BBC TV 'Putin v The West'

Insensitive, no self-reflection, no insight from our leaders. No consideration for a superpower (dismissed as a regional power) as the real superpower expanded to become bigger and better by collecting, victoriously, the hangers-on of the former superpower!

Not one of our Western leaders had the courage or honesty to do a little self-examination as to whether any of their actions or sins of omissions may have contributed to the start of the war in Feb 2014.  And, the full-scale invasion 8 years later.

Over the eight years, what could they have done to be a little less expansionist and a little more magnanimous towards Putin and Russia?

from Quora

Finland and Sweden joining NATO. As a master chess player, Putin must have foreseen this long ago. Why does Putin want to force Finland and Sweden joining NATO? What he's trying to gain from it?

You put Putin on a pedestal by imagining him as a fine strategist.  It is true that Putin has long had this reputation, but the moves he has made in recent months clearly show that Putin has lost his foresight.

His worst nightmare was to see NATO on his borders. His worst nightmare was to see the West getting stronger again.

Instead of letting the moribund NATO (SELF: Hardly moribund with NATO military exercises and nukes in E Europe!) do its thing, Putin was so afraid of the democracy that was beginning to flourish in Ukraine that he decided to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022, thinking that no one would do anything except a few words of indignation.

SELF:  The invasion started in 2014.  With 14,000 dead up to Feb 2022 since the violent overthrow by pro-Western firebrands of the pro-Russian President of Ukraine in Feb 2014, the invasion must have started then.  It was like a red rag to a bull to a nationalist and patriot like Putin.

Putin underestimated NATO, the West, and the Ukrainians while overestimating his weak and unmotivated army.

In the end, Putin is getting his worst nightmare and has locked himself into a strategy from which he cannot escape, or else he will be humiliated in front of his people and end up losing their consent. Even people who have been trained by strong propaganda and oppressed would not be able to bear to find out that Putin has started a useless war for the sake of his ego.

The end of Putin has already begun. The beginning of the end is known: February 24, 2022. The exact date of his fall is yet to be determined.

President Putrid's new naval doctrine

Vladimir Putin has signed a new naval doctrine that casts the US and Nato as the biggest threats facing Russia, Reuters and AFP report.

The 55-page document, signed on Navy Day, sets out the broad strategic aims of Russia’s navy, including its ambitions as a “great maritime power” which extends over the entire world.

The main threat to Russia, the doctrine says, is “the strategic policy of the USA to dominate the world’s oceans” and the movement of the Nato military alliance closer towards Russia’s borders.

Russia may use its military force appropriately to the situation in the world’s oceans should other soft powers, such as diplomatic and economic tools, be exhausted, it adds.

Putrid Putin is seething with rage ...

... at the hated American-led West dancing on the grave of the USSR, ever since its collapse in 1991.  In 1999, he inherited what Gorbachev and Yeltsin did, with their perestroika and glasnost and their overtures to the West.  But our behaviour over 31 years has done nothing to assuage his slow-burning, self-destruct rage over the 22 years he has been President.  

Our so self-righteous revenge is fueling the war and fueling the ecocidal, maniacal fueling of the climate emergency as we all, Putrid and Zelensky/Bush/NATO, angrily race into self-destruct idiocy.  And sleepwalk into a nightmare of entirely their/our own making.

Written after hearing John Sweeney talking on the Jeremy Vine Show on 20 July 2022.

The pro-American/EU/Western firebrands in Ukraine brought the Feb 2014 war upon themselves by not waiting for an election to overthrow their pro-Russian president.

"Unconditional surrender from Russia and, it must return Crimea", says Liz Truss

Hi Mike - our expert on foreign affairs.

Did our side overthrow the pro-Russian Ukrainian government in Feb 2014 and that led Russia to take back Crimea and start the separatists' war in Donbas that led to 14,000 killings in Ukraine up to Feb 2022?

MIKE'S REPLY:

For a short answer within my understanding, which is limited because I am not an expert on Ukrainian political and social movements, although I have a degree of knowledge of Russian and Soviet history, I can say the following.

