the West.

Moscow attacked its neighbor in late February, following a seven-year standoff over Ukraine’s failure to implement the terms of the Minsk agreements, and Russia’s eventual recognition of the Donbass republics in Donetsk and Lugansk. The German- and French-brokered protocols had been designed to regularize the status of those regions within the Ukrainian state.

Russia has now demanded that Ukraine officially declare itself a neutral country that will never join the US-led NATO military bloc. Kiev insists the Russian offensive was completely unprovoked and denied claims it was planning to retake the two republics by force.

March 16, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

YouTube flags Tulsi Gabbard’s criticism of “military industrial complex” as “inappropriate,” “offensive”

By Christina Maas | Reclaim The Net | March 15, 2022

An interview for Fox News’ “Ingraham Angle,” featuring former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, was censored for being potentially “offensive” and “inappropriate” to some audiences.

In the interview, Ingraham asked Gabbard, “Congresswoman, why are we talking about no-fly zones instead of the fact that for the first time we have President Zelensky stepping back from his earlier NATO wishes and even demands?”

Gabbard expressed her frustration with the fact that allegedly no one was discussing a statement Ukraine’s President Zelensky made, about being “… open to the fact of saying, ‘Hey, yeah, maybe we’ll set this NATO membership thing aside,’ and he’s willing to talk with Putin directly to negotiate.”

Gabbard suggested that the West was interfering with attempts to settle the conflict because, “it’s good for the military industrial complex” and it allowed Western leaders to “have this proxy war with Russia, something that Hillary Clinton laid out just recently.”

Gabbard strongly condemned the war, saying: “This war machine, this power elite in Washington, want to turn Ukraine into another Afghanistan, turn into killing fields where this long-term insurgency is supported. And they bleed out and cripple, kill as many Russians as possible for who knows how long, and they’re really showing their real aim in the fact that they’re not taking action right now to end this conflict.”

YouTube flagged the video, putting up a filter that said, “the following content has been identified by the YouTube community as inappropriate or offensive to some audiences.”

March 15, 2022 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | , , , | Leave a comment

China names world’s ‘hacking empire’

RT | March 15, 2022

Calling the US a “hacking empire” of the world, the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Washington to stop “malicious” cyber activities following reports that American hackers subverted a network in China to launch attacks on Russia and Belarus.

“China is gravely concerned about cyberattacks against other countries that originate from the US and use China as a springboard,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told reporters at a press briefing on Monday.

Zhao was commenting on recent Chinese media reports that hackers, mainly from the US but also from NATO allies Germany and the Netherlands, recently hijacked a Chinese computer network for cyberattacks, 87% of which targeted Russia.

“Against the background of the Ukraine situation, such a move may produce the negative effect of misleading the international community and spreading disinformation,” Zhao said, pointing out that “a former US senior official called publicly for launching cyberattacks on Russia not long ago.”

This appeared to be a reference to Hillary Clinton, former US secretary of state and presidential candidate, who made the calls in an MSNBC interview at the end of February.

While Beijing doesn’t know the exact role of the US government in the attack, or if it is linked to the “long practice of smearing China in cyberspace” by the US, Zhao called for Washington to “adopt a more responsible attitude.”

Meanwhile, the White House said on Monday that the US has threatened China with “significant consequences” if it helps Russia in any way, during lengthy talks in Rome between National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Chinese envoy Yang Jiechi.

Multiple Western outlets claimed over the weekend that Moscow had asked Beijing for military aid for the conflict in Ukraine. Zhao called the claims “disinformation” coming from the US.

March 15, 2022 Posted by | Deception | , , , , | Leave a comment

Is Washington Fighting Russia Down to the Last Ukrainian?

By Ron Paul | March 14, 2022

As the Russian invasion of Ukraine moves past its third week, there are slight hopes that negotiations between the two sides may soon produce a ceasefire. But with the shrill warmongering talk in Washington, it almost seems like the US government would hate to see that happen.

Congress and the US Administration seem determined to drag the United States into a war with Russia over Ukraine. Senator Lindsay Graham is openly calling for someone to kill the Russian president and many in the US House have demanded that the Administration establish a “no-fly zone” over Ukraine.

