On Monday, February 28, 2022 at 9:18:14 AM UTC, gerard jud wrote:
> On Sunday, February 27, 2022 at 7:31:06 AM UTC, wog wacker wrote:
> > On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 3:28:06 AM UTC, paul polikos wrote:
> > > On Saturday, February 26, 2022 at 12:39:22 AM UTC, bmoore wrote:
> > > > On Friday, February 25, 2022 at 2:11:46 PM UTC-8, Tom Jigme Wheat wrote:
> > > > > > The Americans should stop pursuing their foreign policies with their military might. This might-makes-right strategy is destabilising the whole world.
> > > > > China’s support for Russia has also stopped short of direct approval for military action. Over the weekend, Wang, the Chinese foreign minister, reiterated that all countries’ sovereignty must be respected, adding that “Ukraine is not an exception.”
> > > > Yes Tom, that's right. The Chinese government says that nations should leave other nations alone. They demand the freedom to persecute their own people without interference, where "their own people" means whatever they say it does. Taiwan disagrees with these bullies.
> > > Chinese Foreign Minister: "all countries’ sovereignty must be respected".
> > > This is a neutral statement. The leader of any country would have said that.
> > >
> > > Chinese President has called for high-level negotiation between Russia and Ukraine. This is another neutral approach to the situation.
> > >
> > > The Chinese leadership has a profound understanding of the issue between Russia and Ukraine. It knows the dirty role the US-led West has played to bring about the current situation.
> > >
> > > The US-led West continues to play the same dirty trick on China. Hong Kong is now a lost cause. Taiwan has become the focus. What is happening to Ukraine is a good lesson for Taiwan. If Taiwan swallow the bait of those fake and vague American-owned concept of democracy, freedom and human rights and allow itself to be trained into an attack dog of the US against China, it will end up worse than Ukraine.
> > >
> > > The Americans never dare to take on the Russians. This was true when Russia-led Warsaw Pact troops attacked Czechoslovakia. It is true again today when Russia attacked Ukraine. Why? Its the Russian military might, especially its nuclear arsenal. This is a lesson for the Chinese. If it can reach parity with the US in military capability, especially nuclear-wise, all its problems with the US would evaporate into thin air. Taiwan would return to the embrace of its Motherland.
> > The war doesn’t seem to be going well for Russia, at the moment..
> >
> > The Russians expectations have not materialised. Taking lessons from the swift victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the Russians have expected :
> > 1. Ukrainian government forces to be lacking in the will to fight and
> > 2. the general population will be nonchalant to the fight.
> >
> > But both are not happening. Government forces are putting up stiff resistance and the people are responding enthusiastically to the call for mass mobilisation.
> >
> > As the fight drags on, it will quickly become problematic for the Russians because US and European military aids are reaching Ukraine in swift flows.
> >
> > The way out for the Russian now is to attack Kiev and bring down the government there in one swift and strong blow. This will break the spirit of the resistance.
> >
> > Otherwise, Russia risk being bogged down into a long drawn war, i.e., Ukraine will become Russia’s Vietnam.
> > That’s the ending the US-led West would love to see.
> No one likes war. It brings about deaths and destruction. We sympathise with all the people caught in the fighting right now between Russia and Ukraine. How does this come about?
>
> After the fall of the Soviet Union, the US became the only superpower. Together with its European allies, collectively referred to as the West, it has a stranglehold on the whole world. Not satisfied with this, it wants to create a world according to its own ideals.
>
> Under the Biden Administration, Western hocus-pocus of an ideal world has been crystalised into the rhetoric of Rules-based World Order and Universal Values. It is being hoisted on the world. Those nations which do not subscribe to it face the threat of a regime change plotted by the West. Few nations can stand up to the threat. Most can only comply.
>
> Every era has its priority. The priority of the 21st Century is to free the world of the West stranglehold on it.
>
> Russia under Putin is willing to stand up to the West. Unfortunately for Ukraine, it has become the battleground. But what Russia does benefits the whole world. The world will be different from now on. It will be a better place for all.
>
> It will be a multi-polar world, a world of diverse political ideologies, not just Western-style democracy. It will be a world enlivened with a diversity of values, not just those “universal values” of the West.
>
> Nations which want a truly free world, a world of diversities, should support Russia.
To better understand the current conflict between Ukraine and Russia.

