Truth dies first and then intelligence

Truth dies first and then intelligence

by Rob Kenius



[This article published on Feb 28, 2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, https://krass-und-konkret.de/politik-wirtschaft/die-wahrheit-stirbt-zuerst-und-dann-die-intelligenz/.]



The war in Ukraine is an exception to the rule of thumb that in war the truth dies first. The truth was already dead before the war began. That's why all speakers in the Bundestag on Sunday were able to start from beliefs that have solidified into dogmas and that have long since left the question of truth behind. A comment

1.

War is the greatest crime imaginable. War creates endless suffering, whoever starts war is a war criminal. (Note: There is only one exception to this: if the war is started by the US or other allies).

2.

Putin is a criminal, autocrat, crazed crazy, in any case bloodthirsty and against our western values, as there are: Freedom, democracy, well-being and security.

3.

24.02.2025 is a turning point in world history far beyond Ukraine. From now on not only Russia is our enemy, we are also the enemy of Russia, with increased sanctions, financial measures and huge armament, especially in Germany.

4.

Ukraine is a normal western state like us, between eastern NATO members. We must support them with money and with weapons. (Note: The capital Kiev is one of the oldest existing Russian cities. There has been civil war in eastern Ukraine for years. Government forces and pro-Western nationalists are fighting the pro-Russian "People's Republics" that were promised autonomy in 2008).

5.

It is the consensus of all the free peoples of the world that Russia is an unpredictable aggressor and that Putin launched this war to destroy our democracy and resurrect the Soviet empire. He is afraid that the idea of freedom and democracy will reach Moscow.

6.

NATO is a peace organization to prevent Russia, which has already invaded and destroyed Napoleon's and Hitler's troops, from penetrating the West. Therefore the North Sea and the Bosporus are secured by Norway and Turkey and in between all accesses to the West by the Nato members Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria. They are secured with US nuclear missiles and troops of all countries, admittedly not aggressively directed at Russia. Ukraine is a gap in this system and it was a mistake not to close this gap earlier.

So far there is agreement on this memorable Sunday of Sunday speeches, and I don't want to publicly disagree with that. But it struck me that a word of central importance to reality was uttered only once in this debate and that it received scant applause:

Ceasefire

The word ceasefire came from Ms. Amira Mohamed Ali (Left Group). Perhaps Amira was not aware that Sunday speeches, much like Friday sermons, are not there to distract the audience from the rite with realities and mundanities, but that they are there to strengthen the congregation in the faith and make them battle-ready and sharp for the holy war against external enemies and infidels.

The Monday Opinion

I completely disagree with the House on this: a Ukrainian struggle against Russian supremacy is futile. It is disastrous to inflame this fight and fuel it with weapons and money or verbally. War is not a professional sport.

Those who support the illusion that Ukraine can stand up to Russia, make the situation worse and one automatically comes closer to the dangerous possibility of temporal and spatial expansion. A comparison with World War 1 or Afghanistan should be enough to suppress any escalation.

The keyword ceasefire should dominate the discussion from Monday 28.02.2022 and then the whole of March (with ä). How to end a war as soon as possible? It starts with a ceasefire. My positive idea of the organization of the end of the war is the following:

1.

Ceasefire between the Ukrainian troops obeying the government and the Russian army. (Not dependent on the behavior of radical militias on both sides).

2.

Withdrawal of Russian forces.

3.

Round of talks in as neutral a place as possible, attended by some uninvolved Western leaders (of stature) and Presidents Selensky and Putin. (Annalena Baerbock and Olaf Scholz have already disqualified themselves because they advocate further rearmament of Ukraine and thus against peace).

4.

Negotiation on the future status of Ukraine. The written guarantee that Ukraine will not be admitted to NATO (which is not on the agenda, as Mr. Scholz said) should not be enough to move Russia now. Perhaps it can be agreed that Ukraine will be committed to neutrality in the long run, as Austria was after its defeat in WW2.

5.

As soon as possible realization of the resolutions, termination of the war. Time for Ukraine to develop into a democratic federation in which radical and armed nationalists have no place. Re-establishment of the Russian language as the second official language. Revive cultural ties with neighboring Russia, recognizing the full sovereignty of a neutral Ukraine.

Optimistic view of the future: Ukraine as the largest and most fertile agricultural country in Europe supplies first-class (organic) food to the West and East. Forget nationalism and reveries of prosperity through ties to the West.

