Roger Waters – enjoying the outrage

Roger Waters, musician, singer-songwriter, co-founder of Pink Floyd, has been blowing off his mouth about Ukraine blaming “extreme nationalists” there as well as Washington and the west for provoking Putin into “this disastrous war” and then demonizing Russia for doing so. Olena Zelenska, the resident’s wife, put him in his place and Poland has cancelled two of his concerts, declaring him persona non grata.

  He has a track record as a contrarian, criticising a Live Aid-style concert to raise funds for Venezuelan humanitarian aid claiming it was a US-backed effort to tarnish the socialist government at a time the Venezuelan security forces under Maduro were executing dozens of people and arbitrarily detaining hundreds of others. He bounced the other way in lambasting rightwing Brazilian Jair Bolsonaro. Then he supported the Chinese in their attitude to Taiwan saying. “Taiwan is part of China.” He has been accused of antisemitism in his support of the Palestinians. Every US President since Ronald Reagan, including Joe Biden, he has labelled as a war criminal.

 He’s all over the place and driven as much by his visceral dislike of the USA as anything. There is an odd mindset nowadays afflicting those to whom the USA is like a red rag to a bull so they immediately embrace the opposite. Shades of the 1930s – pro-communist because the fascists are unsupportable. With no sense there’s an inbetween.  

  Except he celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall with a huge concert – he’s not exactly consistent.

  He was born 6 September 1943 Cambridge, England, no time sadly, with his father, a Labour Party activist, devout Christian and a Communist Party member killed in the war when he was five months old. At school he was active in Nuclear Disarmament.

  Waters is a Sun Venus in Virgo square an excitable, volatile Mars Uranus in argumentative Gemini which in turn is trine Mercury in Libra, sextile a super-confident Pluto Jupiter in Leo. His Moon is Scorpio or Sagittarius. Tr Neptune is square his Saturn earlier this year in June/July and again throughout 2023 which will be uncertain and marginally panicky, with more confusion in 2024/25. But his Jupiter will keep him afloat and he probably enjoys being in the centre of a ruckus. His Mercury is square his Uranus/Pluto and his Mars/Pluto midpoints for fanatical and extreme thinking and speaking; and his Mercury/Pluto midpoint is square both Mars and Uranus. A diplomat he is not.

   His Saturn is conjunct the USA Mars for a ratchety interface and square the USA Neptune. Even more significantly his Pluto is conjunct the USA leadership North Node so he will be keen to control/dent America’s claim to greatness.

  The Ukraine 22 January 1918 9.54am Kharkov chart is also a bad fit with his Mars Uranus conjunct the Ascendant and his pushily-confident Jupiter Pluto conjunct the Ukraine Neptune Saturn. The Ukraine 1991 chart like the USA has its Mars colliding with his Saturn for a bad-tempered chemistry.

  He sounds like an old-school Corbynite who never quite took on board what Stalin and his successors were really like.

40 thoughts on “Roger Waters – enjoying the outrage

  1. @ Aline,

    You haven’t explained anything. You’re simply regurgitating a bunch of nonsense. You have yet to elaborate as to why you think the Russian Federation and Vladimir Putin are being unjustly “demonized” and why you think Zelenskyy, Biden, Blinken are the perpetrators.

  2. Who is the greater demon? The demoniser or the demonised, for when the demonised becomes demonstrably demonic the domoniser cries foul and this is repeated by it`s minions and the response is catastrophic for all involved.

  3. @ Aline,

    Your rant on this thread only confirms to me that you are not as informed about geopolitics as you think you are. Much of your erroneous narratives echoes that of the MAGA Donald Trump supporters you’ll find here in the U.S. or the fanatical Hindutva Modi supporters you’ll find in India.

    The war in Ukraine isn’t simply a “proxy war” between the West and the Russian Federation, it’s about self-defense. Do you really have the audacity to suggest the Ukrainian people should just step aside and allow a foreign, monstrosity of a nation to take over THEIR country? Should the Ukrainian people (especially women and children) allow themselves to be subjugated to mass rape, torture, and murder?

    One Ukrainian journalist asked a very logical question recently: she said every foreigner who has suggested that Ukraine relinquish territory to the aggressor to put themselves in the the Ukrainian peoples’ shoes. Ask yourselves: if someone came into your house and told you they were going to take 2 or 3 rooms and leave you with what they think you should be left with, would that be “ok” with you? Would you submit to that?

