What in the *&%! is Happening in the Middle East???

As just about everyone knows, June 10-12 the US and Israel told Iran they'd better show up for a very important meeting on Sunday, 15 June, or there would be serious consequences. The meeting was very, very important and Iran had better not miss it.

So, since it was Eid, Iran were celebrating Thursday and were in bed asleep at 3:00 am Friday when Israel struck a massive blow with US weapons. The US had been working hard with Israel to trick the Iranians into relaxing and not being on full alert.

After those few days of lies, the lies from Iran and Israel and the US have been pretty much non-stop. No one has a clue what is really happening.

We have lots of pictures, plus stories from reporters that aren't there, of tens of thousands of US weapons striking Iran, with fires, buildings partly destroyed where Iranian generals and university professors of physics lived and were killed along with their families and neighbours. We know that Mossad have a huge network of spies in Iran who told them where the generals and professors lived and called in to say they saw the generals go into their apartments to sleep, and announced that they killed, and Iran admitted, that many of their top generals and professors have been martyred in the Israeli strikes. We know those spies planted many drones in Iran in trucks with retractable roofs just like the ones used to destroy most of the Russian nuclear strike force, in an effort to remove all Russian nuclear fangs.

Israel and the US said the Iranian defences had been totally destroyed by that first strike, and this seems to have been true. Mossad had destroyed the electronic systems that controlled all Iranian defence and offence capabilities, so they expected the bombings to continue with no defensive threats to the Israeli Air Force that would be attacking Iran or any Iranian missiles able to fly at Israel, certainly not enough to penetrate the Iron Dome. We know Trump told the Iranians they had better surrender unconditionally or many, many Iranians would be killed. We know Israel said their strike on Friday, 13 June to surprise and destroy Iranian military capacity to defend themselves or attack Israel was a complete success: all the Iranian offensive missiles were destroyed along with the entire Iranian antiaircraft system.

Only a team of electronic experts from Russia raced to repair the damage and got those Iranian electronic systems working after about 10 hours, when they were expected to be out of service for the duration of the war, and (according to Russia) probably would have been out of service for weeks or months.

So, late Friday, Iran fired the first missiles at Israel.

How much damage was really done to Iran that first night, and all the following days and nights? We know lots of top Iranian officials and many civilians have been killed, Israel claims and Iran decries that much, but the total destruction of Iranian antiaircraft? Israel say not one plane has been shot down, while Iran say they've shot down three (but no pictures or any other evidence). And the near total destruction of all Iranian missiles? Obviously, not all, but do they have dozens, hundreds, thousands, or tens of thousands left? No idea.

And the Iranian missiles fired at Israel? Genocide, of course, since at least thee Israelis have been killed, and the definition of genocide is killing all or part of any recognised ethnic-religious group, so killing three Israelis definitely fits the official, legal definition of genocide. Were more killed? Not sure. Was any damage done to Israelis offence or defence facilities? No idea. How many missiles actually got past the Iron Dome, Israel admits about three, while Iran claim many more.

So all we know now is that this war is likely to continue. Will the people really running the US send the US military to help Israel destroy Iran? No idea. Will Russia and/or the PRC take a bigger role, and will we know about it if they surreptitiously help Iran? No idea.

And absolutely no idea where this is going. 

WWIII anyone???

Cuban Missila Crisis???

 In 1962, I had to sleep on the floor. There was talk that the US was very close to having a massive fleet of nuclear bombs dropping all over the US. Obviously, the targets would include US military sites and all major cities, and we lived in a small town and had lots of relatives who lived in major cities, so they all came to our little town, too small and insignificant to be a target, and far from any possible target. They stayed at my father's house and my uncle's house and two of them got my bed and others got the spare beds and the couch and I had to sleep on the floor. For years, many Americans thought we'd been very close to complete nuclear destruction.

In fact, the Cuban Missile Crisis started in 1961 when the US put nuclear missiles in Turkey. The Soviets vehemently objected, and the US leadership basically said, 'So what can you do about it? Those missiles are staying in Turkey.'

