Ben's Blog

Let’s face it, we don’t have a clue why Vlad is bombing the shit out of his neighbor. Some say it is because the fellow is unhinged, psychotic, deranged or just plain mad. All of which seem to be accurate descriptions, but it is only a partial explanation of why he is hell-bent on pursuing this war to the bitter end. Mr. Putin justifies his war on the grounds that the instillation of N.A.T.O. nuclear missiles in Ukraine is a line in the sand that cannot be approached, let alone crossed. This much we know because Mr. Putin has been at great pains to point it out whenever he gets on the telly, which is often.

(if you want to get on the telly, start a war!)

But that is all we know, because the keepers of the truth have decided in their wisdom, that telling us more would mean crossing a line in the sand that must not be crossed. We, the lumpen proletariat, are apparently  not to be trusted with the facts of the matter. I have therefore chosen to share my ignorance with you.

I personally believe Putin’s all out war on Ukraine is the most abominable act since the invasion of Iraq.

But it is not enough to shake the finger at a psychotic despot. He will not heed our approbation any way. If we want to avoid these conflicts in the future, as surely we do, we must understand why Vlad would commit an act that any other self-respecting psychopath would blanche at.

The little we do know is that Putin has chosen not to join our gang. Let’s call our gang the smug, freedom loving, ‘western’ ‘democracy’ gang, even though it includes a shit load of ‘Eastern’ countries, and a shit load of countries that arenot democratic, like Saudi Arabia for instance.

Russia has always been part of Europe, until now! The Russian nobility were spoking French and sending their children to France for an education when Australians were running around naked! Now that he has distanced himself from almost all European nations by his authoritarian and dictatorial measures – measures he is forced to take in order to maintain power, he must defend himself against the forces of ‘democracy,’ and those forces can be very forceful indeed.

Nato, headed by the U.S. (they fund the operation, by-and-large, according to The Donald, and he should know) has been surrounding Russia with nuclear weapons since the fall of the Berlin Wall. Ukraine would complete that encirclement. All Putin’s major cities and defenses would then be in range of N.A.T.O nuclear weapons. That creates the ability to launch a first strike, knocking out all of Russia’s nuclear weapons before they have time to launch. Game over! A 15 minute, unsymmetrical nuclear war.

It appears this is the aim of the U.S. military industrial machine.

The doctrine of M.A.D. (mutually assured destruction) has put off a nuclear war ever since Julias and Ethel Rosenberg (may they rest in peace) gifted the U.S.S.R. the ability to defend itself. They were not thanked for that brave and selfless act. An act that played a seminal role in 75 years of peace we have all enjoyed without them. Rather than being awarded The Novel Peace Prize, Julias and Ethel Rosenberg were summarily executed in the electric chair!

Do you trust that the people who collectively pressed the button on that infamous death machine, would not do it again to launch a thousand death machines and kill a  hundred million Rosenbergs?

Well, I don’t!

The installation of N.A.T.O. nuclear weapons in Ukraine means the end of M.A.D. and the beginning of mad.  Who knows what would come next if Ukraine bristled with nuclear weapons, but we can assume that it would not be pretty. We can assume that the temptation to launch those weapons by the people that make them and install them would be hard to resist. (almost as difficult as giving up smoking) The hawks who wield power at the heart of the U.S. war machine we quaintly call ‘western democracy’ are itching to press that button, they have said so, repeatedly.

So that is the reason Putin is determined to control Ukraine, as he has stated boldly and clearly. Of course we would all be happier, especially the Ukrainians, if Russia really was a democracy, all except Mr. Putin of course. Mr. Putin waxes lyrical about the good old days of the mighty Soviet Union, a union that was held together by sheer force. The Soviet Union was created by force. (Russia won the second World War, remember, almost single handedly. Their ‘allies’ joined in at the last minute in order to thwart the Russian advance from continuing as far as the English Channel. The Soviet Union was abandoned by that funny guy with the birdshit stain on his forehead. Mr. Chernobyl or something…

The cold war was finally over. Thank God!*

We could all live in peace and harmony until the imminent return of Jesus Christ, or some similar savoir.

I have it on good authority, straight from the-horses-mouth. A former member of the C.I.A. (whose name escapes me) said that the U.S. won the cold war using text book Capitalist theory.

Competition 101 – Send your adversary broke.

The crafty Yankies did this by feeding Soviet paranoia, thus inducing them to spend all their spare cash on weapons, and very expensive weapons at that.

Huzzar! – now you/we have an ideological monopoly!

Simple really when you think about it.