    Anyway, I’ve noticed that all of the links you’ve posted in this thread (as a means to try and defend your ridiculous argument) come from off-the-wall websites that are not reputable in any way. Are these REALLY your sources of information, Aline? If so, you may want to reconsider looking for new ones.

    Also, you mentioned BRICS (Brazil, Russian Federation, India, China, and South Africa). I find it ironic that you had the nerve to suggest the U.S. Dollar is being used to “blackmail” countries into supporting U.S. interests, YET you don’t see how BRICS has been more instrumental in that department?

    For example, I have friends living and working in Latin America and Africa who affiliated with environmental conservation organizations. They’re on the ground and they actually see the devastating affects China’s involvement has had in these nations. China has invested heavily in almost every single African nation and they’ve also invested heavily in the Caribbean and Latin America as well. All of these nations are in debt to China…and China has been able to exploit natural resources and exotic animals (for the use of Traditional Chinese Medicine – which is a major lucrative enterprise that brings in a lot of money) from these nations. One of my conservationist friends also informed me that China has made it where nations that are unable to pay off their debts have had to turn over their ports or other properties to China as collateral (this was the case with an airport in Uganda last year).

    Then there is the Russian Federation. Though the Russian Federation isn’t a global superpower like China, they have been the largest arms suppliers to Africa. This is one of the main reasons why many African nations have been such ardent supporters of Putin and the Russian Federation.

    According to CNN, the Russian Federation has been exploiting Africa by raiding many of the gold mines there and that has actually been funding their war with Ukraine.

    So, don’t you think it’s a bit hypocritical for you to excoriate the United States (and I’m not suggesting U.S. foreign policy has an excellent track record by any stretch) yet give the Russian Federation a pass for wars, imperialistic actions, and corruption they’ve been responsible for?

    FYI, the Russian Federation is just as much of a “Western nation” as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., the EU nations, etc. – even my Russian friends will attest to that. The only difference is mentality: Putin is a relic of the past who clings to czarist nostalgia.

    I’m not at all surprised by the far-right people supporting Vladimir Putin; he’s basically a White supremacist (notice how reputable news sources have noted that many of the Russian men who’ve been conscripted are coming from one of the Russian Federation’s many Turkic, Caucasus, or Mongol ethnic minorities like the Tatars, Chuvash, Buryat, Chechens, Ingush, Tuvans, etc. rather than the Slavs?) and he’s been carrying out much of the agenda that White nationalists and White supremacists love.

    However, I am perplexed by the some of the far-left who support Vladimir Putin – he goes against everything they claim to be opposed to (he’s an imperialist, he’s a racist, he’s a capitalist [on steroids], and he’s an autocrat). It tells me the far-left can be just idiotic and ill-informed as the far-right.

    • Very well said, Chris.

      As you say, hardly surprising that the supremacist far-right admire Putin. As for the far-left, it has always supported dodgy regimes in a childish ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ kind of a way, for example it supported the Iranian Revolution and subsequent hardline theocracy and assault on human rights. Extremists behave like extremists be they left, right, religious or ideological.

  4. Thank you Marjorie for writing about this.

    My Mother is a huge Pink Floyd fan. She’s a graduate of art college (Memphis College of Arts) and she and all her friends listened to Pink Floyd back in the late 70s and early 80s religiously – it was the norm in her circle. When I brought up the controversy regarding Roger Waters, I knew she was going to defend him in some way (even though she’s also strong Ukraine supporter like myself). She said she didn’t agree with Waters and his conspiracy theories about Ukraine (Waters accused Ukraine’s militias of being ultra-ethnonationalists) and his defense of the Russian Federation….but she thinks he’s just distraught because he’s a total pacifist and finds war and social injustice of any kind disturbing. I decided not to press the topic any further – she’s much too loyal of a Pink Floyd fan to be swayed into condemning Waters or any of the other band members.

    I was pleased, however, to discover that all of the other Pink Floyd band members disagree with Roger Waters and his wannabe virtuous “white savior” mentality. And all of the other Pink Floyd members have been very supportive of Ukraine and the Ukrainian people – and none of them are making any excuses for Vladimir Putin whatsoever.

    I read that “open letter” that Roger Waters sent to Ukraine’s First Lady Oleana Zelenska. I can’t believe he had the audacity to try and lecture her (and her husband) on ethics. His letter to her was condescending and full of platitudes and subliminal criticisms of her, her husband, the Ukrainian govt., and the Ukrainian military.

