I have found myself at odds with a lot of people since the start of the war in Ukraine. I would hasten to add with people supporting either side but mainly those supporting US/NATO view. I would once again reiterate my position which many try to distort. I have opposed this conflict from day one. I am an anti-war person. My view today is the same as the first day of the SMO, an immediate ceasefire and a negotiated settlement. I want an end to the killing! I have been protesting against wars since my teenage days. I started with the Vietnam War. Like many of you I was on the streets protesting against the Gulf Wars. Although millions in the UK were doing likewise it was all to no avail. The hawks in Washington and their poodle in London were determined to grab Iraq’s oil.
Regime change is the US’s favourite ‘democratic’ tool. Remove legitimate governments and install puppet regimes in their place and then plunder the resources uninterrupted. It is what imperialists have always done. They also lie suggesting they are bringing democracy or peace or Christianity. They never admit the truth that they are only there to steal and subjugate.
Some of my friends on the left have tried to convince me that Russia was justified in invading. They point to genocide and eight years of shelling and bombing in the Donbass killing 15,000 ethnic Ukrainian Russians. The ignoring of the Minsk Agreements by Kiev, war crimes and atrocities as why Putin had to intervene. I refuse to accept that. War to me is a failure of diplomacy. War can always be avoided if there is political will. That of course, is dependent on both parties genuinely wanting resolution and not confrontation.
Unfortunately, Ukraine and its people have been used by US and Russia. We do indeed have a US puppet government in Kiev. I admit that much to my friends on the left.I also concur this is a US proxy war. While accepting all that I still cannot condone war.
Those supporting the US/NATO/Ukraine side attack me because I will not join in with their warmongering and Russophobia or their desire to fight the war till the last Ukrainian dies. In their eyes this makes me a pro Putin, pro invasion supporter. A hater of the West because I pointed out the lies we were and continue to be told by the western politicians and their tame, corrupted media. I wrote a blog at the start of this conflict. It has proven to be accurate. Truth is indeed always the first casualty of war.
My answer to both sides will always be the same, war only ever achieves avoidable deaths. There always has to be peace talks eventually. I want them now and not just in Ukraine. All the conflicts in Yemen, Somalia, Syria, Palestine can be settled if there is a will and no bigger nations playing at proxy wars and advancing their own narrow political ideology!
Post WWII the US took over from UK and France as the global imperial power and thief of other nation’s resources. The list of countries that the US has bombed, plundered and raped would fill the entire blog.
This, of course, does not include its involvement in the illegal occupation and annexation in Palestine. Sadly, the EU and NATO choose not to condemn or sanction Israel. Why is it viewed differently from what is happening in Ukraine?
Without US support, the Israelis could not get away with the atrocities, war crimes and illegal occupation.There have been over 100 UN Resolutions against Israel at UN. Most are vetoed by the US. Those that do get through lead to nothing. Iraq allegedly ignored just two UN resolutions and received shock and awe from US and UK. Iraq was bombed back to the Middle ages. Where were the sanctions against US and UK? The hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of the UN is legendary. The fact of the matter is this, if the US decided today that the two state solution in Palestine should happen by the weekend Israel would be out of the occupied territories and peace would be restored. If the UN had any power, they would tell US to do that and expel Israel from the UN until it complied. Where are the sanctions against Israel? Where is the western outrage about the illegal occupation?
This week the people of Donetsk, Lugansk, Kherson and Zaporozhye voted in referendums to decide whether or not they wanted to join the Russian Federation. These were carried out using internationally respected and normal accepted democratic practices.The people of Donbass and the south of Ukraine exercised their lawful right to self-determination in accordance with the UN Charter, the 1966 international human rights covenants, the 1975 OCSE Helsinki Final Act and the verdict of the UN International Court of Justice on Kosovo on July 22, 2010. The latter confirmed that the unilateral proclamation of independence by a part of a state didn’t violate any norms of international law. However, now the UN and all the western countries are saying this is different when applied to Donbass. What is the difference? We know why. It is not in what the US views as its interests, Kosovo was! It really is that hypocritical and simple!
International observers from Italy, Germany, Venezuela, Latvia and other countries (overall, 133 people) monitored the course of the Donbass referendums and recognised them as legitimate.
