United Kingdom – The decision to slap mighty Russia with sanctions and effectively declare economic war on this key supplier of energy, foodstuffs, precious metals, etc, then provide weapons and know-how to Russia’s enemy without a proper explanation or even a vote in Parliament, has spectacularly backfired as everyone with half a brain knew it would.
The Secretary of State for Scotland, who also happens to be my MP, ignored my earlier letter on the subject so I’ve written to him again.
Check it out
Rt Hon Alister Jack, Secretary of State for Scotland
Dear Mr Jack,
Baiting the Russian Bear
I wrote to you three weeks ago asking why the Government threw caution to the wind and backed Ukraine against Russia knowing that doing so would seriously hurt our own people and ruin our economy.
Why, after doling out some £3billon of military aid, was Mr Sunak allowed to say: “We are working tirelessly to bring an end to this conflict” when he was obviously escalating it?
Why did the Government, already £2.4 trillion in debt, pledge help to rebuild a devastated Ukraine at an estimated cost of $750 billion?
And why hasn’t the Government sent a peace delegation to Moscow instead?
No reply as yet.
With 700,000 households in Scotland facing extreme fuel poverty, and in many cases destitution, and 18 million families (that’s 45 million people) in the UK as a whole likely to be left cold and hungry and struggling to make ends meet, isn’t it time to mend our relationship with Russia? A few short months from now, when our self-inflicted pain turns to agony, when people’s modest savings are wiped out when their hopes for a bright future vanish and the dreams of their children are dashed, and when countless businesses have gone to the wall, no-one will care who started the war — Putin, NATO or Zelensky. We’ll be praying for it to stop. So we might as well do everything possible to end it now.
But Boris Johnson, who seems more concerned with creating a heroic self-image than achieving peace, has just committed us to prolong the bloodshed by announcing that “the UK will continue to stand with our Ukrainian friends” regardless of the cost-of-living consequences to us. Giving away another £54 million in military aid he said that for the past 6 months the UK had stood shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine “supporting this sovereign country to defend itself from this barbaric and illegal invader” (meaning Russia). His posturing has just won him Ukraine’s Order of Liberty medal.
The irony is that Mr Johnson cannot even bring himself to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Palestinians defending their homeland from murder and ruthless ethnic cleansing by the barbaric and illegal invader, Israel. All the more shocking when the responsibility for restoring freedom to the Palestinians is plainly Britain’s having been the mandated power in Palestine until 1948 when we walked away, leaving the fuse to the powder-keg fizzing.
The apartheid Israeli regime has been allowed to terrorise the Holy Land, slaughter the Arab population and rob them of their homes, resources and livelihoods with impunity for 74 years. Like most of his predecessors, our outgoing PM has taken every opportunity to actually REWARD Israel for its crimes against humanity. For the Palestinians, there has been no liberty, only nonstop misery on Mr Johnson’s watch. The Order of Perpetual Oppression would be an appropriate award for him there.
And the NATO question?
In 2007, Putin complained: “What happened to the assurances our western partners made after the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact? Where are those declarations today? No one even remembers them.”
During negotiations over the reunification of Germany in 1990, the Russians were given to understanding that NATO would not encroach eastwards beyond that point. It wasn’t carved in stone but such an undertaking by Western leaders was appropriate to the occasion and should have been respected by their successors. Breaking promises at the top diplomatic level simply isn’t acceptable, and the West’s betrayal is central to the Ukraine conflict.
Newly declassified documents, I read, reveal that in 1990 when Gorbachev told US Secretary of State James Baker “it goes without saying that a broadening of the NATO zone is not acceptable”, Baker replied: “We agree with that.” Baker then told a press conference that NATO’s “jurisdiction would not be moved eastward” and assured Gorbachev and Shevardnadze (Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs) that “if we maintain a presence in a Germany that is a part of NATO, there would be no extension of NATO’s jurisdiction for forces of NATO one inch to the east”. Baker’s not-one-inch promise was the condition that allowed Gorbachev to agree to a united Germany in NATO.
UK’s John Major told Russia’s Minister of Defence Dmitry Yazov that he “did not himself foresee circumstances now or in the future where East European countries would become members of NATO”. And his Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd informed Soviet Foreign Minister Aleksandr Bessmertnykh that “there are no plans in NATO to include the countries of Eastern and Central Europe in NATO in one form or another”.