    My blood was boiling after reading that letter – Roger Waters really succeeded in bringing out my fiery Iberian/Latin/Mediterranean temper (which ain’t pretty) and I felt like going all out “Conquistador” mode in that moment. LoL

    Anyway, I also read Zelenska’s response to Waters and she rightfully put Waters in his place. And once my feelings of rage and subsided, I decided to go to Roger Waters’ official Twitter page and excoriate him as well.

    On his official Twitter page, I called out Roger Waters for being a hypocrite. I know that he’s an ardent supporter of Palestinian self-determination and independence…..yet, he doesn’t appear to support Ukraine’s self-determination and independence.

    I tweeted out that if he thinks Ukraine should “surrender” (has has openly called for this) to their oppressor, then perhaps Palestine should also “surrender” to their oppressor as well. After all, there are many parallels between the Palestinians and the Ukrainians: both are persecuted peoples, both are defending themselves against violent perpetrators, and both are being denied their sovereignty.

    Anyway, it’s obvious that I cannot stand Roger Waters (or people like him), but I often find myself having to separate the “artist” from the “person” when it comes to books, music, films, and art I enjoy. I’ve never been a hardcore fan of Pink Floyd (like my Mother), but I do like some of their music and I will continue to listen to the songs I like. I’m just very happy to know that Waters’s opinion isn’t necessarily reflective of the entire group.

  5. Roger is like people I have known all my life. He is about 10 years older than me. The USA can never do right in their opinion and it is always in the wrong. It used to be said often at parties I attended in the seventies. He won’t change. I think he should have left Olena out of it, she is not a politician and I think carries enormous stress.

  6. It seems to me that part of the problem is that we live in an environment where there is a binary approach to every conceivable topic, them and us, and it is a tactic that has worked superbly for the elites, inequality has been rising almost everywhere because the choice of approaches is limited to only two options. It is becoming clear that societies need to come with different ways of doing things, neither the harsh right wing capitalism of the last 40 years nor the dark ways of a handful of oligarchs is delivering benefits for the wider population, I am not entirely sure that Pluto entering Aquarius will be useful unless the electorates see through the machinations, the clearing out of those Augean stables will be a formidable task for the younger generations.
    By the way I think we should allow every conceivable opinion, so long as it is put across politely, you never know someone, somewhere, may come up with good ideas.

    • Agreed – up to a point.
      “THE GREATEST LESSON IN LIFE IS TO KNOW THAT EVEN FOOLS ARE RIGHT SOMETIMES.” (WINSTON CHURCHILL)

      Keep an open mind but not so open your brain erodes. Being bombarded with fake info or paranoid delusions gets seriously disturbing.

    • He was a former Foreign Minister and I’ve no idea how much of an oddball he is/was. He was exposed as an informant for Securitate, the secret police of the Socialist Republic of Romania.
      I’d prefer to leave it to Solaia who is closer to the line and the bullets and bodies on the ground. She’ll be better informed. He could just be one of Putin’s useful idiots.

        • @Nicole, thank you! As for astrological knowledge, I try to keep it compact. One of the things I do are Solar Returns. Obviously, these are very personal. I have one coming this weekend, and I remember looking at this chart years ago and thinking it looked intense to say the least. And the situation certainly there for all middegree Librans.

  7. https://dailytelegraph.co.nz/world/romanian-ex-fm-calls-for-ukraine-to-be-brokenup/

    This link was just given to me s few minutes ago.
    It might be a far right ” rag” publishing. I am not a “connaisseur” of rags, left, center or right, so i cannot judge. Still interesting article – even rags can sometime publish pearls of wisdom -as it is somebody speaking that have an inside knowledge of all the intricaties of eastern europe ; that i have not.
    And also the readers comments, scroll 10 inches down are also interesting

    • I can’t find it on that URL and other reputable websites suggest the Romanian PM is calling on Russia to stop it aggression and withdraw which hardly squares.

  8. Living in the post-truth era makes armchair debates even more intractable than they were in the past.

    Take Roger Waters stated view that there were no chemical bomb attacks in Syria by Assad/Putin. They were, according to him, fake events brewed up by the White Helmets, a humanitarian organisation, to pull the west into the civil war.

    “That claim, which has been repeatedly debunked, was instantly applauded and spread by the same crowd of pro-Russia voices on the far left and far right who have served so dutifully as Assad’s online cheerleaders. To them, Waters was a hero for daring to speak an unpopular truth. For everyone else, a once admired musician had joined the ranks of conspiracist cranks and apologists for a murderous dictator.

