The Threat of WW3 and the Ukranian Crisis : ''Ukraine: Can anyone stop that train?'' by Minabere Ibelema

[Oluwatoyin Adepoju]

Minabere Ibelema

20 February 2022
From The Punch 

As I chatted with my first daughter about two weeks ago, she unexpectedly asked me: “What is this about Russia planning to invade Ukraine?” It was an unexpected question because it is not often that we discuss foreign affairs beyond her occasional vacations abroad. Perhaps, she was already pondering the probable casualties from the perspective of a physician.

As I told her, I was as perplexed as she was. Sure, the invasion of one country by another is not something in the distant past. Still, there was something about this virtual siege that evoked images from ancient history.

Perhaps, the most vivid — thanks to Homer’s epic poem, the Iliad — is that of Greece’s siege of Troy in 1250 BCE. It was the narrative that bequeathed us still commonly used phrases such as the Trojan horse, or the white horse, or beware of the Greeks bearing gifts. They are all references to the ploy the Greeks used to trick the Trojans into letting them into their fortified country.

After more than 10 years of seeking to breach the Trojan fortress, the Greek army pulled back, as though they had given up. Meanwhile, they left a white wooden horse, ostensibly as a goodwill gesture to the Trojans. Inside the horse, however, were Greek soldiers, who at the opportune time broke out from the horse, opened the gates of Troy, and let in the now resurgent invaders.

There is a bit of parallel between this ancient tale and current affairs. To begin with, the Greeks laid siege to Troy to reclaim a royal wife the Trojans had abducted for their own prince. Today, the Russians are threatening to invade Ukraine because they believe she is betrothed to them and the West is at the verge of abducting her.

The Russians have no need for the equivalent of a Trojan horse, however. Their probable entry gates are all around Ukraine: the Crimea, Belarus, and pro-Russia secessionist regions at the eastern borders.

Meanwhile, all the principals in this drama are engaging in a diplomacy of denials and self-contradictions. The Russians have repeatedly denied any plans to invade Ukraine, accusing the West of hysteria. Meanwhile, they continue to build up infantry and naval capabilities around Ukraine. And they submitted conditions to avert the invasion they deny intending to undertake.

On its part, the US has repeatedly warned of crippling sanctions against Russia if they invade Ukraine. But President Joseph Biden has said he has no intention of sending US troops to defend Ukraine. Even sending US troops to evacuate Americans could lead to World War III, he said. (World War III may well be a euphemism for a nuclear war.)Meanwhile, the US is sending thousands of troops to Ukraine’s neighbours, notably Romania and Poland.

On their part, the Ukrainian government has fervently sought Western help to defend itself. Even then, the president has chided the US and other NATO countries for exacerbating the crisis by claiming an invasion is imminent. In effect, the world may be heading toward a catastrophic war that everyone sees coming, prepares for, yet denies.

The stakes are very high. Unlike, the Trojan war, which was fought with spears and shields, a war in Ukraine could possibly escalate into nuclear warfare. So, we might be witnessing the equivalent of a train of humanity hurtling toward a precipice, with various engineers jostling to steer it to their preferred destination. People of the world may well cry out: “Stop that train, we want to get off.” But to where? A post-nuclear Earth will probably still be more habitable than Mars. But then that’s no consolation.

Early last week, the Russians announced that some of their troops were returning to their bases. Might that be the equivalent of the Greek retreat? NATO almost immediately countered that columns of Russian tanks were advancing toward Ukraine.

There have also been reports that President Vladimir Putin — the wily former leader of the KGB — is merely using the threat of invasion to extract concessions from NATO. Along the same line, there is speculation that he may have planted “intelligence” information to unsettle Ukraine.

But then there is the contrary view that Putin means business.  Michael Kimmage, a professor at the Catholic University of America who specialises in US-Russia relations, told CNN that Putin’s aggression is borne of frustration with the West. “Putin harbours grievances and resentments toward the West and is using this crisis to express them,” Kimmage said.

A focal point is the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation into countries that Russia considers its areas of influence. NATO was formed in April 1949, nearly four years after the end of World War II. It was intended as a bulwark against the feared exportation of communism to Western Europe by the Russia-led Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. About six years later, the Soviets countered by forming the Warsaw Pact, a political/military alliance of Eastern Europe’s communist countries.

In the wake of political and economic reforms in the late 1980s, the Soviet Union splintered into its constituent republics. Correspondingly, the Warsaw Pact also came apart. To varying degrees, the countries—including Russia—abandoned communism and began to install free enterprise economies and democracy.

