RUSSIA

EDITOR—This video has quite a story, albeit, a typical story for a film that exposes the Empire in all its perfidy. It was first posted about a decade ago, on Cyrano’s Journal, when we first encountered this resource. It was soon the object of sabotage by technical means: the page mysteriously vanished and our server went down—for almost a full week. Further attempts met the same fate, so we gave up until circumstances became favorable to our side. Lately, we decided to try again and looked for the video all over the place, to no avail. It was certainly not on YouTube, a platform notorious for its aggressive participation in imperialist censorship of free speech exposés. But, we eventually found it on YouTube, again, of all places, although after posting it here a few days, it again vanished (see the black box below). Clicking on the link provided to supposedly see it on YouTube itself, as they promise, leads nowhere. So we conducted a new wide search and located an independent depot that had preserved this film.

DMITRY MEDVEDEV—To protect the territorial integrity of our country, ballistic and cruise missiles with special warheads will be used. This is based on our doctrinal military documents and is well known to everyone. And this is the very notorious Apocalypse. The end of everything. Therefore, Western politicians should tell their voters the bitter truth, and not treat them as brainless idiots.

MIKE WHITNEY—Imagine if the Mexican army started bombarding American ex-pats living in Mexico with heavy artillery-rounds killing thousands and leaving thousands more wounded. What do you think Joe Biden would do? Would he brush it off like a big nothingburger and move on or would he threaten the Mexican government with a military invasion that would obliterate the Mexican Army, level their biggest cities, and send the government running for cover? Which of these two options do you think Biden would choose?
There’s no doubt what Biden would do nor is there any question what the 45 presidents who preceded him would do.

ANDREI MARTYANOV—Putin set the goals of the SMO. The demilitarization of an enormous military, stocked for eight years and restocked feverishly from the bases and warehouses of 30 countries in NATO, is going very well. The Ukies had 750,000 men in trenches and fortified positions and embedded in big cities, shielded by civilians everywhere from Kiev to the smallest settlement in Donbas. Ukraine had a significant air force and stout air defenses with BUKs and S-300s in large numbers.

CAITLIN JOHNSTONE—But what does it mean if the war is “unprovoked”? It means Putin didn’t invade Ukraine because of anything the western empire was doing, so it couldn’t have been prevented by the western empire behaving less aggressively on Russia’s borders. It means Putin necessarily invaded because he is some kind of evil lunatic who loves to commit war crimes, or a megalomaniacal tyrant who wants to conquer the world because he hates freedom and democracy. Which means he will keep attacking and invading other countries unless he can be stopped. Which means the only answer to the Putin problem is more war.