You know the world is in trouble when Kissinger is the voice of reason
Henry Kissinger will soon turn 100, proving that like Dick Cheney, evil men seem to live forever.
While Kissinger is mostly remembered for winning the Nobel Peace Prize for Vietnam while committing genocide in Cambodia, I prefer to remember his comments to the Iraqi Kurds just one year later, who he has inspired to revolt against Saddam Hussein and were being slaughtered.
“Promise them anything, give them what they get, and fuck them if they can’t take a joke.”
Followed by, “Covert action should not be confused with missionary work.”
It is this evil man that we now turn to as the voice of sanity.
“We are at the edge of war with Russia and China on issues which we partly created, without any concept of how this is going to end or what it’s supposed to lead to.”
That’s the view of Henry Kissinger, the 99-year-old former secretary of state and national-security adviser, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. He recommended that the U.S. not “accelerate the tensions and to create options, and for that you have to have some purpose.”
Kissinger added that foreign policy is “very responsive to the emotion of the moment.”
...On Taiwan, he advised being “very careful” in measures that seem to change the structure of the relationship with China, without directly criticizing the recent visit by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
It's a sad day when "Let's not cause a war with the other major nuclear powers in the world without a plan and for no good reason," is bold outside-the-box thinking.
Washington hasn't bothered with diplomacy since the end of the Cold War. Unless you think diplomacy means dropping bombs from 30,000 feet. While you might be able to get away with that against internationally isolated nations like Afghanistan and Iraq, that won't work against Russia and China.
Hell, it wouldn't even work against Russia and China of 1992. It certainly doesn't work against Russia and China of 2022. Even fellow war-criminal Tony Blair, not exactly a man of deep wisdom, has figured out that the world has moved on.
"We are coming to the end of Western political and economic dominance," Blair said in a lecture entitled "After Ukraine, What Lessons Now for Western Leadership?" according to a text of the speech to a forum supporting the alliance between the United States and Europe at Ditchley Park west of London.
"The world is going to be at least bi-polar and possibly multi-polar," Blair said. "The biggest geo-political change of this century will come from China not Russia."
If you aren't aware of the consequences of the political elites not smartening up, this headline happened today.
As many as 5 billion people worldwide – 75% of the global population – would die from famine and hunger after a nuclear war between the U.S. and Russia, a new study says.
The detonation of a nuclear weapon would cause massive fires and inject soot into the atmosphere, blocking sunlight from reaching the surface and limiting food production, leading to the deaths, the study said.
“A large percent of the people will be starving,” Lili Xia, a climate scientist at Rutgers University, who led the research, told Nature.com. “It’s really bad.”
What do you think are the chances of you surviving a nuclear war if you aren't wealthy? Near zero.
That's why I believe that while Russia should not be rewarded for it's aggression against Ukraine, if the alternative is risking nuclear war with Russia then "Sorry Ukraine."
And anyone who thinks otherwise doesn't have their head screwed on properly.
Things like this do not help.
Now some European politicians are calling for an end to the short-term visas that allow Russians to holiday in the EU as the war in Ukraine rages on.Countries including Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia, Finland and the Czech Republic have called for the EU to limit or block short-term Schengen visas for Russians, in protest at their country’s invasion of Ukraine.
After six months of war, the proposal echoes widespread frustration with a Russian public that seems either unable or unwilling to mount a meaningful resistance to the war being waged in their name.
Either Putin is a dictator or he isn't. If he's a dictator then you can't blame the people of Russia for this war, and collective punishment is wrong. Plus it looks a whole bunch like xenophobia.
We are also seeing a disturbing revival of Cold War propaganda that were long ago proven to be lies.
As for Kissinger looking back on his horrible legacy.
The secretary of state under Richard Nixon himself has been dubbed a war criminal by some, for his role in sabotaging Vietnamese peace talks, expanding that war into Cambodia and other controversial moves. He didn’t appear to express regret in the Wall Street Journal interview. “I do not torture myself with things we might have done differently,” he reportedly said.
Guilt and regret is not part of Kissinger's character.
Comments
Shocker! Ukraine isn't going on the offensive
You'll need to sit down for this.
