Thank you to all those who took the time and effort to respond to my comment.
Mike Monett: I would hardly call NATO's intervention in the breakup of the Yugoslav civil war "defensive!" (At best, it was defending the Muslim population, perhaps, IF it had received UN authorization.) On the other hand, it was not a unified NATO action. It co…
Thank you to all those who took the time and effort to respond to my comment.
Mike Monett: I would hardly call NATO's intervention in the breakup of the Yugoslav civil war "defensive!" (At best, it was defending the Muslim population, perhaps, IF it had received UN authorization.) On the other hand, it was not a unified NATO action. It could be described as some NATO members "going rogue," acting out on their own under US influence without an agreed consensus, and certainly not within their remit or based on NATO principles of operation.
Pat: From what I read in your reply, it appears to me that you did not read my words carefully.
Daniel Solomon: Thanks for providing all that supplementary information. I'm sure I'd enjoy further discussion with you, but this forum doesn't seem the appropriate place or format.
William Farrar, et al: I agree Obama's terms in office were disappointing, but I have to acknowledge that in part his hands were tied by Congress (a glaring example being the attempt for universal healthcare - such as what Veterans receive as a group, i.e. socialised health care provided by the state - which is apparently what the majority of the population desire, as are some other needs denied by a so-called representative democratic government).
Daniel Solomon: I can assure you that I'm no fan of the Russian state! I don't recognize any "good" players among the principal actors in this Ukraine issue (or even most others, such as the Israeli-State/Palestine conflict).
As regular citizens, I'm not sure we'll ever know what's really going on in the background that we just don't know about. This may sound cynical, but history provides evidence, as when documents are finally declassified we find out that the US and UK governments (no matter the party in power) have been lying through their back teeth to their citizens decades prior to declassification of documents (so many examples, but just take the story the UK government gave for using taxpayer money to build the UK's first nuclear reactor for electricity supply). In the case of Ukraine, it appears to me I'm faced with a State-Oligarch form of capitalism in competition and surrogate war with the Corporate-Oligarch form of capitalism in the USofA for power, influence and territory to control, with the People's Republic of China watching on for now. It's all rather pathetic if the stakes for humanity were not so high.
I can't think of one major harm that the so-called "rogue" nations have committed that the USof A or the UK have not also perpetrated, or vice versa. The hypocrisy is just astounding. The talk of "democracy" is a complete farce at this point; the level of corruption disqualifies the USoA and UK (with which I have a little familiarity) from even consideration as quasi-democracies. So, with the Budapest Memorandum, it is not as though the US has a history of respecting or honouring treaties/agreements, and no doubt this goes for other nations also, if the terms don't suit the entrenched interests of those with power.
Gloria Maloney asks about what to do now. As an individual living with this massive systemic problem, I can feel pretty powerless at times. All I think I can do is struggle with others for forms of governance that nurture well-being for ourselves as individuals, for each other collectively, and for the planetary environment so future generations have a chance to survive until the collective will brings about a radically different society. As I learned as a child, war is total madness! and the nations referred to above are, in my opinion, just acting like primary school scraps (fights) mostly on the boys' playground side, only mega-times more violent though just as immature.
Thank you to all those who took the time and effort to respond to my comment.
Mike Monett: I would hardly call NATO's intervention in the breakup of the Yugoslav civil war "defensive!" (At best, it was defending the Muslim population, perhaps, IF it had received UN authorization.) On the other hand, it was not a unified NATO action. It could be described as some NATO members "going rogue," acting out on their own under US influence without an agreed consensus, and certainly not within their remit or based on NATO principles of operation.
Pat: From what I read in your reply, it appears to me that you did not read my words carefully.
Daniel Solomon: Thanks for providing all that supplementary information. I'm sure I'd enjoy further discussion with you, but this forum doesn't seem the appropriate place or format.
William Farrar, et al: I agree Obama's terms in office were disappointing, but I have to acknowledge that in part his hands were tied by Congress (a glaring example being the attempt for universal healthcare - such as what Veterans receive as a group, i.e. socialised health care provided by the state - which is apparently what the majority of the population desire, as are some other needs denied by a so-called representative democratic government).
Daniel Solomon: I can assure you that I'm no fan of the Russian state! I don't recognize any "good" players among the principal actors in this Ukraine issue (or even most others, such as the Israeli-State/Palestine conflict).
As regular citizens, I'm not sure we'll ever know what's really going on in the background that we just don't know about. This may sound cynical, but history provides evidence, as when documents are finally declassified we find out that the US and UK governments (no matter the party in power) have been lying through their back teeth to their citizens decades prior to declassification of documents (so many examples, but just take the story the UK government gave for using taxpayer money to build the UK's first nuclear reactor for electricity supply). In the case of Ukraine, it appears to me I'm faced with a State-Oligarch form of capitalism in competition and surrogate war with the Corporate-Oligarch form of capitalism in the USofA for power, influence and territory to control, with the People's Republic of China watching on for now. It's all rather pathetic if the stakes for humanity were not so high.
I can't think of one major harm that the so-called "rogue" nations have committed that the USof A or the UK have not also perpetrated, or vice versa. The hypocrisy is just astounding. The talk of "democracy" is a complete farce at this point; the level of corruption disqualifies the USoA and UK (with which I have a little familiarity) from even consideration as quasi-democracies. So, with the Budapest Memorandum, it is not as though the US has a history of respecting or honouring treaties/agreements, and no doubt this goes for other nations also, if the terms don't suit the entrenched interests of those with power.
Gloria Maloney asks about what to do now. As an individual living with this massive systemic problem, I can feel pretty powerless at times. All I think I can do is struggle with others for forms of governance that nurture well-being for ourselves as individuals, for each other collectively, and for the planetary environment so future generations have a chance to survive until the collective will brings about a radically different society. As I learned as a child, war is total madness! and the nations referred to above are, in my opinion, just acting like primary school scraps (fights) mostly on the boys' playground side, only mega-times more violent though just as immature.