They talked about the same nonsense in Iraq back in 2003 and despite hundreds of billions (of US taxpayers money) supposedly handed over for this purpose when I eventually got there by 2010 nothing had been spent, I guess it just ‘disappeared’. We ploughed on successfully building over 3000 houses in Najaf with private investment and not long after the US left at the end of 2011 real investment started with non western firms in everything from cement plants to power stations and numerous housing schemes, so Ukraine will benefit from seeing the back of western madcap ideas. It’s an absolute certainty that they won’t benefit from anymore western involvement nor will any other country the west has systematically wrecked.
Great writeup - the entire thing is absolutely mad. The amounts of money being spent on senseless destruction, the pollution of much-needed agricultural land with heavy metals and depleted uranium, the ever-rising costs to ever rebuild, and worst of all the hundreds of thousands of people killed. Beyond that, there are also hundreds of thousands maimed - how will they and their families live? Who will pay for this?
This is one of the most senseless acts in European history. It underlines that what passes for leaders in Europe are anything but.
On the pollution point, the Balkans has been having unprecedentedly, unliveably hot summers with ever-escalating heat (hitting mid-40s regularly) since the proxy war began. Given the environmental destruction wrought on the region by NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia it's unsurprising many locals believe the proxy war is contributing to the heatwave - which is reaching Western Europe now too it seems.
I lived in Greece through the war in Yugoslavia, and I can testify that the weather went crazy during that time, everyone noticed it, and was widely discussed.
But never have been through a war like that before, it took a while for us to realise it was the weapons they were using that was causing the extreme weather phenomena.
I also lived through Chernobyl, and before anything was announced officially, we suspected that something was wrong, because suddenly one day all the flies everywhere came indoors and just sat on the walls for days without moving, turning the walls black
The generational hatred that naturally festers in the heart unless one is able to forgive. This is very difficult for most and the seed of all this anti-Russian rhetoric. Feed hatred and it only grows. So sad.
Great article as usual. Regarding Yanukovych's decision to sign a trade deal with Russia in 2013, which was used as the pretext for the Maidan coup, I've seen Yanukovych state somewhere (may have been in Oliver Stone's Ukraine On Fire) that it was the EU that insisted he could only sign with them and not with Russia, but the Russians had no such stipulations on their deal. Just another reason never to believe EU or NATO leaders when they talk about 'helping' Ukraine
Thank you, dear Alistair! Yes, the two were absolutely not necessarily mutually exclusive, although the EU agreement was certainly intended to push Ukraine in a Westward-direction to the exclusion of Russia - which simply didn’t make sense from Kiev’s perspective, given how integrated it was with Moscow economically. This extends to Soviet-era infrastructure still in use today for moving goods, resources, and people between the pair.
I might add - not that this a point you were arguing at all - Yanukovych’s government was far from pro-Russian, and efforts to integrate Ukraine into the Western fold that began under his NED-installed predecessor continued during his term in office. I will never forget speaking to an American while on holiday in Vietnam in 2012 who openly talked about how he was on break from a major assignment in Kiev. When I asked too many questions about what that assignment was and on whose behalf he was conducting it, he excused himself from the chat.
Yes, Yanukovych was pro-Russian the same way Corbyn was an antisemitic revolutionary! Just standard bourgeois press hysterical hyperbole.
The way I remember Yanukovych (or maybe Putin?) describing the EU deal, it actually was intended to preclude Ukraine also making a deal with Russia, but it's not a claim I've heard repeated so perhaps I'm misremembering, I'll have to watch Ukraine On Fire again. Along with the insistence on Ukraine taking out IMF loans, it was less a good deal for Ukraine and more an "offer you can't refuse", as Maidan showed.