You’d think our current Tory Government if they wished to be seen behaving honourably, would have kept all that in mind.
America and NATO, meanwhile, have been interfering in Ukraine for years and began training the Ukrainian military in 2014, accounting for about 40 per cent by 2020. They were armed and financed by the US, UK, Canada and France. In November 2020 Jens Stoltenberg, General Secretary of NATO, announced: “We have increased our presence in the Black Sea region… We have increased our cooperation with our two valued partners, Ukraine and Georgia.” So Ukraine had been on board with NATO for some time, posing a serious threat to Russia’s security. But, although NATO has a presence there, Ukraine is only a ‘partner’ not actually a member. So neither Britain nor the other members of the alliance need to feel obliged to wade in.
No matter how abhorrent the situation in Ukraine today, it has been an on-off civil war within Russia’s sphere of influence since 2014 and peace initiatives (Minsk 1 and 2 and the Normandy Format) all failed. It was of little interest to ‘the man on the Clapham omnibus. But in February of this year, the local ruckus erupted into the hellish ‘proxy’ confrontation that US-dominated NATO had long been hoping for. And the man on the bus now finds himself paying through the nose for it.
Zelensky, elected in 2019 on a pledge to end the conflict, doesn’t seem to care how much devastation or how high the body count it takes to achieve his ambition, whatever that really is. He’s the creation of media image-makers and who knows what else, and expects the West to carry on turning the sanctions screw, send him endless supplies of high-tech weaponry, and pay for rebuilding Ukraine afterwards. He says he then wants to turn the country into a “second Israel”.
Throwing around money we haven’t got!
UK policy so far shows little regard for the consequences to Britain’s fragile economy and demoralised citizens and gives even less thought to the harm caused by our vicious sanctions to Russia’s civilians and the many British companies that worked hard for years, even decades, to establish themselves in Russian markets.
Declaring economic war on Russia and arming Russia’s enemy obviously puts us in peril and our nation, quite possibly, in Russia’s nuclear cross-hairs. Isn’t it time Westminster changed its tune and took steps to avoid creating a legacy of bitterness and destruction?
Our debt-ridden Government, after failing to safeguard the country’s energy security, bodging Brexit, overdoing furlough and casually handing £billions to fraudsters during the lockdown, simply cannot afford to subsidise this largely self-inflicted cost-of-living crisis driven by a war it is trying — unbelievably — to keep going. It must go straight to the core of the problem and try to stop it.
The trouble is that Johnson, Truss, Sunak and co have no personal memory of the last cold war with Russia. But my generation does – the Civil Defence, the huge inconvenience of National Service, the countless alerts and NATO exercises, the ever-present fear of being nuked… Not very funny then and even less funny now with the prospect of grinding poverty was thrown in.
A response would be greatly appreciated, please.
Kind regards, Stuart Littlewood
After working on jet fighters in the RAF Stuart became an industrial marketing specialist with manufacturing companies and consultancy firms. He also “indulged himself” as a newspaper columnist. In politics, he served as a Cambridgeshire county councilor and member of the Police Authority. Now retired he campaigns on various issues and contributes to several online news & opinion sites. An Associate of the Royal Photographic Society, he has produced two photo-documentary books – Paperturn-view.com.
Also, check out Stuart’s book Radio Free Palestine, with Foreword by Jeff Halper. It tells the plight of the Palestinians under brutal occupation and explains to me why the Zionists who control Israel should be brought before the International Criminal Court.
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As Dr. K. Barrett also wrote, for other reasons I don’t know, you deleted my reply to Sikel.
True that to refute Sikel the links were in Italian but the essential contents were transcribed.
Then what bothered you to delete? Evolution or Devolution?
@Sikel
I transcribed what was already written, in the same words, a month ago. But in other words I have been writing it for months. Who are you?
You speak as if you know Italy, but you speak ignorantly (in the good and not good meaning). In Italy there is Equitalia and since it has existed dozens of entrepreneurs have committed suicide
You talk about Eni, Enel … but you don’t know, or pretend, who is fattening? Since you sound Italian listen here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnK1kZVqOq4. Benito Livigni was a close associate of E. Mattei (and you should know that he was the one who said “the Seven Sisters” to indicate the Anglo-American-Dutch power over oil, and you will also know about his HOMICIDE, won’t you!) and Draghi for selling off to Golman Sacks immense real estate assets became DG of Goldaman Sacks who also (I add it) paid him. Eni is no longer Italian and those who are fattening are the Anglo-Americans who besides Eni have bought everything, even the government.