So the evil Soviets, completely unprovoked, threatened to put nuclear missiles in Cuba, and the US were ready to nuke the Soviet Union to teach them that putting nuclear missiles in Cuba was a clear and flagrant violation of the Monroe Doctrine.

So President Kennedy made a fatal phone call to Nikita Khrushchev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Kennedy said, 'I have to run for re-election and you don't, so if you'll say, "The USSR is taking all our missiles out of Cuba and will never put any missiles in Cuba," we'll take all our missiles out of Turkey, and you don't have to give us anything but your pretence that the US got everything and the USSR got nothing.' So Secretary Khrushchev agreed, since he thought he had nothing to lose. The US secretly removed all the missiles, with USSR inspectors verifying that there were no US missiles left in Turkey, and the US intelligence services were furious, as were the Soviet intelligence services.

The US intelligence services got rid of Kennedy in 1963, and the USSR intelligence services got rid of Khrushchev in 1964, as anyone who knew the intelligence services knew they would.

But there was never a crisis, there was never a real threat of nuclear war in 1962 because the US and USSR both had decent leaders who were able to defang the situation with no real threat (but they allowed ordinary people to think there had been a threat from which they had saved the world).

Khrushchev had to keep his victory secret, so USSR intelligence forces decided they had to get rid of him, and the US security forces could never forgive Kennedy for coming up with a serious loss that only looked like a great victory. 

(Of course, while the US had to remove all those missiles from Turkey, they moved them all to Türkiye, but they are no longer aimed at the USSR, now they're aimed at Russia.)

Great Power Pollitics: Indivisibility of Security

A Great Power can defend themselves. The Great Powers are never equal, but a nation defending themselves against an attack have a large logistical advantage, and to be a Great Power, one must, with this logistical advantage, be able to defeat any attack by another Great Power, so the weakest of the Great Powers must be able to defeat an attack by the strongest Great Power or they are not a Great Power.

Every Great Power are entitled to Indivisibility of Security, meaning no Great Power can increase their security at the expense of another Great Power. Such an increase in security at the expense of another Great Power would be an attack on the other Great Power, and a Great Power, by definition, can successfully resist such an attack.

Europe has been at war for most of the history we have of Europe, since they were never able to agree on who were and who were not a Great Power. Russia, in particular, have been very strong and very weak, and for the last two hundred years (that we know of) the Western Great Powers have wanted to defeat Russia and take some or all of the Russian resources, and have had differing degrees of success.

Napoleon attacked Russia with a military of 500,000. He returned to France in 1812 with a military of just 10,000 (and no longer being a Great Power, France were defeated, twice, by the UK after that visit to Moscow).

In the first part of the 20th Century, Japan, Germany, the US, UK, and France all managed to seize some Russian resources and Russia could do nothing and ended up dissolved and reformed as the Soviet Union.

Germany decided, in 1914, that they were strong enough to defeat the alliance of the UK, France, and Russia, and might have succeeded, but the US banks were sure that the UK and France were the only Great Powers in Europe, and loaned them lots of money to defeat Germany. Then, when it looked like the UK and France were sure to lose, the US joined them in their war against Germany to save the US banks, and Germany, while able to exhaust the UK and France, were themselves exhausted and unable to stand up to the US, UK, and French alliance.

In 1919, Germany were forced to sign the Treaty of Versailles, agreeing to hand all their gold over to the victors as war reparations and to completely disarm and agree never again to have a military.

But, not long after that, the UK and France decided that the Soviet Union were a serious threat and they needed an alliance with a moderately armed Germany to defeat the Soviet Union, so they allowed Germany to begin rearming in 1933.

Then, in 1938, five long years after the the UK and France decided that Germany needed to rearm, decided that Germany were getting too strong and must be defeated, but both were not ready, so the UK negotiated a peace treaty with Germany to give the UK and France time to prepare for war with Germany.

France and the UK wanted war in 1939, so they asked Poland to blockade East Prussia from the rest of Germany, an Act of War, and Germany responded by declaring war on Poland, which the UK, French, Polish Alliance meant justified the UK and France declaring war on Germany. Sadly, France and the UK were defeated in 1940, and Chamberlain, after his death, was blamed for not attacking Germany in 1938, since the UK desperately needed a scapegoat and Chamberlain, having died, could not defend himself.