Interesting story from Vietnam! I went there in 2012 too but didn't meet any loose-tongued diplomats, alas
I swear this stuff follows me around. A few years back in Krakow I ended up sat at a table next to an American academic at a local university and a British guy I can only assume was a spook. They were talking about pumping out reports for media consumption on how RT/Sputnik represented a continuation of Stalinist propaganda. I asked as they were leaving if I could get a copy as it sounded interesting - they looked at me and laughed awkwardly before hurrying out.
Ha, they wouldn't have wanted anyone who was actually knowledgeable on the subject to look at their report too closely. Seems there are quite a few reports into how RT and Sputnik 'manipulate the information space' in Russia's favour so I wonder if they had a hand in one of them. A brief dive into any of the reports reveals them to be full of all the usual talking points and assertions - Skripals, Ukraine, back to the bad old days of the USSR etc.
I feel like kind of a mug for not realising earlier how those reports get quoted by media and contribute to the manufacturing of consent. I know a couple of people who work for RFE and someone who works for a high profile NGO, and unfortunately they seem to believe all this 'evidence' too
Never forget that Ukraine was to be the bridgehead to invade and Balkanize Russia, the ultimate prize for the Anglo-Saxon global elites who for the past 500 years colonized and plundered the rest of the world.
Which is possibly why Russia has flattened it. It becomes a huge desolate wasteland very difficult and dangerous to cross. The way things are going it looks like it will never be fully rebuilt and will remain as a no mans land between Europe and Asia.
Blackrock's attempt to take control has been thwarted, no one is willing to invest in any such "rebuilding". This should tell us all we need to know about this proxy war.
It appears that capitalism unleashes the worst in human nature. Just like the founding of the the Republic of the United States, only worked for a moral people for whatever short period of time that was until Godless people took over. The love of money is the root of all evil.
The accurate quotation is "the love of money is the root of all evil". If you leave out the love of money part, you change the meaning of the quotation. The love of money may also mean you are a psychopath, but the end is the same.
The quotation is wrong. Money is the root of all evil. Money is the root of capitalism🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ And if you love money more than life itself, that makes you a psychopath.
I don't care if she recited the correct quotation. The quotation is wrong. Phrasing it correctly does not make the quotation from a book of FICTION accurate.
People invented the platform you're conversing on for money, as well as everything else that provides you a first world lifestyle. Evil people are evil with or without money involved.
Please keep this up. Your work has helped inspire me to write and post about these same issues. I grew up in the Vietnam Era and watched that debacle unfold. We were carefully conditioned to keep quiet and to accept the government and the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex's bullshit. No More! I've watched this country and working class Americans go down the drain due to the Uni-Party shills, the MIC and corporate raiders. As the song goes: "We won't get fooled again!"
That’s incredibly flattering to hear Michael! And we need as many ungovernable truth-tellers as possible. There’s more of us than there are them, never forget.
“unlike Britain’s military chiefs who were given the freedom to go whenever necessary. Sometimes their visits were so sensitive they went in civilian clothing.”
Would Russia consider them spies, if not in uniform?
What's up with Fareed Zakaria always hanging out at these institutional conferences? He was just moderating the Aspen Ideas festival sitting next to Susan Rice. Perfect merger of the media and the military industrial complex achieved.
The real plan was ever always only for the europeans to intervene, once Ukraine starts to run low on warm live bodies, then for the Americans to ride to the rescue, rather than leave their catamites to twist in the wind.
Thank you for this, Kit. I don’t understand why everyone isn’t outraged by these continuing proxy wars. Why am I in the weird position of agreeing with Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the few politicians who is pushing to stop sending money and weapons to Ukraine (and Israel)?
Interesting, how coorporates can be fooled. Also Media, politiicans, people. I do not believe on a conspiration, there is als o big deal of greed and self-deception. Okay, there are also groups who try to reach goals. A lot of human behavior and processes lead to the end-result.
There seems to be only one conspiracy - Capitalism. I find it remarkable that the most venal and corrupt Capitalists don’t trumpet their activities - it’s always hidden away in boardrooms.
