<div dir="ltr">What's the point of all this jabber about Russia-Ukraine? What's your "theory of change"? What's your path to accomplishing anything on Planet Earth? <div><br></div><div><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Apr 8, 2022 at 5:26 PM David Green via Peace-discuss <<a href="mailto:peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net">peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div dir="auto"><a href="https://twitter.com/ARmckay82/status/1512428417622454273?t=Iq78IEfpkBP_gq8S2WGkJw&s=19" target="_blank">https://twitter.com/ARmckay82/status/1512428417622454273?t=Iq78IEfpkBP_gq8S2WGkJw&s=19</a><div dir="auto"><br></div></div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Apr 8, 2022, 3:56 PM Morton K. Brussel <<a href="mailto:mkb0029@gmail.com" target="_blank">mkb0029@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex"><div style="word-wrap:break-word;line-break:after-white-space"><div style="word-wrap:break-word;line-break:after-white-space">A rather (over) sanguine view from Pepe Escobar. Whether Russia can overcome its internal obstacles/problems and fulfill the scenario described is debatable. Expertise of the internal conditions in Russia is needed!<div><br></div><div>Mar Slebota’s piece was not available at the link given. Curious.<br><div><br><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Apr 8, 2022, at 11:23 AM, karen aram <<a href="mailto:karenaram@hotmail.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">karenaram@hotmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br><div>
<div style="word-wrap:break-word"><div><br></div><div><font color="#0433ff">Scott Ridder</font></div><div><span style="color:rgb(71,135,255);text-decoration:underline"><a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdM5Pkyl0_8__;!!DZ3fjg!v-X0NH-ci7-SPP-X04Sg5f_m3d9H0BFZwUIMJldYydZkYfjklCM44eZihsxjxqc-3g$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdM5Pkyl0_8</a></span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(71,135,255);text-decoration:underline"><br></span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(71,135,255);text-decoration:underline">Mark Sleboda</span></div><div><a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://l.facebook.com/l.php?u=https*3A*2F*2Fthegrayzone.com*2F...*2F04*2Fwar-ukraine-unipolar-world*2F*3Ffbclid*3DIwAR081Tftf0-jNFkFvTDn7r_T-XbFOt5tnEDSpCtD-TOWTHAqDd1PaGpZGXU&h=AT3AEW__kRzPEsVGPwvWXlkz0tRJHghPI3VPGqhVecS2CnW1ROBzAdMI_vkaMcJ41dDBVXvZBvOzQPefLhrUdvcDgUu2jYjvsjENcyCYHVBX-DhuwsR188fy1F6Rl8r73esJs0E&__tn__=-UK-R&c*5B0*5D=AT1H40ifLxHQ8JyoABXzHaw7U10TKnTpmpDae_M_Yos7VGk1FrioKdQ4oGNqS45Q1IUUwu-aHFpFesVXi6F3hIlBChnehK9TJs8wuUH_ykrK3XOZUV0wt4ham9eNkbROGLK-jFqJQOLm4uiNJIVXBVhUF2Q__;JSUlJSUlJSUlJSU!!DZ3fjg!v-X0NH-ci7-SPP-X04Sg5f_m3d9H0BFZwUIMJldYydZkYfjklCM44eZihswIplyp4A$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://thegrayzone.com/.../04/war-ukraine-unipolar-world/</a></div><div><span style="color:rgb(71,135,255);text-decoration:underline"><br></span></div><div><span style="color:rgb(71,135,255);text-decoration:underline">and Pepe Escobar</span></div><div><u style="color:rgb(71,135,255)">offer similar assessments of what has taken place and what’s to come.</u></div><div><font color="#4787ff"><u>Pepe not a military analyst, as are Scott and Mark, is a geopolitical journalist and has been predicting for seven years now, what’s to come.</u></font></div><div><font color="#4787ff"><u><br></u></font></div><div>From Pepe:</div><div><div><div dir="auto"><br></div><div dir="auto">UKRAINE AFTER THE WAR </div></div><div><div dir="auto">Mariupol was battered by Ukraine’s right-wing Azov battalion well before Moscow launched its military ops. In Russian hands, this strategic steelworks port can transform into a hub of Eurasian connectivity.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Mariupol, the strategic Sea of Azov port, remains in the eye of the storm in Ukraine.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">The NATO narrative is that Azovstal – one of Europe’s biggest iron and steel works – was nearly destroyed by the Russian Army and its allied Donetsk forces who “lay siege” to Mariupol.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">The true story is that the neo-Nazi Azov batallion took scores of Mariupol civilians as human shields since the start of the Russian military operation in Ukraine, and retreated to Azovstal as a last stand. After an ultimatum delivered last week, they are now being completely exterminated by the Russian and Donetsk forces and Chechen Spetsnaz.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Azovstal, part of the Metinvest group controlled by Ukraine’s wealthiest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, is indeed one of the biggest metallurgic plants in Europe, self-described as a “high-performance integrated metallurgical enterprise that produces coke and sinter, steel as well as high-quality rolled products, bars and shapes.”</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Amidst a flurry of testimonials detailing the horrors inflicted by the Azov neo-Nazis on Mariupol’s civilian population, a way more auspicious, invisible story bodes well for the immediate future.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Russia is the world’s fifth largest steel producer, apart from holding huge iron and coal deposits. Mariupol – a steel Mecca – used to source coal from Donbass, but under de facto neo-Nazi rule since the 2014 Maidan events, was turned into an importer. Iron, for instance, started to be supplied from Krivbas in Ukraine, over 200 kilometers away.