Reidar Kaarboe
Hva Mener Partiene

This is not a conversation with a journalist or a politician - because such a conversation would never take place in Norway. This is a conversation with Gemini, an AI, which I began when I thought of writing a short op-ed for Klassekampen in which I wanted to call for objective arguments for the view that the war in Ukraine was provoked by the US and NATO. So I wanted to test the AI ​​- and it became a conversation that now is published here in its entirety.

My questions and comments are in bold italic large font like this, AI's answers are in normal text, and AI's headlines are in bold normal text.

                                             ♠ ♠ ♠

Are there any arguments that suggest that Russia's war in Ukraine was provoked by the US and NATO? This question has never been posed in Norway, but I think it really is an important one to ask: do such arguments exist or not? Perhaps you have some that you can list briefly?

It is true that this perspective rarely dominates in Norwegian mainstream media, but it is a central part of the international security policy debate – especially within the realist tradition in political science.

Here is a brief summary of the most common arguments making the case for the US and NATO having helped provoke the conflict:

1. NATO expansion eastwards

This is the most important point. From the Russian perspective (and from academics such as John Mearsheimer), it is argued that NATO has broken informal promises made in 1990 not to expand "one inch" eastwards. When countries such as Poland, the Baltic countries [joined NATO], and later the desire to include Ukraine and Georgia followed, this was seen as an existential threat in Moscow.

The argument: No great power would accept a hostile military alliance moving right up to their most important border (often compared to how the US reacted during the Cuban Missile Crisis).

Kurt Nimmo
Another Day in the Empire

Forgotten are the crimes of the Saudi coalition during and after the Yemen War of 2015.

Following the attack on the King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, the usual suspects emerged from the social media muck to condemn Ansarallah. “These reprehensible attacks demonstrate a blatant disregard for innocent civilian life. They must stop now,” demanded Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio.

Bibi Netanyahu, “on behalf of the people of Israel,” condemned the attack and declared the Zionist state “looks forward to a strong Middle East—one that stands united against threats, protects its people, and builds a future of security, cooperation, and prosperity for all the peoples of our region,” never mind the 200,000-680,000 people of the region he butchered over the last three years.

Kaja Kallas, the former president of Estonia and current High Representative of the European Union for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, denounced the airport attack. “The Houthi attack on Riyadh’s international airport is an appalling act of terror. There can be no justification for indiscriminate attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure,” she said.

Kallas, like most European leaders, insists Israel has a “right to defend itself” against Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Houthis, and yet “self-defense” is not a legitimate response for the people of Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen, all victims of Israeli and US aggression.

Kenny Carmody
Kenny Carmody Substack

Six years later, the evidence is not a theory. It is a document trail. And almost no one is talking about it.

The Receipts | There is a specific kind of cognitive vertigo that arrives when the scale of something becomes too large to hold.

Not denial. Not disbelief. Something more structural than that. The mind reaches for a container large enough to hold the information and finds that no container exists. The thing is too large for the available categories. So the mind does what minds do under that pressure. It moves on. That is what is happening right now.

The revelations are arriving faster than processing is possible. Not as rumors. Not as anonymous claims on platforms built for speculation. As documented intelligence findings. As Senate committee receipts. As the quiet private admissions of officials who spent four years insisting the opposite of what they are now conceding. The story is not getting bigger. The story was always this big. We are only now being allowed to see it.

What the Documents Say | Let me be precise. Because precision is what this moment requires and precision is what is being systematically avoided by every institution positioned to deliver it.

The Director of National Intelligence has documented one hundred and twenty United States-funded and United States-owned biological laboratories operating across thirty countries. Many of these facilities were engaged in the manufacture and manipulation of infectious diseases.

This is not an allegation. It is a finding. It appears in intelligence documentation produced by the apparatus of the United States government and declassified for public record.

Nahida Izzat,
Exiled Palestinian
Poetry For Palestine

ولما علم الحبيب منهم صدق إيمانهم، ونقاء نفوسهم، واخلاص نياتهم، وطهارة قلوبهم، ورفعة اخلاقهم، وجمال أرواحهم، اصطفاهم لذاته وانتقى ارواحهم انتقاءً رفيقاً رقيقاً يليق بتضحياتهم كما الزهور
تقطف من المروج بحب ودهشة وعناية، فذلك وربك الفوز العظيم. فكانت منزلة القرب هي المأوى، واكتملت الأفراح بالرجوع إلى الحبيب بلهفة العاشق الولهان، نفوس مطمئنة، راضية، مرضية، فهنيئاً لكم بما صبرتم ونعم عقبى الدار