Thank you for your coverage and work. The skill it takes to write up, and so-well tie together such evidence and points of connection is real useful to cite in everyday conversation and writing.
Topically this is a damn mess and as so-to-speak 'radical' as I am, seeing the wastage, pointlessness, and proxy puppeteering keeps me with an inkling of an idea of the complexities of such a monstrous, deep-rooted imperial-industrial meat grinder.
They talked about the same nonsense in Iraq back in 2003 and despite hundreds of billions (of US taxpayers money) supposedly handed over for this purpose when I eventually got there by 2010 nothing had been spent, I guess it just ‘disappeared’. We ploughed on successfully building over 3000 houses in Najaf with private investment and not long after the US left at the end of 2011 real investment started with non western firms in everything from cement plants to power stations and numerous housing schemes, so Ukraine will benefit from seeing the back of western madcap ideas. It’s an absolute certainty that they won’t benefit from anymore western involvement nor will any other country the west has systematically wrecked.
Great writeup - the entire thing is absolutely mad. The amounts of money being spent on senseless destruction, the pollution of much-needed agricultural land with heavy metals and depleted uranium, the ever-rising costs to ever rebuild, and worst of all the hundreds of thousands of people killed. Beyond that, there are also hundreds of thousands maimed - how will they and their families live? Who will pay for this?
This is one of the most senseless acts in European history. It underlines that what passes for leaders in Europe are anything but.
Beautifully put.
On the pollution point, the Balkans has been having unprecedentedly, unliveably hot summers with ever-escalating heat (hitting mid-40s regularly) since the proxy war began. Given the environmental destruction wrought on the region by NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia it's unsurprising many locals believe the proxy war is contributing to the heatwave - which is reaching Western Europe now too it seems.
I lived in Greece through the war in Yugoslavia, and I can testify that the weather went crazy during that time, everyone noticed it, and was widely discussed.
But never have been through a war like that before, it took a while for us to realise it was the weapons they were using that was causing the extreme weather phenomena.
I also lived through Chernobyl, and before anything was announced officially, we suspected that something was wrong, because suddenly one day all the flies everywhere came indoors and just sat on the walls for days without moving, turning the walls black
Really fascinating stuff - thank you!
Good points - there were some writeups last year on massive amounts of deforestation in Ukraine:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/ukraine-crisis-environment-forests/
https://grist.org/international/how-three-years-of-war-have-ravaged-ukraines-forests-and-the-people-who-depend-on-them/
The generational hatred that naturally festers in the heart unless one is able to forgive. This is very difficult for most and the seed of all this anti-Russian rhetoric. Feed hatred and it only grows. So sad.
It's depopulation in action.
Great article as usual. Regarding Yanukovych's decision to sign a trade deal with Russia in 2013, which was used as the pretext for the Maidan coup, I've seen Yanukovych state somewhere (may have been in Oliver Stone's Ukraine On Fire) that it was the EU that insisted he could only sign with them and not with Russia, but the Russians had no such stipulations on their deal. Just another reason never to believe EU or NATO leaders when they talk about 'helping' Ukraine
Thank you, dear Alistair! Yes, the two were absolutely not necessarily mutually exclusive, although the EU agreement was certainly intended to push Ukraine in a Westward-direction to the exclusion of Russia - which simply didn’t make sense from Kiev’s perspective, given how integrated it was with Moscow economically. This extends to Soviet-era infrastructure still in use today for moving goods, resources, and people between the pair.
I might add - not that this a point you were arguing at all - Yanukovych’s government was far from pro-Russian, and efforts to integrate Ukraine into the Western fold that began under his NED-installed predecessor continued during his term in office. I will never forget speaking to an American while on holiday in Vietnam in 2012 who openly talked about how he was on break from a major assignment in Kiev. When I asked too many questions about what that assignment was and on whose behalf he was conducting it, he excused himself from the chat.
