IMPERATIVE

EDWARD CURTIN—This is expert opinion for dummies.  A vast tapestry of lies, as Harold Pinter said in his Nobel Prize address.  The war escalation the editorial writers are promoting is in their words, “this time pitting Western arms against a desperate Russia,” as if the U.S./NATO does not have CIA and special forces in Ukraine, just weapons, and as if “this time” means it wasn’t so for the past nine years at least as the U.S. was building Ukraine’s military and arms for this very fight. It is a fight they will lose in the days to come.  Russia was, is, and will triumph.

An engrossing chat with Garland Nixon on the Neocon project, as this malignant cabal of deeply-embedded US policy shapers might finally recede from the centers of power. The cause, notes Garland, is that reality cannot be denied with impunity. At the end of the day artillery rounds are always more persuasive than mere tweets; propaganda eventually cannot win wars, it can’t assure victories in the battleground against a disciplined, highly capable and extremely well-armed and motivated enemy.

CYNTHIA CHUNG—By 1914, Europe would be dragged into WWI. In March 1918, after two months of negotiations with the Central Powers (the German, Austria-Hungary, Bulgarian, and Ottoman Empire), the new Bolshevik government of Russia signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk ceding claims on Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Finland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania as the condition for peace (Note: the Bolshevik Revolution began in March 1917). WWI would officially end on November 11th, 1918.

As a result of the treaty, eleven nations became “independent” in eastern Europe and western Asia, Ukraine was among these nations. In reality, what this meant was that they were to become vassal states to Germany with political and economic dependencies. However, when Germany lost the war, the treaty was annulled.

With Germany out of the picture and the dissolution of both the Austria-Hungary and Russian Empire; Poland and Ukraine found themselves in a position to establish their independence.

KIM PETERSEN—It is a given that the rules-based order is an American linguistic instrument designed to preserve it as a global hegemon. To rule is America’s self-admitted intention. It has variously declared itself to be the leader of the free world, the beacon on the hill, exceptional, the indispensable nation (in making this latter distinction, a logical corollary is drawn that there must be dispensable nations — or in the ineloquent parlance of former president Donald Trump: “shithole” nations).

ERIC ZUESSE—Unlike other types of companies, which sell exclusively or mainly to the public (consumers, including to other companies), military manufacturers sell only or mainly to their own and to allied Governments; and, therefore, in order to control their own sales-volumes (which is an objective of any for-profit corporation), they need to, essentially, own these Governments by means of corruption, which enables these countries to pretend to be democracies instead of aristocracies (which they actually are — controlled by their billionaires — who also control these companies, and the ‘news’-media there).