After WWII, which the US claim to have won single-handedly, defeating Germany with their invasion of Europe in 1944 and Japan with two nukes in 1945, the USSR managed to keep all of Eastern Europe in the Warsaw Pact. The US and the rest of Western Europe hoped to defeat the USSR, but needed to beware of the USSR military with their nukes, obviously (to the US and Western Europe) stolen from the US.

In any case, the world noticed two Great Powers, the US and the USSR (the PRC proved they could defend themselves, the DPRK, and Vietnam from being overrun by the US, so they were probably a Great Power, but for most people, the US and USSR stuck out as Great Powers).

And then the USSR collapsed in 1991, the world had only one Great Power, everyone knew the US could (and did) destroy any nation they felt like destroying: Serbia so that NATO could establish a base against Russia in Kosovo, Afghanistan to destroy a weak nation as punishment for the September 2001 terrorist attack on the US (the attackers were renationalised as Afghans from 2001 until 2003, when they became not just Afghans but also Iraqis, Iranians, North Koreans, Syrians, Libyans, and Cubans, even though none of the attackers actually came from any of those nations, but the US was Global Hegemon, so if they renationalised the attackers, the re-nationalising stood). All the nations the US decided to blame for the 9/11 terrorist attack were attacked, some just with sanctions, some by sanctions and military attacks by the US and NATO.

This annoyed a lot of nations, but the US was obviously Global Hegemon, the only Great Power. The US could destroy any other nation, and no other nation could destroy the US, or effectively resist a US attack. So everyone accepted whatever the US did.

The handful of nuclear states knew that they could try using nukes against the US, but would probably do only limited damage while being utterly destroyed. And the US could inflict unbearable damage without nukes by stopping all international trade plus non-nuclear military attacks.

But times keeps a changin': now there are two or three nations that think they might be Great Powers.

Russia seemed to think they could defeat the US Proxy attack, but all the US/UK/EU news media assure us that the US/UK/EU proxy attack on Russia has just about destroyed Russia, which was no longer a Great Power, but has lost to a US/UK/EU armed Ukraine that have killed more than a million Russian troops, totally destroyed the Russian economy, left Putin in a precarious position, probably soon to be pushed out of the presidency. Russia thought they could take all of the Ukraine in three weeks, but have only a tiny sliver (which is still far too much) of the Ukraine after three years. So Russia have already been defeated, and it's just a question before that defeat turns to total destruction and reorganisation of Russia into a bunch of neutral, demilitarised states, all with governments bought and paid for by the US that all do whatever the US order them to do.

Of course, there are other news media that say the Russian military were never interested in quickly overrunning all of the Ukraine, but wanted to minimise Russian losses while maximising Ukrainian losses, especially of NATO weaponry, the goal being to demilitarise the Ukraine, and the Ukrainian losses have been vastly greater than the Russian losses, while the Russian economy has expanded in spite of all the US/UK/EU sanctions, including in weapons production, so the Ukraine are rapidly running out of NATO weapons and troops while the Russian military are very well supplied with a massive inventory of weaponry.

Of course, both the US/UK/EU news media and the other news media say they are the only news media telling the truth, the other news media with the opposite story are pure propaganda.

So, if one believes the US/UK/EU news media, Russia were never a Great Power and are now very close to total defeat, but if one believes the other news media, Russia are now very close to victory, meaning a Ukraine that will never dare try to join NATO and will obey Russian requirements about freedom for ethnic Russian that remain in whatever is left of the Ukraine after part reverts to Russia.

And then there are the PRC, no longer the nation with the largest population, but now the nation with the largest number of petrol-powered vehicles and the largest number of electric vehicles. And those are just filling the streets with people and goods moving about, that's not counting the military vehicles, of which they have the largest number on land, sea, and air.