Are they insane? A no-fly zone means you destroy anything and everything that can prevent total US air dominance. That means an attack on Russian missile and air defense systems within Russia. In other words, World War III.

We can all feel disgust at the destruction in Ukraine, but is it really necessary for us to gamble with our own nuclear annihilation?

Sadly, a large bipartisan group in Congress seems to think so.

Much of what is happening in Ukraine can be traced back to the Obama Administration. State Department officials like Victoria Nuland and Antony Blinken planned and executed the overthrow of the Ukrainian government in 2014. This is what set us on this path to conflict, as the government put in place after the coup began demanding NATO membership.

Blinken, Nuland, and the others responsible for this heinous act returned to government in more senior positions under President Biden and they have continued to push their Ukraine agenda.

Last week Secretary of State Blinken – our top diplomat – sought to send Soviet-era Polish fighter jets into Ukraine to shoot Russians. When the Poles said they’d be happy to ship the planes to a US base in Germany and let the Pentagon transfer them to Ukraine, the Pentagon finally stepped in to quash an extraordinarily high-risk move that even the Pentagon said would have no real effect on the outcome of the war.

The State Department is trying to get us into a war and the Pentagon is trying to keep us out. How ironic!

Back when I was on the campaign trail I would say that we have a few thousand diplomats in government, it might not be a bad idea to use them. But I certainly did not mean that we should use them to try and get us further involved in a war!

Three weeks into this terrible war, the US is not pursuing talks with Russia. As Antiwar.com recently reported, instead of supporting negotiations between Ukraine and Russia that could lead to a ceasefire and an end to the bloodshed, the US government is actually escalating the situation which can only increase the bloodshed.

The constant flow of US and allied weapons into Ukraine and talk of supporting an extended insurgency does not seem designed to give Ukraine a victory on the battlefield but rather to hand Russia what Secretary of State Blinken called “a strategic defeat.”

It sounds an awful lot like the Biden Administration intends to fight Russia down to the last Ukrainian. The only solution for the US is to get out. Let the Russians and Ukrainians reach an agreement. That means no NATO for Ukraine and no US missiles on Russia’s borders? So what! End the war then end NATO.

March 14, 2022 Posted by | Militarism | , , | Leave a comment

Zelensky Thanks Zuckerberg For Fighting ‘Side by Side’ With Ukraine in Info War

By Chris Menahan | InformationLiberation | March 13, 2022

Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky on Sunday expressed his gratitude to Mark Zuckerberg for Facebook and Instagram censoring Russian news outlets, allowing calls for violence against Russians and helping his government spread endless disinformation.

“War is not only a military opposition on UA land. It is also a fierce battle in the informational space,” Zelensky said Sunday on Twitter. “I want to thank @Meta and other platforms that have an active position that help and stand side by side with the Ukrainians.”

Last month, Facebook changed their rules to allow users to praise the “neo-nazi” Azov Battalion and this week they changed their rules further to allow calls for violence against Russians.

Facebook blocks RT and Sputnik in the EU but allows the Ukrainian military to announce plans to commit war crimes.

Facebook has helped Zelensky himself spread endless disinformation to try and con NATO into World War III. Most recently, they helped Zelensky spread the lie that Russians attacked the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with tanks and it was leaking radiation and could lead to a nuclear holocaust wiping out all of Europe (if NATO doesn’t immediately get involved in the war and start WW3).

They also helped Zelensky spread the lie that Russians attacked the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and were trying to trigger a meltdown.

With Mark Zuckerberg’s full backing, Zelensky used Facebook to lie about Snake Island and spread the fake news that Russia attacked a Holocaust memorial “to erase our history.”

Whereas Facebook said in the past they would censor content that may cause harm or lead to violence, they now boost Israeli-funded “neo-nazi” groups in Ukraine and spread Zelensky’s lies and disinformation to millions in an effort to start WW3.