In due course, many of the former Soviet republics began to identify more with Western Europe than with Russia. A number of them were admitted into the European Union and even NATO — to the chagrin of the Russians. It just happens that, of the former Soviet republics, Ukraine was relationally closest to Russia. The Russians even ceded the Crimea to them during their days as Soviet republics.

Things fell apart between the two countries when a popular revolt in Ukraine in 2014 ousted the pro-Russian government. The Russians immediately took back the Crimea and began to encourage secessionist movements in Ukraine, consisting mostly of ethnic Russians.

When Ukraine formally applied to join NATO, Putin decided that destabilisation was no longer enough. Hence, the siege. So, a major condition for calling off the Russian invasion—which they deny intending to carry out — is that NATO declare that it will never admit Ukraine.

“In my opinion, NATO should no longer be in the business of expanding into Eastern Europe,” Kimmage said. “This is already NATO’s de facto policy regarding Moldova, Ukraine and Belarus, which are the three Eastern European countries that could conceivably join NATO.”

Still, NATO sees a formal acceptance of Russia’s demand as unacceptable. As Kimmage explains it, to formally make such a concession to Russia is to contravene the principle of self-determination of sovereign nations. “If left unopposed, even the annexation of a small bit of territory in Ukraine would be leading in a dangerous direction,” Kimmage added.

And therein lies the stalemate. So, if Russia goes to war with the US and Western Europe it will be over something that Russia asks the West not to do and which the West does not intend to do. Yet, much blood could be shed for that. And the fate of humanity could be at stake.

Consistent with the yes-but-no equivocations on this crisis, there may be hope for a resolution, but then maybe not. Last Sunday, Ukraine’s ambassador to Britain told the BBC that his country would reconsider its application for membership in NATO to avert war. But that hope was quickly extinguished by other officials who noted that Ukraine’s quest to join NATO is enshrined in its constitution.

Talk about a stalemate—and a dangerously hurtling train. The only glimmer of hope lies in the fact that constitutions are drafted by people—and they have the power to amend it.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

 The much-dreaded world war can only start when some missiles are fired into Russia

The evil man fears the world war to end all world wars, a world war which if kick-started today, with hypersonic nuclear missiles whizzing everywhere, even President Biden sitting safely in his bunker somewhere in Delaware will forget all about the invasion of the pentagon in 1967 and the storming of the capitol in 2021.

This is what the map of Ukraine looks like

Ukraine

If peace is the absence of war, then Russia’s push for the recognition of the independence of the separatist Donetsk and Luhansk, the most Russian-speaking dominated regions in Ukraine, is the smartest diplomatic move that should ensure peace in the NATO-dominated Europe.

There’s a general feeling that if Trump was US president today, things would have been very different, at least a lot calmer, everywhere.

[Cornelius Hamelberg]

“In war, truth is the first casualty”

The UK's Boris Johnson has already announced what he hopes will be the first of his punitive sanctions.

Hush puppy is likely to do likewise.

Sanctions?

Just as Ginsberg put it,

“Money has reckoned the soul of America
Congress broken thru the precipice of Eternity
the president built a War machine which will vomit and rear Russia out of Kansas
The American Century betrayed by a mad Senate which no longer sleeps with its wife.”

Uncle Sam

will soon be sending additional troops

to defend Liberty.

Let us pray that they don’t get orders

to lose their compass and step over the border

into Russian territory

proper.

Should matters escalate, for balance, three sites to keep our eyes on

Global Research

Information Clearing House

RT

[Salimonu Kadiri]

​The end of the first world war gave birth to Bolshevik revolution and the following first Communist regime on earth which Winston Churchill blamed on the Jews. The end of World War II gave birth not only to Communist China but forced the Western colonialists to become installers of slave overseers in the colonies for continued economic enslavement of the people in the colonies and exploitation of their natural resources. Not all people colonised by the capitalist Western Colonialists accepted slave overseers imposed on them. Thus, the French colonialist met stiff resistance in Laos and Vietnam and in fact the Vietnamese defeated the French colonialist at Dien Bien Phu in 1954. Where the French Tiger failed to make meal of the Vietnamese people, the American Lion came in with all the military arsenal in their possession, except nuclear weapon, but was defeated with its tail in between the legs while fleeing Vietnam. Had it not been for the outcome of the World II and the fear of communist uprising in the colonies, the indirect slavery which is usually referred to, wrongly, as independence would not have happened.