1). Putin has his own motives for his actions in 2014 so to imply that his actions were a reaction to others only is not to attempt an understanding of the emergence of Putin as the dominant political leader in Russia after Yeltsin and the international strategies and policies that he has developed since then. Any actions he took in 2014 needs to be understood within that context. Taking that as read, his actions in 2014 were in response to the political events within the Ukraine which moved in a direction that rejected the leadership of Yanukovich and the pro-Russian policies he wanted to pursue and those within the Ukraine who favoured a pro-Russian policy. The context within Ukraine is that after the decisive vote in the independence referendum of 1991, Ukrainian political movements switched between western and Russian oriented political tendencies with external support from western states and from Russia. Both tendencies were heavily dominated by oligarchic capitalist groups dominating the economy, media and politics. 

2). The USA and the intelligence services allied to them like ours have a long reach and western states have a far greater economic power than Russia and the ability to offer incentives that Russia cannot match and although the overthrow of Yanukovich in 2014 was an internally driven political process within the Ukraine I suspect it was supported covertly by western intelligence and its agencies like the National Endowment for Democracy and overtly because of the offers from the EU states of a partnership agreement with the west. Internally Ukrainian political movements were torn after 1991 into either a western or Russian international orientation which shifted in each of the elections after 1991. I do not accept the 2014 overthrow of Yanukovich as coup directed by the western powers.

3). Political movements in the Donbas were more allied to a pro-Russian orientation and as a major industrial zone since the 19^th century it had strong ties to Russia economically which made it more understandable they were more sympathetic to Russia. Russia intervened with covert military support to political movements that wanted more autonomy for the regions and the attempt to set up separatist movements after 2014. I have read conflicting reports as to how genuine the separatist sentiment amongst the wider Donbas population was.

So in summary what I am saying is that what has happened is down to internal political and social movements within the Ukraine, these movements are not proxies for external states. External states have tried to influence these Ukrainian political movements. In my view Russia took the more aggressive response to what was happening in the Ukraine than that of western states. 

Mike

MINE:

Very many thanks for this, Mike.

I am very concerned that our side felt unable to wait for a chance to overthrow Yanukovich in a competently and fairly run election.  This was an own goal by liberal democratic forces within Ukraine.  An utter tragedy that was, possibly, not condemned by the American/UK-led West at the time.  Putrid Putin must have been absolutely furious!  Hence, the 2021 re-assurances or demands that were never forthcoming from NATO before the war's escalation in Feb 22. Our side called it appeasement if we did what Putrid wanted.  Liz Truss is demanding unconditional surrender and the return of Crimea, instead.

Is this a fair summary, Mike?

16 June 2022:

I do fear that the UK's open-arms approach to Ukrainian refugees fleeing war and our firmly closed arms to refugees from every other war-torn country, does give the game away.  It shows how we will welcome those suffering at the hands of our No 1 sworn enemy, Russia and her war (fueled by our gifts of "only 'defensive' weapons" to make it our war, too).  No way do they have to risk drowning in the Channel, only to be jetted off to Rwanda.  We are not so welcoming to those from our own initiated wars in past years, like Afghanistan and Iraq or from our present war on Yemen!

Do remember that the West's wars and Russia's wars are all good for the capitalist armament factories in America and Europe and in Russia.  All helpful for economic growth and the fat profits for the armament kings and queens.  Never unemployment or low wages for those workers.  No industrial action, ever from trade unions in the factories churning out the weapons to kill and maim.  Only strikes from the railway workers next week when one of their leaders, last decade, publicly said that they would use their muscle to get more wages for nurses!

Only one railway worker, the brave and campaigning train driver Dave Parsons, has helped and supported me in my efforts to highlight, and our attempt to stop, the sheer scale and the long decades of our self-inflicted and ongoing destruction of about one-third of our railway network for roads and buildings and private gardens.  Dave resigned from ASLEF a couple of years ago in disgust at his union.

Tim

What is Putin thinking?

Zbigniew Łobocki

Studied political scienceApr 12

What is Putin thinking?

Originally Answered: What is going on in Putin’s head?

I’ve put a lot of effort into trying to understand this, read their news and here’s my conclusion.

First thing you have to realize is that it’s not just Putin. A lot of Russians think the same way, even Russians living in the west who have access to Western information sources. 

The USSR was a mighty empire that lost the cold war in a humiliating manner, by going bankrupt. In the 1990s, Russia suffered another humiliating period of poverty and corruption when it failed to adapt the Western economic and political model. Right now Russia is often described as a corrupt, destitute “gas station with nukes” - not a true partner to the West. Its political system is rejected by the West as a crooked dictatorship.

