Tag: russia

Flashback ’97: Sen. Biden Says NATO Expansion Would Spark War With Russia

In 1997, then-Senator Joe Biden (D-Del.) warned that the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would result in “vigorous and hostile” action by Russia in Europe.

“I think the one place where the greatest consternation would be caused in the short term, for admission – having nothing to do with the merit and preparedness of the countries coming in – would be to admit the Baltic states now, in terms of NATO-Russian, US-Russian relations,” Biden said during an event held by the Atlantic Council, NATO’s de facto think tank.

“And if there was ever anything that was going to tip the balance, were it to be tipped, in terms of a vigorous and hostile reaction, I don’t mean military, in Russia, it would be that,” he continued, adding that Russia would be pushed into an alliance with China and even Iran.

At the time of Biden’s remarks, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Poland were actively seeking to join NATO.

They later did join NATO in 1999.

Notably, ex-Russia ambassador William Burns – now Joe Biden’s CIA director – admitted in a 2008 security cable leaked by WikiLeaks that NATO expansion to Ukraine would result in a war with Russia and a civil war in Ukraine.

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A Surprising Explanation Of Russia’s Invasion From A Former Top-Level CIA Official

A surprising op-ed in MSNBC arguing that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was likely “preventable” if the US and NATO had merely tried to take a path of muscular diplomacy and potential compromise appears to have slipped passed the mainstream media censors and gate-keepers. 

Since the start of the Thursday Feb.24 invasion, the prevailing narrative concerning Russia’s motives has been largely limited to an ultra-simplistic hollywoodwesque story that goes something like this: one day a big bully and monster named Putin decided he wanted to invade and kill people in a neighboring country, and that he further wants to “resurrect the old Soviet Union”. 

But in a refreshingly realist op-ed piece, MSNBC political columnist Zeeshan Aleem exposed the self-serving Washington narrative which was intended more for the consumption of masses as false. Aleem points to a much more complex and nuanced reality, reminding the public of what should be obvious to any student of history – that the top diplomats and US officials who oversaw post-Soviet negotiations with Russia over Europe’s security order in the 1990’s knew full well that if NATO ever got expanded up to Russia’s borders, it would be suicide. It was predicted decades ago that war would be triggered in such a scenario.

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The War From TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome)

Hear us out here. The Donald himself is the approximate casus belli of the World War III prelude now raging in Ukraine, reminding us once again that sometimes history morphs in the strangest ways.

But the truth is, Trump single-handed generated such a deep, intense and irrational wave of TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome) in the Imperial City that Washington – berserk with anti-Putin hysteria – essentially shoved Cool Hand Vlad right over the brink.

To to be sure, before Trump came down the escalator in June 2015 Washington was already rife with Russophobia. But that emanated chiefly from the war-loving neocons of the GOP and the porkers and bag carriers for the military industrial complex, including the vast array of think-tanks and NGOs whose livelihoods depend on military threats, real or imagined, to America’s security.

But what turned the Washington of these failed proponents of the Afghan, Iraq, Syria and Libya invasions into an implacable and aggressive foe of Russia’s legitimate security interest in its own backyard was the utter, absolute and unremitting demonization of Vlad Putin himself by the Dems and incumbent Washington political class, which bought hook, line and sinker the hoary RussiaGate story.

That is to say, America was allegedly besmirched and defiled by the election of Donald Trump in November 2016 to such a ghastly degree that the man who single-handedly made it possible–Vlad Putin – deserves a place in the pantheon of historical evil-doers right up there with Adolf Hitler and Attila the Hun.

That’s right. The everlasting blot of the Trump presidency never, ever could have happened, according to the RussiaGate narrative, save for Vlad Putin’s nefarious and sweeping interference in the 2016 election. So this evil needs be avenged and the most effective avenue now consists of raining smack right in Putin’s face on the Ukrainian frontier.

As a result of the Dem establishment’s raging, unquenchable quest for revenge, however, the normal balance of power within the Imperial City and the national security Deep State has been upended.

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PBS Hosts Neo-Nazi Ukraine Mayor, Blurs Image of ‘Hitler Accomplice’ Behind Him.

America’s Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) has published and promoted an interview with a renowed Neo-Nazi Ukrainian mayor, without disclosing the politician’s allegiances to World War II German leader Adolf Hitler and Ukraine’s own Nazi sympathizer Stepan Bandera.

The interview comes just days after PBS published an article downplaying the links between Neo-Nazi politicians and Ukraine’s current political situation.

On Thursday, March 4th, PBS hosted Mayor Artem Semenikhin of Konotop in the country’s North East.

Semenikhin described the Russian military as “cockroaches” before going on to thank the United States for supplying his people with weapons.

“My weapon is American, and I feel like our occupiers will be pleased that we are killing them with American weapons,” he concluded.

But Semenikhin is scarcely the liberty-minded freedom fighter PBS would have him seem. In 2015 the Jerusalem Post reported:

Two months after local elections were held across Ukraine, residents of the small northern city of Konotop are expressing shock and dismay over the behavior of newly chosen Mayor Artem Semenikhin of the neo-Nazi Svoboda party.

According to reports, Semenikhin drives around in a car bearing the number 14/88, a numerological reference to the phrases “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” and “Heil Hitler”; replaced the picture of President Petro Poroshenko in his office with a portrait of Ukrainian national leader and Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera; and refused to fly the city’s official flag at the opening meeting of the city council because he objected to the star of David emblazoned on it. The flag also features a Muslim crescent and a cross.

In fact, during the PBS interview Semenikhin posed with a Bandera portrait behind him, albeit blurred out by the network in their attempts to obscure their work with Ukrainian Neo-Nazis.

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When Western Media Saw Ukraine’s Neo-Nazis

Emmanuel Macron said in a speech Wednesday it’s a lie that Russia is fighting Nazis in Ukraine. But in 2014, the BBC, the NYT, the Daily Telegraph and CNN — not just CN — reported on the Nazi threat.

Throughout the Ukraine crisis, the U.S. State Department and mainstream media have downplayed the role of neo-Nazis in the U.S.-backed Kiev regime, an inconvenient truth that is surfacing again as right-wing storm troopers fly neo-Nazi banners as they attack in the east, Robert Parry reports.

The New York Times reported almost in passing on Sunday (Aug. 10) that the Ukrainian government’s offensive against ethnic Russian rebels in the east has unleashed far-right paramilitary militias that have even raised a neo-Nazi banner over the conquered town of Marinka, just west of the rebel stronghold of Donetsk.

That might seem like a big story a U.S.-backed military operation, which has inflicted thousands of mostly civilian casualties, is being spearheaded by neo-Nazis. But the consistent pattern of the mainstream U.S. news media has been since the start of the Ukraine crisis to white-out the role of Ukraine’s brown-shirts.

Only occasionally is the word “neo-Nazi” mentioned and usually in the context of dismissing this inconvenient truth as “Russian propaganda.” Yet the reality has been that neo-Nazis played a key role in the violent overthrow of elected President Viktor Yanukovych last February as well as in the subsequent coup regime holding power in Kiev and now in the eastern offensive.

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