I've been covering Ukraine's big offensive near Kherson (in the news media) for over a month now, and now it turns out that there is no big offensive.
Boy, we never saw that one coming.
But there is one winner from all this, and you'll never guess who: the merchants of death.
The war mongers at the RAND
don't seem to agree with you:
These 'experts' at RAND have failed to take into consideration Putin's PRIMARY goals - denazification and demilitarization. It is not to make territorial gains at this point. The Russian forces are quite content to minimize casualties by staying back and pounding the Ukraine forces with their artillery. The more they can kill and maim the safer the country will be when it is over.
In any event, it appears that the Ukraine forces along the Donbas line have been gradually pushed out of their dug-in defensive positions (constructed in the 8 years since 2014) and will not be able to maintain a viable defence in the future. This front will most likely collapse within the next month at the rate it has been going.
Sigh….
Russia has a good case for its actions in Ukraine being self defense from America which has been encroaching on its borders for 30 years. Anyone who thinks that Russia should allow America to put nuclear weapons in Ukraine are the ones who don’t have their heads screwed on properly. You know damn well how we’d react if Russia put their army and nukes in Mexico after violently removing the president and killing thousands of Americans living there.
Biden and his puppet masters could have easily avoided Russia making the decision to protect the people in the Donbas by simply agreeing not to let Ukraine join NATO and insisting that they uphold the Minsk agreement. Instead Ukraine built up a huge force backed by and armed by NATO to slaughter more people there. Ukraine already killed 40,000 people. How many more do you think Russia should have watched being killed before they acted?
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
I didn't want to focus on that for this essay
You already know I am fully aware that NATO forced Russia into a position that it had to respond in some way, and then has pressured Ukraine from making peace.
OTOH, the war doesn't start until someone starts shooting. So Russia isn't innocent in this.
But my major point is that it doesn't fucking matter if we are all dead in a nuclear war.
I'm sure that you can agree with this. I've also cross-posted this on reddit to see what sort of response I'll get.
iirc
Ukraine has been shooting ethnic Russians in the Donbass since 2014.
Then maybe you might have left this out
Russia has said numerous times that they don’t plan on using nukes in Ukraine because it’s a stupid thing to do. But lots of our congress critters are saying that yes indeed the world could maybe survive if mini nukes are used.
I agree that they should be off the table by any country. RT also wrote about nuclear winter and posted this picture. Russia has been asking Biden to extend the current nuclear weapons bill, but without much luck. Biden’s been yapping about it, but has not talked to Russia about it because he wants China to sign on too. China is saying no they don’t think they should.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
I really don't want to follow this thread
I wrote that with anti-Russia people in mind, but I would like to remind you as well.
If you are so focused on "Russia should not be rewarded for it's aggression against Ukraine" that you are distracted from my main point then you are making a HUGE mistake.
Personally I believe that you are smarter than that.
If there will be a nuclear war
the US will start it - but Russia will finish it. Unlike in the Cold War times, they have the ability to hit the US mainland, both by missiles and subs, for which the US has no protection. Russia still has functional bomb shelters.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7FI6ijbH-w]
Putin is not in any hurry to end the Ukrainian SMO
He still has not completed his goals.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jSMj-lLdeo]
If you have watched Putin's actions in the preceding 22 years you should know he is an extremely patient man and only makes decisions after extensive discussions and planning.
In February US/NATO had finally pushed him to war with Ukraine.
PUTIN WAS LEFT WITH NO OTHER CHOICE EXCEPT TO INVADE UKRAINE IN ORDER TO PROTECT HIS COUNTRY AND PEOPLE!
Yup.
This is what the philosopher Cornelius Castoriadis called "the atrophy of political imagination" in that essay "The Retreat from Autonomy: Postmodernism as Generalized Conformism." Biden has stocked his cabinet with warmongers, to be sure, and they are to some extent directing the show, but more importantly they are neoliberal social climbers whose imagination is limited to following what other people believe, and right now it's about "us good, them evil." Isn't that what the light show in Roger Waters concerts (at about 8:26) is about? Zelenskyy and Putin are basically thieves out to steal what they can. The weapons in this war are all going to go into the black market, either when it's over, or now. It's all about money.