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">After Donetsk solidifies itself as an independent republic or, via referendum, chooses to become part of the Russian Federation, this situation is bound to change.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Azovstal is invested in a broad product line of very useful stuff: structural steel, rail for railroads, hardened steel for chains, mining equipment, rolled steel used in factory apparatus, trucks and railroad cars. Parts of the factory complex are quite modern while some, decades old, are badly in need of upgrading, which Russian industry can certainly provide.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Strategically, this is a huge complex, right at the Sea of Azov – which is now, for all practical purposes, incorporated into the Donetsk People’s Republic, and close to the Black Sea. That implies a short trip to the Eastern Mediterranean, including many potential customers in West Asia. And crossing Suez and reaching the Indian Ocean, customers all across South and Southeast Asia.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">So the Donetsk People’s Republic, possibly part of the future Novorossiya, and even part of Russia, will be in control of a lot of steel-making capacity for southern Europe, West Asia and beyond.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">One of the inevitable consequences is that it will be able to supply a real freight railroad construction boom in Russia, China and the Central Asian ‘stans.’ Railroad construction happens to be the privileged connectivity mode for Beijing’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). And, crucially, of the increasingly turbo-charged International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).</div></div><div><div dir="auto">So, mid-term, Mariupol should expect to become one of the key hubs of a boom in north-south routes – INSTC across Russia and linking with the ‘stans’ – as well as major BRI upgrades east-west as well as sub-BRI corridors.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Interlocked Eurasia</div></div><div><div dir="auto">The INSTC’s main players are Russia, Iran and India – which are now, pos-NATO sanctions, in advanced interconnection mode, complete with devising mechanisms to bypass the US dollar in their trade. Azerbaijan is another important INSTC player, yet more volatile because it privileges Turkey’s connectivity designs in the Caucasus.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">The INSTC network will be progressively interconnecting also with Pakistan – and that means the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a key BRI hub, which is slowly but surely expanding to Afghanistan. Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s impromptu visit to Kabul late last week was to advance the incorporation of Afghanistan to the New Silk Roads.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">All that is happening as Moscow – extremely close to New Delhi – is simultaneously expanding trade relations with Islamabad. All three, crucially, are Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) members.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">So the grand North-South design spells out fluent connectivity from the Russian mainland to the Caucasus (Azerbaijan), to West Asia (Iran) all the way to South Asia (India and Pakistan). None of these key players have demonized or sanctioned Russia despite ongoing US pressures to do so.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Strategically, that represents the Russian multipolar concept of Greater Eurasian Partnership in action in terms of trade and connectivity – in parallel and complimentary with BRI because India, eager to install a rupee-ruble mechanism to buy energy, in this case is an absolutely crucial Russia partner, matching China’s reported $400 billion strategic deal with Iran. In practice, the Greater Eurasia Partnership will facilitate smoother connectivity between Russia, Iran, Pakistan and India.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">The NATO universe, meanwhile, is congenitally incapable of even recognizing the complexity of the alignment, not to mention analyze its implications. What we have is the interlocking of BRI, INTSC and the Greater Eurasia Partnership on the ground – all notions that are regarded as anathema in the Washington Beltway.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">All that of course is being designed amidst a game-changing geoeconomic moment, as Russia, starting this Thursday, will only accept payment for its gas in rubles from “unfriendly” nations.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Parallel to the Geater Eurasia Partnership, BRI, since it was launched in 2013, is also progressively weaving a complex, integrated Eurasian network of partnerships – financial/economic, connectivity, physical infrastructure building, economic/trade corridors. BRI’s role as a co-shaper of institutions of global governance, including normative foundations, has also been crucial, much to the despair of the NATO alliance.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Time to de-westernize</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Yet only now the Global South, especially, will start to observe the full spectrum of the China-Russia play across the Eurasian sphere. Moscow and Beijing are deeply involved in a joint drive to de-westernize globalist governance, if not shatter it altogether.