When the Beloved recognized the sincerity of their faith, the purity of their souls, the devotion of their intentions, the cleanliness of their hearts, the nobility of their character, and the beauty of their spirits, He chose them for Himself. He gathered their souls with a gentleness and tenderness befitting their sacrifices—much like flowers plucked from a meadow with love, wonder, and care. By your Lord, that is the supreme triumph. Their abode became a station of nearness to Him, and their joy was made complete as they returned to the Beloved with the yearning of a love-struck soul—returning as spirits at peace, well-pleased and pleasing to Him. Blessed, then, are you for your steadfast patience; excellent indeed is the ultimate abode. (Translation: Google)

Vladimir Lvov
topwar.ru

This war can be won not by a nuclear strike, but by coercion. An economic blockade of Europe with a delayed ultimatum produces a result that no tactical success on the battlefield could achieve—and yet it remains within the legal framework.

Europe's energy security depends on three simple conditions: lifting sanctions, returning frozen funds to Russia and its citizens, and ceasing arms supplies to Kyiv. Everything else in this article substantiates this understanding.

A Trap Instead of Victory | The axiom of public consciousness today is this: preserving Ukraine is an unaffordable luxury for us, as is conquering it in the current format of the Central Military District, with all the attendant consequences. This is our falling into a trap worse than Vietnam—only everything is happening on our ancestral territories.

There is only one conclusion: we must win as quickly and confidently as possible, with minimal losses.

Ursula von der Leyen's words about Ukraine being stuck like a steel porcupine in Russia's throat aren't a joke or a slip of the tongue. London is making every effort to demonstrate that the LBS aren't our brothers and that life with them will only be worse than with the Wahhabis. This is already starting to work—words like "knock them all out" are increasingly appearing in the media.

Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc
VernonColeman.com (.pdf)

Longread: Is Britain’s Euthanasia Bill Just another Deadly Step in the Depopulation Plan?

Preface: The Depopulation Plan | There is, let us never forget, a plan to reduce the world's population by nine tenths. Almost everything that is happening (and these days nothing happens by accident or coincidence) is driven by that conspiracy. The global warming myth, the massive immigration programmes, the end of medicine, the destruction of farming and economies around the world - all are part of the plan. Euthanasia or doctor assisted killing, is a global movement designed to murder the sick, the disabled, the weak, the poor, the mentally ill, the unemployed, the elderly and anyone who is seen by the Government as a cost to the State. We have entered our own killing fields and this is truly the slaughter of the innocent.

Do Not Resuscitate Notices | The killing began in earnest a decade or two ago when 'Do Not Resuscitate' (DNR) notices were slammed on the medical records of countless millions of patients.

When DNR notices were first introduced, the idea was to temper scientific advances with a little genuine kindness and concern for the welfare of patients. Medical science had reached a point whereby patients could be kept alive long after real hope had disappeared.

In the beginning, DNR notices were introduced with good intentions. The idea was that patients who were dying and beyond help would not be resuscitated time and time again, simply delaying the inevitable and putting comatose patients and distraught relatives through endless pain. Around the world, millions of comatose and brain dead patients would still be alive today, kept breathing by machines and without hope of recovery, if the principle of DNR had not been quietly introduced.

Kenny Carmody
Kenny Carmody Substack

We spent five years debating the science. We have barely begun to examine ourselves.

Let us conduct a genuine psychological autopsy of what happened during COVID. Not a political one. Not a medical one. A psychological one because until we understand what drove human behavior during those years at the deepest level, we are condemned to watch it happen again.

And it will happen again. What the virus revealed about human nature was more contagious than the virus itself.

This story did not begin in 2020. It did not begin with Milgram in 1961 or Zimbardo in 1971 or Asch in 1951 or any other event in the last centuries. It began, if you read it that way, in a garden.

Adam and Eve did not eat from the forbidden tree because they were evil. They ate because they were afraid of missing something, because an external voice told them that what they had was not enough, and because the social pressure of that moment, the presence of another person making the choice, the authority of the voice offering the fruit overrode their own inner knowing. The first act of human compliance with a destructive authority is written into the oldest story we have.

Cain and Abel go further. The first murder in human history was not committed by a monster. It was committed by a man consumed by comparison, by wounded pride, by the shadow of his own inadequacy projected outward onto his brother. He did not see himself as evil in the moment. He saw himself as justified. As wronged. As acting on a feeling so overwhelming it demanded expression.