PRC security is strange. The US agreed in 1972 that they would accept that Taiwan are just another PRC Province, but implemented what is called Strategic Ambiguity: the US say that Taiwan are just another PRC Province while acting as if Taiwan are an independent country. Taiwan have a person in the US with all the duties and responsibilities of an Ambassador residing in a building that serves all the functions of an Embassy, but the person has a title that is not Ambassador and the building has a name that is not Embassy.

And the PRC have accepted this since 1972. But will the PRC continue to accept this, and where does the PRC and US security stop with regard to Taiwan? No one has a clue.

Finally, there are Iran, with the US and Israel demanding total and unconditional surrender or total destruction, but no one knows if Iran are a Great Power or not, Can the US and Israel attack Iran without unacceptable losses? No one knows. The more cautious officials in the US strongly suggest that the US do not want to find out. The less cautious officials say the US must proceed to destroy Iran ASAP, which is not only without the slightest risk to the US or Israel, since Iran cannot respond by doing any real damage to the US or Israel, but that will also return all Iranian oil to the rightful owners: the US, and cut the PRC off from all that Iranian oil, so what are the US waiting for?

***

I have left out India, which have the economy that is now producing the 3rd largest amount of goods in the world, but because of low prices (for Indian citizens), is only producing the 4th largest amount measured by how much it is bought and sold for. And India make their military less obvious than Russia or the PRC. But they are likely to be a Great Power that mostly keep their heads down (except for war with Pakistan, one of the basic Indian-Pakistani traditions since independence being war with each other).

So India are a Great Power, but one that somehow manage to keep their security concerns (and their military) out of sight and out of mind.

(While fighting fairly obvious wars with Pakistan, India kept fighting a very obscure war with the PRC along the Line of Actual Control, lost somewhere up in the mountains, but India and the PRC proclaimed peace at a meeting in Kazan, Russia in October, 2024.)

President Trump and the JCPOA Revisisted?

 The US signed the UN Charter in 1945, agreeing to abide by all the Security Council resolutions (since the US had a veto power, and how could something be so obviously good for the US one day that they would allow the resolution and then somehow become bad for the US later???).

Then President Obama got Iran to sign the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), an agreement that, if Iran allowed UN inspectors to verify that Iran had absolutely no Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) the US would end all sanctions on Iran, sanctions applied in 1980 that reduced the Iranian economy by half.

We had seen this before: President Clinton put sanctions on Iraq that blocked just about anything and everything from being sold to or bought from Iraq, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died from lack of food and medicine, with the promise that all sanctions would be lifted as soon as Iraq had UN inspectors verify no WMD, and as soon as those UN inspectors verified no Iraqi WMD, President Bush, Jr. ordered the destruction of Iraq, with hundreds of thousands more civilians killed and all the Iraqi government executed. And, of course, Iraqi oil was returned to the rightful owner, the US, with a little of the oil given to the UK for helping.

Then President Bush, Jr. put sanctions on Libya with the promise to lift the sanctions as soon as Libya had UN inspectors verify no WMD, and as soon as those inspectors verified no WMD, President Obama and Secretary Hillary sent the US, UK, and French military to kill Gaddafi and get all the US oil that Gaddafi had been stealing returned to the US, then President Obama generously gave a little to the UK and France for helping get rid of Gaddafi.

Then President Obama offered to lift all the sanctions on Iran as soon as UN inspectors verified no WMD, and this promise was named the JCPOA and was passed by the UN Security Council, so the US was legally treaty-bound by the JCPOA no matter who was elected president. The basic idea was that, once UN inspectors verified that Iran had no WMD, President Hillary would completely destroy Iran, with all Iranian oil going back to the rightful owner, the US.

Only St Hillary lost the election, Trump won, and President Trump said the US are not bound by silly things like UN Security Council Resolutions.

Before Trump, the US always followed UN Security Council Resolutions, since the US had a veto, so the US never allowed any Security Council Resolution to pass if it were not in the interest of the US. Only Trump figured a Security Council Resolution that was in the interest of President Hillary was not in the interest of President Trump, so, in 2018, President Trump withdrew from the JCPOA, UN Security Council Resolution notwithstanding.

