UKRAINE: 3 good articles at Antiwar.com
Rick Rozoff's short article lists a Russian proposal for removal of nuclear weapons from non-nuclear Europe.
Dan Sjursen points out why US/NATO cannot win a non-nuclear war over Ukraine.
And David Stockman explains why our addiction to regime change makes our criticism of Crimea's vote to join the Russian Federation so hypocritical. Not to mention our annexation of certain territories.
https://www.antiwar.com/blog/2022/01/27/russia-calls-on-us-to-withdraw-n...
Russia Calls on US To Withdraw Nuclear Weapons From Europe, Cease Joint Nuclear Drills With Non-Nuclear Allies
by Rick Rozoff Posted on January 27, 2022
https://original.antiwar.com/Danny_Sjursen/2022/01/26/the-us-russia-comm...
January 26, 2022
The US-Russia Commitment Gap: And Its Tragic PotentialMaj. Danny Sjursen, USA (Ret.)
... Russia has demonstrated a will, and deployed military capacity, to win – and win fast – if this thing goes hot, that America and its divided, and oft-impotent, NATO allies simply can’t match. Therefore, the West would lose – full stop – to say nothing of the reality that it shouldn’t even consider fighting in the first place. That makes the whole matter pure madness, and the fact that Biden and Blinken won’t admit this inconvenient truth, well, blatantly criminal.
... Bottom line: it’s long past time to admit some hard truths about the Ukrainian crisis. America shouldn’t fight for this far flung, internally-divided, non-treaty ally that’s – like it or not – nestled deep in the Russian sphere of decisive interest; nor could NATO truly win if it tried. Pretending we would or could is a recipe for disaster...
https://original.antiwar.com/David_Stockman/2022/01/26/sleepy-joes-wimpy...
January 26, 2022
Sleepy Joe’s Wimpy Tail Wags The Dog Of War
David StockmanThis is getting downright pathetic.
... the latest caterwauling from the desperate Biden White House – on top of the idiotic British intelligence “leaks” over the weekend about a nonexistent Russian invasion plan – was even too much for its ostensible Ukrainian allies. They latter have been far more cautious in their assessment of the situation on the ground, with current and former Ukrainian national security and defense officials saying they don’t recognize Russia’s latest military buildup as anything out of the ordinary.
... It’s all in the name of protecting the liberal order against unwanted border changes or threats to sovereignty, Blinkey neighed again and again.
Really?Between 1947 and 1989, the United States tried to change other nations’ governments 72 times;
... My research found that after a nation’s government was toppled, it was less democratic and more likely to suffer civil war, domestic instability and mass killing.
... The allegedly “occupied” territory of Crimea, in fact, was actually purchased from the Ottomans by Catherine the Great in 1783, thereby satisfying the longstanding quest of the Russian czars for a warm-water port.
... For the next 171 years Crimea was an integral part of Russia (until 1954). That span equals the 170 years that have elapsed since California was annexed by a similar thrust of “Manifest Destiny” on this continent, thereby providing, incidentally, the United States Navy with its own warm-water port in San Diego.
... Still, it was this final aggressive drive of Washington and NATO into the internal affairs of Russia’s historical neighbor and vassal, Ukraine, that largely accounts for the demonization of Putin. Likewise, it is virtually the entire source of the false claim that Russia has aggressive, expansionist designs on the former Warsaw Pact states in the Baltics, Poland, and beyond.
The latter is a nonsensical fabrication. In fact, it was the neocon meddlers from Washington who crushed Ukraine’s last semblance of civil governance when they enabled ultra-nationalists and crypto-Nazis to gain government positions after the February 2014 coup.
So it may be fairly asked: What lame brains did not understand yet that Washington’s triggering of “regime change” in Kiev would reopen this entire bloody history of sectarian and political strife?
Moreover, once they had opened Pandora’s Box, why was it so hard to see that an outright partition of Ukraine with autonomy for the Donbas and Crimea, or even accession to the Russian state from which these communities had originated, would have been a perfectly reasonable resolution?
Certainly that would have been far preferable to dragging all of Europe into the lunacy of the current anti-Putin sanctions and embroiling the Ukrainian factions in a suicidal civil war.
(Emphasis mine.)
Comments
Scott Ritter has a similar article over at RT
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/547526-us-power-biden-ukraine/
Here is the title.
I got to meet Scott Ritter once
Good egg; how's he been?
I'd heard he'd been branded a sex-criminal, and was even buying into it himself for a time. Has he managed to shake that off?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I have no answers to your questions.