The participation was incredible and puts western democracies to shame. 97.5% in the DPR, 92.6% in LPR 85.4% in Zaporozhye and 76.9% in Kherson. They voted 99.23%, 98.42%, 93.11%, 87.05% to join the Russian Federation. By any standards this is a huge democratic outpouring. Yet we have some idiots in the West suggesting that the Russians forced people to vote at the point of a gun. Utter lies of course, those of us seeking out alternative news sources have seen for ourselves the people gladly and indeed joyously queuing to vote. Nobody forced them to do so. It should be noted that in 2014 these same regions voted to be autonomous republics within Ukraine! The 8 years of death and destruction changed their minds, nothing else. Those US and NATO shells killing them in their thousands convinced them they would be safer under the Russian Federation.
Sadly, in the intervening years the response from Kiev has been 8 years of bombardment and 15,000 Ukrainians killed by their own government’s forces. Something rarely if ever mentioned by western media or politicians.
Regrettably before a single ballot was filled in the so-called democratic west, the defender of freedoms and democracy had been telling the world they would not under any circumstances recognise the will of the people in these republics. It is an absolute disgrace as well as extremely hypocritical.
Self-interest and monetary considerations are being promoted over the voice of the ordinary, Ukrainian, now Russian citizens. Anyone who thinks the US/NATO involvement is anything whatsoever to do with protecting democracy or concern for the ordinary population of Ukraine, I have a bridge to sell you! The US do not even care for their own downtrodden populace let alone the downtrodden or oppressed of another nation!
“In the years of 1991, 1992 and 2008, the West approved of a number of independence referendums in the Balkans. In 1991, 1992, the West not only approved and recognized, but also engineered independence referendums in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina, which effectively killed the socialist federal republic of Yugoslavia, a member of the United Nations and whose borders were internationally recognized.
In 2008, the west not only approved and recognized, but also engineered an independence referendum in the Serbian province of Kosovo and Metohija. In Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia Herzegovina, the west cited the principle of self-determination in accounting for why they recognized those independence referendums, though it should be said the west never applied the principle of self-determination to the Serbs of Croatia and the Serbs of Bosnia.So, today in 2022 the question which needs to be put to the west is this: they did recognize the independence referendums in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo and Metohija on the basis of the principle of self-determination, then why will the West not apply the principle of self-determination to the people of Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson?
That is why I say the West’s position on the referendums in Lugansk, Donetsk, Zaporozhye and Kherson is completely contradictory. The reality is that the west will apply the principle of self-determination when it suits its own geopolitical objectives, and when the principle of self-determination does not suit their geopolitical objectives of the west, then the west will quite simply discard that principle.
We in Scotland should be very concerned with this turn of events. It seems the UN just like the IAEA forget their function and position as neutral organisations. It seems both can be bullied into falling into line with the western narrative or at least not exposing the lies. Recently we have seen how they bend to the US/Western will and it should give everyone in Scotland cause for concern.
The IAEA went to the Zaporizhzhya Nuclear Power Plant. This plant has been under Russian control since March 2022. Recently the plant has been subject to artillery and drone attack as well as several attempts by Ukrainian Special Forces to retake the plant and bring it back under Ukrainian jurisdiction. However like cowards when the IAEA team returned to Vienna they were unable to determine who had been shelling the nuclear facility. While in Zaporizhzhya they had even been shown fragments of US/NATO exploded shells but inexplicably were unable to say which side was shelling the plant! This could result in a catastrophic nuclear disaster. However, rather than apportion blame and tell an uncomfortable truth the IAEA pretended to know nothing!
Likewise, on these referendums the UN again sided with the western view. The UN General Secretary,António Guterres rightly cited the principal of non-use of force in international relations taken from Article 100 of the UN charter. However, at the same time the Portuguese Secretary omitted to mention another part of that same UN Article 100 ” equal rights and self-determination of peoples.” The very same piece that was used to justify the Kosovo referendum!
This is why we in Scotland should be worried. People like myself and others have been citing the UN Decolonisation Unit as a means to our secession from the accursed British union. With the UN Secretary General becoming political as he has been with Ukraine referendums he throws into doubt the honest broker status of the United Nations. When you add into your deliberations the inaction against UK and US over Chagos Islands and the lack of sanctions against Israel you begin to see that the UN, NATO and now the EU are just vessels of US global hegemony.
Scotland is in a geographical location that is important to US interests. The UK itself is a large air carrier in the Atlantic for US planes and nuclear weapons. It seems we are not just fighting the Britnat neocons, House Jocks and corrupt British media. We could possibly have to contend with an aggressive warmongering US we could also have to watch out for a very ineffectual UN and a compromised EU! As if our task was not difficult enough already.