Sanctions on Iran continued, but Iran can feed themselves and make most essential medicines, so the US sanctions didn't kill very many Iranians, only a few with rare but treatable diseases where Iran could not buy or produce the necessary medical items.

And then, in 2021, when President Biden was in office, the sanctions on Iran ended. Not through any fault of President Biden (who had no idea what was having his name autopenned on it), but the small group of US Navy Corvettes enforcing the sanctions found a huge fleet of oil tankers accompanied by a sizeable fleet of Naval Frigates, and the US Corvettes had no choice but to allow the fleet of oil tankers to pass unmolested or the Corvettes would have been toast, and the Commander of the small US fleet that had been enforcing the Iran sanctions made the only prudent decision. So the oil tankers filled up with all the oil Iran had available, after unloading whatever they were using to pay for the oil. Most international transactions take place using SWIFT, which the US blocked for Iran, but the buyers figured a non-SWIFT way to pay for the oil, and this continues to this day. So the US sanctions on Iran aren't up to much any more.

Israel wants Iran destroyed, but no one has a clue what would happen if Israel or the US or Israel and the US attack Iran.

Israel have attacked Iran several times, and Iran have retaliated. Israel say their attacks did major damage, while the Iranian attempt at retaliation was completely destroyed by Israel, the US, UK, France, Jordan, and others before any of it could hit Israel.

Iran say the Israeli attacks did little damage while the Iranian retaliation did major damage.

Neither Iran nor Israel have allowed unbiased inspectors to verify how much damage was done, but we do know that an Israeli strike killed 89 attendees at the 2024 memorial service for General Suleimani, who had been killed by the US in January, 2020.

So Israel have been able to kill Iranians with little difficulty and no effective retaliation, but Iran is said to have weapons they haven't used because they do not want a large war, but if Israel or the US engage in a strike that does major damage to Iran, then Iran claim to have weapons that can do major damage to Israel and the US military bases in the Gulf countries and maybe the oil producing facilities in the Gulf countries, and Iran claim they can close the Strait of Hormuz.

Is the Iranian threat real, or just an empty threat? No one knows at this point, not even Iran. Maybe the US and Israel and Friends can completely stop the Iranian attack, and maybe they can't and the attack will do major damage to the US and Israel.

So the real question is, Do Israel and/or the US really want to find out?

But it's a little more complicated than that.

The Fleet of oil tankers that have been filling up with all the oil that Iran can sell is only a small part of the Fleet of oil tankers that also buy a lot of Saudi oil, enough Iranian and Saudi oil that the owner of that Fleet could order Iran and Saudi, enemies for at least 40 years, to become BFF overnight, and they both said, 'Yes, Sir.' Saudi even sent a major diplomat to an Iranian event, and there isn't the slightest sign of that 40 year conflict.

That country will be very annoyed if the US reduce their supply of oil. They have, by far, the most cars of any nation in the world and need more oil than any other nation. And they have the world's largest Naval Fleet. And they will also be very annoyed, along with the Iranians, at any attack on Iran,

The US also want to stop all Russian oil sales, so Russia might figure it's in their interest to stop the US from blocking Iranian oil sales.

WWIII anyone?

So Long Mom???

Tom Lehrer wrote the song, "So Long Mom" back in 1965, when the US and UK and Europe still had leaders who were not stark raving mad, a halcyon time we are likely to see again in the fairly near future, after the US, UK, and Europe have no leaders at all (and few, if any, people).

Germany want to send long range missiles (and German military to fire them) to the Ukraine, planning a strike on a major Russia city, e.g., Moscow or St Petersburg, that will leave Russia little choice but to respond, taking out a minor German city such as Munich or Berlin in order to trigger Article 5.

I think it is worth repeating that, on 19 January 2025, President-elect Trump said the US must stop sending weapons to the Ukraine or the US economy would be destroyed. Then, on 21 January 2025, President Trump said Russia must completely withdraw from the Ukraine or Russia would be completely destroyed. 

Obviously, between 19 January and 21 January 2025, the men who Ray McGovern says always wear dark suits and dark glasses had a little talk with Trump and explained why Kennedy wasn't able to run for a second term.