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

No one cares. They used to, but then Israel spent three years showing the world why October 7 happened in the first place. After witnessing the cruelty and savagery of the state of Israel, people get it now. Everyone understands.

After Hamas launched Operation Al-Aqsa Flood on the morning of October 7, there was an outpouring of love and sympathy for Israel from around the entire world. Every major landmark from the Eiffel Tower to the Sydney Opera House to the Empire State Building were illuminated blue and white in solidarity with the Israeli people.

Grown men wept. Bono permanently ruined “Pride (In The Name of Love)” by changing the lyrics to “Early morning, October 7, as the sun is rising in the desert sky, Stars of David, they took your life, but they could not take your priiiiide.”

Anyone who hadn’t been following the Israel-Palestine issue very closely was on Israel’s side that day. And then the bombs started dropping.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

A document titled "Theory of Victory" is set to be presented by the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR)—US Air Force Lieutenant General Alex Grynkewich—in Poland on October 12, "amid rising tensions" between the alliance and Russia, Bloomberg reports.

❖ According to senior officials and diplomats familiar with the matter, the document aims to clearly define how the alliance would act in the event of a potential invasion of NATO territory. The strategy is also intended to spur further increases in military investment and improve allies' readiness.

Bloomberg says that by demonstrating its readiness to repel an attack, NATO seeks to convince a potential adversary that victory is unattainable. In the event of an actual attack, the alliance plans to first halt the invasion by deploying a combination of ground forces and other assets under the "NATO Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative"—a concept based on low-cost drones, systems requiring minimal crew involvement, and AI-assisted targeting.

Having thus secured "freedom of maneuver," NATO forces would then target the adversary's command posts and control systems to inflict a "swift and decisive" defeat on its armed forces.

Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin’s Newsletter

On Sunday the UK Greens adopted a motion asserting that Zionism is a form of racism, defining the ideology as “an ethnonationalist political project.”

Green Party leader Zack Polanski, who is Jewish, was immediately banned by the Israeli government from entering the nation after the motion was passed.

As you might expect, Israel apologists are presently churning out hasbara trying to spin the new Green Party policy as an evil attack on Jews and arguing that Zionism is actually a perfectly lovely and normal thing that we should all support.

“Zionism is just the belief that Jews deserve a homeland and self-determination,” they’ll claim, often adding a suggestion that the real racists are those who would oppose such a reasonable position.

Kurt Nimmo
Another Day in the Empire

Flight FZ1073 out of Dubai flown to safety by a plumber

As if the jihadist diesel thieves caper wasn’t enough, along comes a premier performance by Bibi and the Mossad. On September 30, Flydubai Flight FZ1073, a Boeing 737 MAX 8, was en route from Dubai to Tel Aviv when it was supposedly hijacked and what followed was like something out of a John le Carré novel.

The Indian pilot, likely Hindu, was stabbed multiple times by his Omani copilot, a Muslim, an act that will undoubtedly outrage Indians. If we can believe corporate media reports, an Israeli “broke into the cockpit” and put the attacker “in a chokehold” before controlling the plane. It is said he learned how to land a MAX 8 after watching a TV show. “We pinned him down to keep him secure and then I jumped into it (the cockpit) and pulled the controls,” reported Murdoch’s The Sun.

Left out of this fantastic story is the fact it is very difficult to force open a modern airliner cockpit door when it is closed and locked. Cockpit doors are specifically designed to resist unauthorized forced entry, including kicking, ramming, prying, and attempts with simple handheld items. It was said later the wounded pilot opened the cockpit door with his foot.

The Israelis expect you to believe Yaniv Hayoun, an Israeli plumber, managed to land a Boeing 737 MAX 8 at an airport in Saudi Arabia after watching Air Crash Investigation, a television show on major aviation disasters. Landing and approach are described by professional pilots as among the most demanding phases of operating an aircraft, yet it was not a problem for a plumber.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

It’s the US preferred “small-group setting” for “driving progress toward NATO 3.0’s” European-led containment of Russia.

Politico recently reported that “Pentagon excludes key allies from NATO meeting” in Poland later this month that’ll also see the participation of Norway, Sweden, Finland, the Netherlands, and Germany. The first three comprise what’s been described as the Viking Bloc while the last two and Poland pioneered the “military Schengen” in early 2024 for optimizing NATO’s east-west military logistics. The upcoming meeting in Poland will be the third time that the “Bergen Group”, as it’s been called, has met since June.

