Comments on New Yorker interview with John Mearsheimer

The New Yorker has a good interview with John Mearsheimer in which they discuss why Putin invaded Ukraine: Why John Mearsheimer Thinks Donald Trump Is Right on Ukraine. The interviewer, Isaac Chotiner, thinks Putin invaded because of his imperial ambitions. Mearchsheimer thinks the invasion was in response to NATO expansion that the Russians perceived as…

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Jeffrey Sachs castigates the EU Parliament about their subservience to U.S. imperial plans

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZUbBU0OqCgE (15 minutes of excerpts),   https://x.com/Fidias0/status/1892990169558721024 (full speech, 98 minutes) The full transcript of the speech is at https://progressivememes.org/ukraine/Jeffrey-Sachs-Speech-to-EU-Parliament.pdf  This is is a summary. Sachs talks about Ukraine, Israel, Iran, and China.  He tells them: Pursue peace with Russia. A lot of what European leaders believe about Russia is childish.  For example, Russia has no…

Col. Daniel Davis on U.S. provocations in Ukraine (summary)

Col. Daniel Davis spoke with Massachusetts Peace Action about the hypocrisy of the United States concerning NATO expansion.  Here’s my summary. Davis starts out by saying that people in the West believe a lot of disinformation, and there is a lot of wishful thinking.  He criticizes the notion that one side is totally evil…

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Why it’s crucial to expose U.S. provocations in Ukraine

(Slightly shorted version also published at antiwar.com) If you believe that Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was unprovoked, you will likely compare Putin to Hitler and will likely oppose President Trump’s peace negotiations with Russia. After all, if Putin’s invasion was unprovoked, a settlement would reward naked aggression and would be akin to Neville Chamberlain’s…

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Letter from Bellingham Travail: Stopping the War Machine

In Bellingham on Jan 28, 2024 the Washington State Democratic Central Committee passed a resolution written by me, Donald A. Smith, PhD, along with Sharon Abreu and Linda Boyd, calling for a less militarized foreign policy and for a “just transition” to a peace economy. Resolution on the Urgency of Transitioning to an Economy Based…

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Another good article by Jeffrey Sachs

In Jeffrey Sach’s NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction, he quotes NATO Secretary0-General  Jens Stoltenberg saying, “So, he [Putin] went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite.” When Prof. John Mearsheimer, I, and others have said the same, we’ve been attacked as Putin apologists. The same…

Did the U.S. orchestrate the 2014 Maidan uprising? Or did it just back it and exploit it?

There are competing views about this. Modern Diplomacy’s US campaign behind the turmoil in Kiev says, “Incontrovertible proofs will be presented here not only that it was a coup, but that this coup was organized by the U.S. Government:  “that the U.S. Government initiated the ‘new Cold War’.”   I don’t know the nature of that…

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Summary of Jeffrey Sachs interview with Andrew Napolitano about the CIA, JFK, and Ukraine

CIA Manipulation of Public Opinion Here’s my summary: The security state (CIA and Pentagon) run the government more than the White House does, especially when the president is old and weak, as is Biden.  Congress mostly follows what the White House wants (on foreign policy) [and funds the security state extravagantly].  The peoples’ voices barely…

In response to David Ignatius on the strategic windfall from the war in Ukraine

From an opinion piece in the Washington Post by Washington Post associate editor David Ignatius:  The West feels gloomy about Ukraine. Here’s why it shouldn’t: Meanwhile, for the United States and its NATO allies, these 18 months of war have been a strategic windfall, at relatively low cost (other than for the Ukrainians). The West’s…