.................RATIONAL THINKING.................. مرا جهل در کامِ دیو میبَرَد.............از آن دوستی میکنم با خِرَد
April 28, 2022
2014 saw two pivotal events that led to the current conflict in Ukraine.
The first, familiar to all, was the coup in Ukraine in which a democratically elected government was overthrown at the direction of the United States and with the assistance of neo-Nazi elements which Ukraine has long harbored.
April 26, 2022
Fortunately, President Biden thus far has rejected the most risky policies that hawks are pushing in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Despite being under intense pressure, he continues to rule out proclaiming a no-fly zone, and he flatly rejects suggestions (including from one close political ally) that he consider sending U.S. troops to Ukraine. However, even the policies the administration has embraced entail an unacceptable risk of entangling the United States in a military confrontation with a nuclear-armed power. The United States and some NATO allies are pouring increasingly sophisticated weapons into Ukraine to bolster that country’s resistance to the invasion. Russia recently reiterated its warning that such shipments are legitimate military targets. In addition to lavishing arms on Ukraine, Washington is sharing key military intelligence with Kyiv. The United States is skirting very close to becoming an outright belligerent in an extremely dangerous war.
When you get hopelessly lost in the woods, the best way to find your way out is to reverse the steps you took to get in.
In numerous addresses since the illegal invasion of Ukraine, Russia has clearly set out its terms for ending the invasion "in a moment." The terms usually follow a three part formula: Ukrainian neutrality, meaning not joining NATO; removal of US and NATO troops and missiles from Ukrainian soil; and recognizing Donetsk and Lugansk.
MARCH 18, 2022
Tomorrow is the 19th anniversary of Iraq War 2.0 — the one we fought over Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction. What have we learned over the almost two decades since?
While the actual Gotterdammerung for the new order took place just six months ago in Afghanistan as the last American troops clambered aboard their transports — with Washington seeming to abandon American citizens, a multi-million dollar embassy, and the Afghan people to their fates. The Afghan War did not begin under false pretenses as much as it began under no pretenses. Americans in 2001 would have supported carpet bombing Santa’s Workshop. Never mind we had been attacked by mostly Saudi operators, the blood letting would start in rural Afghanistan and the goal was some gumbo of revenge, stress relief, hunting down bin Laden in the wrong country, and maybe nation building, it didn’t matter.
April 17, 2022
A recent poll truly shocked me.
Quinnipiac University found that President Biden’s approval rating had sunk to just 33 percent. You might argue that this was just one poll, but Biden’s approval is down in multiple surveys.
As CNN’s Harry Enten pointed out Friday, there were four major national polls released last week, and in three of them — including Quinnipiac — Biden had the lowest showing of his presidency. In the fourth, he was “one point off the lowest.”
These are just devastating results on the heels of a historic Supreme Court confirmation and only seven months out from the midterms.
The gist of our two-part series is this: Unlike Ford automobiles, Ukraine was not "Built to Last!"
Asked if the U.S. should send troops to fight beside the Ukrainians, Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., said Sunday the time may have come.
Russian President Vladimir Putin "will only stop when we stop him," said Coons.
"We are in a very dangerous moment where it is important that … we in Congress and the administration come to a common position about when we are willing to go the next step and to send not just arms but troops to the aid in defense of Ukraine."
"If the answer is never, then we are inviting another level of escalation in brutality by Putin."
این عبارتی است که زعمای قوم مذهبی اختراع کرده‌اند، که از هر گونه واکنشی به مزخرفات دینی آنان جلوگیری کنند. این مختص به اسلام نیست، چرا که در غرب مسیحی / یهودی نیز به زبانها و گفتار‌های متفاوت این اصطلاح دیده میشود. ستیز به معنای جنگیدن است. بنابراین چنانکه شما در بحثی جمله‌ای را عنوان کنید که انتقاد سازنده‌ای به یک جریان مذهبی باشد، و شخص مقابل بحث به آن جریان مذهبی اعتقاد داشته باشد، با گفتن "لطفا دین ستیزی نکنید" به بحث خاتمه میدهد.ا
Do you want to charge Russia with war crimes? Go for it. Though Russia felt the tide of existential threat at their borders, they were not under imminent attack, and they did not seek Security Council approval. So the moment they launched a war against Ukraine, Russia had broken international law and committed a war crime.
