Posted by: Lex | Mar 17 2022 1:03 utc | 195
Tom, it’s not necessarily to Russia’s advantage in the short, medium or long term. Which is why Russia’s spent a lot of time trying to negotiate the volatile situation away.
Okay. To Lex, Peter AU1, and bevin, gimme a bit to roll this over some more. At this stage I’m still seeing the big op has having been a strategic error, but I need to grok this all a bit more firmly. Too many dark patches for me to see the light just yet, I’m tired, and need to consider it all more.

Posted by: Tom Herrera | Mar 17 2022 1:16 utc | 203

I had encountered an article at marketwatch (of all places) last night regarding the bombing of the building in Mariupol with civilians inside. I am just seeing postings on ASB/Miltary today – first saying Russia did it and then saying that Russia didnt do it.
Hypothetically, it could happen. It would be unfortunate of course and a mark against Russia. But how could they prevent such things – they can and should try but they cannot ensure that such accidents will not happen. The west will scream, but of course this can happen in war and is why Russia was asking to evacuate civilians and why civilians wished to leave.
Sad but now to finish the task at hand.

Posted by: jared | Mar 17 2022 1:24 utc | 205

This article by Diane Johnstone sums up the history well:
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/03/16/diana-johnstone-for-washington-war-never-ends/

Posted by: bevin | Mar 17 2022 1:42 utc | 207

jared@199
It has been clear for several days now and widely reported that the Mariupol Theatre was being used as an HQ by the Azov fascist brigade which Zelenskyy has entrusted with the city. It was established that they had taken hostages and held them, under armed guard, in the Theatre.
It was this which prevented the Russians from either bombing or shelling the place.
Obviously the fascists, retreating, killed the hostages. It is what fascists do, particularly when they can count of the Free Press of the Anglosphere to deflect criticism from their crimes and blame them on the Russians.

Posted by: bevin | Mar 17 2022 1:49 utc | 209

I haven’t been posting because work is busy and I cannot keep up with the pace of commentary here. Thanks to everyone supplying great material to counter the relentless infowar in the Western media.
I will say this: Ukraine is a thug-state run by skinheads and has been since 2014. We will never know how bad the intimidation, torture, disappearances and corruption perpetrated by the Ukie-SA/SS has been but I’ve seen enough. I’ve become very sad and despondent about the state of the liberal West and do not know what to do about the zombification of friends and family who swallow the BS spewing from every MSM outlet whole. To think my country endorses Nazi paramilitaries and ethnic cleansing. It’s so depressing.
I just hope Russia root out every one of those skinhead motherf***ers and purge the place.

Posted by: Patroklos | Mar 17 2022 2:13 utc | 211

NYT now claiming 7000 Russian troops killed in 3 weeks, “morale an issue”. Anyone have a credible estimate? oh and “Ukraine Strikes Back!” and “US to provide ‘kamikaze drones'” (aim away from face.)

Posted by: rjb1.5 | Mar 17 2022 2:17 utc | 213

Likklemore #115
“Testing. My posts have disappeared. Why.”
If your posts include links then break the links and allow us to reassemble them.
Try tinyurl to see if that will workaround.
Post the “heading of a report” with quote marks and we can search for it.
The website IT host behaves oddly from time to time.
These are extraordinary times as well.
DO NOT assume that b audits every post or censures stuff minute by minute.
Leave that BS to his detractors.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 17 2022 2:24 utc | 215

Librul 165
From your website link
No. It does not say no Slavs ! Ukrainians are Slavs ,even if they do not agree they are the same as Russians. What it does do though, is say,, that those who have state-formation outside of the Ukraine ,are not autochthonous to the Ukraine and thus should not and will not have gov services provided. Ie not a citizen but a nobody living in the Ukraine.
Ie Russian – speakers will be called Russians. They have a state outside of the Ukraine so therefore then Ukros will argue that they are not autochthonous to Ukraine so do not get gov services.

Posted by: Brother Ma | Mar 17 2022 2:27 utc | 217

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 16 2022 23:45 utc | 176

It was a scam that only Ukrainian morons could have believed

You have behaved like a bully the first time you showed here at MoA then you managed somehow to carry some reasonable conversation thereafter, but at the end … nah … you are just a bully.