So if you want to understand the deep nationalist yearnings of Russians, it is these two:

• We want to be respected as an equal to the west
• We want to humiliate the West in revenge

It’s essentially a national inferiority complex:

Now, Ukraine to Russians is “little Russia”. And Ukraine embarked on a path to westernization, including EU and NATO membership.

In the West, it seems like natural progression: that when a country is “mature” enough, it decides to become a lawful, free-market democracy. But for Russia, which has failed on that path, this aspiration by Ukraine is another humiliation, a total rejection of their political model, their philosophies and morality.

Essentially, by choosing West, Ukraine is also telling Russia that they are shit. And that’s hard to take from a country seen as a “junior partner”.

So of course there are many rationalizations for this invasion. That NATO was going to be “too close to Moscow”. That a stable, Russian speaking, real democracy on their borders would lead to dissent and instability in Russia. That Ukraine’s natural resources would compete with Russian resources, undermining its position in Europe. That “Westernization” of countries is really a CIA campaign. And from Putin’s perspective, these are not insignificant reasons to go to war.

There are also some utterly false rationalizations - that Ukraine is a nazi country, that Ukraine planned to attack Russia, was producing anti-slavic viruses, that Ukraine was committing genocide in the Donbas, etc. This you will hear from the hard-line fanatics. I don’t think Putin buys into these much, but I am sure these delusions are helpful to him psychologically.

But I feel that this is the same kind of imperial humiliation that led to the rise of Hitler in Germany. Russia simply has a bad inferiority complex, and this fuels disgusting anti-social behavior on the country level. Just looking at their TV, how incessantly their propaganda stooges scream about their nukes, how they could vaporise countries. You don’t see that on TV in the US, or France, or UK, or Israel. But in Russia they are overcompensating, so screaming “we have nukes” helps to assuage that inferiority complex. And Putin shares that inferiority complex and thrives off of it.

Pointless resistance when you have nasty, ruthless, right wing oppression

I don't care who governs me - whether its UK, EU or Russia/US.  This is Russia's colonial war to take back Ukraine under its governance and rule.  Under a right-wing, ruthless government I would simply keep my head down, stop dissenting and shut up.  Become anonymous.  Resisting, as the Ukraine government is doing, is killing more of their people than Russians.  Pointless.

All this murder and mayhem has its seeds in our victorious, vanquishing of Russia in the Cold War and dancing on their grave ever since with extending our 'empire' of EU/NATO to and over the former Soviet satellite states and confronting NATO's No 1 sworn enemy right up to their eastern border.  "Standing up to Putin" (Justin Webb on 'Today', today) ever since 1989 when the Berlin Wall came down, is extremely dangerous and foolish and lacking in magnanimity and justice/fairness in victory.

Our delight at pointing the finger at Putin!

It is not our job to even criticise Russia when our record for killing humans is as bad as theirs. 

This century's NATO expansion E is our third invasion of Russia. Putin has every right to be furious.

When will we learn?

I'm tougher on my own side because we proudly claim, as liberal democrats, to be so angelic, holy and superior to all other cultures.

How we rejoice at the discomfiture of NATO's no 1 enemy that takes the spotlight off our own sins!

Phillipe Sands, Steve Rosenberg

HOW I SEE THE SANDS OF RUSSIAN ANGER 

LISTEN TO 'TODAY' on 25.2.22 at 08:55 and Philippe Sands saying that decades of NATO expansion east was "like a red flag to a bull" to Putin.

BBC Moscow correspondent, Steve Rosenberg, on 'Unspun World', talked of Putin's "seething resentment" about how the Cold War ended.

We were not magnanimous in 'victory'.  Victory that was handed to us on a plate by Gorbachev who wanted nuclear disarmament and better relations with America-led NATO.

We were not understanding or fair in taking over lock, stock and barrel all the friends and allies of the enemy we had vanquished at the end of the Cold War.  And it was this no 1 sworn enemy who had graciously retired from the field of battle, too, to allow us to claim a mighty victory!