It seems to me that if this is to escalate to nuclear war, it will be the fault of the West. Why would the Russians need to use nukes first? They've won.
“The loyal Left cannot act decisively. Their devotion to the system is a built-in kill switch limiting dissent.” - Richard Moser
Russia is only protecting itself
Russia still commemorates the end of WWII where it lost so many of its citizens. They have no intention of ever allowing that to happen again. It's existential.
NATO map has a mistake
The line that's supposed to point to Macedonia actually points to Kosovo.
What's your point?
Do you think that this negates my post?
I was just noting a mistake
Nothing more or less.
Nailed it
Shitlibs have rehabilitated the worst of the worst of the people from the Bush cabal and rejected anyone who tries to inject some sanity.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Tom Lehrer
famously stated that the reason he retired from writing and performing was as follows:
And there you have it.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
This is the best discussion
about this issue that I can find anywhere recently, especially because of the articles CB has brought together.
But gjohnsit, the reason I want to persuade you to see not only that Putin was forced to take military action, as so well described above, but that Putin repeatedly stated that nukes in Ukraine would be 5-7 minutes from Russian population and command and control centers. He explained that such a circumstance would force the Russian military to respond before they had time to verify and thus would create a much more dangerous condition for all life on earth.
Nukes positioned 5-7 minutes from Russian retaliation forces would be an attempt to eliminate Mutually Assured Destruction, therefore making it possible to wipe out Russia's military and the Russian people before they had time to respond.
But, as Putin emphasized, Russia WOULD RESPOND. That is the point he has made. In other words, if you want to cut the decision making time down to 5 minutes, go ahead. We will respond. You launch, we will respond. That makes the danger of annihilation much more imminent.
So from my point of view, he is taking this military action to prevent the nuland/kagan psychopaths from succeeding in nazifying us all and destroying life on earth.
I'm aware of the details
I'm totally behind the idea that Putin was pushed into a corner by NATO. That if Putin hadn't seized the Crimea in 2014 that he would have been kicked out of office by a more hawkish general. And the same choice faced Putin if Ukraine joined NATO. And I'm aware that the we gave support to the Ukraine coup plotters in 2014.
All of these things I am already aware of.
But I'm also aware that war is evil, even if you have a seemingly rational reason for it.
I'm aware that Putin had made the move to invade Ukraine, not the other way around.
What you and several other people here are trying to say is "You don't understand. Russia had good reasons for starting this war."
What I'm saying is "I am fully aware of your reasons. War is still evil and Russia started this war. Period."
I remain consistent about the issue of war. There are no exceptions, as long as there are no other options to death.
A couple of you have said that Russia didn't start this war. You are mistaken for rather obvious reasons. You need to do more research.
gjohnsit, I am a pacifist.
I believe war is an abomination. I agree with you that
and so my hope would have been that Putin would hand over the keys to his country to our psychopaths and let them plunder and impoverish his people. I'm serious. Because that was the only alternative to war, knowing that the psychopaths were clearly planning to retake Russia as they had under Yeltsin.
But Putin is not a pacifist, and Putin lived through the Yeltsin period, and Putin's parents lost two children under the Nazi seige of Leningrad, and Putin wrote and pushed for the Minsk agreement. And he could see that our so-called foreign policy was a relentless willingness to promote war, slaughter, ethnic cleansing, and fascism. Fifteen years of disgusting, suicidal, war profiteering, corruption and killing, daring anyone to stop us.
We started this war. We armed the private Nazi Armies and Ukrainian military that started this war in 2014 and launched thousands of strikes on the Donbass in February 2022 before Russia entered the war.
I believe Putin would agree with you that war is evil and should be avoided
For Putin and the Russian people, Nazis with nukes, the prospect we took such pains to create for them, was a clear signal of a threat of death.
And I, as a pacifist, have no other thought as to how he could have "solved" this than to have handed over his country. Seriously. People say he could have stopped sending gas to Europe. Do you think that would have stopped the war in Ukraine? Should he have allowed the slaughter of the people of Eastern Ukraine and the positioning of nukes in Ukraine? Not to mention the biological weapons labs! WTF????!!!!
