Russia said they dismantled the Syrian chemical weapons program.
They did. The OPCW (the group tasked with verifying chemical weapons claims and enforcing the chemical weapons treaty) verified that Syria and Russia removed its chemical weapons.
But here we are with chemicals floating around all over the place...
Be careful not to conflate the multiple US/NATO claims (Novichok nerve agent in the UK spy case).
The chemical weapon used in the claimed Douma attack was chlorine. Every country on the planet has significant quantities of chlorine. Chlorine is used in many industrial processes, in swimming pools, and in most every city and town on the planet which has a water treatment plant has enough chlorine to make a chemical weapon. And industrial chlorine is easy to "weaponize" -- and it's pretty safe to do to (as opposed to nerve agent, for example).
Also note, in 2016 Amnesty International bluntly stated, "Syria: armed opposition group committing war crimes in Aleppo - new evidence. The Aleppo Conquest armed groups may have used chemical weapons, as well as ‘hell cannon’ gas canister munitions."
That our government start being a semi-honest democratic republic and not some war-loving empire out trying to conquer the world and making enemies that rightfully hate the United States. That'd be a start.
Then we can prosecute our torturers and war criminals and pay repartitions to the many countries we have attacked.
That every one of these stories be run every day?
That'd be nice. For our sycophantic mass media to stop unquestioningly reprinting the lies, propaganda and talking points of our evil government would be nice too.
It seems that the US story is falling apart fast. The Pentagon claims that all missiles hit their target and the Syrian claim of shooting down ~3/4 of the missiles is nonsense. But there are online videos of missiles being shot down and the Pentagon now says they're going to study the attack. Trump is using the issue of chemical weapons to flip-flop and now refuses to pull out the thousands of US troops who presently occupy/control 28% of Syria.
The Pentagon has bluntly said:
Q: General McKenzie, the three targets that you struck, were those manufacturing or researching chlorine or sarin?
GEN. MCKENZIE: A little of both. And particularly in the Barzeh target, but there’s a little of both. (source)
But the OPCW, the int'l org which is responsible for enforcing the chemical weapons treaty, inspected the Barzeh site in mid-March and said they saw no evidence of chemical weapons there. (Their PDF report point 8 on page 2.)
When Bush told his lies about Iraq's chemical weapons, at least the BS story held up for a couple of months.:(
So do you believe those civilians were killed by poison gas from Syrian Government or was it propaganda devised as a smokescreen for Western aggression against a poor, mus-understood Russia?
I want evidence the video is actually real.
In 2016 Amnesty International bluntly stated, "Syria: armed opposition group committing war crimes in Aleppo - new evidence. The Aleppo Conquest armed groups may have used chemical weapons, as well as ‘hell cannon’ gas canister munitions."
Russia says that the video was faked and they blame the UK and our proxy rebel forces. The US and UK have a track record of lying through their teeth about chemical weapons (e.g. Iraq) and and the US routinely makes up wild, moralistic propaganda claims (e.g. Nurse Nayirah), so it's clear no one should believe them.
At this point no reasonable, thinking person should be sure of anything.
Syria and Russia are demanding that independent, third-party investigators be sent to investigate the site and chemical weapons claims. The US refused, at one time falsely claimed that Russia was refusing the inspectors (they may have backtracked from that position by now), and either way, Trump's illegal attacks on Syria render that position moot.
The chemical weapons treaty mandates protocols and procedures when someone claims a chemical attack. Like it or not, Russia is following that. Currently, the independent, third-party experts from the OPCW are on the scene in Syria.
My guess is that in a week or so they'll issue a finding that there is no evidence of an attack and US/NATO mass media will ridicule the findings, scream cover-up, and then bury the story. Let's hope I'm wrong.
If you see my reply to that comment, you'll see I provided a half-dozen or so links to the fact that the US gov't wages propaganda wars on the Internet and uses trolls to propagandize both Americans and foreign people. There is simply no doubt in that: the US gov't wages propaganda wars against the American people.
I guess he feels that he'd rather be under the influence of Russian Trolls...
Exactly! You see, I live in a country where I am supposed to have freedom, free speech and a non-oppressive government. I'm supposed to be free to make up my own mind about what is "fake news" and what is not.
As such, I do not want my corrupt government passing laws to force me to pay taxes so the gov't can wage propaganda wars against me, my family, friends and countrymen. It used to be we had laws outlawing such things because in the past the CIA and other parts of the government was found to have been wildly abusing their power. But no more.