In 1989, the world was told that what was called cold war between the Capitalist and Communist world ended. The Communist Warsaw pact was dissolved while the Capitalist Nato pact was not dissolved but, instead, expanded to areas formerly in alliance with the Communist Soviet Union (Russia). If capitalist NATO was formed against Communist WASAW and the latter is no more in existence, why is Russia still considered an enemy that should be militarily surrounded by NATO countries? In 1962, when the then Soviet Union wanted to establish missile base in Cuba, a country that shares no land border with the U.S. and U.S. was prepared to go to war to prevent a nuclear threat so close to her. However, Soviet Union dismantled its missile base in Cuba after a promisory note from the U.S., never to invade Cuba. Will the U.S. agree to Russia placing nuclear missiles in Cuba and Nicaragua as the U.S. has reportedly done in Poland, Bulgaria, Rumania etc.,? If one tenth of what is spent in accumulation of weapons and armoury is spent on socio economic development of the world, the entire planet will be paradise for all human beings to live in. In the country of apostles of democracy, people not only go about in the 21^st century with placards demonstrating that Black lives matter, but 48 states have enacted laws to inhibit Black people from voting. Berlin wall fell and people rejoiced but afterwards, higher and longer walls than Berlin are being built by the evangelists of freedom and democracy.

S. Kadiri

---

From: usaafric...@googlegroups.com <usaafric...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Cornelius Hamelberg <cornelius...@gmail.com>
Sent: 22 February 2022 16:34
To: USA Africa Dialogue Series <usaafric...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: USA Africa Dialogue Series - Re: The Threat of WW3 and the Ukranian Crisis : ''Ukraine: Can anyone stop that train?'' by Minabere Ibelema

 

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Baba Kadiri,

Just yesterday somebody tried to poison me.

What’s happening now is so important it can’t be left to chance: everybody’s got to take responsibility.

Here is Noam Chomsky on the Ukraine crisis

Since you mention Churchill blaming the Jews for the Bolshevik revolution, some of these shortcuts from Tariq Ali ‘s facebook page should interest us

So should Galloway ten days ago telling it as it is (episode 139)

In Episode 140 (12 hours ago – his vitriol begins, “Watching the Anglo-Saxon...

After the Cold War was declared over here is the story of NATO Expansion since 1997 with NATO absorbing 14 former Warsaw Pact countries the push to Russia borders clear in this map

Indeed your question requires an answer, maybe by Brer Biden & Kamala, the question, “why is Russia still considered an enemy that should be militarily surrounded by NATO countries? `”

If you substitute “ Uncle Sam” for “ man” in this line then you’ve got the answer:

“Oh, man is opposed to fair play
He wants it all and he wants it his way” (Dylan: License to kill)

So we heard Brer Biden today rapping like a gangster

not like a statesman and taking the Lord’s name in vain, he swears,

“Who In The Lord's Name" Does Putin Think Gave Him The Right To Declare New Countries?”

Such profanity! I couldn’t believe my ears.

I’m not the only one who wants to know who gave Biden the right to e.g. legalise abortion?

Certainly not His Holiness Pope Francis.

Biden only deserves the same answer that the little pirate gave to Alexander the great as told by Noam Chomsky in “What we say Goes”:

“I don’t know if it happened, but according to the account from Saint
Augustine, a pirate was brought to Alexander, who asked him, How dare
you molest the seas with your piracy? The pirate answered, How dare
you molest the world? I have a small ship, so they call me a pirate.
You have a great navy, so they call you an emperor. But you’re
molesting the whole world. I’m doing almost nothing by comparison.2
That’s the way it works. The emperor is allowed to molest the world,
but the pirate is considered a major criminal.”

Indeed molesting the whole world. The list is long, to name just a few: Korea, Vietnam, CIA coup in Iran, Chile, occupying Afghanistan, looting Iraq and getting some free oil whilst “looking” for weapons of mass destruction”, the destruction of Libya. The devil is still active and will soon be dipping his nose in the South China Seas, looking for more trouble make making overtures to Taiwan to join NATO and braying “ every country has the right “ etc. and whilst he is at - right now would be the wrong time for North Korea for Biden to invite North Korea to join NATO , just to cause a distraction from the inflation that’s biting even without sanctions

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[Cornelius Hamelberg]

Baba Kadiri of Sweden & Nigeria:

For Balance: Carl Bildt on the Ukraine crisis

Not unexpectedly, the same Carl Wildt described as “a medium size dog with big dog attitude” (in a leaked US Embassy cable).

There he was, on Aktuellt last night, alleging Russian “imperial nostalgia”

as if completely unaware of the Eastward expansion of the NATO Empire

Latest news: Germany says they can do without Russian gas….