6.

Reawakening of intelligence throughout Europe, which has more than two thousand years of intellectual history behind it, comparable only to China. With Greek democracy and philosophy, the Roman organization of a constitutional state, medieval art, enlightenment, science and technology, unfortunately also too much weapon technology.

7.

Europe's turning away from the American way. The USA has been in a moral downward spiral since the assassination of John F. Kennedy, its best president after WW2 (which has never been solved). Opaque, non-democratic forces dominate the country, led by the military-industrial complex, financial power and a number of intelligence agencies. The two-party system has degenerated. The media and the Internet are focused on money-making, the monetary system is out of control, and the dollar supply is growing without limit.

Some like it hot

It is amazing what can be accomplished with the application of a little intelligence. Unfortunately, the top speaker at the Feb. 27, 2022, session of the Bundestag, Chancellor Olaf Scholz, did not display any intelligence of his own, not even artificial intelligence. In terms of form and content, his speech seemed as if it had been read aloud from a script delivered to him from Washington.

The content of Scholz's speech caused me - and I'm not a wimp, but a quick thinker - to have a prolonged fluttering of the heart, a symptom of anxiety. It was not a Sunday speech like that of Annalena Baerbock, but a government declaration, i.e. the program of future German politics, presented by the person who, according to the constitution, determines the guidelines of politics.

Mr. Scholz, who until now has only been conspicuous for his inconspicuousness as a money distributor with a soft voice and friend of the banks, wants to transfer 100 billion euros (as a number 100,000,000,000) for armament of the Bundeswehr into a special fund. That goes past the national budget and he needs in addition a change of the constitution, which cannot and will probably not refuse friend Merz (with e) to him.

Just for comprehensibility: 100 billion means 2,500 euros per person for all net contributors who pay more to the state than they get from the state. This assumes that there are 40 million net payers; it is probably less. But there were some net payers among the audience at this speech in the Reichstag, and there were outraged hecklers.

This is a fatal reminder that the SPD, the oldest party in Germany, is guilty of having voted for the war bonds of Emperor Frederick William II at that time to finance World War 1, which was then lost. What was then called war bonds is now called special assets.

Who betrayed us? The traffic light democrats.

The question remains, how is it that the Chancellor reads from a script whose content could have come directly from the U.S. government, and that he adds almost nothing of his own to the dictation except German taxpayers' money? One clue is the word of U.S. President Joe Biden when he recently said in the presence of Scholz, we, meaning us, will stop Nord Stream 2. Who was we?

I know that many colleagues in the alternative media claim that the German government is bound by instructions and must carry out what Washington orders. It looks like it, but what is the mechanism, how does it work?

Does it happen when the new chancellors travel to Brain-Washington for their inaugural visit? Surely it can't be that alone! The question is serious. Who knows more? We need a whistleblower in the chancellor's office.

2 Comments on Truth dies first and intelligence second

Simon

February 28, 2022 at 18:35

This war has many fathers and some mothers and there are social democrats involved. Chancellor Scholz somehow seemed as if he does not want to be part of it and as if he has his own agenda.

But if you look back at the speech in the Bundestag, you see nothing more than the reproduction of the media narrative. And that makes me wonder, does he, like many in Germany, get his information only from the Tagesschau and the media mainstream - or are there other influences?

And what is actually going on with our policy advice? Could it be that we have the worst politicians in Europe who additionally get their information only from journalists?

Answer

osch@d

February 28, 2022 at 19:31

It is a mystery to me how one can get the idea to always attribute an un-German side to an attitude of a German politician that is hostile to Russia. The coexistence of all states with each other is always hostile, because they are competitors. Every state tries to exploit other states as much as possible, always. Yes, this is also the case between France and Germany (supposedly friends) and France once had the idea to compete with the Germans by means of the EU. Now they are just the loser in the competition.

But do they start a war? No, but only because they know that they would lose even worse in the GLOBAL competition. So they let themselves be destroyed out of the insight that the world is hostile without contradicting it militarily.

Russia, with 150 million inhabitants and a gigantic and also nuclear-armed military, is not a nobody. It is a real house number. Both countries, Germany and Russia, want to exploit each other, as it is between states.

Russia wants to use the economic prosperity of Germany for itself, to sell its natural resources in order to rise again in the competition of the states to a world power (keyword multipolar world).