If the Russian people want to waste their money on Internet propaganda, that's their problem, not mine.
My problem is my government forcing me to pay taxes to spread lies and propaganda to be used against me.
It doesn't seem strange to me. It's simple demonization. It's political suppression through oppression. It doesn't matter if your are using raw nationalism and fear to shout down and suppress communists, or "islamofascists" or "Russian trolls" -- it's all the same mindless militarism and nationalism.
Where are the communists in today's Russia?
They placed 2nd in the recent Russian elections for president. Of course Putin, wildly popular in Russia and winning something like 70 or 80% of the vote, crushed the communists.
Where are the paranoid anticommunists in today's America? Where is the witch hunting committee?
It's the 21st century. Since communism has been removed as a specter, anti-communism has been replaced with anti-Muslim mindlessness. Since Americans didn't believe Al Qaeda or ISIS was a real, existential threat to the US, now we've moved on to using North Korea or Russia to generate the fear to ensure the Pentagon and military-industrial complex's budgets are safe.
Rather than the House Un-American Activities Committee leading the charge, today it's corporations talking about suppressing "fake news," Google removing progressive web sites and foreign media sources from their news and searches -- all while claiming they love the 1st Amendment and free speech, and all for purposes of nationalism and militarism.
Of course, our mass media tends not to emphasize such American skulduggery and propaganda. They'll do an initial report on the issue, but it's rarely, if ever, put into the news loop and repeated over and over and over again. Funny how that works, eh? It makes one think of Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, who once bluntly said, "There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear."
If you want any more you'll have to search for it.
What about those of us who want to imitate Bill Gates' life?!
I want to start with being born a son of the richest banking family in the state of Washington. After all, being born rich is a good way to tweak the odds of success in life.
The problem with my plan is Doc forgot the flux capacitor and so the time machine won't work...
I'll be a bloody genius there -- hell, even I know enough to change the login combo to "admin/equfax" -- and they'll pay me well for such brilliant security insights.
Oh, but wait.
Now that people -- and even chat-bots -- are suing them blind over this mindless security breach, I'm thinking that maybe there won't be a company left when they're through.
So let me get this straight: Am I supposed to be happy or relieved about this?!
Uber Inc. is still a nasty corporation that screws its drives and also its customers. I know I'll never give them a dime of my money.
Is it wrong for me to hope that this corporation goes belly-up and that all of its rich shareholders lose a lot of money because they're stomping on the privacy of their customers like an elephant steps on ants?
'in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,'
That's absurd. First, there will always be DRM-free games. People like me will not buy them. I don't care if I have to wait 5 years before I play a game, selling my soul, privacy, control of my computer, and all the other hassles of DRM is not worth it. Eventually software companies will realize that they're losing out on people like me and our money, and eventually they'll come around.
Secondly, aside from DRM-free, closed-source, non-free commercial software, there are numerous free software games out there of varying quality.
But it does not do away with the undemocratic Electoral College, it just massages the system to force the Electoral College electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote.
As such, it's likely an improvement, but to me the fact that this strategy is being used highlights the broken nature of our political system and the fact that it is simply too difficult to amend the Constitution so such end-around moves have to be done to reform/change things.
I don't like the winning plot at all; it ignores reality and the Constitution.
Forget about encryption or electronic voting -- didn't the 2000 election teach us anything when Al Gore got more of the votes from the American people across the country but George W. Bush took the White House? Does this plot presume we had a constitutional amendment to do away with the undemocratic Electoral College?
The US Constitution clearly says that the president is elected by the Electoral College. There are only 535 members of the electoral college. We could call them via phone calls in a couple of hours to see how they voted.
But don't let me get in the way of a good fairy tale...:-)
I agree wholeheartedly. Sadly, the handwriting for this has been on the wall for some time. I can only hope Debian's Iceweasel port of Firefox does not adopt this "feature".
This makes me start to wonder if there is a reduced capability browser -- something leaner and meaner, focused militantly on privacy and even going so far as to deliberately not support portions of HTML5 (e.g. DRM).
Coders of the world, here's a niche you could fill...
The anti-missile bases and technology are quantitatively and qualitatively utterly inadequate to make a flyspeck of a difference. Russia knows this.
They likely do. But as we've wasted well over $100 billion on our so-called "Star Wars" anti-ballistic missile system over the years, and even more money on the anti-missile systems we're developing with/for Israel, I'd bet the Russians fear the day that we finally get it working.
Consider that after the breakup of the USSR, Russia has engineered and deployed substantial new nuclear weapons and delivery systems. The US has not.