Part I
Do you know who Mattarella is?
Carlo Palermo is the only survivor of a massacre: before him it was the turn of two magistrates (that to quote them to you would be useless) and after him it was the turn of Falcone and Borsellino.
Here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roRYab6X3EY speaks for them and for those who died in his place. And he finds that Mattarella’s father was a “Mafioso” and that his son, and current President of the Republic, is involved in the P2 affair that concealed the international dome above P2 (If you were Italian, and not a provocateur, you should know these things as well as the fact that Mattarella says that no one, politician or magistrate, is above the law. But the first one above the law is himself.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roRYab6X3EY
Lastly do you know that in Italy from 1945 to 04.03.2018 we always voted between March and June (as the European elections were all between May and June). Now we will vote on September 25 and you find nothing strange in that (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elections_in_Italy).
This bathing vote is equal to the principle of Tomasi da Lampedusa’s The Leopard “for everything to remain as it is everything must change.” Is that enough for you?
End
thanks for not posting my comment….
yeah…letter writing…
You keep sucking the tit of appeasement…
History remembers fence-sitters.
A small commment concerning the right use of words:
Because the World is round, “THE WEST” lies everywhere that lies to the east of somewhere (except on the north an south poles of our Globe) Thus, “THE WEST” does not exist,
The better word for what is meant aught to be “THE NORTHERNE TRANS-ATLANTIC WEST EUROPEAN HEGEMONY” or something to the like, As for myself, I’m glad to use the term “Around the sunk Atlantis” to derogate this misconception og´f an imagined “culture”.
@Beppe Pal When small to medium-sized Italian businessmen are now being charged with 5.000 to 15.000 for a bimonthly electricity bill, the writing is on the wall for their future. At the same time, companies like ENEL, ENI, Unicredi, Intesa-San Paolo etc. are making billions each in profits. It doesn’t take a rocket-scientist to conclude whose benefiting from the EU’s economic policy. I don’t think Draghi will be the only one high-tailing it out of Italy and Europe come this winter when pitch-forks and pikes will be a common site around Montecitorio, Palazzo Madama, Il Quirinale etc.
A beautiful written and compelling piece Mr. Littlewood lays out the unbalanced assault by the NATO Gnomes on Russia. How this will end is anyone’s guess, but sadly the Ukrainian people seem doomed to be principal victims of their country’s embrace of NATO”s latest war of attrician. When Ukraine secumbed to be front man for the Western assualt, it looks to me they made a big bet the Bear would strike. It seems to have created the very thing Ukraine feared most and wish to prevent
I wrote this a month ago, and, like Bob Dylan, I don’t need the weatherman to know what the weather will be like.
Nam tua res agiutur, paries cun proximus ardet.
It is Horace and was written when the people’s houses in Rome were made of wood. It means it is your duty to act if the wall adjoining yours burns. For if you do not act it will burn your house, the one next to yours … and Rome. (…)
Back to the burning house.
Ukraina, Stoltenberg says, is burning and our houses will burn too if we don’t put out the fire.
What is the fire that Stoltenberg is worried about?
It is the one that might break out in October-November when Europe and the U.S. will be in a corner over energy issues and the people might wake up.
Someone told me that Draghi ran away for this reason.
Who are the recipients of Stoltemberg’s communication? Stoltemberg says it himself: the governments who through Regime pressstitutes must control their peoples and hide that the UKR house is burning (and may burn the West as well) and they will do so by awakening the Covid.
goodbye
The War between Russia-Ukraine like the ‘Covid Epidemic’ are just diversions, just another Chapter in the SAGA, of “FALSE FLAG Attacks”, to keep the World off balance, to be occupied with War and Disease and not to look into who are the Demonic Creatures responsible for the ‘Controlled Demolition’ of the WTC. Towers #1, #2, #7 giant structures and the MURDER of some 3000 innocent Collateral Victims on ‘9/11/2001’ FALSE FLAG attack! ‘9/11’ the greatest Crime EVER, against the US, in our history on our own Soil, dragged the US Into the HELLHOLE of the Middle East that the Zionist Apartheid Talmudic-Supremacist TERROR State of Israel has created there! The Zionist zealots have tried to DRAG US into Their HELLHOLE before, without success, with the ‘LAVON Affair’ in 1953! With the “USS LIBERTY” attack on June 8, 1967! http://www.holocaustonthehighseas.com With a friend like the Zionist TERROR State of Israel who needs Enemies?