    Remember, these voices are not simply saying western air strikes were the wrong response to the killings in Douma. They are saying there were no killings in Douma. Or there were, but they didn’t involve chemical weapons. Or they did, but rebel groups were responsible. Or the whole thing was staged by Britain. The line changes with dizzying frequency.

    In a twisted kind of logic, Waters assumes that acknowledging Assad and Russia’s crimes in the Syrian civil war inevitably means expressing support for terrorists or encouraging western coalitions to drop bombs on civilians.”

    I despair of the world – a mish mash of paranoia, conspiracy theories, an inability to face unpleasant AND complex truths. In the maturing process the toddler should move away from a simplistic good and bad view of the world and people. The USA is bad so Russia must be good – is a dumb way of forming opinions about what is going on.

    The URL below from LewRockwell with right-wing David Stockman’s piece appears to blame the economic malaise in Europe including UK as a result of not cosying up to Putin over energy. And the mish mash of Ukrainian history left me no better informed. But a neighbour crashing across its borders with tanks and guns might suggest a less than civilized approach that demands international condemnation.

    • A bit after my time. I remember the Everley Brothers and even Bill Haley for heaven’s sake. Pink Floyd were a nouvelle vague that I never quite caught up with.

    • They were a big Rick band in the late ’60s and ’70s. I remember it was a big deal when they played at my fresher dance at now-disappeared Bedford College (merged with Royal Holloway and moved to Egham, Surrey) in Regent’s Park in ’68.

  9. Waters reminds me of other crazy old men like Piers Corbyn, another Uranus in Gemini which in his case makes a fanatical square with his Sun/Mercury in Pisces. Or John Pilger who believes in the same conspiracy theory and sees Putin as a victim (T square on Saturn in late Aries with Mars in Aquarius opposing Pluto in Leo). Waters also supported Assad in Syria, alleging that the White Helmets were liars. He’s just awful.

  10. Nothing to say about Waters, but that he is a sad, old man.

    But I think the first wave of Russians escaping mobilization has hit my neighborhood. We are not in league with Tbilisi, with just under 10 k crossings and surprisingly many returns a week. But I just stood on traffic lights with TWO separate young, very hipstery looking couples speaking Russian. Guys in their 20’s who look just like my developer friends, 10-15 years older, owning “The Dark Side of the Moon” in vinyl.

  11. Aline, your comment is emblematic of the knee-jerk anti-Americanism that Roger Waters exhibits. As an American, I can agree that the U.S. has a lot of things to answer for, but this war isn’t one of them. In fact, the U.S. government warned Ukraine (and the world) in advance that Putin was angling for war, and released intelligence information to that effect so Putin wouldn’t have the element of suprise on his side; and yet, you somehow manage to twist those easily verifiable facts into “U.S. politicians wanted this war.” It would be funny if it weren’t so depressing. Surely you don’t believe that if everyone had appeased Putin and pretended nothing was wrong, he would have turned back from his invasion plans? And even if the Ukrainians had simply rolled over, there would still be a refugee crisis, with the added wrinkle that Putin would take their acquiescence as a signal that he should continue his roll farther into Europe.

    Like all decent people, I am so, so sorry for what Europe, Ukraine, and the entire world are suffering because of Putin’s megalomania, but it is not, in fact, the fault of the U.S. (unless you can, as I do, place partial blame on the Obama administration for its passivity in the face of Putin’s invasion of Crimea in 2014; Obama’s non-action helped convince Putin he could invade his neighbors without consequence).

    Try this thought experiment: ask yourself, as a European, just how secure your continent would have been if the awful old U.S.A. hadn’t been supporting NATO in the years since World War II (the maladministration of that ignoramus Trump notwithstanding)? Do you think the British, valiant as they are, could have defended Europe all by themselves? Would the Germans really have stuck their necks out to save your bacon from the Soviets and their successors? What about the French? Did the rest of the EU have the collective strength (and the collective will) to ensure that Western Europe remained relatively free from totalitarianism? If you think the answer to any of those questions is “Yes,” you’re delusional.

    Yes, it’s true, America the geopolitical actor can be, and has been, awful. Many Americans think so, too, and are furthermore quite weary of America’s post-WWII role as “the world’s policeman.”

    And yet, if you think we’re bad, consider the alternative. If we’re gone, someone will rush in to fill the power vacuum, because that’s what power-hungry governments run by power-hungry men inevitably do; do you really want it to be the people who are currently running Russia or China, and their client states?