I think this is misleading. Of course Russia has developed new ICBMs. First, this ignores what may or may not have been in the developmental pipeline. But more importantly, it ignores that we did unilaterally break the ABM treaty and started deploying ABM sites and mounting systems on ships. To expect the Russians not to counter our aggression is to expect them to act foolishly.
Is it the US who is really the only problem here?
Considering the US has launched multiple wars of aggression since the breakup of the USSR, the US gov't wages blatant proxy wars, the US gov't ignores all int'l law dating back to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia and claims a "right" to attack any country even if we have not been attacked first, and considering things like we have used flat-out torture as a national policy and spend almost 1/2 of the entire world's military spending, the US gov't may not be the "only" problem but most definitely our gov't is the largest and most aggressive problem country in the world.
"The organization has concluded that the United States is now the principle violator of human rights and freedoms worldwide." -- Amnesty International's annual report on human rights.
However it is also true that every nation which entered NATO practically begged for it.
I think it's important to remember some of the skulduggery that we did in Europe -- for decades. Remember, we essentially bought elections in France and Italy in the late 40s to prevent communists from being elected into power; we beamed divisive ethnic propaganda into Yugoslavia for decades. Hell, even as late as the 1980s we had our CIA work with European rightists to conduct flat-out terrorist actions against our own NATO allies in a strategy of tension designed to push western European gov'ts to the political right.
Given the fact that many of the new leaders of the former Warsaw Pact we funded and backed for years and years, and in such an atmosphere of such skulduggery, it's not surprising that they'd want to snuggle up to the west if only to increase the odds that they would not continue to remain a target.
After all, it's not like the vast majority of the common people of those countries had a lot of say in the economic shock therapy that was inflicted on their nations, nor in whether they should become a member of NATO or not.
The reality is that the US and west never stopped waging the Cold War. We broke the understanding with Russia and pushed NATO eastward, even incorporating parts of the former USSR into NATO.
Then we tore up the ABM treaty and put anti-missile bases in Eastern Europe claiming we were doing that because of Iran. The Russians didn't find that laughable claim one bit funny and understood that the west was seeking to negate their nuclear deterrence.
NATO has been used offensively both inside and outside of Europe and shows that it has nothing to do with "defense".
We portrayed a rag-tag group of Muslim fundamentalists as some sort of existential threat to the US and west, but now the US gov't has made a "pivot" and is portraying China as militarily aggressive because they are squabbling over some worthless islets with their neighbors. It's clear that China is the focus of a new Cold War.
It's clear the US is in search of a "new enemy" because that's what keeps Americans distracted from how much we waste on our military and our continuing economic decline.
"Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy." -- Ambassador to the USSR and US State Dept. strategist George F. Kennan.
> Performing actions that US govt sees as 'acts of war', against other, *allied*, country?
Well, the European Parliament has found that the CIA in conjunction with right-wing Europeans committed many different acts of terror -- acts killing and wounding hundreds of civilians -- on our own NATO allies during the 1980s in US gov't's pursuit of a strategy of tension.
So for the US gov't to do this would be nothing new.:-(
Slashdot Mirror
Russia said they dismantled the Syrian chemical weapons program.
They did. The OPCW (the group tasked with verifying chemical weapons claims and enforcing the chemical weapons treaty) verified that Syria and Russia removed its chemical weapons.
But here we are with chemicals floating around all over the place ...
Be careful not to conflate the multiple US/NATO claims (Novichok nerve agent in the UK spy case).
The chemical weapon used in the claimed Douma attack was chlorine. Every country on the planet has significant quantities of chlorine. Chlorine is used in many industrial processes, in swimming pools, and in most every city and town on the planet which has a water treatment plant has enough chlorine to make a chemical weapon. And industrial chlorine is easy to "weaponize" -- and it's pretty safe to do to (as opposed to nerve agent, for example).
Also note, in 2016 Amnesty International bluntly stated, "Syria: armed opposition group committing war crimes in Aleppo - new evidence. The Aleppo Conquest armed groups may have used chemical weapons, as well as ‘hell cannon’ gas canister munitions."
What are you demanding?
That our government start being a semi-honest democratic republic and not some war-loving empire out trying to conquer the world and making enemies that rightfully hate the United States. That'd be a start.
Then we can prosecute our torturers and war criminals and pay repartitions to the many countries we have attacked.
That every one of these stories be run every day?