Stuart Littlewood…….thankyou
Andrew Armavir…thankyou….
The uk has a serious problem of education amongst our population.
They have been so dumbed-down that its almost now impossible to raise objection, or focused enquiry as to how the country is run and decisions taken.
Who makes the decision to force inject the public with toxins, and the people so stupid they line their kids up for the jab.
Its Jonestown on a national scale.
Who takes the decision to go to war with Russia….
They didnt ask me…
And if that (((kcksucking pig))) boris johnson thinks he can send my sons to war….
Lets putta gun in that slobs hands and send him first.
Who gave that piece of filth permission to instruct war.
Send Andrew, charles and the rest of the german jewish retards that occupy the monarchy
I danced and drunk wine when classiebawn “royalty” was blown-up.
But lets face it…we live in B’nai B’ritain…….saturated media, saturated government and of course the favourite jewish gravy train called the house of lords.
Bring back Guy-Fawkes.
I am notta catholic but the dutch/german jewish filth that have infested our government needs removal.
Sadly Stuart…we are way beyond letters.
Direct personal physical pain is the only thing this (((filth))) understand.
USG keeping their promises ask the American Indian about that. If Zelensky wants to be remembered as the General Armstrong Custer of Ukraine then that’s up to him. NATO will go down in history as the 7th Cavalry and eventually the west will come to its senses or maybe not when China moves on Taiwan signaling the end of the Great Game.
Who does this Andrew Armavir (Russia) think he is, when Johson, Macron, Shultz, Biden,Von Der ..Something, Borrell and the rest say, Russians are suffering, they must suffer and start rioting against their evil dictator Putin!
😄
Ya, It’s Putin fault for not allowing NATO nuke’s on his border and acting to make sure that Ukraine won’t be able to threaten Russia with NATO”s American nukes or any other things that threaten from NATO. This war is a warning to those who think the debt ridden failing empire all knowing and infallible. So if it’s ignoble route from Afghanistan didn’t clue them into the lost potency & resolve, not to mention how far behind in cutting edge military technology
Brilliant letter, Mr. Littlewood!
I’m waiting for his answer, too 😎
In the UK, the cost of electricity will increase by 80% from October 1, the average household marginal bill for the year will exceed £3.5 thousand (more than $4.1 thousand). This is stated in a statement by the British energy regulator Ofgem, reports Reuters.
The rise in prices will have a “huge impact” on British households across the kingdom, and prices will also rise again next January, warned the head of the regulator, Jonathan Brearley.
He refused to give a forecast for the next price increase, explaining this by market volatility. The head of Ofgem urged official London to provide additional assistance to citizens. The new British Prime Minister, he continued, will have to take further steps to deal with the consequences of this dynamic.
A quarter of British families who signed up for the government’s program to host Ukrainian refugees will opt out in the coming weeks due to a lack of funds amid rising inflation and electricity bills, the Daily Mail newspaper writes.
“Participants report that due to the financial crisis in the country, it is becoming more difficult for them to take care of immigrants every day, and they themselves are left without money to live on,” the article says.
According to the publication, some Britons have spent thousands of pounds caring for refugees. The state promised monthly subsidies for each adopted family, but payments are delayed.
Also, residents of the UK complain of great difficulties due to the language barrier and cultural differences. Misunderstandings between British sponsors and refugees lead to the fact that the Ukrainians find themselves without a roof over their heads.
And in Russia, food prices have risen a little, gasoline prices have become slightly lower, grocery stores are flooded with goods, and we do not save water, electricity and heat. We have simply gigantic resources. But why these sufferings to Europeans and the British – we need to ask the insane rulers of these countries.
For the British “Empire”, it’s all the karma of their centuries of colonial pillage around the world. For everyone else, it’s just pure stupidity.
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