He’s the president of Belarus… I suspect he has the authority (that he gave himself) to reveal such things…
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I’m sure he does, but all the same…
Please proceed, Governor.
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I don’t know how him revealing the plans of his own military is a war crime… I have little doubt there are actual war crimes happening right now against the Ukrainian people, but I’m not sure this would constitute that…
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Budapest Memo … has some promises… in it.
Here it is: a written commitment to Ukraine, which received certain assurances when it gave up its nuclear weapons.
And now the U.S., U.K. (and of course Russia) have broken it.
What happens next?
ETA: typo
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Telling everyone plans to invade isn’t, but invading is?
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That’d be a good book title.
Unencrypted: Inside Putin’s Naked Aggression
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I assume that neither the UK nor the US want to use this as a justification for direct support? Though it does seem like a justification.
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One thing that happens next - any country with a small nuclear arsenal will see that giving up the bombs in exchange for a security pact demonstrably doesn’t work.
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Billy Bragg on FB:
It’s been a week of harsh lessons. We’ve been taught how to say Kyiv, not Kiev.; we all now know what the Ukrainian flag looks like; and we’ve learned that, if your goalkeeper can’t save penalties, he better be able to score them. Worst of all, people under the age of 35 have been subjected to the idea that they might die in a nuclear war.
Those of us who clearly remember the 1980s will have some prior cognescence of that hard to ignore feeling, but back then, we were seriously worried that it might be our side that caused global annihilation by siting nuclear missiles close to the Soviet Union. Now we have the added fear that the furture of the humanity is in the hands of an authoritarian war-monger who shows little compassion for the casualties of his conflicts.
Someone sent me a link to a book which some claim to be Vladimir Putin’s blueprint for the future of Russia. The Foundations of Geopolitics was published in 1997 by Alexsandr Dugin, a Russian fascist, organiser of the National Bolshevik Party. The book promotes the idea of eurasianism, calling on Russia to rebuild its influence through alliances and annexation. It is apparently highly popular among the Russian military and foreign policy elites.
The Wikipedia page for the book handily lists the objectives that Russian needs to pursue in order to achieve ‘the Finlandisation of Europe’. Chillingly, the plan for the UK has already been accomplished: “The United Kingdom, merely described as an “extraterritorial floating base of the U.S.”, should be cut off from Europe.”
I thought about this when I read the headline below. While the European Union is preparing to grant Ukrainians who flee the war the immediate right to stay and work in the 27-nation bloc for up to three years, the Tories are continuing to place barriers in the way of those seeking refuge here. That in itself is shameful enough, but to find that the Labour Party are opposing the kind of open door policy that the EU is implementing is deeply disappointing.
Instead of talking up the idea of NATO-imposed no fly zones over Ukraine - a confrontational tactic that would ramp up the chances of a nuclear war - Labour should be calling for the creation of UN controlled safe zones within western Ukraine, where refugees can gather prior to moving on to safe countries. The UK should be one of those countries, showing a compassion for those fleeing war and ending the demonisation of refugees that has gone on for the past decade.
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Nice to see Billy continue being a decent human being.
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Silly rabbit, nothing is sovereign if there is a “Russian speaker” there
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As author and human rights activist Leila Al-Shami put it several years ago, “The pro-fascist left seems blind to any form of imperialism that is non-western in origin. It combines identity politics with egoism. Everything that happens is viewed through the prism of what it means for westerners — only white men have the power to make history.”
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It’s almost as if they’re addressing a former co-worker…
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Hmmmm, i am green with curiosity
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