The straw that broke the camel’s back was of course Afghanistan, where the U.S. and the indominable Afghanistanis had the same goal, to send Russia broke. The same strategy the Afghanis deployed when the U.S. tried to copy the Russian occupation of that blighted country. The U.S. is proving a harder nut to crack, as they can suck the whole world dry and take us all with them, before they inevitably crumble. But those Wiley Afghanis are very patient people, and they never give up! (You would think the C.I.A. would have learnt from the lesson they taught the Soviets. Maybe they weren’t paying attention in class at Harvard Business School)

Now we find China, without a doubt the most successful Capitalist state the world has ever known, deploying the exact same strategy on its former ideological adversary, turned economic mentor, turned economic adversary.

This could get ugly. The U.S. will not hand over the empire without a fight, and I mean a real barny. A ding-dong battle to-the-death!

Obviously China does not want a war. They are richer than Jeff Besos. The last thing they want is a war upsetting the apple cart, not to mention the gravy train. On the other hand, our good buddies at The Pentagon desperately need a war with China, and the sooner the better, before China’s war machine achieves parity with the U.S.

Time is running out!

Obviously, if you are having a war with China, you don’t want the second most powerful military machine in the world sticking it’s nose in, unless it is on your side. So the idea is to knock out the Ruskies in one fell swoop before they have time to put on their undies. Whammo!. A short sharp surprize attack with every nuclear weapon within cooee of Russia. 15 minutes later, it’s all over Red Rover!

Ideally the Chinese will take note of your steely resolve and lack of qualms about dropping nuclear bombs on the innocent Russian people. (Don’t forget who dropped the atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The only Nation in the entire world to even contemplate such a despicable war crime. Thankfully, that crime has not been repeated by any nation on earth, no matter what sort of psychopathic megalomaniac is running them.

(hint – the country I am referring to is not Russia)

Maybe now we can begin to grasp the forces at play that bring us to this sorry state of world affairs, where  the innocent people of Ukraine are made to endure the suffering imposed on them by circumstances beyond their control.

Vladimir Vladimirovich launches a full scale war on their country. Naturally no one in the whole world comes to their military aid because they don’t want the conflagration to escalate into a nuclear war. But ironically enough, this attack was launched because Russia does not want a nuclear war either.

So it seems at first blush that we are having one sort of war because both sides do not want a different sort of war. But Putin sincerely believes that the U.S. and N.A.T.O. do want a nuclear war, once they have created the means to win it decisively and quickly.

We must learn as much as possible about the causes of this present war in order to stop it being repeated ad infinitum. But the ‘Western’ media all over the world, including Japan and South Korea and almost all Asian states, are refusing to tell people the reasons Putin uses to justify his war, because they are really worried we might decide to support him. The people that run our ‘democratic’ alliance, including our ‘free’ media, obviously don’t trust us with the truth, never have and never will.

There was a simple solution to this crisis. Nato and Ukraine could have made a pact that Putin would not invade Ukriane if N.A.T.O agreed not to install nuclear weapons there. Simple. I for one, have no idea why Nato refused to make that pledge until Ukraine was ruined.

*So the cold war ended in 1991, not with a bang, but a whimper. As soon as Russia’s apparatchiks abandoned their posts and scuttled off back to the motherland, the vassal states leapt into the breech, lifting the yoke from their callused shoulders and hurling it into the nearest ditch, in a series of largely bloodless uprisings.  

All well and good. Welcome to the land of the free …and other appropriate platitudes and clichés. It is what happened to mother Russia that was an unmitigated disaster. The country ended up in the hands of Boris Yeltsin, a drunken buffoon, by all accounts. Mr. Yeltsin proceeded to sell off all of Russia’s most profitable assets to the highest bidder, and the bids were not very high at all.

A fire sale, I think it is called. A fire sale of the entire country. A country that had pulled itself up by the bootstraps with blood sweat and tears. A phenomenal rate of development unprecedented in world history. From a semi-feudal society of illiterate peasants, to winning the second world war almost single handed. Now that is no mean feat by anyone’s standards. Credit where credit is due. (But poor mother Russia has run out of credit) The sudden, brutal abandonment of socialist job security for life was an unforgivable human tragedy. From then on the country was run by the infamous Russian Mafia, the infamous Oligarchs and the not yet infamous F.S.B. (formerly the infamous K.G.B.) A match made in Hell!

So we can see why Putin was invited in to clean up the mess, and we can see why he yearns for ‘the good old days’ of the cold war – a military stalemate, enforced with nuclear weapons. Russia has always campaigned to get rid of nuclear weapons, no doubt because the arms race continues to drain their coffers. But the U.S. and Europe want to keep them to guard Western Europe from a Russian blitzkrieg, and because they like nuclear weapons.

So here we are staring down the barrel of a gun held by a maniac.

The lesson being, things are not always as they seem at first blush.

Ben Boyang 2022