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Russia from now on will be even more meticulous in its institution-building, coalescing the Eurasia Economic Union (EAEU), the SCO and the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) – a Eurasian military alliance of select post-Soviet states – in a geopolitical context of irreversible institutional and normative divide between Russia and the West.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">At the same time, the Greater Eurasia Partnership will be solidifying Russia as the ultimate Eurasian bridge, creating a common space across Eurasia which could even ignore vassalized Europe.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">Meanwhile in real life, BRI, as much as the INSTC, will be increasingly plugged into the Black Sea (hello, Mariupol). And BRI itself may be even prone to re-evaluation in its emphasis of linking western China to western Europe’s shrinking industrial base.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">There will be no point in privileging the northern BRI corridors – China-Mongolia-Russia via the Trans-Siberian, and the Eurasian land bridge via Kazakhstan – when you have Europe descending into medieval dementia.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">BRI’s renewed focus will be on gaining access to irreplaceable commodities – and that means Russia – as well as securing essential supplies for Chinese production. Commodity-rich nations such as Kazakhstan, and many players in Africa, shall become the top future markets for China.</div></div><div><div dir="auto">In a pre-Covid loop across Central Asia, one constantly heard that China builds plants and high-speed railways while Europe at best writes white papers. It can always get worse. The EU as occupied American territory is now descending, fast, from center of global power to the status of inconsequential peripheral player, a mere struggling market in the far periphery” of China’s “community of shared destiny.”</div></div></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div><br><div class="gmail_quote"><div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Fri, Apr 8, 2022 at 6:54 AM karen aram via Peace-discuss <<a href="mailto:peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">peace-discuss@lists.chambana.net</a>> wrote:<br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0px 0px 0px 0.8ex;border-left-width:1px;border-left-style:solid;border-left-color:rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">To be clear in my statement below, I’m not suggesting we do nothing, I’m suggesting just focusing on anti-war is a lost cause. <div><br></div><div>It’s time we recognize the many issues in relation to imperialism, poverty, racism etc., require structural system change. We can’t rely upon our elected officials to represent us. </div><div><br></div><div>The end of the petrodollar is here, the violence and chaos that we saw in Portland, O. will be seen across the nation when people take to the streets because they are starving. <div><br></div><div><div><blockquote type="cite"><div>On Apr 7, 2022, at 6:12 PM, karen aram <<a href="mailto:karenaram@hotmail.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">karenaram@hotmail.com</a>> wrote:</div><br><div>
<div style="word-wrap:break-word">Mort<div><br></div><div>An excellent article, one with which I couldn’t agree more. Only one statement is questionable, </div><div><u><br></u></div><div><u>"the politicians in the US are very, very concerned about
what we may think – our words do have an effect, albeit limited one. That is
the reason the US has no draft.” </u></div><div><br></div><div>I don’t believe our politicians are concerned about what we may think, that was the case in the sixties and seventies, but no longer. The invasion of Iraq, went ahead in spite of over 100,000 people in the streets protesting at the time. We’ve had how many wars and interventions since? </div><div><br></div><div>I’ve come to the conclusion that unless a Republican is in the WH, we won’t see a viable anti-war movement in the US. </div><div><br></div><div>Sorry, I know I’m not offering hope, but maybe I’m wrong. </div><div><br></div><div>On Apr 7, 2022, at 4:56 PM, Morton K. Brussel <<a href="mailto:mkb0029@gmail.com" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">mkb0029@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<div><blockquote type="cite"><br><div><div>This article gives one some hope. Meanwhile, so-called anti-war groups including CodePink, DemocracyNow(?)(disgusting treatment), fail to see the forest through the trees (or don’t want to). . <br><br><a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://original.antiwar.com/john-v-walsh/2022/04/06/an-antidote-to-the-split-in-the-us-peace-movement-anti-interventionism/__;!!DZ3fjg!v-X0NH-ci7-SPP-X04Sg5f_m3d9H0BFZwUIMJldYydZkYfjklCM44eZihsyzht5WQw$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">https://original.antiwar.com/john-v-walsh/2022/04/06/an-antidote-to-the-split-in-the-us-peace-movement-anti-interventionism/</a><br><br>Most of the commentary for Walsh’s piece is also useful (on <a href="https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://antiwar.com/__;!!DZ3fjg!v-X0NH-ci7-SPP-X04Sg5f_m3d9H0BFZwUIMJldYydZkYfjklCM44eZihsyTzo0wMg$" rel="noreferrer" target="_blank">Antiwar.com</a>.)<br><br>—mkb</div></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div></blockquote></div><br></div></div></div>_______________________________________________<br>
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