A most excellent commentary Roddy and very well researched.
We live in very dangerous, if not grave times. Our world view here in Blighty is not as we are fed to believe. Sadly many, but not all, believe what they are fed to believe.
This Ukrainian conflict and the ensuing economic conflict was no accident. No accident what do ever. And no, God, righteousness, and military and economic success is s not, as we are fed, an absolute truth. In fact, maybe, dare I say it, no truth at all
Interesting therefore how at the UN recently the four countries of China, India, Brazil and Gabon refused to endorse a condemnation of Russia for annexing parts of Ukraine that had by referendum confirmed the desire to secede.
The countries of China, India, Brazil and Gabon constitute approaching 40% of the world population with a huge proportion of world resources. Their alignment on matters from international affairs to economic cooperation reinforces, or at least should reinforce to even the most ardent Washington – London pyscophants how the USA and its lapdog UK are maybe not the world powers in control of the world view.
Indeed, in the push to try and take economic and military domination, I think the West has very possibly bitten off more than it can chew.
And an example of this must be the UK economy. Busted Britannia and an ever more impoverished populace is being exposed worldwide for what it is.
And will it end in tears. Yes I think it will as we all get dragged in to what is now shaping up to be a global military conflict.
But we want war, we are proud of our military, which aside of all ways only fighting the good fight, is proudly proclaimed as being able to project global lethal force.
As the Americans used to say ” let’s kick ass”…. but whose will it be?
0ff to put another jumper on now and start my warm up lounge dancing.
When the Director (and originator) of the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons decided to have his office remodel, his IT manager (an American) did a midnight flit, never to be seen again. The office was riddled with electronic bugs.
The OPCW was subsequently turned wholesale into a tool of the Western Intelligence agencies (Douma, Salisbury et al.) This includes former British “diplomat” Bob Fairweather as Chef de Cabinet (2nd in command). These British “diplomats” crop up in odd places. Think Rory Stewart and David Harvey.
Yes, these international bodies have been systematically subverted and turned into adjuncts of the West and America in particular.
Perhaps uniquely, we are not powerless to fight back. The Scottish diaspora in America remains a vast, untapped resource. Scottish actors are disproportionately Hollywood A Listers (as indeed are artists from Wales and the island of Ireland). The likes of Brian Cox, Ewan McGregor (and many others) have shown willing to hit the American TV, talk show circuit and extoll the case for Scottish independence. Once organised, the Scottish diaspora can readily attain the political clout of the Irish and Italian counterparts. Every other Senator and Congress-person (rightly or wrongly) claims Scottish ancestry. Imagine hundreds of little saltire lapel pins on the floor of Congress. Millions of saltire bumper stickers.
The pressure on the political hacks and grifters to assuage their constituents from “Scotchland” would be difficult to ignore.
Vivian O’Blivion: I believe that many Americans and Canadians know and understand that Scotland wants and needs independence. On separate occasions, I recall talking to a chap from North Carolina and a chap from the Burns Society of one of the Canadian provinces – sorry, can’t recall now, but it might have been Nova Scotia, or equally, another province – and each had a very sharp understanding of our cultural heritage (allied to theirs), our languages (also allied to theirs in nuance and accent) and our desire for independence (both treasured theirs). Each knew of many others in his country who had a similar understanding and both felt at home in Scotland, having Scottish ancestry and a shared history in their family line. We have been far less pro active than the Irish in this respect: that is, in harnessing political comprehension of our need for independence. Equally, I have met English people up here who have a very sharp understanding of our need for independence and who respect it rather than denigrate it.
Well some of us have heritage that are baith. Gallagher O’Donnell’s and Sheridan and a few others are my family background. There’s a lot of Scottish/ Irish people as ye know. Some of the famous Irish actors spoke today at their rally, ours don’t. Fact is probably there’s a lot of mixed heritage between the both countries so America should not be seeing us as different. Also I was watching a talk from Greg Braden and a guy from the Arlington Institute in the USA and they were speaking about the UN and WEF plans for 2030.
It will certainly be interesting to see what happens when the results of Sturgeon’s sham referendum are announced.
Excellent piece, Roddy. Historically, the eastern wedge of Ukraine, running down the Russian border to Crimea have been predominantly Russian, the home of the Cossacks, Tatars (descendants of the Mongolian hordes) and others. Traditionally, these peoples have been the imperial bodyguards of the Tsars of All the Russias, then, latterly, of the Communist Party apparatchiks and leaders, and the majority of them have always viewed their interests as lying with the Russians.
