When officials say the quiet part about Russia and NATO out loud

“President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement,” Stoltenberg told a joint committee meeting of the European Parliament on September 7. “That was what he sent us. And [that] was a pre-condition for not invade [sic] Ukraine. Of course we didn't sign that.”

“He went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders. He has got the exact opposite,” Stoltenberg reiterated, referring to the accession of Sweden and Finland into the alliance in response to Putin’s invasion. Their entry, he later insisted, “demonstrates that when President Putin invaded a European country to prevent more NATO, he's getting the exact opposite.”

Link here.

Jeffrey Sachs: NATO Expansion & Ukraine’s Destruction

Why does Russia oppose NATO enlargement? For the simple reason that Russia does not accept the U.S. military on its 2,300 km border with Ukraine in the Black Sea region. Russia does not appreciate the U.S. placement of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania after the U.S. unilaterally abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty.

Russia’s Reasons

Russia also does not welcome the fact that the U.S. engaged in no fewer than 70 regime change operations during the Cold War (1947-1989), and countless more since, including in Serbia, Afghanistan, Georgia, Iraq, Syria, Libya, Venezuela, and Ukraine. Nor does Russia like the fact that many leading U.S. politicians actively advocate the destruction of Russia under the banner of “Decolonizing Russia.” That would be like Russia calling for the removal of Texas, California, Hawaii, the conquered Indian lands, and much else, from the United States.

Link here.

Neoconservativism in a Nutshell

If I were asked to boil down neoconservatism to its essential elements—that is, those that have remained consistent over the past nearly 50 years—I would cite the following:

• a Manichean view of a world in which good and evil are constantly at war and the United States has an obligation to lead forces for good around the globe.
• a belief in the moral exceptionalism of both the United States and Israel and the absolute moral necessity for the U.S. to defend Israel’s security.
• a conviction that, in order to keep evil at bay, the United States must have—and be willing to exercise—the military power necessary to defeat any and all challengers. There’s a corollary: force is the only language that evil understands.
• the 1930s—with Munich, appeasement, Chamberlain, Churchill—taught us everything we need to know about evil and how to fight it.
• democracy is generally desirable, but it always depends on who wins.

Link here. 

A Basic Buddhist Meditation Synthesis

Meta-Attention: Of all meditation skills, this is the most important. All it means is being aware of what you’re paying attention to: to what your mind is doing. If you’ve ever started walking or driving somewhere you usually don’t go and realized that you’d spent the last few minutes heading to work or home even though that wasn’t your intention, you’ve experienced what happens when you don’t know where your attention is, or what your mind (and body) are doing. Every time you drift off in thought without realizing you have for a while, you’ve lost your awareness of what your mind is doing.

May I be happy. May I be well. May I be safe. May I be peaceful and at ease.

Link here.

How politics can destroy your soul – confessions of a former Tory candidate

"MPs, ministers, civil servants, special advisers, think tanks, quangos, NGOs, industry groups, unions, MSM, charities, lobbyists, consultancies and more are all the ‘crooked timber’ of humanity.

They need to be accepted. To belong. They are greedy. Angry. Ambitious. Fearful. Vain. Vulnerable. Most of them are utterly enslaved by ego. They want what they don’t have. They don’t want what they do have. They are easily manipulated.

But how? Huge incentive levers. Emotional, financial and moral. We all want power, status, popularity and wealth to some degree. We are all vulnerable to peer pressure. Many are attracted to ideas that promise a better tomorrow. That is why the Labour Party can rely on so many youth activists. Our ability to deceive ourselves knows no bounds."

Link here.

The Real History of the War in Ukraine: A Chronology of Events and Case for Diplomacy

"The only way to save Ukraine is a negotiated peace. In a negotiated settlement, the US would agree that NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine while Russia would agree to withdraw its troops. Remaining issues – Crimea, the Donbas, US and European sanctions, the future of European security arrangements – would be handled politically, not by endless war.

Russia has repeatedly tried negotiations: to try to forestall the eastward enlargement of NATO; to try to find suitable security arrangements with the US and Europe; to try to settle inter-ethnic issues in Ukraine after 2014 (the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements); to try to sustain limits on anti-ballistic missiles; and to try to end the Ukraine war in 2022 via direct negotiations with Ukraine. In all cases, the US government disdained, ignored, or blocked these attempts, often putting forward the big lie that Russia rather than the US rejects negotiations. JFK said it exactly right in 1961: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.” If only Biden would heed JFK’s enduring wisdom.

To help the public move beyond the simplistic narrative of Biden and the mainstream media, I offer a brief chronology of some key events leading to the ongoing war."

Link here.

All Sides in the Ukraine War Have Been Using Cluster Bombs Since 2014

Russia’s invasion in February 2022 exponentially escalated this war, but it didn’t begin in 2022. It began in the spring of 2014, when a US-backed uprising overthrew Ukraine’s president Viktor Yanukovych. The overthrow triggered a counter-uprising in the eastern region of Donbas, where Yanukovych was popular, and which saw the unelected new government as illegitimate.

By the summer of 2014, the situation devolved into warfare between the new, US-backed Kyiv government on one side and Russia-backed rebels as well as Russian fighters on the other.

Within months, the Donbas—the industrial heartland of Ukraine and home to 3.6 million people—was transformed into a postapocalyptic wasteland framed by matching rivers of crocodile tears gushing out of Kyiv and Moscow.

Link here.