But let there be a common and consistent standard of law established for all countries. And do not allow the one bringing the charges of torture against Russia to be the warden of Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo Bay.
March 16, 2022
When you get hopelessly lost in the woods, the best way to find your way out is to reverse the steps you took to get in.
In numerous addresses since the illegal invasion of Ukraine, Russia has clearly set out its terms for ending the invasion "in a moment." The terms usually follow a three part formula: Ukrainian neutrality, meaning not joining NATO; removal of US and NATO troops and missiles from Ukrainian soil; and recognizing Donetsk and Lugansk.
Chris Hedges
April 6, 2022
Let us honor those workers who stood up to Amazon, especially Chris Smalls, described by Amazon’s chief counsel as “not smart, or articulate,” who led a walkout at the Amazon warehouse at Staten Island JFK8 in New York at the beginning of the pandemic two years ago to protest unsafe working conditions. He was immediately fired.
Amazon’s high-priced lawyers, however, were in for a surprise. Smalls unionized the first Amazon warehouse in the country. He, along with his co-founder Derrick Palmer, built their union worker-by-worker with little outside support and no affiliation with a national labor group, raising $120,000 on GoFundMe. Amazon spent more than $4.3 million on anti-union consultants last year alone, according to federal filings.
Joe Lauria
April 8, 2022
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has been making a virtual world tour with video hookups to parliaments around the globe, as well as to the Grammy Awards and the U.N. Security Council, sometimes with troublesome results.
On Thursday a major row erupted when Zelensky brought along a Ukrainian soldier of Greek heritage from the city of Mariupol, who just happened to be a member of the ne0-Nazi Azov Regiment. Greece was under Nazi occupation during World War II and fought a bitter partisan war against Nazism (later to be betrayed by Britain and the United States.)
With Zelensky in the screen, the man, who gave only his first name, told Parliament: “I speak to you as a man of Greek descent. My name is Michail. My grandfather fought against the Nazis in the Second World War. I am born in Mariupol and I am now also fighting to defend my city from the Russian nazis.”
It all starts with the number $813 billion, the Biden national defense budget for FY 2023. That number is so hideously – nay, grotesquely – large that it is the inherent fount of the war fevers, Russophobia and sweeping disinformation that now gushes from the Washington war machine and its auxiliaries in the mainstream media.
The fact is, never before in the history of mankind have economic resources of this gigantic magnitude been showered upon the blob-like military-industrial-intelligence-foreign aid-think tank-NGO-lobbying complex that is now ensconced in the world’s leading national capital.
"In the battle between democracy and autocracy, democracies are rising to the moment, and the world is clearly choosing the side of peace and security," said President Joe Biden in his State of the Union address."This is a real test. It’s going to take time."
Thus did Biden frame the struggle of our time as the U.S. leading the world’s democracies, the camp of the saints, against the world’s autocrats, the forces of darkness.
But is "democracy" really America’s cause? Is "autocracy" really America’s great adversary in the battle for the future?
Volodymyr Zelensky
defeated Petro Poroshenko in the 2019 election on a platform that included
making peace with Russia and signing the Minsk Agreements. The Minsk Agreements
would have granted a degree of autonomy to the Donetsk and Lugansk regions of
the Donbas that had voted for independence from Ukraine after the 2014 US
backed coup put a government in power that was handpicked by the US and that
was pro-West and anti-Russian. It was intense pressure from the far right wing
ultranationalists that bent Zelensky from a Minsk backer into the shape of a
Minsk rejecter. Under that pressure from neo-Nazi parties that have large power
that is disproportionate to their small support, Zelensky abandoned his
campaign peace promise and refused to talk to the leaders of the Donbas and
implement the Minsk Agreements.