President Trump is hoping to find a way out of the Ukraine, but that does not seem like a viable option, and the Europeans have hated Russia for the last 220 years that I know of (and maybe a lot longer).

Russia was very weak early in the 20th century, losing one war to Japan, then losing WWI to Germany, then Russia's allies, the US, UK, and France invaded Russia from 1918 until 1920, but didn't get much more territory than Germany had taken in 1917.

Lenin was indebted to Germany for making him leader of the USSR, and not much happened until Stalin took over, when the USSR had the Holodomor from 1928 until 1933.

Then, after the UK PM Chamberlain signed a (faux, but very few knew that) Peace Treaty with Germany in 1938, Stalin decided he'd better sign a Peace Treaty with Germany in 1939.

PM Chamberlain planned for war with Germany after the UK radar system and the French Maginot Line were both completed, and, as soon as that happened, the UK and France asked Poland to blockade East Prussia, an act of war, so Germany attacked Poland from the West, and then Stalin attacked from the East in September 1939, and Germany and the USSR split Poland between them. Britain and France then declared war on Germany (but not on the USSR).

Then, in 1940, Germany easily defeated the British Expeditionary Force and the French Army.

And after that victory, in 1941 Germany attacked the USSR.

The US version says to look at the fierce battles for Leningrad and Stalingrad. Is there any Leningrad on the map? Is there any Stalingrad on the map? None. So the Wehrmacht obviously destroyed the Red Army, and all of Eurasia was under Hitler's control until the US arrived to save the day in 1944, easily and single-handedly defeating the Wehrmacht that had destroyed the BEF, the French Army, and the Red Army.

And now Russia are getting uppity again, with their totally illegal seizure in 2014 of Crimea, an Oblast that properly belongs to the UK(raine?) and then their totally unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine in 2022.

But Russia have already lost more than a million men while the Ukraine have lost about 45,000 according to all the US/UK/EU news media, which are totally reliable, unlike the Russian propaganda press. And the Russians are using parts from washing machines to keep their WWII (and WWI) Soviet and Czarist weapons systems working, so what can Russia do if Germany totally destroys Moscow and St Petersburg?

Sure the USSR had a bunch of nukes, but Russia have no one who can keep those nukes operational, and they know if they respond to the German missiles, it means Article 5 and all of NATO will invade Russia with the same devastating success that Napoleon and the Wehrmacht enjoyed.

At this point, Russian nukes are not really the problem, since Russia don't need them, it's those US nukes that will almost certainly be used as NATO begins losing, and the fact that, while Russia will not be the first to use nukes, they'll almost certainly be the last.

Starting in 1823... Answering Jeffrey Sachs' Question, "Why is Europe so Badly Run?????"

 Prof. Glenn Diesen asked Prof. Jeffrey Sachs to explain why Europe seem to be in such trouble, with unpopular leaders doing things the ordinary citizens in their countries don't seem to like. The answer starts in 1823 when US President Monroe said that all of the Americas belong to the US (well, actually Latin America, Canada, not so much).

For the next 75 years, the US strongly condemned colonialism while practicing neocolonialism.

An Imperial Power like 19th century Britain sent British troops to overthrow the government of a nation and take over. The resident Head of State was the British governor. All senior government officials were British. The ultimate Head of State was the British monarch. British soldiers were ready to shoot any and all rebels against British rule.

Spain had a policy that all Imperial Officers must be born in Spain. The existing officers tended to bring their wives along, and it was hard to arrange a trip back to Spain when the wife got pregnant. The Spanish officers considered themselves and their families Spanish citizens, but the children born outside Spain were not considered full citizens, just colonials with very limited rights.

So the US strongly encouraged these children of Spanish officers, with full Spanish blood, to revolt. The US fully supported them with money, weapons, and possibly with US military support. They got full power in their country, in spite of being a small minority, and, if they wanted continued US support, the US got everything of value (of course, the leadership got very well paid for their support, while the ordinary citizens got nothing).

