VIRTUALUNIV

M K BHADRAKUMAR—The whole point is that the western commentariat largely forgets that Russia’s core agenda is not about territorial conquest — much as Ukraine is vital to Russian interests —  but about NATO expansion. And that has not changed.

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.

As a young man, Roy Bourgeois enlisted to fight in the Vietnam War. After being injured, he became a volunteer at a local orphanage and was inspired to become a priest upon his return to the US. Bourgeois became a priest in Bolivia during the dictatorship of General Hugo Banzer. He decided he could not be an apolitical priest. He spoke out against Banzer’s political repression, leading to his arrest and expulsion from Bolivia. Back in the US, Bourgeois organized protests outside Fort Benning, Georgia, where the US was training Salvadorian soldiers to fight the leftist insurgency (“death squads”, also used in many other nations of Latin America, Africa and Asia).

ERIC ARTHUR BLAIR—The US Establishment can now effectively block or stifle any public dissent opposing their War Agenda, while simultaneously instructing the stupid sheeple who they must direct their daily two minutes of hatred against. The Western media have truly turned Orwellian. They have learned how to do this step-by-step over the years since the Vietnam and Afghan and Iraq debacles, now achieving total control over the mainstream media.

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).