Maybe Russia should stack along the US/Mexico border
Yeah if the US did anything about it,after waiting 8 years and failed agreements while the threat was growing, then I guess you'd be saying the US started the war.
Or maybe I don't "have my head screwed on right".
One question for you, do you think that military buildup, with the construction of fortified positions and the combat training of ever more soldiers was for anything other than an eventual attack?
This is cool
On reddit I've been called every name in the book. Lemme check real quick.
stupid fucking tankie
a waste of space
Putin loving fascist apologist
Among lots of other insults. All because I am far too pro-Putin.
EXCEPT HERE. Here I am anti-Putin.
In neither case does anyone consider that I am first and foremost anti-apocalypse.
And surprisingly being anti-apocalypse is a very small minority.
In terms of being
vehemently anti-apocalypse- you are most assuredly not alone...
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I get it now…
Obama’s coup in 2014 was a figment of our imagination and the fact that NATO and especially America has been training and arming the neo Nazis and watching them kill people in the Donbas while ignoring the Minsk agreement wasn’t actually a war against native Russian speakers.
You need to pay attention to the work CB has posted here and maybe you will understand how wrong you are.
Or maybe you could read my essay on how Russia didn’t start the war? Starting with Putin’s speech.
Twice in one century Russia faces a war of annihilation
I encourage you to read the whole essay.
BTW I was going to apologize last night if I had derailed your essay, but I changed my mind after reading your comment about how smart you think I should be. Maybe you can stop insulting people you disagree with. You’re entitled to your opinion, but others here are too.
As for nuclear war being bad I wholeheartedly agree with you. Funny tho how Ukraine right now is trying to create a nuclear accident by bombing nuclear sites in Ukraine. Here’s what they did today and if you don’t think that Biden’s handlers are okay with it I don’t know what to say.
Ukraine bombs nuclear waste storage site
A dirty bomb would affect 9 countries.
There is a reason Russia took control of nuclear power plants in Ukraine immediately after they went in. They didn’t trust that the Nazis wouldn’t create a dirty bomb. Imagine the havoc now if they hadn’t.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
anti-Apocalypse has never been less popular
I was following the events in real time. I know who shot first, and whos troops crossed whos border first.
If you want to take my comment as an insult, then go ahead and insult me to make it even. I can't be more fair than that.
disagreement is not tantamount to insult.
Taking this to some other, lower lever, if my home was surrounded, or starting to be surrounded, no damn way I wouldn't fire first. I have a loved one in my home I would kill to protect, and my loved one would kill to protect me.
We are a home, not a country, but that is the thinking, the charge, of leaders and defenders.
Come to my home, sit on the sofa, and me and my husband will do our best to protect you, and we are not Putin.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
That would be Ukraine
They had been killing people in the Donbas for the last 8 years. Or to be technical it would have been the Maiden square massacre after Obama overthrew Ukraine’s president. Did you read anything I quoted Putin saying as to why Russia decided to protect people in the Donbas and demilitarize and de-Nazify Ukraine so that they could never threaten Russia again? You seem to have blinders on to who actually started the war. Yes Russia went into Ukraine because Biden was holding a nuclear weapon to Russia’s head and Ukraine was actually killing people in the Donbas and said that they were going to build nuclear weapons after Russia warned that they were crossing the red line. How do you not understand the Mexico/iSIs/nuclear weapons analogy? Or the Cuba situation? To use your words you have to be smarter than this hanging on to Russia being the aggressor here. I don’t think America would have been as patient as Russia has been if Russia was surrounding America with Russian bases.
I can’t believe how many times the facts need to be repeated.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
Russia Derangement Syndrome (or Putin Derangement Syndrome)?
It seems to be a massively widespread psychosis. And it's the most dangerous one yet.
There is no justice. There can be no peace.
You don't have to believe me (and you won't), but you should
I'll take these one at a time
The topic here is the war between Russia and Ukraine. This is an internal coup, and thus doesn't qualify by definition.