March 14, 2022 Posted by | Fake News, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | , , , | Leave a comment

When Fanatical Ideology Bumps up Against Stone Cold Reality

By Rob Slane | The BlogMire | March 13, 2022

I have avoided writing anything on recent events in Ukraine thus far, partly because I wanted to see how events were panning out, partly because I still don’t quite understand how this all fits in with the two year Globalist PsyOp that ended abruptly on 24th February – the same day as the Russian military operation started, as coincidence would have it – but mainly because the experience of trying to write rational analysis in the midst of propaganda that would have made the editors of Pravda blush is no easy task.

As a brief defence against those who will inevitably smear my attempts to analyse the context behind all this as somehow pro-Russian, let me ask them not to bother. I really don’t even understand the frame of reference, since I don’t view the world in the absurd black hat/white hat terms that lead to such jibes. And in any case, I am pro-God and pro-Truth, as well as being a patriotic Englishman who writes on such topics because he believes this once green and pleasant land is now run by terminally foolish clowns and Globalist ideologues who do not govern for the people but in the interests of others. I would also point out that I was writing about atrocities committed against Ukrainians years before it became fashionable to do so. However, unfortunately it seems I was supporting the wrong Ukrainians — the ones nobody cares about — in the Donbass, who have been killed, terrorised and forced to leave the country by their own brutal Government for eight years, with some even deliberately burned alive by the neo-Nazis formations that apparently don’t exist. Those caveats aside, let’s press on.

For most Westerners, it appears that the current conflict suddenly dropped from the sky one morning in February 2022. They woke up to hear about a Russian invasion, and without any prior knowledge or context, having been denied this for years by their so-called free press, simply accepted the narrative thrown at them that this invasion was utterly unprovoked — the brainchild of a madman who wishes to recreate Hammer and Sickle Land again.

None of this is remotely true. Whatever the actual reasons for invading at this particular time — and I don’t believe for one moment that we have the full picture yet — this conflict most certainly did not drop out of the sky or from the ravings of a lunatic on 24th February 2022. No, it is part of a sequence of events that was set off years ago, particularly in 2014, which were clearly destined to reshape the world. As I wrote back in September 2014:

“I believe this crisis to be the defining crisis of the 21st Century so far. … It is also something that may well define the shape of the planet for the rest of the century — whether we are left with a unipolar world … or whether we see a new multipolar world emerging … It is in a very real sense the key battle between globalisation and national sovereignty.”

That sequence of events has a long history, but behind it all is an ideological fanaticism that overtook certain elements of the Western powers – and I’m thinking here in particular of the cult known as neoconservatism (the name is a misnomer as they have their roots in Trotskyism, not conservatism) – who saw the collapse of the Soviet Union as an opportunity not for peace and stability, but for the establishing of a US-led Globalist hegemon, with “Full Spectrum Dominance”, as one of their number once put it.

It was this ideological fanaticism that led to the carpet bombing of Serbia, the invasion of Afghanistan, the war against Iraq, the dismemberment of Libya, and the arming of jihadists to destabilise Syria — wars which killed or displaced hundreds of thousands if not millions of people, yet which curiously attracted none of the sort of response we are seeing now.

It was this ideological fanaticism that also led to the continuance of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), long after the ostensible reason for its existence ceased to exist. NATO was a military alliance against the Soviet Union, and since then it is a military alliance against Russia. This is undeniable, and it gives rise to two questions. Firstly, why was it deemed necessary to continue this alliance at a time when Russia itself quite obviously desired to be on good terms with the West (despite the pilfering of the country during the so-called Shock Therapy of the 1990s)? Secondly, since the alliance remained and was quite obviously aimed at Russia, isn’t it obvious and indeed reasonable that they would see it as a threat?

This should not be hard to understand. If, say, an anti-Russian military alliance crept up to its borders, in five successive waves, despite assurances given to the last Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in 1991 that this would not happen — all of which has come to pass — why on earth would anyone think that the Russians wouldn’t see this as a threat, and why on earth would anyone think that there would not be a major pushback at some point? This is not rocket science!