Posted by: Vajezatha | Mar 17 2022 2:42 utc | 219

@ Posted by: Inkan1969 | Mar 16 2022 15:29 utc | 9
The fault with your reasoning comparing the attack on Ukraine to Hiroshima and Nagasaki is that Japan was already trying to surrender but the US, mainly because of the racist secretary of state from South Carolina James Byrnes, demanded unconditional surrender. The US mainly wanted to frighten the Soviet Union with the atomic bomb. There is nothing analogous in the Ukraine situation at all.

Posted by: Cabe | Mar 17 2022 2:44 utc | 221

Posted by: Arioch | Mar 17 2022 1:06 utc | 196

That Bulgarian girl is on bio-labs again…

She’d better watch her back from now on, or she’ll end up like David Kelly:

Kelly was a British scientist and authority on biological warfare, employed by the Ministry of Defence and formerly a United Nations weapons inspector in Iraq. He had an off-record discussion with a BBC journalist concerning a British government dossier about Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, which was cited by the journalist. Kelly’s name became subsequently known and he was aggressively questioned by a Parliamentary committee. He was found dead two days later, attributed to suicide. In the book, Baker disputes this version of events and suggests Kelly was murdered. Baker stated ‘I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that this could not be suicide. The medical evidence does not support it and David Kelly’s state of mind and personality suggests otherwise. It was not an accident so I am left with the conclusion that it is murder.’

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Strange_Death_of_David_Kelly

Posted by: Arch Bungle | Mar 17 2022 2:52 utc | 223

Alessandro Cagliostr #130
Concordato e che è come la vedo io accadendo. Tutto il resto è teatro.
Agreed and that is how I see it happening. All else it theater.

Posted by: uncle tungsten | Mar 17 2022 3:01 utc | 225

@ Arioch | Mar 16 2022 16:48 utc | 46
1. Both Hiroshima and Nagasaki were significant military and/or logistic centers, and that is why they were targeted. It was not hunt of civilians.
This is not correct. Hiroshima and Nagasaki were only chosen because they were among the few cities not yet reduced to ashes in Japan by August, 1945. The area bombing campaign was meant to destroy whole cities and to kill their civilian populations with the hope of breaking the Japanese will to resist, even though that did not succeed. The atomic bomb planners positively drooled over the possibility of nuking Kyoto, a much larger city that had not yet been bombed because it was the historical capital of Japan, hoping thereby to kill over a million people with a single device, as Kyoto was in the bottom of a valley surrounded by mountains. This would have happened except that the secretary of war Henry L. Stimson wanted to have Japan as an ally after the war and thought the Japanese would never agree if the US destroyed their cultural capital like that. The planners put Kyoto at the top of the list repeatedly, and Stimson removed it repeatedly, and then appealed to President Truman, who backed him. So Kyoto was barely saved. This is in James Carroll’s book on the Pentagon, House of War. Niigata was also considered. And by August, 1945, the existence of military targets in Japan scarcely mattered anyway.

Posted by: Cabe | Mar 17 2022 3:11 utc | 227

Posted by: Arioch | Mar 16 2022 23:02 utc | 161
“Daniil Medvedev and other Russian and Belarusian tennis players face being banned from Wimbledon unless they publicly denounce the Ukraine invasion, the Government has confirmed….”
Just think of the football player in USA, who ‘took the knee’ to honor the BLM action and the death of George Floyd and how he was rendered jobless. And now the action requested by the British Gov. to force the tennis players to ‘take the knee’ against Russia, or else you are jobless. So much for freedom in the contemporary West. Jesse Owens could compete in 1936 Berlin Olympics, even that Hitler was a raging racist (but he did not congratulate him to his brilliant wins).

Posted by: bystander 04 | Mar 17 2022 3:15 utc | 229

@ Richard Steven Hack | Mar 17 2022 3:26 utc | 223
I agree. Better said.
But again, I dont think they will spend time hunting them down or rounding them up – except select few, maybe.