Recall how the West rode roughshod over the world when there wasn't any other power to counterbalance its might

The nation of Yugoslavia had internal ethnic problems. The West marched in with their forces under the banner of UN. Civilians blocked UN vehicles, begging UN personnel not to advance further into their country. Their pleas were ignored. Yugoslavia was dismembered until it became extinct.

An attack by the Muslims on the US heartland on 9/11. The West took revenge on the Muslim world. Afghanistan was openly invaded. Iraq was invaded like a cakewalk. The Gaddafi regime of Libya was toppled. Syria almost followed Libya. A bit more details.

US-led forces openly invaded Afghanistan, without seeking UN approval.

Iraq was accused of being in possession of Weapons of Mass Destruction. US Sec. of State went to UN to produce a “smoking gun” to the world. The UN Assembly was not convinced. Despite getting no approval from the UN and mass protests worldwide against an invasion, the US invaded Iraq and boasted that the invasion was as easy as a cakewalk. After the invasion was completed, no WMD was ever found in Iraq. No apology from the US. No American official was ever charged for any crime.

In Libya, the government put down violent protest with violence. The Gaddafi regime was accused of crime against humanity. Western nations supplied arms to rebel forces. A no-fly zone was declared over Libya. Libyan air-defence systems were bombed by NATO planes. The same planes would provide air support to the rebels in any big battle between Government and rebel forces. Gaffadi himself was a target of aerial bombardment. In the end, Gaffadi was captured and killed by rebel forces and his regime toppled.

Similar attempt was made against Syria. With assistance from the West, Oppositions turned armed rebels. The government was accused of using chemical weapons against its own people. This could have triggered The West to start a full-scale military operation to bring down the regime. But Putin's Russia was there to stop it from happening. If not for this, Syria could have become another Libya.

The West made many attempts to topple the socialists regime in Venezuela. It was another victim of economic sanctions by the West. But the Maduro regime still stands, to this day.

N Korea was threatened with invasion several times, each time surrounded by several US naval fleets.

During the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997/98, IMF officials swaggered into Asian countries and ordered their governments not to bail out their failing banks. Those banks had to become bankrupt, without regard to their effects on the general population. In Indonesia, this caused bloody riots which brought down the Suharto regime.
But when it came to the US Financial Crisis of 2008/9, IMF was nowhere around to issue orders. US banks and financial institutions became “too big to fail”. They were allowed to be bailed out by their government.

Even the tiny nation of Singapore was not spared. When it wanted to whack the arse of an American teenager who had broken the country’s law, the tiny nation was threatened with economic sanctions, a regime change was in the plan. Finally, a US naval fleet was sent steaming toward the island nation until it had to capitulate. The teen’s arse was spared from the worst punishment.

In recent years, China bears the brunt of the attack by the West simply because it is advancing rapidly by its own means without subscribing to Western values.

All these happened while no nation could or was willing to stand up to the West. Now we know how authoritarian and dictatorial the West is when there is other power to counterbalance it's might. The world desperately needs a force to counterbalance the might of the West. The West has to be shown that it is not the Master of the World. That’s what Putin’s Russia is doing. It did this first in Syria and right now in Ukraine. It should be appreciated for its courage.

Ukraine has it coming for itself.

In Ukraine, under Western support, one group staged a coup to topple the Pro-Russian regime. From then on, successive regimes antagonised Russia without limit. These regimes wanted to cut-off historical ethnic links between Ukrainians and Russians. They carried out ethnic cleansing and genocide of Russians within Ukraine. Yugoslavia was accused of the same crime of ethnic cleansing and genocide of its minorities. This was the excuse Western powers used to dismember it. When the Ukrainians did it to their minority Russians, there was hardly a whimper from the West.

Next, Ukraine allows itself to be used as a base to threaten the security of Russia. Western powers secretly use Ukraine to attempt to carry out a regime change in Russia. Worse, Ukraine wants to join NATO, bringing nuclear-capable Western power right to the border of Russia.

This has crossed the Red Line. Russia has no choice but to act.

It’s understandable that small nations would want to depend on bigger nations. But not to the extend that a small nation allows itself to be used to threaten the security of a big nation, especially if that big nation is a neighbor as powerful as Russia. Russia is not alone in doing this. Other nations had done it too. Indonesia invaded East Timur because it could not tolerate a Communist state as its neighbor, however small that state may be. It was the same reason the US invaded Grenada.

What happens between Ukraine and Russia have many important lessons for the world, especially for those small nations. We are now in the era of Big Power Conflicts. Small nations have to know how to survive under such global political environment. Neutrality is the key. Take no side. Be friends to all and enemy to none.