Yes, Yanukovych was pro-Russian the same way Corbyn was an antisemitic revolutionary! Just standard bourgeois press hysterical hyperbole.
The way I remember Yanukovych (or maybe Putin?) describing the EU deal, it actually was intended to preclude Ukraine also making a deal with Russia, but it's not a claim I've heard repeated so perhaps I'm misremembering, I'll have to watch Ukraine On Fire again. Along with the insistence on Ukraine taking out IMF loans, it was less a good deal for Ukraine and more an "offer you can't refuse", as Maidan showed.
Interesting story from Vietnam! I went there in 2012 too but didn't meet any loose-tongued diplomats, alas
I swear this stuff follows me around. A few years back in Krakow I ended up sat at a table next to an American academic at a local university and a British guy I can only assume was a spook. They were talking about pumping out reports for media consumption on how RT/Sputnik represented a continuation of Stalinist propaganda. I asked as they were leaving if I could get a copy as it sounded interesting - they looked at me and laughed awkwardly before hurrying out.
Ha, they wouldn't have wanted anyone who was actually knowledgeable on the subject to look at their report too closely. Seems there are quite a few reports into how RT and Sputnik 'manipulate the information space' in Russia's favour so I wonder if they had a hand in one of them. A brief dive into any of the reports reveals them to be full of all the usual talking points and assertions - Skripals, Ukraine, back to the bad old days of the USSR etc.
I feel like kind of a mug for not realising earlier how those reports get quoted by media and contribute to the manufacturing of consent. I know a couple of people who work for RFE and someone who works for a high profile NGO, and unfortunately they seem to believe all this 'evidence' too
Never forget that Ukraine was to be the bridgehead to invade and Balkanize Russia, the ultimate prize for the Anglo-Saxon global elites who for the past 500 years colonized and plundered the rest of the world.
Which is possibly why Russia has flattened it. It becomes a huge desolate wasteland very difficult and dangerous to cross. The way things are going it looks like it will never be fully rebuilt and will remain as a no mans land between Europe and Asia.
Blackrock's attempt to take control has been thwarted, no one is willing to invest in any such "rebuilding". This should tell us all we need to know about this proxy war.
Fortunately, you are not in charge.
It appears that capitalism unleashes the worst in human nature. Just like the founding of the the Republic of the United States, only worked for a moral people for whatever short period of time that was until Godless people took over. The love of money is the root of all evil.
Money is the root of all evil. Loving money makes you a psychopath.
The accurate quotation is "the love of money is the root of all evil". If you leave out the love of money part, you change the meaning of the quotation. The love of money may also mean you are a psychopath, but the end is the same.
This ain't rocket science. Ffs.
The quotation is wrong. Money is the root of all evil. Money is the root of capitalism🤦♀️🤦♀️🤦♀️ And if you love money more than life itself, that makes you a psychopath.
The quotation is from the Holy Scriptures. 1 Tim 6:10
An apology to Carolyn is warranted as she is correct.
I don't care if she recited the correct quotation. The quotation is wrong. Phrasing it correctly does not make the quotation from a book of FICTION accurate.
People invented the platform you're conversing on for money, as well as everything else that provides you a first world lifestyle. Evil people are evil with or without money involved.
In my experience it tends to make good people better and bad people worse. Much like religion in that regard.
Wrong 🤣 You're an idiot.
Godless people are the only sane people. Religious people are anachronisms. At least you got the quote about the love of money correct.
**Religion is the Killer**
They raised the altar, stone on stone,
And carved the Name in sacred tone,
Then dipped the blade in holy oil,
And called the kill a sacred toil.
*Religion is the killer.*
They bound the book with iron clasp,
Denied the questions, sealed the gasp
Of doubt that dared to whisper *why?*
And lit the pyre 'neath the sky.
*Religion is the killer.*
They drew the line in sand and creed,
Marked "Chosen" there, and "Damned" for seed
That worshipped light in different guise –
Then taught the children hate's disguise.