After WWII, the US asked, 'Why only Latin America?' and set up neocolonial puppet governments in South Vietnam for 10 years, South Korea, Japan, Europe, and Africa (and for 20 years in Afghanistan), while keeping full neocolonial control over Latin America.

So when Sweden, which had been neutral for hundreds of years, were told to join NATO, the government didn't bother to ask the Swedes, who had no say in the matter, they just joined. The Finns, who had hated Russia for years also joined NATO, apparently having forgotten all of the disastrous losses every time they tried to fight Russia, figuring the US would at least enrich all the senior members of the Finnish government and protect them from the Russians. And the government in Switzerland, neutral for as long as anyone can remember, said the US had full control over all Russian assets in Swiss banks, and nothing was said, but the Swiss government must have been very well paid for their doing as they were told.

All Europe are basically a US neo-colony now, with the EU government making the decisions national leaders like Orban don't like but can't stop, and legally overruling elections that pick people who won't properly toe the US line.

So the European leaders with real control over their own countries have that control with US help, and always do whatever the US want, even if it is very bad for their country (but it's certainly very good for the leadership of the countries).

So the US neo-Empire now covers much of the globe, with a few obstreperous objections from places like the DPRK, Iran, Russia, and the PRC, but the US figure they can take them all out, preferably using the lives of proxies rather than American lives.

Holodomor???

 There is no question that there was a Holodomor, but there is a big question about, 'What was it???'

I checked Google and Wikipedia, and all the Google sources I found, including Wikipedia, were in complete agreement: it was an attempt by the Russians to commit genocide on the Ukrainians: all the food in the Ukraine was shipped to Russia and there was mass starvation in the Ukraine. Only a few survived, and they all know that Russia want to finish the job, and that is why Putin ordered a totally unprovoked attack on the Ukraine in 2022. The Ukraine and just about all of the EU and NATO agree that the Ukraine is just the start, Putin wants to restore the USSR and the Warsaw Pact with Moscow in full control, but he won't stop there, he'll then add Western Europe.

Of course, if one checks with other search engines, there's the Russian version.

First, start with the old story: 'I was born in Austria, I went to school in Poland, I got my first job in the Soviet Union, and I retired in the Ukraine.'

'You must have done a lot of travelling.'

'I never left the village where I was born.'

The first problem is that, before there was a Poland, there was no Austria, there was the Austrian-Hungarian Empire that covered a lot of southeastern Europe. Then a Serb shot the Archduke of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and Britain, France, and Russia went to war against Germany, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire in WWI.

After the war, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire was broken up into a bunch of small countries, usually with a mixture of people who hated each other so the countries would never be able to agree to go against the UK and France, but would have to do as they were told. Russia lost a big chunk of West Russia to Germany during the war, then, after the UK, France, and the US won the war, that big chunk of West Russia plus a bit more was mostly made part of Poland, and the Ukrainians who hate Russia the most and make the accusations of genocide against the Russians were not in the Ukraine when the Holodomor happened, they were annexed by Stalin and put into the Ukraine during WWII, both those who had been part of the Russian Empire before the war, and many who had been part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire before the war.

The Russian version is that, in 1928, Stalin wanted all agriculture done in the Communist way, which was supposed to greatly increase agricultural production and make food distribution more fair. In fact, the good Communists put in charge of directing all agriculture knew absolutely nothing about agriculture, and agricultural production fell throughout the USSR resulting in the Holodomor, with many starving all over the USSR, not just the Ukraine, and with some of the other Soviet Socialist Republics having a greater per capita death rate than the Ukraine. The Holodomor ended in 1933 with the end of Stalin's First Five Year Plan.

And the Ukraine grew much larger during and after WWII when Stalin added all that the Russian Empire lost after WWI, plus parts of what had been the Austrian-Hungarian Empire before WWI, and parts of what had been Russia, not Ukraine. Khrushchev also added parts of the Soviet Socialist Republic of Russia to the Soviet Socialist Republic of the Ukraine.

From what I've read, almost every available source in English supports the Ukrainian version of the Holodomor, but the historical facts cannot.