But, it's even worse than that, for in 2014 the pro-Russian President, fairly elected in 2010, was unceremonially bundled out of power by over-enthusiastic pro-American/Euro fanatics to put their man in the top spot.  This was like a red rag to a bull for poor, pariah Putin.

STOP THIS DESTRUCTION OF YOUR RAILWAY AND NATURE AT MERRY HILL

STOP THIS DESTRUCTION OF YOUR RAILWAY AND NATURE AT MERRY HILL

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

While pariah Putin and ruthless Russia enter their second week of death and destruction on Ukraine, we enter our fourth decade of destroying the 120 Kms Black Country (Bypass Brum) Mainline Railway.

• This Derby to Devon via Dudley principal mainline railway gets destroyed in Dudley and Sandwell.
• For over half a billion pounds, Nature, plus trees and my landscape enhancement scheme get destroyed at Merry Hill Shopping Centre.
• Destroyed by the tramline that could still be put on stilts above the canal, instead of on stilts above the grass embankment alongside the towpath for 230 metres.
• Three different kinds of trams are put on the railway "of national strategic significance"

 "of national strategic significance".pdf

but that still leaves 49 Kms out of the 56 Kms that is wasted but still available for commuter and regional TRAINS.

• Next month, my £50/mth energy bill gets doubled.  This should make it obvious that destroying Nature and the UK's last but wasted mainline railway will also rocket in price.

PHOTOS to be shocked over:

 M6 Toll banner 01.jpg

 M6 Toll 03.jpg

Half a billion pounds of Metro destroys the above half-finished 120 Kms Worcester to Derby railway and these trees, all for a stranded, 'shuttle' tramline on a former mainline railway that does not even connect with the two railway sections between Worcester and Derby, at either end.  It is needed for freight trains, anyway.  So what is the point of Metro?

 6 glorious white trees.jpg

Exactly where the mighty tram viaduct goes!

Tim Weller  28 Hunnington Cres  HALESOWEN  B63 3DJ

0791 380 4363

Learning the wrong things from Russia

Very many thanks for the notes, Mike that I've read.  Do we support NATO membership for Ukraine?  Or, is this one concession LU can make to Putin and Lavrov?

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is moving towards how Russia does things and, when being interviewed by Nick Robinson on Radio 4, Chris Bryant MP also brought in how Russia does things when talking about HMG's 'help' for Owen Paterson.  We are learning all the wrong things from Russia.

My emphasis is always on holding our own people to the highest standards of behaviour and probity, as I do with myself.  Unless we get our own house in order and have leaders of the highest integrity and competence, we are setting a very bad example to Russia and China and every other nation.  We have a hell of a lot of work to do in our own nation - and it starts with individual self-examination, of course!  Hypocrisy remains rock solid even with us and our leaders.

Perspective from Stop the War Coalition

Stephen Bell presents his perspective on the confrontation on Ukraine.

"Shortly before the new year, there were many media reports concerning the possibility of a war between Russia and NATO over the Ukraine. Behind this tension lay the breach of the promise NATO made to the Soviet government not to expand eastwards upon Soviet withdrawal after 1989. Since that time NATO has steadily advanced its presence through most of the Eastern European states. Inevitably, this has been interpreted as a threat to the Russian people and state. The presence of British troops as part of this increased pressure is a major concern. It is increasing rather than reducing the tension in the region. It is vital that the peace movement in Britain discuss the issues, and acts in support of reducing the chances of war over Ukraine."

 

I think I should add that the endless talk about defending a “FREE” Ukraine is complete nonsense. In the 1990s after the independence in Ukraine there was a large Communist Party with significant parliamentary representation and in the 2000s there was a separatist party in Eastern Ukraine (similar to the Scottish National Party). Both organisations have been banned, how can you have a “FREE” Ukraine if major popular political organisations are banned? One does not have to support the politics of these two political organisations to understand Ukraine is an authoritarian state. Equally the Putin regime has a long record of suppressing internal opposition including recently Memorial which have since the 1980s exposed the crimes of the Stalin era.

Stuart Richardson

Democracy/voting is not always the right thing to do

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jan/12/russias-belief-in-nato-betrayal-and-why-it-matters-today

 

Democracy/voting, as with B Johnson’s disastrous Premiership, does not always get things right!  Extract:

“The US administration in 1993 could have delayed Nato expansion, but supporters who saw it as a democratic right of the former Warsaw Pact countries defeated those who argued it would weaken both Russian support for arms control and the forces of reform inside Russia.”