The separatists and Ukraine army have been killing each other in the Donbas for 8 years.
Stop right there. I won't listen to Putin about why he invaded Ukraine for the same reason I won't listen to Bush explain why he invaded Iraq (or any politician that was involved in a war of any kind).
No, I don't. You just give me no credibility.
No, Biden wasn't. There was the danger of that becoming true, but it wasn't true.
Like I said. It went both ways. Most of the killing happened in 2014-15. Since 2016 there was no mass killings. It had settled down to the occasional artillery shell getting lobbed a couple times a week.
Ukraine was never going to build nuclear weapons. That's not something anyone took seriously. Not even Putin. Stationing NATO nuclear weapons was more likely.
Because you don't have a lot of respect for me.
Fact: the first international military action was when Russia seized Crimea. Until then there had been nothing happening at the borders.
Now I vocally supported Russia on this. But I also recognize that this could be said to be the start of a war (although only exactly 1 person died in this action, so it wasn't much of a war)
Fact: the first real conflict happened in the Donbas between the separatists and Ukraine forces.
It started out with sit-in protests, but quickly escalated.
Fact: There was no genocide here for one simple reason - because the separatists held their own. There was a whole lot of civilians that got killed near the front lines, but most of the Donbas wasn't near the front lines.
Fact: the real war started when Russia invaded in February. You could say Russia was provoked (and I strongly believe that you would be right). In fact, you could come up with probably a dozen reasons to justify the invasion. But at the end of the day you wouldn't have changed this most important fact:
Russia invaded Ukraine and that started the war. Period.
Au contraire
I have a lot of respect for you and the topics you bring us. I hope we can just agree to amicably disagree on this. Our opinions are not going to affect anything either way and if I’ve stepped over the line I apologize.
Was Humpty Dumpty pushed?
A history lesson for you
What I have noticed is that the NAZIfied Ukranian's
were the ones who shot civilians first. If you haven't noticed this ongoing conflict for the last 8 years then you have fuck all to say about this conflict because you are fucken clueless. I have followed the carnage since the US engineered the overthrow of the legitimate Ukrainian government in 2014 under Obama's term.
OK
https://caucus99percent.com/content/ukraines-corruption-and-us-weapons
https://caucus99percent.com/content/ukraines-big-counter-offensive-reall...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/us-media-declares-ukraine-winning-war
https://caucus99percent.com/content/ukraine-about-lose-war
https://caucus99percent.com/content/ukraine-has-effectively-outlawed-all...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/interpol-chief-arms-sent-ukraine-wil...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/ukraine-and-general-jack-d-ripper
https://caucus99percent.com/content/hillary-clinton-says-little-luck-we-...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/who-going-invade-ukraine
https://caucus99percent.com/content/welcome-ukraine-d-day-please-plan-yo...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/us-plan-using-mercenaries-false-flag...
https://caucus99percent.com/content/whats-going-inside-ukraine
https://caucus99percent.com/content/pipeline-politics-and-ukraine
https://caucus99percent.com/content/non-bs-ukraine-election-news
https://caucus99percent.com/content/ukrainegateimpeachment-points-view
https://caucus99percent.com/content/peace-threatens-break-out-ukraine
https://caucus99percent.com/content/nato-loses-ukraine-election
https://caucus99percent.com/content/all-roads-lead-ukraineclinton-collusion
https://caucus99percent.com/content/mess-ukraines-government
https://caucus99percent.com/content/us-using-ukraine-threaten-russia
This is only what I've written since the start of 2018 and that has Ukraine in the title
gjohnsit, respect for you
at this site is pretty universal and at the highest level possible. I have a short list of maybe 4 journalists whose work I find to be the most reliable, insightful, and constructive, and they include Chris Hedges, Scott Ritter, gjohnsit at C99, and I forget who the other one is.
The struggle in this discussion for me is that you posted Henry Kissinger's statements to the Wall Street Journal, but you've said that,
I'm going to look at all the links you've listed here showing what you've written on Ukraine since 2018 out of respect for you and because I learn from you all the time. I'm sure I've read most if them before. But I'm hoping you will begin to look at Putin differently by reading his statements.