Putin has what he always intended to have – which was the eastern part of Ukraine – and he had to cripple the rest of Ukraine to get those areas incorporated into Russia by leaving Ukraine proper a massive post war reconstruction hat would absorb its energies for generations. Did that make the Russian invasion right or moral? No. Merely politically strategic. To put it bluntly, he has outmanoeuvred and outwitted the West.
The call-up of Russian reserves – not exactly a success story – is less to fight Ukrainians than to populate the eastern areas with Russian troops, and, eventually, Russian immigrants to shore up the existing populations and rebuild the area as an extension of Russia proper. The hyperbole about the Russians moving from Ukraine to the Baltic States was always nonsense if only because the Russian military cannot achieve that kind of war on several fronts, albeit the peoples of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania had good cause to fear the worst, given their histories.
Putin is an extremely sharp operator, however you think of him, and a return to the imperialist Soviet Union would be a practical and psychological impossibility, given the number of former Soviet states that would put up a hard fight. What Putin appears to want is to reinforce Russia’s borders against the West, and China must be breathing a sigh of relief because they know they will be next on the West’s agenda.
I think that we, in the West, should defend our values, but we should also leave others to work out their own way to a better world, to a form of ‘democracy’ that might not tally with ours – particularly those in the former Soviet sphere and those in the Middle East. People will always want freedom and a decent way of life, education, a roof over their heads, employment and access to medicine, whoever they are because we have a shared humanity, but we cannot drag peoples with a very different social, political and/or religious history to jump over our Western hurdles in step with us. Nor can we continue to rob them of their resources for our own benefit and to their detriment.
Parasitism of all kinds is starting to stand out as the ‘ism’ that we can no longer endure, or it will lead, eventually, to global catastrophe of one sort or another: the parasitism of the wealthy, billionaire tax avoiders on the struggling poor, using politics to amass even greater wealth; the parasitism of one sex on the other in terms of resources and sexual and social expectations; the parasitism of neoliberal capitalism on the planet that belongs to us all and which the proponents of neoliberal capitalism – of both East and West – are exhausting. This is the war that we need to fight. The east of Ukraine is lost. It was lost from the first day the Russians invaded. Indeed, it was lost in 2014 when the democratic Ukraine was overthrown by Western interests.
If Russia succeeds in annexing East Ukraine would the remaining Ukraine be landlocked? Many nations are, I understand, dependent on grain from Ukraine and so grain exports from Ukraine would be determined/controlled by Russia? And then move on to gas, mega supplier, Russia.
Do you really believe that Putin is concerned about the status of “ethnic” Russians in Ukraine? Is it true that 15,000 ‘ethnic Russians have been killed in East Ukraine? Proof?
Democracy is an illusion you say, true reporting of reality – from whatever side – is the illusion I’d say.
Man’s inhumanity to Man – there are more than a few persons existing on this planet who care not for human life, and act out their carnage ambitions with no life risk to themselves.
Putin, like so many wielding political power is in effect playing political chess against political opponents with human lives as pawns.
I think that Ukraine would still have a sliver or more of access to the Black Sea, past Crimea. I’d have to check. I don’t see the Russians blockading Ukraine proper because that could initiate another conflict, and it has always been Russia’s fear that Ukraine would block Russian access to the Black Sea and the Bosphorus, especially when the Russian ports of Murmansk and Archangel were frozen for most of the year.
Although they are frozen for fewer months of the year now, the Black Sea port of Sebastopol is still crucial to the Russian Black Sea fleet’s operations into other oceans and seas. I think the east was always Putin’s goal, not the remainder of Ukraine, and the biggest nuclear power station in Europe is in that area, too, along with other resources. I well recall and commented on, at the time, the reporting of the Russians shelling that nuclear power station, but it can only have been the Ukrainians after the Russians took control of it, but we had to swallow the nonsense. I am no Putin fan, but I now scrutinise every morsel of news.
Wasn’t that mass grave also thrown into doubt when a BBC reporter – I think it might have been Jeremy Bowen – said that it was covered with crosses which no mass grave of murdered people has ever witnessed before. That these were civilian casualties is probably correct and these poor people did not stand a chance in the shelling, but actual reporting from a war zone becomes useless if it is propagandised. Their deaths were bad enough without using them to add fuel to the fire. Like Roddy, I wish that Zeleskyy and Putin would come to an agreement through diplomacy, but, whatever happens, the east is lost and will always be a source of unrest now if it is returned to Ukraine.