 

NATO expansion has led to the Putin kickback.  No arms control even in the UK, certainly not in Russia.  And no reform anywhere!

 

Thanks for the excellent debate and for your comments, Tony.

 

Tim

Corruption is the greater evil than killing Commies and Muslims

Dear all

What some sons of Abraham get up to!

For what its worth, this is how I see things, after reading Simon’s blog about the Central African Republic (CAR).

ONE VERSION:

What a horrendous time for the people of the CAR.  I cannot possibly understand how the situation developed to such a frightening scenario of sectarian violence.  All I do know that the killings by Muslims must not make us even more anti-Islam or prejudiced, in anyway against Muslims we might meet.  It certainly must not make us even more determined to get our own back or, to extend the War of Terrorism in Afghanistan beyond the end of 2014.

As regards political correctness, I think that being correct in every way is the only correct thing to be!  We could do with being religiously correct, too but then that means being loyal to the faith you were brought up in when we should be able to think things out for ourselves and to come to our own conclusions.

Being correct in every way means, I think, acknowledging that the Muslims have a better track record than the Christians when it comes to who does the least violence.

Being correct in every way means, I think, accepting that the Koran has no violence but the Bible has much.

Being correct means understanding that the Arab slave trade was much less extensive,  and brutal than the slave trade by the ‘Christian’ nations.

It seems to me that the Muslim countries look as though they are less avaricious, materialistic and less dominated by the ‘consume ever more’ mentality of the now very rich ‘Christian’ nations.

It is definitely the Western world, with those nation’s wars over their various empires, over the last two hundred years, at least, that has the worst record for man’s inhumanity to man.  The Western, ‘Christian’ world that includes America, is responsible for

• the killings of Africans that included Muslims during the vicious slave trade.
• decades of oppression and deaths of black people by the supposedly ‘Christian’ and advanced nations of the USA and South Africa.

• the persecution and killing of Jews,
• then, Communists in the countries of SE Asia as we fought for “our vital strategic interests”, capitalism and democracy against godless, evil Communism; and, now
• the latest horrors are perpetrated against Islam and the people of Iraq and Afghanistan.  Both direct and indirect killings in, so far, twelve years of the war of terrorism in leaving a wasteland, mayhem and intermittent civil war in Iraq.
• Yet, Bush and Blair sincerely believed they were doing what God wanted in launching the War of Terrorism.  Just like the two Muslims who killed the soldier outside his barracks in Woolwich in 2013.  Except Bush and Blair have much more blood on their hands than the two Muslims, of course.  Abraham and his God and Allah have much to answer for.
• for years the West has threatened to attack Iran for wanting nuclear weapons to balance or match Israel’s arsenal and so deter an attack from them.
• this year, the Western powers nearly attacked Syria as punishment for a chemical attack in July.  Putin saved the day.  And, what an excellent article of his in the ‘New York Times’, too!

Yet, we get into such a state of indignation over the very much lower killings in the countries of eastern Europe that came under Stalin’s control in the wake of his help in defeating Nazism.  We honestly think USSR communism killed “millions of millions” of their own (Daily Mail Dep Editor, Jon Staefel, ‘Newsnight’ 2013) but we conveniently forget our own millions whose premature deaths we are responsible for! However, since we kill blacks and foreigners, perhaps that does not matter.

Therefore, not man’s inhumanity to man but ‘Christian’, Western inhumanity to the Muslims of this century.  How very ironic, how very thoughtless and hypocritical of us, how very unkind of us, how very reprehensible of us!

ANOTHER VERSION:

1. I do suspect (but there is no way of proving this) that down through the centuries, the adherents of the three dominant and influential Abrahamic faiths have been more responsible for killing their own than all the other faiths put together.

2. Muslims in my former workplace (I have now retired) tend to view their home of Britain as being founded and still based on the Judeo/Christian view of the world eg for many centuries the practices of Parliament on the centrality of the Bible and Christian belief and, especially, in the Coronation ceremony of our once all powerful, unelected and dictatorial and, too often, very badly behaved monarchs.  In other words, since we label all Arabs as Muslims, some Muslims do like to label all people in the West as Christians.  That is understandable.