But there is a possible reason for the slanderous allegations as his viewpoints are not acceptable to TPTB. Look what they have done to Julian Assange for his truth telling.
Kinda figured
Only so many people who happen to be high-profile enemies of Morgoth can be brought low by lurid To Kill A Mockingbird-esque accusations before it starts sounding more convenient than plausible.
"Obsession with sexual misconduct/deviancy" was identified as a signature symptom of the fascist syndrome long ago.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
I read Scott Ritter's article,
and I think it's important. Thanks for calling my attention to it. And I love Dan Sjursen, who makes similar points.
But I fear that neither of them looks at what they're saying, which is that neither the U.S. nor NATO is configured to fight a ground war. They're configured to fight nuclear war. And the United States will be destroyed in a nuclear war. And our military industrial leadership is fine with that. They arm NAZI private armies in Ukraine. They want to control Russia's resources. They don't care about us. They're NAZI fascists.
They definitely want to control the entire world.No doubt there
without any competition.
They don't want any limits on their corporate pillage.
But they didn't wait until they had the consent of the world. They just decided in 1990 that "capitalism had won" and proceeded to outlaw new anything like new public healthcare in the entire world with the WTO. (if the countries wanted to trade with the US and joined the WTO we had allegedly created they had to agree to basic rules which required "committing" to this agenda to privatize everything.)
So we should trust that at least, if the US does conquer the whole world, they wont allow public things to get out of hand and "ruin the market" for exotic financial instruments and exotic anticancer drugs with "government interference". The US and its "global economic governance" organizations, such as WTO are open for business.
Why is our taxpayer money used to fund all this, which we likely dont agree with (do you want to privatize education healthcare, and water everywhere? Or only where its already sold for profit somewhere in a country?)
Yeltsin's period of control of Russia
is a perfect example of what you describe. Shock Doctrine we called it. Our gift to Russia. We bragged about it. Total control of the extraction of resources by gangster oligarchs. No wages. No taxes. No healthcare. No law. No education. No safety net.
New industries for the former communist Russians like drug addiction and child sex trafficking.
What our degenerate overlords hate about Putin is that he's not Yeltsin.
They definitely want to control the entire world.No doubt there
without any competition.
They don't want any limits on their corporate pillage.
But they didn't wait until they had the consent of the world. They just decided in 1990 that "capitalism had won" and proceeded to outlaw new anything like new public healthcare in the entire world with the WTO. (if the countries wanted to trade with the US and joined the WTO we had allegedly created they had to agree to basic rules which required "committing" to this agenda to privatize everything. Or do you want to let countries have public services, like healthcare, in effect, sharing the burden of the cost between one another, to make it affordable to all? (The 20th century way. We're told that the trend is privatized everything, as its all the WTO allows, the desired "end point" of the one way street of WTO deregulation. )
So we should trust that at least, if the US does conquer the whole world, they wont allow public things to get out of hand and "ruin the market" for exotic financial instruments and exotic anticancer drugs with "government interference". It wont get in between predatory corporations and their prey. The US and its "global economic governance" organizations, such as WTO are open for business, but notopen to other business models, like worker owned businesses. It frames public anything including co-ops, as barriers to trade in services. Worker standards that attempt to raise pay levels to a "living wage" or protect unions and union workers are also framed now as trade barriers. .
Why is our taxpayer money used to fund all this? which we likely dont agree with (do you want to privatize education healthcare, and water everywhere? Or only where its already sold for profit somewhere in a country?)
Yes, so I heard.
European oligarchs SO envied the Russians for their theft of the entire country, just about. So the WTO framed everything as requiring the privatization of everything.
This was to trick the former socialist countries into signing trade agreements like the WTO that forced the privatization and re-capture of almost all business activity.
Like loon at the Achmea vs. Slovak Republic ISDS case in the Slovak Republic. Over public healthcare. Make sure you read the full story.
I wonder why Achmea hired Bill Clinton when they did. $400000 to give a 40 minute speech.
You can read some of the case documents on italaw.com. italaw 3207 is the one, read the factual summary. Yes, this is the one..
https://www.italaw.com/sites/default/files/case-documents/italaw3207.pdf
UNDER THE ARBITRATION RULES
OF THE UNITED NATIONS COMMISSION
ON INTERNATIONAL TRADE
ACHMEA B.V.