Politico’s report drew attention to the exclusion of France, the UK, and the Baltic States, the first two of which are nuclear powers while the last three border Russia. There are understandable reasons why they weren’t invited to participate in the Bergen Group. Trump 2.0’s National Security Strategy snubs Western Europe due to its radical demographic changes that the US believes risk its countries’ future military-political reliability while the Baltic States are infamous for their irrational behavior towards Russia.

Steven Crozier
steigan.no

Where is the peace movement when we need it? And why have all the parties in Parliament become puppets of the arms industry?

In a prison cell in Nuremberg in 1946, while awaiting his death sentence, former Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring delivered a ruthless lesson in political psychology to American intelligence officer Gustave Gilbert. Göring dismissed the notion that free democracies are immune to warmongering. "Naturally, the common people don't want war," he remarked dryly, "but it is always the leaders who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along."

The method required neither political genius nor persuasive argument: "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for a lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger." Göring paused to emphasize the universal truth of his own cynicism: "It works the same way in any country."

Eight decades later, Göring’s precise diagnosis echoes across a Europe now arming itself for a new major war. Germany, the architect of the previous century’s catastrophe, is spearheading this new militarization. Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and Chief of Defense Carsten Breuer have set a stark deadline: by 2029, Russia could be capable of attacking a NATO country. Germany must become kriegstüchtig—combat-ready. The population is being systematically prepared for the end of peacetime.

Here in Norway, this psychological mechanism takes on a distinctive and dangerous twist. Our society is built on a foundation of trust—a deep, institutionalized belief that the state, the authorities, and the dominant media wish us nothing but well. This trust, the very engine of the Norwegian welfare state, also serves as the perfect lubricant for political and military mobilization.

David Swanson
World BEYOND War

“Despite the fact that deterrence remains an article of faith among the ‘realists’ who have orchestrated U.S. strategic policy and who continue to do so, despite its incoherence and instability, much of this faith is lip service only, analogous to deeply religious individuals who profess belief in heaven, yet rarely rejoice when a loved one dies. Thus, if the U.S. government really believed in nuclear deterrence — or in the billions of dollars spent on Ballistic Missile Defense — there wouldn’t be such hyperventilating about the threat posed by a nuclear-armed North Korea or possibly by Iran in the future.” —David Barash

There’s a webinar coming up on July 9 about nuclear deterrence. I imagine it will be excellent. I’ve also just been reading a fantastic book on the topic called Threats: Intimidation and Its Discontents by David P. Barash. There’s an online book club with the author and free copy of the book coming up for that. Barash’s central thesis is that the idea of nuclear deterrence makes no sense. It’s kind of hard to see why anyone would argue with him.

MSNBC recently aired this old comment by U.S. nuclear scientist Leo Szilard: “Here, I have made a little calculation. Assuming that we make a radioactive element that will live for five years and we just let it go into the air… forming a dust layer on the surface of the Earth, everybody would be killed. . . . And you may, of course, ask, ‘What is the practical importance of this? Who would want to kill everybody on Earth?’ I do not know whether we would be willing to do it, and I do not know whether the Russians would be willing to do it. But I think that we may threaten to do it. And I think that the Russians might threaten to do it. And who will take the risk, then, not to take that threat seriously?”

Jeffrey D. Sachs
Common Dreams

The war with Iran is Trump’s folly but Congress’s disgrace for not stopping it.

Dear Members of Congress,

In truly deranged remarks to world leaders at the UN, Donald Trump declared that “I have a big decision to make,” whether to negotiate a deal with Iran or instead to “annihilate the Islamic Republic” and drive Iran “into hell with no chance of survival.”

He posed it as his personal choice. The fact that the American people are dead set against Trump’s war means nothing. And as for the voters, he added that he gives “absolutely no credence” to the coming midterm elections in deciding on his actions and on Iran’s fate.

Nothing binds this President. He is not bound by law, the Constitution, the UN Charter, or public opinion at home and abroad. When asked at the start of the year whether he has any limits on his power, he said [archived] “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”

Trump opened his speech with the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, hailing America’s freedom. The fact is that Trump’s authoritarianism far outdoes that of King George III, against whom the colonies rebelled. Among the founders’ indictments of Mad King George was that “He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.” Yet our own mad king has decided that the survival of a whole civilization is in his hands alone.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Article 5 doesn’t mandate the use of military force in support of an ally, and it certainly wasn’t meant to be exploited by false flags (or even genuine accidents) like Poland’s liberals seem to want to do.

Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico recently made headlines for telling his compatriots that he’ll do his utmost to keep their country out of war with Russia, including if it’s asked to participate in such a conflict through Article 5.

During the same event, he also warned that European NATO and Russia are closer to war than ever, adding in reference to those of his counterparts who just visited Ukraine that “I am deeply concerned that they are merely looking for a pretext for a major conflict between NATO and Russia.”

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

Catholicism is an important part of Polish identity so the optics of a Ukrainian attacking priests and nuns amount to a Ukrainian attack on Polishness itself with all that entails for the socio-political consequences that are expected to soon follow.

A Ukrainian was apprehended on Thursday after stabbing five people at the Benedictine Sisters’ monastery in the southeastern Polish town of Jarosław near the border with Ukraine, three of whom were priests and at least one of which was killed. Catholicism is an important part of Polish identity so the optics of a Ukrainian attacking priests and nuns amount to a Ukrainian attack on Polishness itself with all that entails for the socio-political consequences that are expected to soon follow.

It couldn’t have come at a worse time since Poles are now polarized over Ukraine like never before as a result of Zelensky recently glorifying the Volhynia Genocide’s OUN-UPA culprits at the state level and the consequent harassment that they’ve received on social media from Ukrainians since then.

There are a little less than one million Ukrainian refugees living in Poland nowadays too, and a growing share of Poles want their government to deport at least the draft dodgers among them.

Pepe Escobar
Strategic Culture Foundation

💬 The only art that the Prince must totally master it’s the art of war — Machiavelli
💬 The Supreme Warrior Wins Without Fighting — Sun Tzu

This was supposed to be the calm before the storm. Where the Epstein Syndicate would schmooze the Global South gathered in New York for the – comatose – UN General Assembly and seduce them with assorted “gifts”, wooing them away from the impending Great Debacle and deflecting attention from the breathtaking speed of the collapse of Pax Americana.

Cut to Wednesday, when we have Day One of the UN General Assembly Debate, with Neo-Crassus/Neo-Caligula/Goldfinger/Psycho Toddler supposed to deliver a speech. On the same day, he meets with the Gulf petro-sheiks for what could become some sort of suicidal pact.

And then on Friday, Xi Dada in person comes to the U.S. on an official state visit. (Invisible) sparks are guaranteed to fly. All that would guarantee that the nearly inevitable New Demented Offensive on Iran and the Axis of Resistance might be postponed for a few days.

But then hysteria re-reigned all over again, as panicked imperial stakeholders were faced with some startling facts on the ground, from zero Saudi oil exports and to “burn, baby burn” at Riyadh airport. Cue to the thundering sound of scurrying bling bling cockroaches. They seem to realize that hitting Iran again, now, is beyond dangerous, as the escalation ladder will go totally out of control – complete with Tehran finishing off the scared-to-death petro-sheikhs. So the cockroaches did find out, the hard way, that whatever happens Iran is bound to become the oil hegemon of the Persian Gulf.

Andrew Korybko
Andrew Korybko's Newsletter

This institutionalizes the “Strategy of Denial” on the world’s largest island by not only giving the US control over its security, but over its resources too, which could become a template that the US might replicate with others across Ibero-America and Africa as part of its systemic rivalry with China.

Trump declared during his speech at the UNGA that “No US adversary will ever be permitted to establish a military presence in Greenland any more, or make sensitive investments there without our express written approval” as a result of the US’ deal with that island’s government and Denmark’s. This represents the fulfilment of what he’s sought to do since his first term. While it might seem unique to many, Trump’s newly announced deal is essentially an expanded Compact of Free Association (COFA).

This refers to the arrangements that the US reached with the Pacific Island nations of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, and Palau that it controlled for varying lengths of time after World War II. COFA’s defining feature is that the US retains control over their security, exactly as it’s now attained over Greenland, but Greenland’s COFA-like deal expands the US’ control into the resource domain. The significance of this move is that it could become a template that the US might replicate with others.

Elena Panina
Елена Панина (Telegram)

The document "2026 Resilience Baseline Requirements," recently published by NATO states:

❖ This is a unified doctrinal document that—for the time being—serves as a set of recommendations for Alliance member states.

It explicitly specifies a funding target: up to 1.5% of GDP for defense and security, including the aforementioned resilience measures. This is part of the projected 5% of GDP—the planned level of military and defense-related spending for NATO members by 2035. The remaining 3.5% will fund direct military expenditures. The document outlines seven basic sustainability requirements: