Friday, January 28, 2022

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https://www.globalresearch.ca/biden-spits-putin-request-security/5768401

Biden Spits on Putin’s Request for Security

“The main issue is our clear position on the unacceptability of further NATO expansion to the East and the deployment of highly-destructive weapons that could threaten the territory of the Russian Federation.” Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov

Washington delivered a slap in the face to Moscow on Wednesday when U.S. ambassador John Sullivan provided a written response to Russia’s proposals for security guarantees. The missive was given to Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko who did not reveal the contents but passed them on to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov for analysis. Lavrov, in turn, issued a statement on Thursday morning confirming our worst suspicions that the Biden administration has shrugged off Russia’s reasonable demands choosing instead to intensify the provocations that are likely to trigger a war between the world’s two nuclear superpowers. This is an excerpt from an article at Tass News Agency:

“The United States and NATO don’t seem to have taken Russia’s concerns on security guarantees into account when drawing up responses to Moscow’s proposals, nor did they demonstrate any willingness to do so, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on Thursday.

“The numerous statements that our colleagues made yesterday make it clear that as for the major aspects of the draft agreements that we earlier presented to other parties, we can’t say that they took our concerns into account or showed any readiness to take our concerns into consideration.” (Tass News Agency)

Peskov is right, on the core issues the US either issued no clear response or refused to comply. In effect, the US response was designed to look like Washington was honestly negotiating when in fact, they were merely reinforcing their original position. The US response is essentially a defense of Washington’s commitment to rule the world by force and to ignore the legitimate demands of weaker states to provide even minimal security for their people. If the US and NATO are allowed to pursue their present course of action, Russian cities and towns will be within 7 to 10 minutes of nuclear missiles located in nearby Romania and Poland. Russia’s are being asked to live with a nuclear dagger pointed at their throats. This is Biden’s idea of global security. Is it any wonder why Putin does not agree? Here’s part of what Lavrov said on Thursday:

“There is no positive reaction on the main issue in this document. The main issue is our clear position that further NATO expansion to the east and the deployment of strike weapons that could threaten the territory of the Russian Federation are unacceptable.”

Lavrov has summed it up perfectly. While Sullivan was delivering his response to Grushko, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg issued a statement saying the Alliance “will not compromise” on potential expansion into Ukraine, Georgia, and other former Soviet republics, as this clashes with the NATO’s principles.” Stoltenberg’s statement removes any doubt that NATO will not only continue its eastward expansion onto Russia’s doorstep, but feels thoroughly justified in doing so. As we noted earlier, NATO’s response confirms that Washington is still committed to its overarching plan to rule the world by force regardless of how ordinary people are impacted by the policy.

On Thursday morning, former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev reiterated the recently-verified claim that NATO’s eastward expansion violates the promises of US officials to Russia following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

“They promised not to expand NATO, but didn’t keep their promise,” Medvedev said speaking with the Russian media. “They say that ‘we did not sign anything.’ But we all know well who and when granted to whom such promises, such assurances….. They failed to keep their promises. They are now encroaching on our state borders.”

The steady eastward movement of troops, the buildup of lethal military hardware, and the deployment of nuclear weapons all pose an existential threat to Russia that suffered horrific losses in World War 2. The Biden administration seems to believe their sinister plan is working since people in the west generally believe reports in the media that the fake threat of “Russian invasion” is an honest account of what is actually going on the ground. But there is no threat of a Russian invasion; the story was stitched together to divert attention from Russia’s security demands which are both reasonable and appropriate. Once again, the media is shaping a narrative to fit the policy which is the very description of state propaganda.

In an effort to further downplay the importance of Moscow’s requests, US officials characterized their written response not as “a formal document but a set of ideas for further discussion.” What this means is that Washington does not feel that that Russia is its equal so it does not feel required to enter into a treaty agreement with them. Keep in mind, this response does not in any way meet the basic requirements that were clearly outlined by Putin repeatedly in December when he said thatRussia wanted a written, legally-biding treaty that could not be sloughed off by countries that prefer to conduct an impulsive, self-aggrandizing, fly-by-the-seat-of-their-pants foreign policy that has left great swathes of the Middle East and Central Asia in an utter shambles. Indeed, this may not be a “formal document”, but it is clear that there will be a formal document or there will be no agreement and no peace. The choice is Washington’s.

On the issue of nuclear missile sites in Poland and Romania, as well as, the development of military bases in Ukraine, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken indicated that Washington was still open to discussion.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that if Russia were to approach this seriously, and in a spirit of reciprocity, with the determination to enhance collective security for all of us, there are very positive things in this document that should be pursued,” he said.

“Positive things”, says Blinken?

There are no “positive things” in the American response. The response is a flagrant and contemptible rejection of Moscow’s core demands on NATO expansion and the deployment of nuclear missiles to locations on Russia’s border. To understand what a fraud the Biden administration is engaged in, please, take a look at this brief excerpt from the draft treaty that Russia presented to NATO and Washington.

The United States of America shall undertake to prevent further eastward expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and deny accession to the Alliance to the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

The United States of America shall not establish military bases in the territory of the States of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that are not members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, use their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them……

The Parties shall undertake not to deploy ground-launched intermediate-range and shorter-range missiles outside their national territories, as well as in the areas of their national territories, from which such weapons can attack targets in the national territory of the other Party.

Article 7

The Parties shall refrain from deploying nuclear weapons outside their national territories and return such weapons already deployed outside their national territories at the time of the entry into force of the Treaty to their national territories.” (“Treaty between the United States and the Russian Federation on Security Guarantees,” Official Russian State Document, December 17, 2021)

Is there anything ambiguous in the language of this document?

No, there isn’t.

The US was asked to respond in writing to these explicit demands. No one is in the slightest bit interested in Blinken’s vague pontifications on “positive things”. It’s completely irrelevant. What Putin wants to know is whether US nukes are going to remain 7 minutes flight-time from Moscow and whether a hostile foreign army is going to be hunkered down in nearby Ukraine. He wants to know whether Washington plans to put a gun to Russia’s head in order to increase its power in the region. That’s what he wants to know, and that’s what this foreign policy debacle is all about.

What Blinken’s response tells us is that the provocations are going to continue unabated whether they ignite a war or not. Even as we speak, the US is sending more lethal weaponry and troops to the Ukrainian theater while other NATO allies promise to assist in the effort. It is madness.

At the same time, President Joe Biden is threatening to impose “direct personal sanctions” on Putin if the Russian president takes action to defend the Russian-speaking people in East Ukraine. The threat was issued just hours after the State Department told Russian Ambassador Anatoly Antonov that he “would have to leave the US by April if Moscow fails to meet certain demands made by Washington.” While these may seem like trivial developments, the two incidents help to illustrate how relations between the two nations are fast deteriorating increasing the prospect of a tragic miscalculation that could precipitate a bloody and protracted conflagration.

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https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/old-man-look-at-your-life/

Old Man, Look at Your Life….

Rock’n’roller Neil Young’s conniption over having to share the Spotify platform with Joe Rogan affords a glimpse into the glutenous mire that is a mind bethinking itself “progressive” these drear days of American unraveling. For those of you not tuned in: Joe Rogan is a comedian and martial arts maven who runs the most popular podcast in the world, renowned for long-form interviews (three hours sometimes!) often with high-powered intellectuals. A month ago, he interviewed the mRNA developer Dr. Robert Malone, who has become an outspoken opponent of the Covid-19 mRNA “vaccines,” and of the US-led world pandemic policy in general under Dr. Anthony Fauci, going as far as to call for an immediate end to the world-wide vaxxing program because, Dr. Malone says, the vaxxes don’t work and they kill and disable people. Hearing that, Mr. Young called for Joe Rogan to be cancelled for spreading “misinformation.”