No, I shouldn’t think that ‘ethnicity’ has a lot to do with the annexation of eastern Ukraine, although it must be a bonus for the people there, but it does afford Russia a more solid foothold on the Black Sea and access to European markets and other parts of the world without going through Ukraine. As for the atrocities in the east, independent reporters from other countries have attested to at least some of them: the burning to death of ethnic Russians in Odessa, for example, as well as other killings.
We all know the influence the USA plays in other countries to get what they want. I have been saying for years that Scotland will never be Independent because AMERICA will never allow us to be. They rely on their nuclear weapons being based here, to cover their arses against the likes of Russia. WM is just a puppet of the USA, Whatever AMERICA wants WM will deliver, just as they did with the Chagos islands. USA has allowed thousands of UKRANIANS to die, all for their need to have bases on RUSSIAS doorstep. As long as we house their weapons. USA will play dirty to keep us tied to ENGLAND..
Absolutely brilliant analysis of the situation & the psychology ( and strategic intent ) of V Putin as I’ve read anywhere . In fact , the best .
North .South .East .West . It makes no difference : the malaise is global . You named it well – Parasitism aka pathological self-interest . The ” ism ” that will eat every other ” ism ” .
Great piece also Roddy
We will be independent. Stop panicking. I know things look awful and they are for a lot folk but have faith. If you start to put this kind of energy out there and you start feel negative it can escalate. I am am like yourself but I just feel like this time it’s going to happen despite the odds and everything else. If you were going along to Yestival I would have brought ye a wee dram to warm yer heart and put a wee bit of fire in yer spirit.
Is that you Ruby ?
Democracy Is An Illusion and always has been and it is NOT the US that is the puppeteers but they are the puppets of these MAFIAS being exposed in this video here who own and control most of this planet including the UK, US, EU, UN, NATO and Scotland etc and since these MAFIAS UK military and Empire was weakened by WW2 they have been using the US as their order following idiots to take over the countries that they do NOT own and control. You are correct that the Ukranians have been trying to ethnically cleanse the Russians out of the Donbass region that used to be part of Russia originally just like the Crimea did as well but they were left as part of the Ukraine in the USSR days and this has been going on for the last 8 years without any reports from the western media and the reason that Putin went in this time was because the Ukrainians were building up for a massive push against these people of that region.
Of course the west and NATO started to report on this as part of their agenda to cover up what is going on with the massive spike in excess deaths going on all over the world because of the bio-weapon jab being used to depopulate 95% of the worlds population – Tim Truth on Bitchute is just one of many reporting on this while he mainstream media when they do report on it act as if it is unknown why this is happening – and it is also being used as cover for the DELIBERATE destroying of our countries and worlds economy as part of these MAFIAS agenda also exposed in this video here for their digital social credit system and One World Communist Government Dictatorship for which they need to remove Putin and Russia in order to bring in – is China already owned and controlled by these MAFIAS hence why they sent all of our jobs etc there for decades since none of the countries that used to be under the British Empire actually gained any independence and that includes Ireland as they are all still controlled via their banking, legal and political systems etc as per this video – people are ignorant of the fact that WW2 was started in exactly the same way with the Polish government ethnically cleansing and murdering the Germans living in the German areas handed over to Poland after WW1 while being egged on by the British/French to force Hitler into going to their aid because they had to take out Hitlers Germany and Italy because they did what all of our corrupt puppet governments and political parties should be doing and that is they arrested and jailed the bankers including Loius De Rothschild and took over their banks and printed their own debt and interest free money and that is why Germany especially ended up with full employment and their people the richest and best off in Europe so they conned the people with lies into taking these countries out and have lied and demonised them ever since to cover all of this up and steer people away from this truth and Putin is changing his country to gold backed money now as well hence why the west wants rid of him and Russia a country they have not controlled since the collapse of the USSR hence why the Allies and Communists fought together in WW2. The people need to know that any political party/government that is NOT exposing the FACT that we will be much better of with debt and interest free money printed by our own government with NO need for taxes is NOT working for the benefit of the people/country or independence because anything else is being slaves of these MAFIAS being exposed in this video THE DEMOCRACY ILLUSION here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98qv9ztkW_U