In 2007, Vladimir Putin warned very starkly at the Munich Security Conference of the long-term consequences of the continuance of this policy. Not only did the warnings go unheeded, the very next year NATO upped the ante significantly with the Bucharest Summit Declaration:

“NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”

Again, it fails me to see how can any rational person can look at this and not see the clash that was inevitably on its way from such a policy, and how easily it could have been avoided. It’s not as if the consequences were unknown. Amongst other foreign policy realists, the great US diplomat, George Kennan, observed the following about NATO expansion towards Russia:

“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.”

Indeed. And I’ll give you three guesses who agreed with that assessment back in 1997, calling out what the reaction might be should the Alliance move into the Baltic States, let alone Ukraine.

“The only thing that can provoke Russia into a hostile and vigorous response is the expansion of NATO to the Baltic states.”

Did you get it? Why, it was none other than Joe Biden, who apparently understood then what he pretends not to understand now.

It was therefore all extremely predictable what would eventually happen if this expansion occurred, and yet the expansion and promises of further expansion did continue nonetheless.

We then fast-forward to 2014, where we find what was perhaps the most blatant coup d’etat in history, when the US and EU conspired together to foment regime change in Ukraine. The coup itself relied heavily on neo-Nazi groups such as Pravy Sektor, whose leader at that time, Dmytro Yarosh, stood on the stage in Maidan Square in Kiev and, flanked by some sinister looking Nazi goons, informed the crowd that his organisation was rejecting the deal brokered by the French, Germans and Poles for a gradual and peaceful handover of power, and that if then President Viktor Yanukovych hadn’t vacated his premises by the following morning, they would depose him — violently. The rest is history. The coup took place, the French, Germans and Poles slunk away apparently forgetting the deal they had brokered, and Victoria Nuland at the State Department gleefully rubbed the cookie crumbs from her hands and set about realising her dream of what to do with that poor country, including the installation of biological weapons laboratories, it would seem. That’s her legacy: She came, she saw, she bought them Cookies and Plague.

One of the first things the new illegitimate regime did was announce a ban on Russian as an official language — despite the fact that it was the predominant language throughout most of the East and South East of the country, where the majority of people were historically, culturally, religiously, and linguistically Russian. Which explains why some of these regions rejected this new hostile, illegitimate government and decided to secede. Again, there is no rocket science here.

What then took place was eight years of conflict, in which the West turned a blind eye to continued atrocities — even blaming them on Russia, when it was the Western backed coup government that was carrying them out. For eight years, with varying degrees of intensity, that people were subjected to bombardment, and being terrorised both by the regular Ukrainian Army and the unashamedly Nazi Tornado, Azov, and Aidar Battalions, which the Western governments helped to train, whilst the Western media pretended it wasn’t happening. But it did happen, and here was the former Ukrainian President, Petro Poroshenko, boasting early on in the hostilities that the bombardment he authorised would see the children of Eastern Ukrainians cowering in basements. Even when a peace process was agreed, with the first and then second Minsk Accords, the shelling of those areas never ceased, over a million refugees fled to Russia, and the Western powers put absolutely no pressure on the Ukrainian Government to fulfil the obligations it had signed to seek a peaceful settlement with the two republics.

Why was this allowed to happen, and why was there no international outcry as those children were holed up in basements and as innocent civilians lived under the constant threat of bombardment by their own Government? The simple reason is that despite their current fake bleeding heart blue and yellow social media profiles, Western governments and the media don’t give a stuff about the people of Ukraine, but have instead led them up the garden path with their phoney promises of Westernisation and NATO membership, when in fact their entire plan was and is very simply to use that country as a stick to poke the bear next door. Here’s a quote from a piece I linked to back in 2014, which very succinctly explains the strategy:

“The Eurasian-wide plan of strategic destabilization and state fracturing owes its genesis to Zbigniew Brzezinski and his Eurasian Balkans concept. The US is flexible in practicing this concept, and it does not meet a dead end if the destabilization encounters an obstacle and cannot be advanced. Should this occur, as it has in Ukraine, Syria and Iraq, and possibly soon in the South China Sea, the stratagem evolves into maximizing the chaos within the launch pad states that are positioned on the doorsteps of the Eurasian Powers. The idea is to create ‘black holes’ of absolute disorder in which Moscow, Beijing, and Tehran are ‘damned if they do, damned if they don’t’ intervene.”