That'd be nice. For our sycophantic mass media to stop unquestioningly reprinting the lies, propaganda and talking points of our evil government would be nice too.
cid=56442457 Here it is.
It seems that the US story is falling apart fast. The Pentagon claims that all missiles hit their target and the Syrian claim of shooting down ~3/4 of the missiles is nonsense. But there are online videos of missiles being shot down and the Pentagon now says they're going to study the attack. Trump is using the issue of chemical weapons to flip-flop and now refuses to pull out the thousands of US troops who presently occupy/control 28% of Syria.
The Pentagon has bluntly said:
Q: General McKenzie, the three targets that you struck, were those manufacturing or researching chlorine or sarin?
GEN. MCKENZIE: A little of both. And particularly in the Barzeh target, but there’s a little of both. (source)
But the OPCW, the int'l org which is responsible for enforcing the chemical weapons treaty, inspected the Barzeh site in mid-March and said they saw no evidence of chemical weapons there. (Their PDF report point 8 on page 2.)
When Bush told his lies about Iraq's chemical weapons, at least the BS story held up for a couple of months. :(
So do you believe those civilians were killed by poison gas from Syrian Government or was it propaganda devised as a smokescreen for Western aggression against a poor, mus-understood Russia?
I want evidence the video is actually real.
In 2016 Amnesty International bluntly stated, "Syria: armed opposition group committing war crimes in Aleppo - new evidence. The Aleppo Conquest armed groups may have used chemical weapons, as well as ‘hell cannon’ gas canister munitions."
Russia says that the video was faked and they blame the UK and our proxy rebel forces. The US and UK have a track record of lying through their teeth about chemical weapons (e.g. Iraq) and and the US routinely makes up wild, moralistic propaganda claims (e.g. Nurse Nayirah), so it's clear no one should believe them.
At this point no reasonable, thinking person should be sure of anything.
Syria and Russia are demanding that independent, third-party investigators be sent to investigate the site and chemical weapons claims. The US refused, at one time falsely claimed that Russia was refusing the inspectors (they may have backtracked from that position by now), and either way, Trump's illegal attacks on Syria render that position moot.
The chemical weapons treaty mandates protocols and procedures when someone claims a chemical attack. Like it or not, Russia is following that. Currently, the independent, third-party experts from the OPCW are on the scene in Syria.
My guess is that in a week or so they'll issue a finding that there is no evidence of an attack and US/NATO mass media will ridicule the findings, scream cover-up, and then bury the story. Let's hope I'm wrong.
I'll ignore your paranoid, McCarthy-ite, ad hominem smears to just ask one question:
No proof of "Pentagon trolls" has ever been offered.
So the post I put in this thread full of media links about US propaganda and trolling is not "proof"?
Even if he's correct (I doubt it)
If you see my reply to that comment, you'll see I provided a half-dozen or so links to the fact that the US gov't wages propaganda wars on the Internet and uses trolls to propagandize both Americans and foreign people. There is simply no doubt in that: the US gov't wages propaganda wars against the American people.
I guess he feels that he'd rather be under the influence of Russian Trolls...
Exactly! You see, I live in a country where I am supposed to have freedom, free speech and a non-oppressive government. I'm supposed to be free to make up my own mind about what is "fake news" and what is not.
As such, I do not want my corrupt government passing laws to force me to pay taxes so the gov't can wage propaganda wars against me, my family, friends and countrymen. It used to be we had laws outlawing such things because in the past the CIA and other parts of the government was found to have been wildly abusing their power. But no more.
If the Russian people want to waste their money on Internet propaganda, that's their problem, not mine.
My problem is my government forcing me to pay taxes to spread lies and propaganda to be used against me.
This new spin is very strange.
It doesn't seem strange to me. It's simple demonization. It's political suppression through oppression. It doesn't matter if your are using raw nationalism and fear to shout down and suppress communists, or "islamofascists" or "Russian trolls" -- it's all the same mindless militarism and nationalism.
Where are the communists in today's Russia?
They placed 2nd in the recent Russian elections for president. Of course Putin, wildly popular in Russia and winning something like 70 or 80% of the vote, crushed the communists.
Where are the paranoid anticommunists in today's America? Where is the witch hunting committee?
It's the 21st century. Since communism has been removed as a specter, anti-communism has been replaced with anti-Muslim mindlessness. Since Americans didn't believe Al Qaeda or ISIS was a real, existential threat to the US, now we've moved on to using North Korea or Russia to generate the fear to ensure the Pentagon and military-industrial complex's budgets are safe.