    • Thank you, Ali22, couldn’t agree more about most things. As a Finn, it has also been particularly frustrating to hear “tankies” who’ve mostly lived all their lives under NATO nuclear umbrella to make this about Ukrainians provoking Putin. As if they didn’t know what happened to Hungarians in 1956, Czechs and Slovaks in 1968 and then, partially self imposed, to Poles in 1981 (just saw a documentary on Intervision Song Contest that took place Sopot, a seaside resort near Gdansk, in 1980 where many interviewees told how Soviet missiles were pointed to their ally), Soviet “allies” showing minimum of free thinking, while they’ve always been justly able to protest the US all they want (I protested in 2003, in Italy).

      One thing I have to comment on are Obama Administration not responding to Occupation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 efficiently enough. Because I think that again, the US did well under circumstances, most important being that Ukrainian democracy was all but solid, with politicians more than ready to flip for some gas money. This situation is, in fact, well presented in sitcom that made Zelinskii president. Also, the US did impose some very well aimed sanctions, that I’ve heard from people with knowledge on affairs of Putin’s ex-bestie Gennady Timchenko, most likely hit Putin directly. Putin would not have felt the need to meddle with US 2016 elections if this hadn’t been the case. But the fact is, Russian economy still hadn’t fully recovered from the hit it took in 2014, when the pandemic hit in 2020.

      If Russia was able to build some military capacities from 2014 on it was, again, I’m afraid to say, mainly thanks to European greediness. For instance, Finnish partially state owned energy company Fortum took a major hit as an owner of German gas company Uniper, besides their own Russia trading, of which they bought shares of in 2017, and needs to be bailed out. And through this, the CEO had audacity to say that risks on Russian gas trade were not visible in 2017! I can’t say I was personally paying much attention to this deal, but I remember being completely aware of risk of a Russian company Rosatom winning a precontract for a nuclear plan project in Finland, or Nordstream2 route running close strategic sea routes in Baltic Region.

  12. Marjory,
    There is quite a difference between governments and population.
    As for european mainstream media, most have become tools of propaganda .
    Nobody will deny that the ukrainian population is suffering immensely. And that in Ukraine there are also young men and women, not able to leave the country, enrolled by force to go to war.
    When you want to extinguish a fire, you don “t put fuel on it.
    ” Le responsable de la guerre n’ est pas celui qui la commence, mais celui qui la provoque” Montesquieu ( 17/18th century).

    US politicians wanted this war .
    I insist on politicians and not population that is very often ill informed.
    Everybody that has a little brain and enough ressources to do research on the subject knows the role of the USA( or the WASP )in this war that is going not only to ruin Ukraine , but also the UK and Europe. And any journalist worth its salts knows it.
    The USA governments have only been great since WOII in war mongering.
    American population suffers just as well. There is always enough money for weapons, never to improve the lives of million american poors

    • @Aline, are you Ukrainian, or otherwise living close enough for a Russian conventional mortar fire hitting your home? If not, please abstain from commenting here. There is also such a thing as Russian Imperialism, never dismantled, and currently affecting both their neighboring non-Russian people, as well as those non-Russians inside boarders. Just look at Daghestani and Sakha women protesting – it’s their youth (and not) that’s taken to die for Russia with mobilization first. And it’s only now World at large seems to take some notice.

      • I don’t understand your
        “are you Ukrainian, or otherwise living close enough for a Russian conventional mortar fire hitting your home ? If not, please abstain from commenting here.”
        Surely you are not suggesting only Ukrainians and Russia’s neighbours are allowed to comment on this forum ?

        Courtesy and tolerance, Jupiterian qualities, are what we expect in a democratic society.
        Intolerance and the shutting down of different viewpoints, Mars/Saturn I would think, are what we see in authoritarian and totalitarian states.

          • Mercury Pluto – I think those living close to the firing line might be forgiven for getting aggravated by those who underplay the risks of living with a Russian grizzly for a neighbour. Or try to whitewash Putin in their rush to condemn unnamed war-mongering Americans.

          • Thank you Marjorie, I agree about forgiveness always, but is Aline whitewashing Putin ? Or is she putting the blame equally on the US ? I am not saying she is right or wrong, I don’t know, but just say for argument’s sake she is right, that would mean Zelensky and the Ukrainians are trapped between a rock and a hard place, that the invasion by Putin is being made use of by the US for their own reasons.
            Aline might be right.