Posted by: jared | Mar 17 2022 3:37 utc | 231

Nice folk, eh?
—
If you are clapping along with these types you’ll likely have your wish to meet Adolf Eichmann in the next life for a group hug.
—
Channel 24 anchor, Fahruddin Sharafmal:
“Especially at a time like this, since in Russia they call us Nazis, fascists and so on. I’ll allow myself to quote Adolf Eichmann, who said that in order to destroy a nation you must first of all destroy its children. Because by killing their parents the children will grow up and take revenge. By killing children they will never grow up and the nation will disappear. The Ukrainian Armed Forces cannot destroy Russian children because it is forbidden by the rules of war and it is also forbidden by various conventions including the Geneva Conventions.
“But I am not from the Armed Forces of Ukraine. And when I get the chance to settle things with the Russians I will be obliged to do it. Since you call me a Nazi, I’ll adhere to the doctrine of Adolf Eichmann and will do everything in my power to ensure that your children never live on this earth. So that you can feel what it’s like when innocent civilians die. So that you can feel all the pain and suffering when you say, ‘We didn’t start the war. It was all Putin. We didn’t want this war.’ We didn’t want it either.
“But you have to understand it’s about the victory of the Ukrainian people. It’s not about peace. We need victory. And if we have to slaughter all your families to do it, I’ll be the first to do it. Glory to the nation! And let’s hope there will [not] be such a nation as Russia and the Russians on this earth again. Because they are just scum that pollute this land. If Ukrainians have the opportunity, which they are basically doing right now, to destroy, to slaughter, to kill, to strangle the Muscovites, I hope everyone will do their part and whack at least one Muscovite.”
https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2022/03/17/ukre-m17.html

Posted by: imo | Mar 17 2022 3:45 utc | 233

The US is the playground bully who has lived on credit for ages. It could never oay back what it owes and obviously has no intention of doing so.
They have now split the world financial system in two, or perhaps more, pieces. Discerning traders and investors will begin avoiding the USD like the plague that it has become. Hopefully this will be the end of the petrodollar.
Putin and Russia are doing what they have to do to stand up to the bully and its psychophants.

Posted by: dnomsed | Mar 17 2022 4:12 utc | 235

On nuclear war
True that cool rationality would avoid nuclear war. But often in war people are hotheaded and do not think out the consequences well. Exhibit A: the suicide of many of the European political establishments in the First World War. Also, mistakes, accidents, malfunctions, and miscalculations happen, especially in war. So even a full nuclear exchange with accompanying near total destruction could easily occur. In fact, it is miraculous that there has been no nuclear war since 1945.
Some persons have asserted that a nuclear attack could be thwarted by anti-missile defenses, but this is not at all true. Indeed, the US has given up on these projects, except against short and medium range missiles, because such a defense is too expensive and probably also useless. Indeed, an article was just published four days ago in the Boston Globe describing the impossibility of any anti-missile defense. See https://turonzamin.com/2022/03/12/after-four-decades-and-200-billion-the-us-missile-defense-system-is-no-match-for-a-russian-nuclear-attack/ So the country is wide open to an attack, with the only defense being the revenge of massive retaliation.
As for the elite hiding out underground, even if they could survive that way, which would depend on a lot of factors beyond their control, their world and their power would still be utterly destroyed. So they would really be unable to take pleasure in survival. Philip Wylie has an interesting old novel called Triumph about a wealthy individual in the 1960s with 1960s dollars who spent $150 to $200 million building a many-chambered shelter for fifteen people carved out of bedrock far below the earth’s surface. He provided his shelter with every conceivable need and backup in the story, and thirteen people succeeded in surviving in it for two years, after which they were running out of food, and then they were only saved by the deus ex machina of the Australians (yes!) coming all the way to Massachusetts to get them. They found that no one else in the US had survived at all, but the southern hemisphere had been spared. And this all barely scratches the surface of the tribulations that would await any survivors. So I don’t think the elite, if they reflect, could possibly want a nuclear war.

Posted by: Cabe | Mar 17 2022 4:19 utc | 237

Posted by: bevin | Mar 17 2022 1:42 utc | 200
Thanks for the link. I enjoy reading her articles. I read her Fools’ Crusade: Yugoslavia, Nato, and Western Delusions. She writes very well, not as vulgar or prolific as Caitlin Johnstone.

