What Russia proposed in Istanbul in March 2022 (tags)
Sachs writes that Russia has proposed negotiating security arrangements with the US for the fifth time since 2008. NATO, led by the US, has steadily expanded its alliance to the east, which has contributed to the current crisis in Ukraine. Putin's fourth offer of negotiations came in March 2022, which led to Russia and Ukraine almost concluding a peace agreement.
Ukraine's attack on NordStream 2 (tags)
The CIA learned last June through a European spy agency that a six-member team of Ukrainian special forces intended to sabotage the natural gas project between Russia and Germany. Three months before saboteurs bombed the Nord Stream natural gas pipeline, the Biden administration learned from a close ally that the Ukrainian military had planned a covert attack.
De-escalartion instead of war of attrition (tags)
The call for negotiations alone is no longer enough. In a situation in which parts of the Western alliance are struggling to find ways out of the war & at the same time more & more heavy weapons are being supplied for a war that will last for years, the social left should campaign more strongly than before for "mutual de-escalation" & security guarantees, for European independence
Total victory over a nuclear poweer is not possible without nuclear war (tags)
We are now in a situation where the best-case scenario is that this war will continue for years as a slow, bloody war of attrition with hundreds of thousands more dead, with progressive destruction of the Ukrainian economy and infrastructure, with progressive impoverishment of the European population. The worst-case scenario is a global nuclear war.
The visions of a possible peace in Ukraine differ among all parties. For Russia, it is a matter of ensuring that Ukrainian territory no longer poses a threat to its own security. Therefore, it primarily wants to achieve the demilitarization of Ukraine. It must not become a deployment area for NATO.
Total victory over a nuclear poweer is not possible without nuclear war (tags)
Neither side in this war represents any forward-looking political idea. It is not a war for freedom and democracy, but an imperialist war over whether Ukraine will remain a semi-colony of the US and EU or become a semi-colony of Russia again.
Economic war instead of climate policy and Russia is enemy (tags)
Sustainability and capitalism do not go together. Because capitalism needs growth and drives environmental destruction. The consequences: Species extinction, drought stress for trees, water scarcity. A consistent climate policy is overshadowed by the economic war.
No fear of peace negotiations (tags)
For Ukraine, security means that a peace agreement will not be followed by renewed Russian threats or incursions. For Russia, security means that their withdrawal from Ukraine will not be followed by NATO's eastward expansion.
In the run-up to the founding of NATO, those responsible in the USA knew: The Soviet Union posed no military threat. The weakened power could not sustain an attack on Western Europe even if it wanted to: The Soviet Union's economy is largely destroyed and technologically obsolete.
War as crisis accelerator (tags)
Opportunistic parts of the German left are already sorting themselves into NATO supporters and cheerleaders of hollow Western values, who are peddling the stale bourgeois-liberal ideology one last time before the Western states also sink into barbarism.
Russia is reacting to NATO's policy of expansion (tags)
Russia is accused of calculating power and bellicose behavior. As far as the situation in Ukraine is concerned, however, the political facts speak a different language. Russia is being built as an enemy for peace. With its Ukraine policy, Russia is actually reacting to NATO's expansionist policy.
Russia wants a treaty with NATO on eastern enlargement (tags)
There is now a need for "a treaty that prevents NATO from standing on the Russian border:" "We need to start negotiations on the new NATO expansion plans." Conceding such a "red line" to the Russians has so far been rejected by NATO
Advice on Corona and Budget 2020 (tags)
Emancipatory politics is characterized by the fact that interests are negotiated. The post-Corona phase will show what can be learned about the relation between politics and capital. Civil society should be engaged and resistant to ruling politics
The New York Times War on Truth Revisited (tags)
NYT
NYT Russia Bashing Stench (tags)
Ukraine
America: Super-Bully Nation (tags)
America
Russia
So he thinks it’s all over... (tags)
George Bush has announced the end of the war. But try telling that to the Shias and the Badr Brigade, says Robert Fisk
UN Authorization Can't Mke Rank Imperialism Just (tags)
If a war without UN authorization would be wrong, does that mean that a war with UN authorization would be right? http://www3.sympatico.ca/sr.gowans/unbacking.html
Things that make you go hmmmm! as we hurtle toward the ultimate move of the 21st Century endgame under the triumphalist banner of the oil plutocrats