And the Germans do not want a rise of Russia in any case. They want the best possible exploitation of Russia, and from Germany's point of view this happens best when Russia can only act as a supplicant.

So Germany is trying to play the game on the political and economic side against Russia and has clearly won in the current eastward enlargement of the EU over the decades up to the Ukraine Association Agreement, which Yanukovych did not want to sign. The EU is Germany's way to dominate Europe, without a world war, without soldiers.

When he refused to sign, Germany said: he must go. If not legally, then illegally by a coup.

From the Russian point of view, this was once again a relegation against Germany in the competition and Russia now sees: in the political and economic field we are really so inferior to Germany that we are losing control over our hinterland (Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania are already gone, Ukraine the next, Belarus the last).

Now Russia pulls out its military trump card and especially the German politicians always scream the loudest: deploying soldiers is fraud. You can impoverish a population, starve it and let it die of thirst, that's okay. But not by force of arms, but only by economic and political force (which is of course enforced internally by force of arms through the police).

Because: Germany is militarily impotent compared to Russia and you know that you lose on the field.

It is the German interest to defeat Russia politically and economically, to make it small. You don't need the USA for that. It is not foreign domination. Capitalist states are in a state competition and everybody wants to make everybody small and exploit them.

Germany is the master in Europe by means of the EU and they don't want a second master in Europe. Russia must be trimmed so that it is only a kind of Poland. Another Poland is ok. Sometimes unruly, but can be controlled.

The USA do not want a second master on the WORLD. They play just a league higher than Germany. Therefore the USA are also against Russia.

Each of them has his own interest AGAINST Russia. To pretend that there is no capitalism and that we can simply stop taking things from each other is almost a child's faith. I am appalled how one can think so naively.

A few bad German politicians were bought by the USA. Yes, of course, the U.S. is also trying to implement their interests in Germany. But do not mistake how mercilessly Germany exploits the USA. Has anyone taken a look at the balance of trade between the USA and Germany? There Germany is KNALLhart and pulls the USA something over the table.

How does that fit into this conspiracy theory?

The riddle's solution is simple: everyone fights Russia on their own account. And of course the Germans want to use Russia as a supplier of raw materials, so they don't want to provoke a world war. But they do not want to become a second master in Europe. Russia's ambitions are exactly there.



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Ukraine: No to Putin's war! No to Nato's escalation!

Why leftists must strongly condemn Putin's imperialist war over Ukraine, but also the escalation by arming Germany and NATO. An analysis of the marx21 network

[This article published on 2/28/2022 is translated from the German on the Internet, Ukraine: Nein zu Putins Krieg! Nein zur Eskalation der Nato! - marx21.]






Ukraine: Nein zu Putins Krieg! Nein zur Eskalation der Nato! - marx21

Warum Linke Putins Krieg gegen die Ukraine scharf verurteilen müssen, aber auch die Eskalation durch Aufrüstung ...

On the orders of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the Russian army is waging war against Ukraine. Putin is concerned with restoring Russian domination over Ukraine. For this purpose, he uses Great Russian chauvinist ideas and war lies. Thus he speaks of a "peace mission" with which a "genocide" by a Ukrainian "fascism" is to be prevented.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Since Feb. 24, the Russian army has been overrunning Ukraine with massive shelling and attacks by ground forces using tanks and other heavy weapons. In the face of Ukrainian army resistance, the Russian assault is proceeding more slowly than first expected. Already, there are hundreds of dead and wounded on both sides, and hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians are fleeing. Further destruction is expected as more Russian troops invade.

Russia's invasion of Ukraine joins a series of bloody military interventions under Putin's supreme command. Russia under Putin has put down the Chechen independence movement, waged war on Georgia, annexed Crimea, bombed Syria to save the brutal dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, and recently intervened against broad-based protests in Kazakhstan.

Reaction from the German government and NATO

Initially, the German government had reacted rather cautiously compared to other NATO states. However, Chancellor Scholz's speech on Feb. 27 marked a turn toward a drastic escalation policy. In addition to a tightening of sanctions, the centerpiece of this turnaround is the delivery of weapons to Ukraine, an armament package of 100 billion euros for the Bundeswehr, as well as the decision for combat drones.

With this announcement, Chancellor Scholz and the traffic light coalition are further fueling the spiral of military and economic escalation. They are thus complying with the demands of the arms lobby and militarists, who have been beating the drum for a higher military budget and the procurement of combat drones for years.