Posted by: Calgary Guy | Mar 17 2022 4:36 utc | 239

not as vulgar or prolific as Caitlin Johnstone.
Posted by: Calgary Guy | Mar 17 2022 4:36 utc | 232
Yeah I know, it’s just so insensitive of Caitlin to bother you with her vulgarity about the murderous US war machine.
Far as I’m concerned there aren’t enough expletives in the world to adequately describe their depravity, the Empire is the very definition of vulgar!
Caitlin is fearless and incredibly insightful. Into the bargain she creates beautiful sensitive poetry.

Posted by: K | Mar 17 2022 5:12 utc | 241

too busy to keep up…
richard steven hack and brother ma – thanks for the correspondence earlier… i have been out all day…

Posted by: james | Mar 17 2022 5:44 utc | 243

@Richard Steven Hack | Mar 17 2022 4:16 utc | 229
Agreed as well in return. I imagine such conflicts all too often in recent years, and remembering the KAL007 incident back in ’83, the pressure to escalate.
(I was only 5 in 1962 but do remember how freaked out all the adults were, and the duck-and-cover drills in school).
Before he released *The Pentagon Papers* Daniel Ellsberg worked for the RAND Corporation. Out of this experience he wrote his first book: *The Doomsday Machine: The Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner*. After he saw Dr. Strangelove when it premiered in 1963, he turned to his colleague and said, “That’s a documentary film. That’s not a piece of fiction.” Alas, 60 years later it’s still not fiction.
I too have noticed the Pentagon staying the hand of those who might push a no-fly-zone or other suicide-by-escalation. Do I trust them one iota to continue this? Absolutely not—all it takes is one…
@Cabe | Mar 17 2022 4:19 utc | 230
I don’t pretend to know what the billionaires are thinking but they clearly regard the rest of us as no better than livestock (in return I remember the words of an old comrade of mine who described capitalists as “human only in the broadest zoological sense”). One indicator of how they think, however, was glimpsed by Douglass Rushkoff who wrote of it in his Survival of the Richest. A group of high level investment bankers peppered him with questions regarding how they could prepare for “The Event… their euphemism for the environmental collapse, social unrest, nuclear explosion, unstoppable virus, or Mr. Robot hack that takes everything down.”
Questions billionaires ask futurists:
”How do I maintain authority over my security force after money has no meaning?”
”Can we create robots instead, to serve as workers and guards?”
”Can I escape to a Mars colony?”
”Can my consciousness survive uploading to a supercomputer?”

Posted by: Vintage Red | Mar 17 2022 6:21 utc | 245

Don’t know if anybody else pointed this out up thread, but the Saker (who, almost alone, predicted the scale of this war) has predicted that an American – Russian war is now almost inevitable and that it will probably be nuclear.

Posted by: Hidari | Mar 17 2022 6:42 utc | 247

On the sidelines of the China-US summit in Rome on 15 March 2022, the United States exerted heavy pressure on the Holy See, in their intent to transform the conflict in Ukraine into a religious war.
In association with Bernard Lewis, under the George Bush Sr. administration, the Straussians [1] had dreamt of mobilizing Muslims against Russia. This deliberate strategy was later taken up by Lewis’s assistant, Samuel Huntington, who promoted it as an inevitable scenario : the clash of civilizations.
However, this strategy which was implemented in Bosnia and Herzegovina, then in Chechnya, is ineffectual in Ukraine where both camps are Christian. The Straussians, therefore, want to fan the flames of the Catholic/Orthodox divide. To this end, they intend to revive the theology evolved from the visions of Fatima.
To Arioch- here is Thierry’s text.
During the thirties and the Second World War, the anti-Slavic and anti-Semitic “nationalist” Stepan Bandera was a Uniate, that is Greek-Catholic, who celebrated an Orthodox rite while being affiliated with Rome.
Three years ago, the Straussians broke up the Ukrainian Orthodox Church by creating the Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church, not recognized by the Patriarch of Moscow, but by that of Constantinople [2].
In 1917, during the First World War and just after the Russian Revolution, three Portuguese psychics claimed they had received a message from the Virgin Mary, saying:
“You have seen hell where the souls of poor sinners go, To save them, God wishes to establish in the world devotion to My Immaculate Heart. (…) The war is going to end but if people do not cease offending God, a worse war will break out during the reign of Pius XI. When you see a night illumined by an unknown light, know that this is the great sign given you by God that He is about to punish the world for its crimes, by means of war, famine, and persecutions against the Church and against the Holy Father.To prevent this, I shall come to ask for the consecration of Russia to My Immaculate Heart, and the Communion of Reparation on the First Saturdays. If my requests are heeded, Russia will be converted and there will be peace if not, she will spread her errors throughout the world, causing wars and persecutions against the Church. The good will be martyred, the Holy Father will have much to suffer, various nations will be annihilated. In the end, My Immaculate Heart will triumph, the Holy Father will consecrate Russia to Me, and she will be converted, and a period of peace will be granted to the world.”
On 24 March 2022, President Joe Biden will travel to Europe to chair a special summit of NATO heads of state and governments against Russia.
On the following day, 25 March at 5 p.m. (12 p.m. Washington time; 6 p.m. Kiev time; 7 p.m. Moscow time), Pope Francis will consecrate Ukraine and Russia to the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as per the wishes of the psychics of Fatima. Accordingly, Russia will be portrayed, as the troublemaker. Fighting against her will become the sacred duty of all Catholics.
The faithful who participate in religious wars lose all thinking capacity and show unparalleled determination and cruelty. For twenty years, the Muslim world has been paying the price. The Christian world is preparing to follow suit.