3. The latest upsurge of violence between two largest branches of Abraham's family started with what the 'Christian' West called a declaration of war on the USA - 9/11.  The 11 September 2001.  Indeed, that Bible believing Christian who was saved from alcoholism by the Lord, President GW Bush called his launch of the War of Terrorism, a crusade.  For Muslims, the word, 'crusade' has the horrifying connotations of the first named Christian crusades against the Muslims some centuries ago.

4. That far wiser man of God, Bishop Desmond Tutu, commented on 9/11 as being an act of terrorism and not an act of war.  The implication being that the White House administration of the time, rather than seeing the attack on the twin towers as an opportunity to launch their 'New American Century Project' of violence and domination in the Middle East, should have used the courts of law to bring Osama bin Laden and the other surviving plotters to justice under American law in the USA and not to lock suspects up for years in Guantanamo Bay outside American law, in a state of limbo.  Many seem to be suspects picked up on a whim, provided they were Muslims.  Some remain in Guantanamo Bay without evidence against them and without trial.  No wonder we have many Muslim insurgents or terrorists fighting our brave, upstanding, heroic soldiers.

5. Rather than keeping within the law, we have seen both the very military powerful Jewish state of Israel and its financial backer and supporter, the 'Christian' state of the USA, both indulging in extra judicial assassinations of their enemies who are classed by both democratic states as 'terrorists'.  Exactly the same name was used to describe Nelson Mandela who narrowly escaped hanging for his crime against the state of South Africa.

6. Using the term ‘terrorist’ does help them to assuage their consciences in circumventing the far lengthier but inconvenient route of going down the legal avenues of using American law on US territory.  Or, in the case of Israel, Israeli law.

7. What is worse, the men of violence in both the Knesset and in the White House feel quite unable to even abide by the resolutions and mandates of the United Nations.  The UN, like the law, is another inconvenience that both the Western states, with sometimes Russia and China, simply ignore when it suits them!

8. No wonder we have constant war and mayhem in some parts of Africa, along with Iraq and Afghanistan.  Iraq and Afghanistan that we have liberated to enjoy the rich blessings of Western democracy, religion, culture and schooling for girls.

9. In addition, all these men of violence, some the sons of Abraham in the prosperous 'Christian' West (and not so prosperous 'Christian' Africa) or the 'Muslim' Middle East and Africa, make the very weapons that fuel these never-ending wars.

10. The Bible has much violence in the Old Testament (see NOTE, below); the Koran has none.  I have read every single word (practically) more than once in the Bible and literally every word in the Koran, once.

11. The Bible even has rules for waging holy war (Deut 20 v 1-20); the Koran has none.  The Koran allows self-defence but not pre-emptive attacks of so called ‘self-defence’ as the Israelis have done many times since their state was founded.  Founded, too out of many acts of terrorism in 1946 and 1947 to force the hand of the authorities to give them, and only them, the land.  The most unholy Holy Land, ever.

12. The centuries of the most shocking violence indulged in by the supposedly Christian Western European nations - and the United States of Aggression with its offshoot, Israel - all, in this century, set a very bad example to the warring factions in the Central African Republic.  Or, is it just human nature the world over, regardless of religious belief?

The time is well overdue for us good Christian men and women, the righteous of the Lord, to actually begin living up to the, admittedly, extremely difficult teachings of Jesus Christ in the Gospels.  Or, if we cannot even attempt to do the non-aggression of being peacemakers instead of warmongers, how about abiding by UN mandates, international law or, just the law of our own lands?

​​

Or, if even that is beyond us, how about keeping to the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights?  This time, only thirty paragraphs of sound, common decency for us to attempt!

NOTE

The Bible is a contrast of ‘Thou shalt not kill’, yet also ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for tooth’, to genocide as God told Israel to wipe the inhabitants of the Promised Land off the face of the map. From that to a loving God and His people are to love neighbour and to love enemies.  Perhaps, all that explains why atheist, agnostic and devout Christian believers all take part in warfare, and look up to our soldiers as heroes, as making the ultimate sacrifice, as noble service and, who so respect our soldier heroes (as my father in law did).  Nearly all vote for the three main political parties who are this century’s war parties.  For it is they who order the years of aggression, invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, without any authorisation from the UN.