JORGE MAJFUD Russia and NATO: the world's most dangerous game

Jorge Majfud, 5/4/2022

Translated by Lena Bloch

 While with one hand, the world's major media are constantly reproducing the horrifying images of hundreds of corpses scattered in Bucha, Ukraine - with the other hand they are stoking the fires of an escalation of war that could lead us to a nuclear holocaust in a course of months.

 

Tasos Anastasiou, Greece

Whoever committed the massacre (it seems most likely to have been Russian soldiers), it will go down in the annals of history as an unforgivable crime. But I think the smoke is obscuring the horizon. We can't see where we come from and worse, we can't see where we are going. Although I have repeated it in different media since long before the war, wrong or not, I will focus on these two sides of the road that the fire does not let you see.

Let's start with a simple and more immediate question: instead of continuing the endless, dangerous, and notoriously useless game of arbitral sanctions, why not impose the obligation to negotiate a resolution to the conflict between Russia and NATO once and for all and before innocent people continue to die?

A reasonable solution would be the dissolution of NATO in exchange for Russia's withdrawal from Ukraine, but that would be labeled radical. The owners of the business do not negotiate.

There are many other options, such as the most obvious and pragmatic one, i.e. Ukraine's neutral status (with provincial autonomy of the Donbas), which is where it should start instead of provoking Russia by integrating Ukraine into NATO and deploying missiles four minutes away from Moscow.

The neutrality or non-membership of NATO has always been the case of Austria, Finland, Sweden and other neighboring countries, some of which have just expressed the possibility of joining NATO, showing where the business of the old war merchants is going and demonstrating, once again, that the fight against communism - and not only in Latin America - has been nothing more than the perfect excuse to maintain geopolitical dominance and protect corporate, class and capital interests.

What do they intend, apart from expanding militarization more and more in a world, now that they have run out of the excuse of communism and, more recently, of Islamic terrorism, which in Afghanistan alone left eight trillion dollars in profits to the big companies specialized in "security"?

Do they think that having Russia surrounded by that anachronistic and mafia-like NATO organization would make Europe and the world a safer place?

You have to be under the influence of alcohol to forget that we are talking about one of the two atomic superpowers and imagine such stupidity. Or such wickedness of organized crime. If it were really about "security", if they were really sincere about "the right to defend themselves" that countries have, they would never have tried to break this order which, judging by the ongoing war, has not made the world, much less Ukraine. safer, but quite the opposite.

Of course, those who have that bargaining power are not being splashed with the blood of Russians and Ukrainians but, on the contrary, are doing their business, so it may take a few weeks, if not months, for them to stop shedding crocodile tears over the whiskey and get down to serious negotiations.

MANUEL RAPOSO Who gains from a war in Europe? U.S. targets supply of Russian gas to UErope

Manuel Raposo, Jornal Mudar de Vida, 20-2-2022
Translated by John Catalinotto
Original: A quem interessa a guerra na Europa?

At this moment, the events in Ukraine are shrouded in the cloud of smoke that characterizes war propaganda. Official positions, rather than clarifying facts and reporting the progress of negotiations, aim to crush their opponents’ arguments and convince public opinion to back one side of the dispute. 

                An invigorating kick for the Pindostan (USA) 

To understand the role of each of the adversaries, what each of them wants, and how far they can go, we must explore the origins of what is now an extreme conflict. 

Background

Most recently, it all started with two goals shared by the European Union and the United States. One is the economic expansion of the EU (led by its major powers, particularly Germany) to the east. The so-called Eastern Partnership aimed to draw into the European orbit countries as diverse as Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine – all on Russia’s southern and western borders. 

A second purpose is military expansion of the Western bloc, using NATO to complete the encirclement of Russia’s borders. And it is especially here that the interest of the U.S. as the hegemonic power, in this case, has led to a marriage with the economic ambitions of the EU. 

A setback

When it comes to Ukraine, the Eastern Partnership suffered a setback when Russia offered economic advantages to the then-Kiev government which thwarted European advances. The EU and U.S. response was the 2014 coup d’état, backed by Ukrainian fascist militias, which brought a “collaborating” president to power, followed by a bloody persecution of the Russian-origin population. 

Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein Europe, playing with fire in UkraineA "prophetic" article from 2014

 Sergio Rodríguez Gelfenstein, 27/1/2022

When I was preparing to write my weekly article that I had decided to dedicate to the analysis of the situation in Ukraine, I received an email from my dear friend, Juan Pablo Cárdenas, a Chilean journalist with a long professional career, whose opinions are always highly considered by me, to in order to improve the work.

Juan Pablo reminded me of an article I wrote on September 2, 2014 called “Europe, playing with fire in Ukraine”, which was published by the Radio Editions of the University of Chile that at that time he directed in a book entitled “ Crazy world where I was born. An international system in permanent transformation”. In the message, Juan Pablo rescued the “prophetic and accurate” character of said analysis. I asked him if he thought I should publish it again and his response was forceful: "I would be very happy."

With the greatest respect for the reader, seven and a half years later, I deliver these lines again. Incredibly –and as Juan Pablo perceived it- the analysis is fully valid, it would only be necessary to change some names and facts that were recent at that time. But he left it unchanged so that the reader can assess current events and perceive that they respond to a calculated and continued policy of the United States, which has had Democratic and Republican governments in the period.

Ukraine 2014
Ali Divandari (Iran) in cooperation with Mondrian!!!

 Europe, playing with fire in Ukraine

I don't know if anyone has noticed, but in my opinion, the conflict in Ukraine is the most dangerous that has taken place on the planet since the end of the cold war. It is true that in the period there have been several invasions of African countries, coups in Latin America, a deep economic and financial crisis, the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia, genocide within the framework of a permanent siege by Israel against the Palestinian people , the constant threat of a NATO attack on Iran, and the post-imperial intervention wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, but in none of these has direct confrontation between two or more nuclear powers been or is so close. This has an explanation in the local, regional and global context. Let's go from the particular to the general.

It is no secret to anyone that there was a coup in Ukraine. It has its origin precisely in NATO's need to create a conflict situation like the one that exists today. The government of the ousted President Yanukovych was an obstacle to this. In that sense, the current Ukrainian government has been nothing more than a creation of the United States and Europe.

As in Syria and Iraq, where until two months ago the Islamic State was made up of freedom fighters from Syria and today they are classified as terrorists, in Ukraine it should not be forgotten that the revolts leading to the coup d'état, supported by the West , were carried out by Nazi-inspired organizations whose first actions were the attack on synagogues. Even Ukraine's Chief Rabbi Moshe Reuven Azman recommended his community, in February this year, to leave Kiev and the country, stating that he did not want to push his luck, because "there are constant threats of attack on Jewish institutions." Of course, the government of Israel and the United States remained embarrassingly silent.

Thus, conditions were created to impose, in the midst of a brutal psychological campaign, the elections that brought the current government to power. In the current situation, his speech, supported by that of the NATO spokesmen, is so aggressive that it reminds one of the cold war with longing. The President of Ukraine, Petro Poroshenko assured that Ukraine was “very close to the point of no return”. According to him, “the point of no return it is a large-scale war.” Adding fuel to the fire, NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen, who is famous for his abrupt statements according to German journalist Michael Stürmer, stated that the organization he heads is willing to strengthen cooperation with Ukraine.