Posted by: Australian lady | Mar 17 2022 6:53 utc | 249

@Arioch | Mar 16 2022 22:02 utc | 140
The video is from 2018…

Posted by: trurl | Mar 17 2022 7:09 utc | 251

The US has this fantasy about arming the Ukrainian Army with all these weapons, ammunition, etc. When they enter Ukraine they will be destroyed. Obviously, the collective west is proven impotent to even detect Russian cruise missiles much less shoot them down, and using ancient S-300’s is stupid beyond belief. Westerners that survived the barrage now recognize that this is a real war against a peer nation and infantry are cannon fodder. The west isn’t used to thinking like this having fought one-sided wars for the past 70+ years. So, they now see that going to Ukraine and fighting means to the death and it looks like their resolve is weak when faced with the very real probability of dying for another country.

Posted by: Old Microbiologist | Mar 17 2022 8:10 utc | 253

Posted by: Australian lady | Mar 17 2022 6:53 utc | 242
“Fighting against her will become the sacred duty of all Catholics.”
To quote Stalin, “How many divisions does the Pope have?”
Because is he doesn’t have something like the 1st Guards Tank Army, he ain’t gonna count for squat.

Posted by: Richard Steven Hack | Mar 17 2022 8:15 utc | 255

RSH – 102
I don’t agree. Russia is more than willing to go toe to toe with the NATO Army. NATO has only fought one-sided wars against non-peers and even then lost. Russia proved in absolute terms that western aggressors whether they be Al Qaeda, ISIS, US, EU, Canada, or UK mercenaries (note a large volume of Uigyars coming as well) will be allowed to assemble and then wiped out en masse. The same for any equipment brought into Ukraine. The real fighting will be over with the exception of small pockets and these will be cleaned out slowly as well probably by bombing them into non-existence. The lack of any effective air defense and rumor has it they didn’t see the missiles coming at all, means Russia can attack at will any place in Europe and likely can shoot down most attacks in reverse. I think clear minds will see this and understand. Politicians will also once supplies run out in Europe which is already happening. I have a friend in Aachen who told us last night all the shelves are empty in groceries in Germany. I assume this is because there is no diesel for trucks now after stupidly cutting Russian diesel. These politicians, with the exception of Viktor Orban in Hungary, are working against their own populations and clearly show they are more loyal to the USA than their constituents. Voters will take revenge if things get worse. No one cares enough about to Ukraine to die for the Nazis.

Posted by: Old Microbiologist | Mar 17 2022 10:07 utc | 257

I miss Andre Vltchek!
I imagine he would be somewhere in Ukraine right now if he was still with us.
Here’s a column from his travels there in 2014 right after Maidan. A.V. in Ukraine 2014
“No matter what the propaganda says, reality is well known. For decades, after destruction of the USSR,
Ukraine mainly obeyed the West and Russia went its own, determinedly independent way.
The result is: Ukraine is on its knees…”

Posted by: waynorinorway | Mar 17 2022 13:13 utc | 259

Posted by: JB | Mar 16 2022 20:02 utc | 97

it is necessary to know that the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has issued an order that Russia stop its military operation.

