اندیشمند بزرگترین احساسش عشق است و هر عملش با خرد

Saturday, February 26, 2022

George Kennan Warned NATO Expansion Would Lead to This

  Posted on

Mr. "X" Is Rolling in His Grave

We are now deep into the weeds with respect to Ukraine. So deep, in fact, that the underlying architecture of the situation doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in the hot place of getting even a fleeting mention in the 24/7 war news cycle.

So let’s call a spade a spade. The current fraught situation has nothing at all to do with the rule of international law or the sovereignty of national borders or the spread of democracy; and certainly not even remotely with any kind of threat to the safety and security of the American homeland posed by Russia.

To the contrary, it all goes back to the fall of 1991 when the old Soviet Union slithered off the pages of history, but the Washington-based military industrial complex refused to go quietly into the good night. Instead, it busied itself with policing the far-flung precincts of the planet as if the Cold War had not even ended, and extending Washington’s hegemony to any and every vacuum left behind by the vanished Soviet Union and its former satellites, allies and vassals.

Russia’s Strategic Swing Drives NATOstan Nuts

 By Pepe Escobar

 February 21, 2022

History will register that the birth of the baby twins – Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics – only a few hours before 2/22/22, was simultaneous to the birth of the real, 21st century multipolar world.

As my columns have stressed for a few years now, Vladimir Putin has been carefully nurturing his inner Sun Tzu. And now it’s all in the open: “Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”

The thunderbolt was months in the process of being meticulously polished. To paraphrase Lenin, who “created Ukraine” (copyright Putin), we did live many decades in only these past few days. It all started with the detailed demands of security guarantees sent to the Americans, which Moscow knew would be rejected. Then there was the Russia-China joint statement at the start of the Winter Olympics – which codifies not only the strategic partnership but also the key tenets of the multipolar world.

Thursday, February 24, 2022

Russia Recognises Donbass Republics' Independence

 By Alexey Nikolsky

 February 21, 2022

Earlier in the day, in an emergency session of the Russian Security Council, the Russian president consulted with ministers, senior security officials and members of the government to present their views on the matter and its potential political, economic and strategic implications. 

 

Saturday, February 19, 2022

Today’s Crisis Over Ukraine

Jack F. Matlock

Today we face an avoidable crisis that was predictable, actually predicted, willfully precipitated, but easily resolved by the application of common sense.

We are being told each day that war may be imminent in Ukraine. Russian troops, we are told, are massing at Ukraine’s borders and could attack at any time. American citizens are being advised to leave Ukraine and dependents of the American Embassy staff are being evacuated. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian president has advised against panic and made clear that he does not consider a Russian invasion imminent. Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, has denied that he has any intention of invading Ukraine. His demand is that the process of adding new members to NATO cease and that in particular, Russia has assurance that Ukraine and Georgia will never be members. President Biden has refused to give such assurance but made clear his willingness to continue discussing questions of strategic stability in Europe. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian government has made clear it has no intention of implementing the agreement reached in 2015 for reuniting the Donbas provinces into Ukraine with a large degree of local autonomy—an agreement with Russia, France and Germany which the United States endorsed.

Sunday, February 13, 2022

شاه جنگ ایرانیان در چالدران و یونان

کسانی که به مطالعات تاریخی، بخصوص در مورد ایران، علاقمندند، نام ذبیح‌الله منصوری برای آنها نامی آشناست. قلم شیوای منصوری خواندن کتابهای او را شیرین، و سبک ساده نویسی او خواندن آثار او را آسان‌تر می‌کند. ولی آنچه که خواننده پیش از خواندن کتاب او باید در نظر داشته باشد این است که آنچه که می‌خواند رمانی بیش نیست که وقایع تاریخی، درست و یا نادرست، در آن ذکر شده‌اند.ا

 علی‌اکبر قاضی‌زاده در مقاله‌ای در روزنامه شرق به تاریخ ۲۵ تیر ۱۳۸۶ تحت عنوان

  «تکلیف ذبیح‌الله منصوری را روشن کنید»

به ارائه راهکارهایی برای روشن شدن وضعیت آثار منصوری پرداخت. او دربارهٔ آثار منصوری می‌نویسد

همه این کارها به نام ترجمه به خوانندگان عرضه می‌شود، اما اهل تحقیق و کارشناسان ادبیات می‌دانند آن نویسندگان غربی که کتاب‌ها به نام آنان معرفی می‌شود، در مجموع سه حالت دارند

این نویسندگان یا وجود خارجی دارند اما کتابی به چنین نام و مضمونی ننوشته‌اند

یا وجود خارجی دارند اما جزوه‌ای، مقاله‌ای یا یادداشتی چندبرگی نوشته‌اند که با گذر از ذهن خلاق و سازنده منصوری به کتابی مفصل و پربرگ تبدیل شده‌اند

یا اصولاً از ابتدای پیدایش سیاره زمین اصلاً چنین آدم‌هایی زاده نشده‌اند تا چه رسد به اینکه کتابی نوشته باشند که ذبیح‌الله منصوری آن را به فارسی بازگردان


 

Saturday, February 5, 2022

$1.5 Trillion in Student Loan Debt Is Sabotaging the Nation's Future

THOM HARTMANN

Reagan's policy of starving education and cranking up student debt has made U.S. banks piles of money, but stopped generations of young people from starting businesses, having families, and buying homes.

Ronald Reagan knew that an educated populace was more progressive and more Democratic, and he was determined to stop the explosion of college educated Americans caused by both the 1944 GI Bill and free tuition at the University of California.

Forty years later, student debt has crippled two generations of young Americans: over 44 million people carry the burden, totaling a $1.5 trillion drag on our economy that benefits nobody except the banks earning interest on the debt.

Student debt is a rare or even nonexistent thing in most western democracies