Rather than the House Un-American Activities Committee leading the charge, today it's corporations talking about suppressing "fake news," Google removing progressive web sites and foreign media sources from their news and searches -- all while claiming they love the 1st Amendment and free speech, and all for purposes of nationalism and militarism.
It's simply a case of meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
And since in today's America it's almost required, a couple of links for you from RT:
The West? Trolling foreign states for over a decade â" former MI5 agent
Pentagon bots in your comments? US Army wants AI tool for social networks
There. Now if anyone wants, feel free to trash me with McCarthy-era red-baiting about how I'm a Russian troll or bot. /s
Are they like the Russian Trolls?
Beats me, I've never met one. But considering the Pentagon's gargantuan budget, I'd bet our trolls are paid far better than than Russian trolls.
So can you give me some links to the "Pentagon trolls?
Sure, here is some relevant reading:
Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda
Pentagon ramping up public relations offensive: Agency moves to bolster image in face of mounting criticism of Iraq war
U.S. Media Knew Kosovo Reports Were Propaganda
Meet The State Department Team Trying To Troll ISIS Into Oblivion
Military Plays Up Role of Zarqawi -- "The U.S. military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq, according to internal military documents and officers..."
Pentagon Paid for Fake âAl Qaedaâ(TM) Videos
The Government's Social Media Propaganda Machine
âoeOn the Offensiveâ: US State Dept. Gives $40M Boost to âoeTroll Farmâ Propaganda Efforts
How the American government is trying to control what you think
That should get you started.
Of course, our mass media tends not to emphasize such American skulduggery and propaganda. They'll do an initial report on the issue, but it's rarely, if ever, put into the news loop and repeated over and over and over again. Funny how that works, eh? It makes one think of Ted Turner, the founder of CNN, who once bluntly said, "There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear."
If you want any more you'll have to search for it.
I predict a 3000% increase in Rickrolling.
And I predict a 4000% increase in Pentagon trolls.
Or are we not supposed to acknowledge the fact that the US gov't pays people and wages propaganda wars on the Internet?
What about those of us who want to imitate Bill Gates' life?!
I want to start with being born a son of the richest banking family in the state of Washington. After all, being born rich is a good way to tweak the odds of success in life.
The problem with my plan is Doc forgot the flux capacitor and so the time machine won't work...
Silicon Valley Bosses Are Capitalists, And Then Whatever...
FTFY.
Really, I do want to work there!
I'll be a bloody genius there -- hell, even I know enough to change the login combo to "admin/equfax" -- and they'll pay me well for such brilliant security insights.
Oh, but wait.
Now that people -- and even chat-bots -- are suing them blind over this mindless security breach, I'm thinking that maybe there won't be a company left when they're through.
So let me get this straight: Am I supposed to be happy or relieved about this?!
Uber Inc. is still a nasty corporation that screws its drives and also its customers. I know I'll never give them a dime of my money.
Is it wrong for me to hope that this corporation goes belly-up and that all of its rich shareholders lose a lot of money because they're stomping on the privacy of their customers like an elephant steps on ants?
...until this blows over in the media and until iRobot has a chance to update their terms of service "agreement." :(
"Corporations have neither bodies to be punished, nor souls to be condemned; they therefore do as they like." -- Edward, First Baron Thurlow.
'in two years time I'm afraid there will be no free games to play in the world,'
That's absurd. First, there will always be DRM-free games. People like me will not buy them. I don't care if I have to wait 5 years before I play a game, selling my soul, privacy, control of my computer, and all the other hassles of DRM is not worth it. Eventually software companies will realize that they're losing out on people like me and our money, and eventually they'll come around.
Secondly, aside from DRM-free, closed-source, non-free commercial software, there are numerous free software games out there of varying quality.
That's an interesting concept.
But it does not do away with the undemocratic Electoral College, it just massages the system to force the Electoral College electors to vote for the winner of the popular vote.
As such, it's likely an improvement, but to me the fact that this strategy is being used highlights the broken nature of our political system and the fact that it is simply too difficult to amend the Constitution so such end-around moves have to be done to reform/change things.
I don't like the winning plot at all; it ignores reality and the Constitution.
Forget about encryption or electronic voting -- didn't the 2000 election teach us anything when Al Gore got more of the votes from the American people across the country but George W. Bush took the White House? Does this plot presume we had a constitutional amendment to do away with the undemocratic Electoral College?
The US Constitution clearly says that the president is elected by the Electoral College. There are only 535 members of the electoral college. We could call them via phone calls in a couple of hours to see how they voted.