The ICJ is years behind the present. Are they not aware that the world is currently subject to an “international rules based order?”
The Ukraine conflict originates in the fact the US denies the ICJ has any application to it. In fact, when presented with clear evidence of war crimes subject to ICJ sanction the US simply obtains the lifetime imprisonment of the individual who made public release of the evidence of a war crime.
The ICJ, like many other “global” institutions, needs to be reconstituted under the aegis of a multi-polar world as opposed to remaining as pompous subservient lapdogs to the hegemon.

Posted by: Sushi | Mar 17 2022 13:25 utc | 261

Re: Arioch | Mar 17 2022 1:09 utc | 197
There is a video taken by a press videographer, who wanders the entire breadth of the place, which is huge, and you’re right — the amount of abandoned weaponry is astounding.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ef7VATrCga4

Posted by: AntiSpin | Mar 17 2022 16:38 utc | 263

I’ve been following MoA for years, but this is my first comment. Thanks, B, for providing a sane source of information.
I’m in the UK. Our National Health Service is currently so overstretched that the armed forces have been brought in to help our ambulance crews, who don’t have enough staff to cope with demand.
I’ve just been told that the military medics are being withdrawn from helping with domestic medical services on 25th of March; they’re expecting to be posted to Poland. They have no idea how the NHS will cope.
So, the question is: what is due to happen in April?

Posted by: Dyn Anhysbys | Mar 17 2022 20:02 utc | 265

Post-Soviet space is contested by the Russian Federation. Russia has returned to the global stage as a very significant power whose interests are able to be pressed forward against the claims of other states. The Ukraine is now a failed state propped by Western oligarchs who control the Pentagon and other Federal entities as well as NATO. Russia has broken the Ukraine in a military sense and simultaneously Russia is in wartime attempting to find the medium between military force or accepting more significant casualties than anticipated in planning. Russian objectives are global. I think this war is to end the West as an important player in the WEF future. China benefits, no one else. China as Neo-Colonial partner in resource exploitation and not Germany.

Posted by: Stegiel | Mar 17 2022 22:11 utc | 267

re: AntiSpin | Mar 17 2022 16:38 utc | 264
Tried to access the link got the message “video not avaioable in your country” guess which country lol
USA

Posted by: Perimetr | Mar 18 2022 2:52 utc | 269

(Where’s réante and that HToE hypothesis???)
Boy, I hope we got something valuable in exchange for this:
Russia and Canada spat over “kindergarten-level” UN letter post
https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/russia-and-canada-in-twitter-spat-over-kindergarten-level-un-letter-post-1.5824208
Hang on, maybe this? Bangladesh and Canada co-lead process leading to UN adopting the new 10-year agenda to support the world’s Least Developed countries?
https://twitter.com/rababfh2016/status/1504630292656668686
… this made me consider a need to re-visit PM Johnson’s visit to UAE. On his Twitter account, a short video about his trip to UAE and Saudi Arabia
https://twitter.com/BorisJohnson/status/1504498627351392259
After which a £1 billion investment by the Alfanar Group in Teeside Lighthouse Green Fuels Project was announced.

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Mar 18 2022 12:32 utc | 271

A little too much Canadian media coverage of Moldova for comfort:
Vineyards –
https://globalnews.ca/news/8686213/moldova-wine-industry-ukraine/
Apples (from Reuters) –
https://youtu.be/l0zAa0Thn5g
Neutrality –
https://globalnews.ca/news/8683222/moldova-russian-invasion-fears/
Clowns –
https://twitter.com/CBCTheNational/status/1504759523378036736
Refugees –
Ottawa Morning with Robyn Bresnahan: Refugee situation in Moldova
Also recently announced HMCS Halifax frigate will deploy Saturday as part of support for Ukraine. It’s headed for the Baltic Sea, where tasks may include (I’m paraphrasing) picking up Russian traitors fleeing through Finland. Perhaps we’re helping out the Jolly Old Motherland on this one.

Posted by: Bruised Northerner | Mar 18 2022 14:47 utc | 273