Hello Folks,

I've occasionally posted the odd letter to various commentators or politicians in NZ.

To remind non-NZers. Nine to Noon is a current affairs magazine programme every weekday morning, nearly three hours - it is a very worthwhile broadcasting effort, and mostly Kathryn Ryan does a good job. Her failures, in my mind, are her very conventional thinking geo-politically and her conventional neoliberal economic thinking, ie she's not herself someone who is going to rock the boat or bother to examine in any way the self-contradictions of our present and increasingly dangerous way of doing things. .

This one comes after her scheduled weekly quick report from the UK today. The short segment isn't available on replay. But of course the passing of the Ukraine finance bill featured largely, even though not directly relevant to the UK.

No discussion on the merit of this proposal, just an assumption that in some miraculous way it was desirable and will "help" that benighted country and citizenry.

So I sent a letter She won't read it, it's too long, and there's almost certainly a filter on their email address that will put any letter of mine in the junk mail box. But there you are, when all turns to an even bigger bloody mess I can refer this lady to the alternative opinions that she and her media colleagues have so assiduously ignored over all this time. Maybe she'll say sorry, but I doubt it.

Dear Kathryn and team

Why ask the European correspondent what’s happening about Ukraine, and how the money from the US might “help”. What do YOU think about all this?

You do realise this war was almost certainly avoidable if the US and NATO had bothered to use diplomacy, an old fashioned concept which the US and NATO no longer employ?

Diplomacy would have recognised Russia’s understandable strategic anxieties of having an enemy military alliance on its Ukrainian doorstep. Russia had made this plain for years. It was their “red line” which we would cross at our, and Ukraine’s peril.

Diplomacy would have accepted the reality of Crimea's control by Russia which a large majority of its residents / citizens accept and wish to see continue.

Diplomacy would have accepted that having fascist elements in Ukraine’s army and politics is unacceptable to Russia, as they should be to us and Ukraine, and would need dealing with.

Diplomacy would have insisted the Minsk 2 agreement was adhered to, but Merkel, Hollande, Poroshenko have since all singly admitted they had no intention of honouring this agreement, cynically being used to buy time to re-arm Ukraine.

Diplomacy would have accepted Ukraine’s neutrality and non-membership of NATO. Two countries after WW2 became neutral in agreement with the then USSR, Austria and Finland. Neither country has suffered any deleterious consequences because of this in all the time since. Finland even fought Russia on Germany’s side.

Diplomacy would have prevented the US interference in Ukraine’s internal affairs and the monetary and intelligence support of its Maidan coup - the direct cause of the subsequent civil war in the Donbas, some 4,000 civilian deaths and Russia’s own excuse to interfere.

Diplomacy would have realised that leading Ukraine up the garden path to NATO membership would be a disaster for Ukraine, and NATO

Diplomacy would have noted Barak Obama’s earlier wise and prescient observation, “Russia has escalatory dominance in Ukraine"

So now we have the “success" of yet more humungous sums of money being promised to Ukraine - though of the $60 billion, you do realise about $40 billion goes to the US itself in armament manufacture in the Military-Industrial Complex and allows these companies to continue supporting the election expenses of all these representatives. .

And what will this “success” achieve? Nothing, except more death and destruction for Ukraine. Ukraine lost this war the moment Russia invaded. The failure of diplomacy was spectacular and murderously tragic. Russia is winning, advancing and threatening a total takeover of all Ukraine east of the Dnieper River and this money, these munitions (where exactly are they?) will only prolong Ukraine’s misery for a few weeks or months. Meanwhile there are bridges in the US to repair, poverty to relieve, medicines to be provided, industry to renew, the environment to be protected, universities to staff……...

Biden is desperate to keep the war going until the election. He may or may not succeed. But the sheer evil of sacrificing hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians on this proxy war on Russia, presumably till the last Ukrainian, for political advantage is a degree of barbarous cynicism which is unmeasurable. Keep on supporting Ukraine? Where’s the off-ramp? Where’s the thought as to how this might end? Where was the debate in the House of Representatives? Where’s the debate in the media? Where’s the debate in Nine to Noon?

In not understanding the way you, the media generally, and most of the citizens in the west , and the Ukrainians themselves most tragically, have been gulled, conned, lied to, manipulated, propagandised, cajoled and otherwise abused by a US led crusade against Russia, presumably for its temerity for still existing, you and we are all complicit in the unfolding human and material tragedy and horror of Ukraine.

The flag-waving in the House of Representatives, the standing ovation in the House of Commons are the signs and symptoms of a heedless political elite totally out of touch with reality and partaking in a mass hysteria, not that dissimilar from any autocratic or populist regime’s similar manipulations of citizens’ emotions and actions.

It is all just so dangerous and will lead to total disaster for us all unless we quickly grow up and take on board some hard facts, better known as reality, and be willing to retreat to a better place in which to face our future together. And that will include talking to Russia, to Vladimir Putin and his regime, because if we want a future, we will need to ensure Russia has one too. It has been our refusal to recognise this fact and our continuing assiduously and oh so dangerously to try to undermine that country that has in great part led to this disaster. .

And finally, to repeat what I’ve said before, we will ultimately abandon and betray Ukraine when the cost becomes intolerable or the politics not worth while………because that is what the US and what we, do. Of course, there is a logical and more morally consistent alternative….. we could decide to declare war on Russia and begin WW3 in earnest.

Yours faithfully,


Dr J K Monro
Martinborough
New Zealand.