But don't let me get in the way of a good fairy tale... :-)
True, and accurately summed up decades ago by Orson Welles when he said, "A policeman's job is only easy in a police state."
I agree wholeheartedly. Sadly, the handwriting for this has been on the wall for some time. I can only hope Debian's Iceweasel port of Firefox does not adopt this "feature".
This makes me start to wonder if there is a reduced capability browser -- something leaner and meaner, focused militantly on privacy and even going so far as to deliberately not support portions of HTML5 (e.g. DRM).
Coders of the world, here's a niche you could fill...
The anti-missile bases and technology are quantitatively and qualitatively utterly inadequate to make a flyspeck of a difference. Russia knows this.
They likely do. But as we've wasted well over $100 billion on our so-called "Star Wars" anti-ballistic missile system over the years, and even more money on the anti-missile systems we're developing with/for Israel, I'd bet the Russians fear the day that we finally get it working.
Consider that after the breakup of the USSR, Russia has engineered and deployed substantial new nuclear weapons and delivery systems. The US has not.
I think this is misleading. Of course Russia has developed new ICBMs. First, this ignores what may or may not have been in the developmental pipeline. But more importantly, it ignores that we did unilaterally break the ABM treaty and started deploying ABM sites and mounting systems on ships. To expect the Russians not to counter our aggression is to expect them to act foolishly.
Is it the US who is really the only problem here?
Considering the US has launched multiple wars of aggression since the breakup of the USSR, the US gov't wages blatant proxy wars, the US gov't ignores all int'l law dating back to the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia and claims a "right" to attack any country even if we have not been attacked first, and considering things like we have used flat-out torture as a national policy and spend almost 1/2 of the entire world's military spending, the US gov't may not be the "only" problem but most definitely our gov't is the largest and most aggressive problem country in the world.
Not surprisingly, but still sadly, it's not just me saying this; in one Win/Gallup International survey of people in 65 countries, the US is seen as the greatest threat to world peace.
"The organization has concluded that the United States is now the principle violator of human rights and freedoms worldwide." -- Amnesty International's annual report on human rights.
However it is also true that every nation which entered NATO practically begged for it.
I think it's important to remember some of the skulduggery that we did in Europe -- for decades. Remember, we essentially bought elections in France and Italy in the late 40s to prevent communists from being elected into power; we beamed divisive ethnic propaganda into Yugoslavia for decades. Hell, even as late as the 1980s we had our CIA work with European rightists to conduct flat-out terrorist actions against our own NATO allies in a strategy of tension designed to push western European gov'ts to the political right.
Given the fact that many of the new leaders of the former Warsaw Pact we funded and backed for years and years, and in such an atmosphere of such skulduggery, it's not surprising that they'd want to snuggle up to the west if only to increase the odds that they would not continue to remain a target.
After all, it's not like the vast majority of the common people of those countries had a lot of say in the economic shock therapy that was inflicted on their nations, nor in whether they should become a member of NATO or not.
Perhaps. Perhaps not.
The reality is that the US and west never stopped waging the Cold War. We broke the understanding with Russia and pushed NATO eastward, even incorporating parts of the former USSR into NATO.
Then we tore up the ABM treaty and put anti-missile bases in Eastern Europe claiming we were doing that because of Iran. The Russians didn't find that laughable claim one bit funny and understood that the west was seeking to negate their nuclear deterrence.
NATO has been used offensively both inside and outside of Europe and shows that it has nothing to do with "defense".
We portrayed a rag-tag group of Muslim fundamentalists as some sort of existential threat to the US and west, but now the US gov't has made a "pivot" and is portraying China as militarily aggressive because they are squabbling over some worthless islets with their neighbors. It's clear that China is the focus of a new Cold War.
It's clear the US is in search of a "new enemy" because that's what keeps Americans distracted from how much we waste on our military and our continuing economic decline.
"Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy." -- Ambassador to the USSR and US State Dept. strategist George F. Kennan.
> Performing actions that US govt sees as 'acts of war', against other, *allied*, country?
Well, the European Parliament has found that the CIA in conjunction with right-wing Europeans committed many different acts of terror -- acts killing and wounding hundreds of civilians -- on our own NATO allies during the 1980s in US gov't's pursuit of a strategy of tension.
So for the US gov't to do this would be nothing new. :-(
Great news! I can blame it on the bacteria!
Because I thought I was fat from eating calorie-laden, fat-riddled, corporate-processed junk food and sitting on my ass all day.