Entering the new week, the #UkraineRussiaWar️ is escalating relentlessly. The @NYTimes reports explosions in the Russian region of Belgorod, well north of the Ukraine border. The city of Belgorod is an 8.5 hour drive from Moscow. US-NATO is extending the war into Russia. 1/
Both NATO and Russia are holding nuclear exercises. The NATO exercise, #steadfastnoon, starts Monday, involving 14 countries and 60 aircraft, including US B-52 bombers from Minot Air Base in North Dakota. The flights will be over Belgium, Britain and the North Sea. 2/
NATO describes the exercises as "routine," as if there could be anything routine about a nuclear exercise in the midst of a war that could lead, according to President Biden, to a nuclear #armagedon. In the meantime, Russia is going ahead with its "Grom" nuclear drill. 3/
While describing the NATO exercise as routine, a US defense official told Reuters: "We believe that Russian nuclear rhetoric and its decision to proceed with this [Grom] exercise while at war with Ukraine is irresponsible." Why is the NATO exercise no less irresponsible? 4/4
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Is there any limit to the wretchedness of the #NYTimes? Each day brings new evidence that no such limit exists. The latest specimen is David Brooks' column, "The Triumph of the Ukrainian Idea." It glorifies rightwing Ukrainian nationalism as the liberal ideal. 1/
Brooks' hero, Volodymyr Zelensky, "is fighting not just for democracy but also for Ukraine - Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian land, the Ukrainian people and tongue. The symbol of this war is the Ukrainian flag, a nationalist symbol." Brooks is wallowing in the rhetoric of fascism. 2/
But it is not just a matter of rhetoric.Brooks argues that liberalism, if it is to survive, must embrace nationalist mythology. He writes that national unity cannot be maintained on the basis of reason: 3/
The @nytimes reports that President Biden told a group of billionaires at a fundraising event last night:“We have not faced the prospect of #Armageddon since Kennedy and the #CubanMissileCrisis.” #nuclearwar 1/
Biden continued: “We are trying to figure out: What is Putin’s off ramp? Where does he find a way out? Where does he find himself where he does not only lose face but significant power?” These are questions that Biden should ask himself. 2/
Having instigated the US-NATO proxy war, provided #Ukraine with unlimited weapons and money, pledged the reconquest of Crimea, and called for regime change in Russia, what is Biden's "off ramp"? How can he deescalate "where he does not only lose face but significant power?” 3/
In its report on the August 20 car bomb assassination in Moscow of #daryadugina, daughter of the Russian fascist Alexander Dugin, the #NYTimes hastened to declare that there "was no evidence that the attack was connected to the war in Ukraine..." #UkraineRussiaWar 1/
The Times cited, without a hint of skepticism, the denial of Ukraine's involvement by #Zelensky adviser Mykhailo Podolyak: "Ukraine certainly had nothing to do with yesterday’s explosion. We are not a criminal state like the Russian Federation, much less a terrorist one.” 2/
But today, the Times has posted an article headlined, "U.S. believes Ukrainians were behind an assassination in Russia." It reports: 3/
The Biden administration and the media present Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons in response to military setbacks as an unprecedented break with long-established and hitherto unquestioned rules of international statecraft. This narrative is a lie. 1/ #nuclearthreats
In fact, the United States and other imperialist powers have not only considered on several critical occasions using nuclear weapons to reverse military defeats. They have directly threatened to drop atom bombs in order to extract concessions from their enemies. 2/
There are the well-documented demands of General Douglas MacArthur for the dropping of nuclear bombs on China, President Eisenhower's weighing of France's request for the detonation of nuclear devices at Dienbienphu, and Kennedy's threats during the Cuban Missile Crisis. 3/
With the deterioration of the Russian military position - the outcome of the reactionary strategy underlying the invasion of Ukraine and the general rottenness of the oligarch regime of capitalist restoration - the danger of #nuclearwar is escalating. 1/ #UkraineRussiaWar
Backed into a corner, #Putin's threat to use nuclear weapons should not be viewed as a bluff. The US and other imperialist powers have threatened in the past to use nuclear weapons to avert military defeat. This fact is being ignored by the media. 2/
In 1950 General Douglas MacArthur sought authorization to use as many as 30 atomic bombs against Chinese troops crossing the border into Korea. In 1954 France pleaded with US President Eisenhower to use nuclear bombs to save its encircled troops at Dienbienphu. 3/
The current edition of Foreign Affairs includes an article by @TimothyDSnyder, which provides further proof of his role as a purveyor of historical falsification - even to the point of covering up the mass murder of Jews by rightwing Ukrainian nationalists. 1/
The article, titled "Ukraine Holds the Future: The War Between Democracy and Nihilism", presents the regime in Kiev as the culmination of Ukrainian nationalists' heroic struggle, spanning more than a century, for freedom. He writes: 2/
"When Ukrainian leaders founded a republic in 1918, they revived the trident as the national symbol. Independence meant not only freedom from bondage but the liberty to use the land as they saw fit. Yet the Ukrainian National Republic was short lived." 3/