    • @Aline: “US politicians wanted this war.” What complete and utter rubbish. America has huge problems as you rightly note and Biden entered office with the idea of trying to tackle some of them but then came along the only politician in the world that wanted this war: Putin. And even he miscalculated, thought it would be over with the assassination of Zelensky and his family and the installation of a ‘Putin-friendly regime’. You fall into the same mind trap as Mr Waters, thinking that everything that’s wrong with the world is the fault of the US: crossed purposes. More in depth research, perhaps?

    • Well this is an excellent example of Russian gaslighting. Putin has a long history of war crimes. He bombed civilians in Aleppo, Homs, Grozny as well as Ukraine. No ethical person can justify Putin genocidal behavior.

      • @ Patrick,

        Exactly! Let’s remember that the Russian Federation has a similar history to the U.S. (if we really want to go there) and for anyone to excuse Putin’s behavior is obviously ill-informed.

    • As an American ( and US Navy veteran ) I agree with your comments regarding US imperialism, and warmongering in the post WWII era. Anyone familiar with history is aware of the role played by US government officials, and the CIA in creating political instability leading to coups everywhere from Iran (1953), to Chile (1973), to the 2014 “regime change” in Ukraine orchestrated by Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, US Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt, then Vice President Joe Biden, et al. This, despite the fact that every prominent geopolitical analyst from Kissinger to Mearscheimer has been warning against NATO expansion / US interference in Ukraine for decades. However, now it appears that “America’s chickens are coming home to roost”, with the Pluto return, so this operation isn’t likely to follow the usual script. Not to mention that most Americans are done with our tax dollars being used to support foreign entanglements which benefit only war profiteers, and corrupt politicians like Joe Biden, GWB, and Dick Cheney, who continue to ignore the plight of the poor, the growing homeless population, crumbling infrastructure, disparity in the criminal justice system, etc.
      That said, I’ve always been a fan of Roger Waters on every level, so all politics aside, thank you to Marjorie for featuring him in today’s news.

      https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957

      • Raina, yours is the most informed and truthful comment I feel.
        For Imperialism think money. Money is the absolute power in our world, our late Queens funeral was a big case in point. Money thrown at it, tv and radio and newspapers brainwashing the public whilst the food banks were closed. To me that was the most disgusting thing of all.
        Having been immensely poor in my life I can say that waking everyday for the poverty stricken is just another brick in the wall.
        All wars are created by the money hungry elite governments in the West. Just my opinion, however, the Tories just proved it with their fiscal statement in UK. People having to ask (nicely)for basic assistance.
        Re. Astrology it all seems written.

      • Yes raina, i totally agree with you. The world order as we have known it is disappearing fast. Thanks to the war in Ukraine. The BRICS have met and if they succeed, the power of the dollar used by the US to blackmail countries into complying to their own interests or ” wishes”could also be really at risk. A very dangerous situation for the USA that are already financially broke. As the saying goes, what goes around comes around

        • @ Aline,

          the U.S. isn’t financially broke dear. It’s the Russian Economy that’s in shambles. According to The Wall Street Journal and Fortune, it’s now projected Russia’s economy (which had been somewhat resilient for awhile) will collapse by December.

          It would behoove you get your facts straight. You’ve already posted enough misinformation on this thread that I (along with others) have had to debunk.

      • @ Raina,

        This war in Ukraine isn’t really about “NATO expansion.” Ukraine may have expressed an interest in joining NATO but that wasn’t in any way foreseeable in the near future – given the stipulations that NATO has put in place. To begin with, NATO doesn’t allow any nation to join when there are territorial disputes in place (Crimea is being OCCUPIED by the Russian Federation and the Donbass is another disputed region). Also, Putin’s plan to weaken NATO only backfired: Finland and Sweden are slated to join by the end of the year (Turkey will likely retract her opposition in the end).

        I’m also an American and my Father is a retired U.S. Naval Officer. Frankly, I don’t care if Americans are bothered by their “tax dollars” going to Ukraine to help the Ukrainian people defend themselves against a monstrosity of a nation like the Russian Federation. Tough, deal with it. Ukraine has every right to collect on the promises the U.S. (and the EU) has made to them. After all, Ukraine probably wouldn’t be in this predicament had they not been encouraged to give up their nuclear weapons arsenals in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

        And for the record, President Joe Biden is not a “corrupt politician.” It’s not as if he encouraged this war. If anything, he tried to deescalate the situation with diplomacy – Vladimir Putin (who you are subliminally defending) was having none of it.

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