It’s worth paying attention to just how disordered Mr. Young’s thinking is because it summarizes everything that has gone awry on the political Left: He is wrong two ways: 1) morally, and 2) on the facts of the matter — which is as wrong as you can be. Like virtually everyone on the Democratic Party / Woke / Progressive axis, he is obviously in favor of suppressing free speech. Since when did that become okay for old hippies?

If I remember correctly (cuz I was there) the youth movement of the 1960s was all about freedom to say pretty much anything, except yell “fire” in a crowded theater — based on the idea that ordinary people were equipped to sort out the truth. During the War in Vietnam, we hippies were especially averse to the official lying that emanated from the Department of Defense, the FBI, the CIA, and the White House under both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. We founded “alternative” newspapers in defiance of the establishment’s propaganda. We applauded Daniel Ellsberg’s purloined Pentagon Papers, revealing the mendacity of the war effort. Altogether, this activity made it more difficult for the government to prosecute that war, and to defend the strategy behind it.

Today the Left is not only all-in on speech suppression, but also censorship of print and broadcasting, and is especially avid for the diverse punishments of cancellation — ruining careers, reputations, livelihoods, and families of anyone who opposes Woke right-think. Alternate views are not tolerated, labeled “unacceptable” (Mr. Young put it exactly that way), and flagged as “misinformation” (ditto Mr. Young). It’s gotten to the point where the word misinformation has acquired a distinct odor that signals bad faith in everyone who flogs it. These days, the charge of misinformation is deliberate misinformation.

Today, the Left is all-in for FBI home invasions, DOJ malicious prosecutions, CIA manipulations of public opinion, a fake president fronting for an unseen cabal, and a news media that wouldn’t know the actual shape and substance of reality if it jumped up and bit Jim Acosta on the lips. Ideas and principles don’t really matter to the Left; they’re just window-dressing for their sole interest, which is pushing other people around, in a word: coercion. That is the moral quagmire the Left is in and, having captured so many institutional transmitters of our polity, that is the nature of the evil they represent.

On the facts of Dr. Malone’s public statements about Covid-19 public health policy and the “vaccines,” Neil Young doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He’s just dead wrong, uninformed, possibly ignorant. The vaxxes have been a disaster from the start and the damage gets worse every week that the insane policy of coercing more vaxxes goes on. The vaxxes are a false magic talisman for a psychotic cargo cult of disordered minds who cannot face the actual quandaries in this momentous Fourth Turning of our foundering civilization — namely, our dwindling energy resources, the economics based on them, the malfunctioning operations of money, our over-investments in techno-complexity, and the out-of-scale dynamics of just about everything in daily life.

Fortunately, enough Americans now see through this matrix of bad faith and mendacity that the opposition is poised to wipe up the floor with the Left in next November’s election. The Left has screwed things up so completely that the end of Covid will expose every broken thing on the landscape — and now it’s up to others to try to repair it all, if possible. One thing is certain to happen a little less than a year from now, the day a new Congress is sworn in: “Joe Biden,” if he is still alive, and still in office, will be impeached. And unlike his several predecessors — Andrew Johnson, Richard Nixon, Bill Clinton, and Donald Trump — “Joe Biden” will be convicted in the Senate, too, and of serious crimes against his country, not just trivialities because the evidence is there. He’ll be convicted of the very things spelled out in the constitution: treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors.

The laptop computer belonging to the Biden family bag-man, Hunter Biden, is not only still in the negligent possession of the FBI, but many faithful copies of its hard-drive were mindfully distributed to safe hands outside the agency. The email, contracts, and memoranda on it contain a clear record of bribery from foreign nations and money laundering to conceal the trail of all that grift. “Joe Biden’s” deliberate open border policy, and the purposeful transport of unvetted illegal aliens from scores of foreign countries to cities all over the USA, certainly represents an arrant and treasonous failure to uphold the law. It remains to be seen what kind of fiasco his misadventures in Ukraine may foment, but we’ll know presently.

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