Which is basically where we’re at. The pathetic drivel put forward by the Western powers, in which Ukraine is the Shire, full of nothing but peaceful Hobbit folk with nary a neo-Nazi to be seen, but who unfortunately live next door to Mordor and its Orc hordes, is tripe of the tripiest dimensions. They care nothing about the people of Ukraine, but have simply used it as their Globalist Plaything, bleeding it dry via shell schemes in which sons of US Presidents magically get paid whacking great salaries for jobs they’re not remotely equipped to do, and where they arm and fund some of the worst people imaginable — in this case neo-Nazi battalions, just as they did the Mujahideen back in the day, and al-Nusra Jihadists more recently — to create permanent chaos on Russia’s borders.

But as I said earlier, we certainly haven’t been told the whole reason for the current invasion, and I’m sure there’s much more to come. Because ultimately this is not really about Ukraine, but about an inevitable conflict between ideological fanatics and stone cold realists, with the poor Ukrainians sadly caught in the middle of it.

I want to finish this piece with seven very brief points, some of which I may return to in the future.

Firstly, the reaction to the Russian intervention has been on a level of hysteria that I’ve only ever seen once before in my life — last year, in fact, with the absurd reaction to an eminently treatable virus with a 99.9% Survivability Rate. The fact that we are witnessing a reaction that never occurred during the US/NATO wars of aggression throughout the last few decades, or indeed during the Russian intervention in Syria (although there was some) should alert thinking people to the following conclusion: this military operation is about something much bigger than the reasons that have been stated either by the Russians or the West.

Secondly, the Western media has entirely deceived people into what is really going on, with their heroic but fake tales of Ghost pilots, Snake Islands, and massive Ukrainian resistance. The fact is that the bulk of the action has been in the East, not in Kiev as the media leads people to believe, and the Ukrainian armed forces are now basically trapped there in a number of military cauldrons, where they will either lay down their weapons or die. For an ongoing analysis of the situation, I recommend the excellent videos put out by The Duran.

Thirdly, the ONLY solution to this crisis that has any hope of bringing lasting peace, is for Ukraine to declare itself a neutral country between the NATO alliance and Russia. However, the Neocon Globalist cult will never accept this solution, and so unless other more sensible heads in the West understand this simple point and are able to prevail, the conflict will inevitably continue and quite possibly escalate even further at some point, which is a very scary thought.

Fourthly, the economic sanctions that have been placed on Russia by the Western countries will rebound spectacularly, and end up hurting European countries especially, far harder than they will hurt Russia. Again, the analysis at The Duran is excellent for those who want to learn more.

Fifthly, when the monumentally ignorant MPs in the British Parliament stood up to applaud President Zelensky, did they have the remotest clue that his closing words — “Glory to Ukraine” — was the official slogan of Stepan Bandera’s OUN-B, the Ukrainian Nazi group that fought alongside the Waffen SS in World War II, and which horrifically massacred 100,000 Poles in Volhynia in 1943, or that this same slogan is used by the openly Nazi heirs of Bandera today? I somehow doubt it.

Sixthly, the existence of US funded Biological laboratories on the territory of Ukraine, which was yesterday’s conspiracy theory, is in fact true and was even confirmed by none other than the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs of the United States, Victoria “Cookies” Nuland, who is apparently very concerned that the contents of these places might escape or fall into the hands of the Russians. Why is she so concerned, and why has the US tried to delete or burn the records of these places? For those interested in finding out, I recommend the work of a very brave proper journalist (remember them), George Webb who can be found on Twitter at @RealGeorgeWebb1. Should all this turn out to be as bad as it looks, it might just put a very different perspective on things and explain the unhinged reaction we’ve seen in the Western media. It would also be mighty ironic: many of the Western leaders and media that still justify the invasion of Iraq, even though it turned out not to have the Bioweapons that were claimed as the pretext, are now howling with outrage at a conflict in an area where they do exist.

Seventhly and lastly, why do I get the feeling that Klaus Schwab is one of the few people who is enjoying the economic repercussions of this war?

March 13, 2022 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

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