*Religion is the killer.*
They marched beneath the banner's fold,
The story of salvation told
With sword and fire, zeal's cruel art –
A fist of doctrine 'round the heart.
*Religion is the killer.*
The statues weep with blood-red rust,
The fractured chalice holds no trust,
The temple glass lies shattered, cold,
Where love was bartered, hatred sold.
*Religion is the killer.*
For paradise paid in blood and bone,
For thrones of dogma, built alone
On fear that fills the god-shaped hole...
The sharpest weapon of the soul.
*Religion is the killer.*
Another well polished explanation of the proxy war and the real reasons behind it. Thank You!
Cheers Michael! I can but try!
Please keep this up. Your work has helped inspire me to write and post about these same issues. I grew up in the Vietnam Era and watched that debacle unfold. We were carefully conditioned to keep quiet and to accept the government and the Congressional-Military-Industrial Complex's bullshit. No More! I've watched this country and working class Americans go down the drain due to the Uni-Party shills, the MIC and corporate raiders. As the song goes: "We won't get fooled again!"
That’s incredibly flattering to hear Michael! And we need as many ungovernable truth-tellers as possible. There’s more of us than there are them, never forget.
Also, on Vietnam:
https://www.kitklarenberg.com/p/how-britain-started-vietnam-war
“unlike Britain’s military chiefs who were given the freedom to go whenever necessary. Sometimes their visits were so sensitive they went in civilian clothing.”
Would Russia consider them spies, if not in uniform?
What's up with Fareed Zakaria always hanging out at these institutional conferences? He was just moderating the Aspen Ideas festival sitting next to Susan Rice. Perfect merger of the media and the military industrial complex achieved.
Be watchful and carefully observe actions rather than words.
The real plan was ever always only for the europeans to intervene, once Ukraine starts to run low on warm live bodies, then for the Americans to ride to the rescue, rather than leave their catamites to twist in the wind.
This plan is proceeding swimmingly.
Thank you for this, Kit. I don’t understand why everyone isn’t outraged by these continuing proxy wars. Why am I in the weird position of agreeing with Marjorie Taylor Greene, one of the few politicians who is pushing to stop sending money and weapons to Ukraine (and Israel)?
She is a white supremacist and imperialist. Only question with her is when and who. Not if.
@Susan, MTG probably has motives to give the $$$ elsewhere.
Interesting, how coorporates can be fooled. Also Media, politiicans, people. I do not believe on a conspiration, there is als o big deal of greed and self-deception. Okay, there are also groups who try to reach goals. A lot of human behavior and processes lead to the end-result.
There seems to be only one conspiracy - Capitalism. I find it remarkable that the most venal and corrupt Capitalists don’t trumpet their activities - it’s always hidden away in boardrooms.
"All Wars Are Bankers' Wars".
How could be so fulled away by their own fantasies, bankers have became gamblers, and directly
or indirectly owning the press (I include cinema, TV) world took them where they are. but their
own inventions are working against them, and that 10% of the world that can't be bought or
preassured have ways to make themselves seen and listened, when you uncover one lie, doubts
begin and there you go, down the rabbit hole.
Thank you for clarifying parts that allow us tie knots and be to see at least part of the spiderweb
and know that is there.
Thank you for your coverage and work. The skill it takes to write up, and so-well tie together such evidence and points of connection is real useful to cite in everyday conversation and writing.
Topically this is a damn mess and as so-to-speak 'radical' as I am, seeing the wastage, pointlessness, and proxy puppeteering keeps me with an inkling of an idea of the complexities of such a monstrous, deep-rooted imperial-industrial meat grinder.
Much appreciated, Kit.
Remember when the USGS was drooling over trillions of dollars worth of minerals in Afghanistan?
Worked out really well.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html
Is it true the U.S still pays the Ukrainians pension country wide?