"Acting like a hegemon, the United States, starting in 1999, took advantage of Russian weakness and broke its promise not to expand NATO, eventually adding 13 countries, the last of which was Montenegro, in 2017. When Bush announced plans to incorporate Georgia and Ukraine, Putin drew the line. Following the US-backed Ukrainian coup, he took back Crimea and made clear that there are limits to his toleration of NATO expansion..."

“This is about getting into a corporation, screwing it up, putting in poison pills so your competitor can’t swallow it…. Very intricate game played in the 1980’s…. Mike Milken did it with junks bonds, Drexel Burnham.”

“Oliver Stone, an American writer and an Oscar winning filmmaker will present his documentary about Ukraine at the 65th Taormina Film Festival... in Sicily on June 30 - July 6. ... The documentary... reveals the details of the 2014 uprising in Ukraine, discloses the connection between interference to the recent presidential elections in the U.S. and Ukraine, casts the light into the current situation with the conflict in Donbas.”

“My father was a Republican and he hated Roosevelt. And that's sort of been the battle of my life, I think. You have to understand I grew up a Republican conservative. I hated Castro. And I put my money where my mouth was because I went to war, but I understood pretty quickly that this was another place, another culture and we would never fit in there.”

“filmy Olivera Stone'a”

“There was a civil war in this country... Kennedy provoked such hostility and hatred. His death was cheered in the South because of his support for Martin Luther King. He was moving to change things on all fronts. He was starting to end the Cold War. He made a deal with Khruschev and Russia in 1962 to end the missile crisis, and he furthered the... Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963. He... described the Soviets for the first time in American history as mortals, like us, who care about their children. He seemed to have an expanding vision of the world, much like Gorbachev did in Russia in the '80s... Since that day, the media has chanted the mantra that Oswald did it alone. But the American public... has never accepted it. They smell a rat.”

“I’m ambivalent. I like Gekko, which is partly why Michael Douglas did so well…. Gekko is despicable but kinda fun too.”