(The Netherlands)
Claimant
-v-
THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC
(The Slovak Republic)
Respondent
PCA Case No. 2013-12
AWARD ON JURISDICTION AND ADMISSIBILITY
Arbitral Tribunal:
Dr. Laurent Levy (Presiding Arbitrator)
Mr. John Beechey
Prof. Pierre-Marie Dupuy
Secretary of the Tribunal:
Mr. Magnus Jeska Langer
20 May 2014
I.
A. THE CLAIMANT ............................................................................................................................................... 6
B. THE RESPONDENT ........................................................................................................................................... 7
c. THE ARBITRAL TRIBUNAL .................................................................................................................................. 8
II.
PROCEDURAL HISTORY ........................................................................................................................ 10
A. THE NOTICE OF ARBITRATION .......................................................................................................................... 10
B. THE FIRST PROCEDURAL HEARING AND PROCEDURAL ORDER No.1 ....................................................................... 10
c. THE WRITIEN PHASE ..................................................................................................................................... 10
D. THE HEARING ON JURISDICTION AND ADMISSIBILITY ............................................................................................ 11
E. THE POST-HEARING PHASE ............................................................................................................................. 12
Ill.
FACTUAL BACKGROUND .................. .................................................................................................... 13
A. ACHMEA'S INVESTMENT AND THE HEALTH INSURANCE MARKET IN THE SLOVAK REPUBLIC ..........................................
13
B. THE BAN ON PROFITS, THE BAN ON TRANSFERS AND THE FIRST BIT ARBITRATION ..................................................... 14
c. PUBLIC STATEMENTS BY STATE OFFICIALS ON THE INTRODUCTION OF REFORMS TO THE HEALTH-INSURANCE MARKET ..... 17
D. THE RESIGNATION OF THE HEAD OF HSA ........................................................................................................... 18
E. THE INTENTION STATEMENT ............................................................................................................................ 19
F. THE PROJECT PLAN ....................................................................................................................................... 23
G. THE MINISTRY OF FINANCE REPORT .................................................................................................................. 28
H. THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE PROJECT PLAN .................................................................................................... 29
I. THE CONDUCT OF VsZP AND STATE-OWNED HOSPITALS ...................................................................................... 30
PRAYER FOR RELIEF ............................................................................................................................. 31
IV.
A. THE STATEMENT OF CLAIM ............................................................................................................................. 31
B. THE RESPONDENT'S OBJECTIONS TO JURISDICTION .............................................................................................. 32
c. THE CLAIMANT'S RESPONSE TO THE OBJECTIONS TO JURISDICTION ......................................................................... 32
v.
ANALYSIS ............................................................................................................................................ 33
A.
INTRODUCTORY MATIERS ....................•.......................................................................••................................. 33
1. Applicable procedural law ................................................................................................................... 33
2. Applicable substantive law .................................................................................................................. 33
3. Interpretative approach ...................................................................................................................... 34
4. Jurisdictional requirements under the Netherlands-Siovak Republic BIT .......................................... 34
5. Jurisdiction vs. admissibility ................................................................................................................ 35
B.
FIRST OBJECTION: THERE IS NO LEGAL DISPUTE .................................................................................................. 39
1. The Respondent's position .................................................................................................................. 39
2. The Claimant's position ....................................................................................................................... 45
3.
c.
Discussion ............................................................................................................................................ 47
SECOND OBJECTION: ACHMEA FAILED To STATE A PRIMA FACIE CASE .................................................................... 55
1. The Respondent's position .................................................................................................................. 55
2. The Claimant's position ....................................................................................................................... 59
3. Discussion ............................................................................................................................................ 60
a) The applicable standard .................................................................................................................. 60
b) The expropriation claim (Article 5 of the BIT) ................................................................................. 64
c) The non-expropriation claim (Article 3 of the BIT) .......................................................................... 74
COSTS ................................................................................................................................................. 80
A. THE PARTIES' COSTS STATEMENTS ..•.•...••....••.•....•.•...•.••......••.....•••.....•....•...•..•.•..•.•..•••.•••.••••••••••••.••••....•••.....••• 80
B. THE COSTS OF THE PROCEEDINGS •••••...•.•••••••••..••••.....•.......•••....••....•.•...•••••.•...••••••.••...•••••••••.•••••••••••...••.......••... 83
C. THE ALLOCATION OF COSTS •••••.••••••••••••.•.•••....••....•.••....••••...•.•••....•••••••••••••••.••••••••••.•••••••••..•••.....•...••••...••••••••• 83
VII.
DECISION ............................................................................................................................................ 84