Gigantic rearmament of Germany

100 billion euros more for armaments - that is twice the amount of a complete year's military budget. Yet Germany's military budget has already increased by 50 percent since 2014.

Although there is not even a commitment to NATO's 2 percent target in the coalition agreement, Scholz's announcement overfulfills this NATO target. There is no longer a review of combat drone procurement. The militarists in the SPD and the Greens have thus prevailed over the doubters.

This decision will have fatal consequences for foreign policy in the coming years. The vast majority of the population will pay for it. Both social demands and necessary investments in climate change will fall behind the primacy of rearmament.

Nato expansion to the east: an imperialist act

Putin bears full responsibility for the current Ukraine war. However, Scholz's rearmament speech is a reminder that the foundation for the escalation that is now culminating in Russian aggression was laid by NATO and the EU.

U.S. Secretary of State Baker and West German Foreign Minister Genscher promised the then Soviet foreign minister in 1989, in return for Moscow's "permission" to reunify Germany, that Nato would not expand eastward. Nato's eastward expansion is an imperialist act by the West. It allows Putin to present the invasion of Ukraine to his own people as an act of defense by Russia.

NATO is not a defensive alliance. It is a military alliance that secures access to raw materials and markets worldwide. Its purpose is to assert the influence of the Western powers led by the USA. The USA, as the leading power in NATO, has been responsible for 13 wars and military interventions since 2000. None of them was "defensive" because the U.S. would have been attacked militarily.

The NATO-led attack on Serbia in 1999 led to the carve-out of Kosovo and a permanent NATO occupation in the Balkans. The 2001 attack on Afghanistan was followed by a 20-year Nato-led occupation. Many NATO states were also involved in the war against Iraq in 2003.

Ukraine: Plaything of the Great Powers

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, the countries of Eastern Europe were very quickly integrated economically and politically into the West, first with free trade agreements and association agreements, and finally with admission to the EU, which was followed by admission to NATO. The association agreement with Ukraine was also about expanding the EU's economic influence in Ukraine.

The people of Ukraine have become the plaything of the great powers. When Ursula von der Leyen now talks about accepting Ukraine into the EU, it is another step in the escalation.

At its core, this is a conflict between the most powerful bloc in the world, the United States with its European allies on the one hand, and Russia, an imperialist power that is far weaker and weakened economically and militarily and therefore all the more aggressive on the other.

This struggle for zones of influence in an international system of rival blocs threatens to trigger a spiral of violence and counterviolence that could end in a world war.

Economic war and sanctions

Sanctions are the wrong response to Putin's war. The EU's economic war preceded NATO's military expansion. It cannot be the solution for a peaceful future. The sanctions that have now been introduced punish not only oligarchs, but also the Russian people; they are the precursor to further escalation, at the end of which there may also be the use of military means.

We stand by the side of the people who are resisting the Russian invasion. We are for an independent, neutral Ukraine. Only in this way can Ukraine preserve its unity as an independent state.

The key to Putin's defeat lies in the resistance of the Russian people against the war and Great Russian chauvinism, not in the armament and escalation of NATO. Every Nato soldier more on Russia's borders is one less anti-war opponent on the streets of Moscow and St. Petersburg.

Anti-militarism in Russia

There is a tradition of anti-militarism in Russia: in 1989, after more than a decade of Red Army warfare in Afghanistan, with a million dead among the Afghan population and more than 50,000 dead and wounded among Russian occupation forces, there were demonstrations in Moscow and many other Russian cities by mothers whose sons had been killed or wounded in Afghanistan.

Similar to the U.S. Army after the Vietnam War, the Red Army was not operational for many years after the fiasco of its war in Afghanistan. Gorbachev announced in the late 1980s that the Russian Army would no longer intervene in insurgencies in Eastern Europe because he knew the mood in his army all too well.

Anti-war movement and refugee solidarity

It is now crucial to organize solidarity with refugees, to take to the streets and build a protest movement against Putin's war and the German government's rearmament plans.

In this anti-war movement we stand up for a no to arms deliveries from Germany to Ukraine, a no to sanctions of the EU and Germany against Russia and a no to the NATO expansion to the East. The Bundeswehr must be withdrawn from the countries bordering Russia.

Against the increase of the Bundeswehr budget and the further rearmament, a broad alliance is needed to oppose this resolutely. For an end to the military arms race, which devours resources that are urgently needed for the fight against poverty and climate change.